Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Risk of Tuberculosis Doubles in First Year of HIV Infection

The risk of tuberculosis infection doubles within one year of HIV infection, according to a study published in the Jan. 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Scientists previously assumed that there was no increase in tuberculosis risk within the first few years of HIV infection. Pam Sonnenberg of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and colleagues were therefore surprised by the results of their research on the two infections, which they conducted in South African gold miners.

The study was large, involving 23,874 miners from four mines, and retrospective in design, drawing its results from the medical records available for each miner. All subjects were black men between 18 and 65 years of age. They were divided into three groups: those who were HIV-negative throughout the study, those who were HIV-positive on study entry, and those whose infection status changed from negative to positive during the study. Miners were followed until they developed pulmonary tuberculosis, left the mines, or died. Tuberculosis incidence not only doubled within the first year of HIV infection but also increased four-fold after two years, with a further slight increase in those infected for longer periods of up to seven years.

Sonnenberg and colleagues explained that several characteristics of the gold mines greatly facilitated their research: a very high incidence of tuberculosis among the miners, due to crowded conditions and other work-related factors; the fact that the miners lived on-site at the mines, making their external environments relatively uniform; and the mines’ provision of free, high-quality health care to the miners, including a voluntary HIV testing program and tuberculosis screening and treatment programs. The unique setting of the gold mines also provides a caveat: because the study population was not diverse and was characterized by unusually high rates of tuberculosis, the results may not be applicable to all individuals with HIV infection.

Diana Olson | EurekAlert!
Further information:
http://www.idsociety.org

Im Focus: (Re)solving the jet/cocoon riddle of a gravitational wave event

An international research team including astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has combined radio telescopes from five continents to prove the existence of a narrow stream of material, a so-called jet, emerging from the only gravitational wave event involving two neutron stars observed so far. With its high sensitivity and excellent performance, the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg played an important role in the observations.

In August 2017, two neutron stars were observed colliding, producing gravitational waves that were detected by the American LIGO and European Virgo detectors....

Im Focus: Light from a roll – hybrid OLED creates innovative and functional luminous surfaces

Up to now, OLEDs have been used exclusively as a novel lighting technology for use in luminaires and lamps. However, flexible organic technology can offer much more: as an active lighting surface, it can be combined with a wide variety of materials, not just to modify but to revolutionize the functionality and design of countless existing products. To exemplify this, the Fraunhofer FEP together with the company EMDE development of light GmbH will be presenting hybrid flexible OLEDs integrated into textile designs within the EU-funded project PI-SCALE for the first time at LOPEC (March 19-21, 2019 in Munich, Germany) as examples of some of the many possible applications.

The Fraunhofer FEP, a provider of research and development services in the field of organic electronics, has long been involved in the development of...

Im Focus: Regensburg physicists watch electron transfer in a single molecule

For the first time, an international team of scientists based in Regensburg, Germany, has recorded the orbitals of single molecules in different charge states in a novel type of microscopy. The research findings are published under the title “Mapping orbital changes upon electron transfer with tunneling microscopy on insulators” in the prestigious journal “Nature”.

The building blocks of matter surrounding us are atoms and molecules. The properties of that matter, however, are often not set by these building blocks...

Im Focus: University of Konstanz gains new insights into the recent development of the human immune system

Scientists at the University of Konstanz identify fierce competition between the human immune system and bacterial pathogens

Cell biologists from the University of Konstanz shed light on a recent evolutionary process in the human immune system and publish their findings in the...

Im Focus: Transformation through Light

Laser physicists have taken snapshots of carbon molecules C₆₀ showing how they transform in intense infrared light

When carbon molecules C₆₀ are exposed to an intense infrared light, they change their ball-like structure to a more elongated version. This has now been...