ABSTRACT Antenatal syphilis is a major cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality. Programmes to control syphilis in developing countries are hampered by lack of laboratory services, delayed diagnosis and doubts about the accuracy of the current screening methods. In Kenya, the Venereal Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) test is currently used as the primary screening test for syphilis in health facilities. This method is labour intensive in the screening of large numbers of serum specimens a...
ABSTRACT Cryptosporidium causes significant morbidity and mortality in AIDS patients worldwide particularly in developing countries where ART is not widely available or affordable. In Kenya, approximately 8% of the adult population lives with HIV/AIDS and Cryptosporidium has been reported as the leading indicator of death among adult HIV/AIDS patients. There is very little information about the molecular epidemiology of cryptosporidiosis and no documented data on immune responses to Cryptospo...
ABSTRACT Plasmodium falciparum infection is characterized by deadly complications such as severe malaria-associated anaemia (SMA) and cerebral malaria (CM).The exact mechanisms underlying pathogenesis of these severe forms of Plasmodium falciparum malaria are not fully understood yet they are associated with a lot of morbidity and mortality. Studies have shown a link between severe P. falciparum malaria and levels of circulating immune complexes (CIC) but the exact role of these CICs in the p...
ABSTRACT Malaria persists to be one of the world’s complex and dynamic disease. The disease is more devastating in sub-Saharan Africa as it constitutes high cases of childhood mortality and morbidity. Management of the disease remains a problem as a result of the spread of parasites that are resistant to the available drugs. Due to the broadened spread of resistance to Sulfadoxine Pyrimethamine (SP), the artemether-lumefantrine which is a more effective and well-tolerated anti-malarial drug...
ABSTRACT The immunobiology of African trypanosomes in the context of both parasite and host survival are tightly interconnected and ultimately determine the complicated traits of host tolerance versus susceptibility. Multigene control of variation in susceptibility to the pathological effects of trypanosomiasis, the most prominent being anaemia, is known to occur in domestic livestock populations. The aetiology of trypanosomiasis-associated anaemia in cattle is multifactorial with enhanced er...
ABSTRACT Leishmania major is an obligate intracellular protozoan parasite that causes chronic cutaneous lesions that often result in disfiguring scars. Artemisinin, a well known antimalarial drug, has been shown to be efficacious against Leishmania parasites both in vivo and in vitro. This study sought to determine the adjuvant potential of artemisinin when administered with a soluble leishmanial antigen. To test this hypothesis, seventy-two female BALB/c mice were randomly assigned into...
ABSTRACT An estimated 1.8 billion people in the world use water coming from fecally contaminated sources. This is as a result of 80% of the human generated wastewater ending up in rivers and other reusable water bodies before treatment. The hygienic balance is locally complicated by the fact that 57% of people in informal settlements have no access to basic sanitation, including latrines and toilets. This study sought to evaluate alternative toileting in the name of “Peepoo”, as single us...
Abstract Introduction Significant bacteriuria during pregnancy can lead to serious obstetric complications, poor maternal and perinatal outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of significant bacteriuria among pregnant women at Makole health centre Dodoma city, Tanzania. Methodology This was a cross sectional study conducted from February 2020 to April 2020. During this period two hundred consenting pregnant women, aged 18 years...
Abstract Isolates of hepatitis B viruses were collected from 20 acute and chronic hepatitis patients in a highly endemic region of Nigeria. Sequencing classified the isolates to the ayw4, as they all contained the amino acid variations characteristic for that serolype. In the pre-S2 region of five isolates, three to seven amino acids were deleted, suggesting that immune escape mutations previously associated only with chronic HBV infection may be observed also in acute disease. Phylogenetic a...
ABSTRACT Proper diagnosis and management of clinical diseases requires succinct understanding of well-established human physiological reference values. Despite the high prevalence rates of HIV, Tuberculosis and Hepatitis infection in Kisumu area of Western Kenya, there are no locally developed hematological values that can be used as reference values of normal biological or homeostatic processes from which pathogenic, pathologic or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention can be ...
ABSTRACT Strategies to reduce HIV-related morbidity and mortality include scale up of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) and provision of broad spectrum antibiotics. Cotrimoxazole (CTX) is a widely available low cost antibiotic recommended by WHO in settings with high infectious disease prevalence for treatment and prevention of opportunistic infections and malaria in all HIV-infected individuals. With immune reconstitution following ART, the risk of opportunistic infections greatly diminishes. Con...
ABSTRACT Transfusion transmissible infections (TTIs) especially, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and syphilis (Treponema pallidum) are a constant threat to blood safety for recipients. Globally, about 1.6 million blood units are destroyed annually owing to TTIs seropositivity, of which 10% is discarded in sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, despite of a series of safety improvements in blood donations among them rigorous pre-donation screening an...
ABSTRACT Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum) malaria is a major cause of childhood morbidity and mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa despite the integrated approaches put in place to control the disease. Most of the mortality in holoendemic transmission areas occurs due to severe P. falciparum disease complication of severe malarial anaemia (SMA), a condition which largely presents in children below five years. Molecular determinants have been implicated in the pathogenesis of SMA (Hb
ABSTRACT Malaria vaccine clinical trials in exposed populations have not always been consistent in finding robust associations between the predicted immune responses and protection against disease. The selection of most promising vaccine candidates have been based on direct antibody inhibition assays that have performed dismally. This suggests that such immune correlates employed in assessing their efficacies may not be surrogate markers of protection. Immunity to asexual blood stage malaria ...
ABSTRACT Plasmodium falciparum malaria infection remains one of the greatest global public health problems. However, studies have shown that fetal haemoglobin (HbF) protects against malaria in sickle cell disease (SCD) and HbF cooperates with antibodies to provide protection. Associations between HbF and antibodies have been done only on infants and therefore protection could be due to maternal immunity. Children at 5 years old have developed their own immunity and also HbF levels do not sign...