showing 2 related works from this author
Management of chronic hepatitis C in childhood: The impact of therapy in the clinical practice during the first 2 decades
2011
Background and aim: Treatment of chronic hepatitis C in children is controversial and its role in the clinical practice is unknown. We retrospectively investigated the impact of treatment in a large cohort of children with chronic hepatitis C over the past 20years. Methods: 376 hepatitis C virus RNApositive children were recruited consecutively in five Italian centres since 1990and followed for1–17years. Results: 86 (23%)subjects were treated: 73 with recombinant interferon alone and 13 with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin. Sustained clearance of hepatitis C virus RNA was observed in 25%of the former, in 92%of the latter and in 9% of untreated cases(p < 0.001). Loss of viraemia was re…
Culture and Real-time Polymerase Chain reaction sensitivity in the diagnosis of invasive meningococcal disease: Does culture miss less severe cases?
2019
BackgroundInvasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is a highly lethal disease. Diagnosis is commonly performed by culture or Realtime-PCR (qPCR).AimsOur aim was to evaluate, retrospectively, whether culture positivity correlates with higher bacterial load and fatal outcome. Our secondary aim was to compare culture and qPCR sensitivity.MethodsThe National Register for Molecular Surveillance was used as data source. Cycle threshold (CT), known to be inversely correlated with bacterial load, was used to compare bacterial load in different samples.ResultsThree-hundred-thirteen patients were found positive for Neisseria meningitidis by qPCR, or culture, or both; 41 died (case fatality rate 13.1%); 1…