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Health equity is a priority in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda and other major health initiatives. The World Health Organization (WHO) has a history of promoting actions to achieve equity in health, including efforts to encourage the practice of health inequality monitoring. Health inequality monitoring systems use disaggregated data to identify disadvantaged subgroups within populations and inform equity-oriented health policies, programs, and practices.

This paper provides an overview of a number of recent and current WHO initiatives related to health inequality monitoring at the global and/or national level.

We outline the scope, content, and intended uses/application of the following Health Equity Monitor database and theme page; State of inequality reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health report; Handbook on health inequality monitoring with a focus on low- and middle-income countries; Health inequality monitoring eLearning module; Monitoring health inequality an essential step for achieving health equity advocacy booklet and accompanying video series; and capacity building workshops conducted in WHO Member States and Regions.

The paper concludes by considering how the work of the WHO can be expanded upon to promote the establishment of sustainable and robust inequality monitoring systems across a variety of health topics among Member States and at the global level.

The paper concludes by considering how the work of the WHO can be expanded upon to promote the establishment of sustainable and robust inequality monitoring systems across a variety of health topics among Member States and at the global level.

Community health workers (CHWs) are an integral resource in many health systems, particularly in resource-poor settings. Their identities--'who' they are--play an important role in their hiring, training, and retention. We explore the perceptions, experiences, and identities of CHWs as they adopt a CHW role in rural South Africa, using 'role identity theory'.

From April to December 2010, we conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with CHWs volunteering in non-governmental home-based care (HBC) organisations in one rural sub-district in South Africa. The role identity theory framework was used to understand the work of CHWs within their communities, addressing themes, such as entry into, and nature of, caring roles, organisational support, state resourcing, and community acceptability. A thematic content analysis was used to analyse the collected data.

The study found that CHWs usually begin their 'caring work' before they formally join HBC organisations, by caring for children, neighbours, mothers, fathole identities reveal the tensions CHWs face as 'insider' members of the community and yet at times being treated as 'outsiders', who might be regarded with suspicion, and at the same time, appreciated for the resources that they might possess. Understanding role identities, and how best to support them, may contribute to strategies of retention and sustainability of CHW programmes, as their formalisation in different contexts continues to grow.Extracellular vesicles (EVs) mediate non-conventional transport of molecules across the fungal cell wall. We aimed at describing the carbohydrate composition and surface carbohydrate epitopes of EVs isolated from the pathogenic fungi Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and P. lutzii using standard procedures. Total EV carbohydrates were ethanol-precipitated from preparations depleted of lipids and proteins, then analyzed by chemical degradation, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance and size-exclusion chromatography. EV glycosyl residues of Glc, Man, and Gal comprised most probably two major components a high molecular mass 4,6-α-glucan and a galactofuranosylmannan, possibly an oligomer, bearing a 2-α-Manp main chain linked to β-Galf (1,3) and α-Manp (1,6) end units. The results also suggested the presence of small amounts of a (1→6)-Manp polymer, (1→3)-glucan and (1→6)-glucan. Glycan microarrays allowed identification of EV surface lectin(s), while plant lectin microarray profiling revealed terminal Man and GlcNAc residues exposed at the EVs surface. Mammalian lectin microarray profiling showed that DC-SIGN receptors recognized surface carbohydrate in Paracoccidioides EVs. Our results suggest that oligosaccharides, cytoplasmic storage, and cell wall polysaccharides can be exported in fungal EVs, which also expose surface PAMPs and lectins. The role of these newly identified components in the interaction with the host remains to be unraveled.Oxygen is essential for aerobic life, and hypoxia has very severe consequences. Organisms need to overcome low oxygen levels to maintain biological functions during normal development and in disease states. selleck chemicals llc The mechanism underlying the hypoxic response has been widely investigated in model animals such as Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans. Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), a key gene product in the response to oxygen deprivation, is primarily regulated by prolyl hydroxylase domain enzymes (PHDs). However, recent findings have uncovered novel HIF-independent functions of PHDs. This review provides an overview of how invertebrates are able to sustain hypoxic damages, and highlights some recent discoveries in the regulation of cellular signalling by PHDs. Given that some core genes and major pathways are evolutionarily conserved, these research findings could provide insight into oxygen-sensitive signalling in mammals, and have biomedical implications for human diseases.The purpose of this study is to determine whether including breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the preoperative workup of patients with known breast cancer has an impact on mastectomy and/or re-excision rates. This is an Institutional Review Board approved HIPAA compliant retrospective study reviewing the impact MRI has on mastectomy and re-excision rates in patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer. Our study compares two groups (i) 154 patients who did not receive preoperative MRIs and served as a control group and (ii) 96 patients who received preoperative breast MRIs. Patient race and age between the two populations were not statistically different. The difference in mastectomy rates between the two populations was 10.7%; although not statistically different, the p value of 0.10 suggests a trend toward significance. The re-excision rates between the two populations, however, were significantly different (p less then 0.001), with women in the control group having a higher re-excision rate than those in the study group. The difference between involved and clear margins was significant as well (p = 0.002), with patients undergoing preoperative MRI more likely to have negative margins. Preoperative breast MRI significantly decreases the likelihood of involved margins as well as the need for surgical re-excision. Preoperative breast MRI does not result in a statistically significant difference in mastectomy rates, although further investigation is required to determine whether there is a trend towards statistical significance.

Memory impairment is considered a hallmark of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and dementia. Emerging evidence suggests that the prefrontal lobe is required to maintain memory functions. The purpose of this study was to clarify whether older adults with aMCI have decreased prefrontal oxygenation during memory encoding and retrieval compared with age-matched healthy older adults, using multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy.

We examined 64 older adults with aMCI (mean 71.8 years) and 66 cognitively healthy control subjects comparable in age and gender (mean 71.7 years). The concentration of oxy-hemoglobin, which is a reliable biomarker of changes in regional cerebral blood flow, was measured in the prefrontal cortex during encoding and delayed retrieval of a list of 10 target words. Task performance was evaluated as average number of correct answers in the retrieval task.

Subjects with aMCI showed reduced activation in the bilateral dorsolateral cortex (approximately Brodmann area 9) and provided fewer correct answers in the retrieval period than control subjects. There were no significant differences during encoding.

Reduced activation in the dorsolateral cortex during retrieval may cause deficits in memory performance, which may be used as a marker of aMCI. Further studies are required to examine the predictive validity of this decreased activation pattern for the incidence of Alzheimer's disease.

Reduced activation in the dorsolateral cortex during retrieval may cause deficits in memory performance, which may be used as a marker of aMCI. Further studies are required to examine the predictive validity of this decreased activation pattern for the incidence of Alzheimer's disease.In this study, we describe the synthetic approach, crystallographic structure, luminescent behavior and elucidation of the channels of the energy conversion in heteronuclear coordination polymers with emission in the visible (Eu(3+) and organic ligand) and near-infrared (Nd(3+)) range. The [(Nd0.9Eu0.1)2(dipc)3(H2O)3]n·nH2O, [(Nd0.7Eu0.3)2(dipc)3(H2O)3]n·nH2O, [(Nd0.5Eu0.5)2(dipc)3(H2O)3]n·nH2O, [(Nd0.3Eu0.7)2(dipc)3(H2O)3]n·nH2O, [(Nd0.1Eu0.9)2(dipc)3(H2O)3]n·nH2O, [Eu2(dipc)3(H2O)3]n·nH2O and [Nd2(dipc)3(H2O)3]n·nH2O materials are obtained by hydrothermal conditions from pyridine-2,6-dicarboxylic acid (H2dipc) and Ln2O3 oxide (Ln = Eu and Nd). The fine structures in the emission spectrum and spectral profile are used to investigate the ion responsible for the emission characteristics of a material (6), based on coordination polyhedron. The heteronuclear systems show emission in the dual spectral range (NIR-VIS) tuned for blue or red. The tuning of emission on the red (Eu(3+)) or blue (organic ligand) range may be performed by controlling the stoichiometric ratio of the lanthanide ions and by controlling the excitation wavelength. Nd(3+) ions display self-absorption of emission to dipc ligand, resulting in interference on the emission band profile ranging from 400 to 600 nm. The energetic process of energy transfer is operated by a cascade of energy transfer, from dipc ligand mainly to Eu(3+) ions and finishing on the Nd(3+) ion. The efficient sensitization to Nd(3+) by Eu(3+) ions is due to the presence of many resonant energy levels and the short distance between these ions.Ketones with bulky aromatic, heteroaromatic and ferrocene substituents react with acetylene in the presence of a KOH/DMSO super-base suspension (90 °C, 15 min) to give polysubstituted furans in up to 86 % isolated yields in a one-pot fashion. This assembly of the furan scaffold involves a domino sequence in which one molecule of ketone reacts with two molecules of acetylene.Combining peginterferon (PEG-IFN) and a potent nucleoside/nucleotide analogue might improve treatment response in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). The aims of this study were to compare the efficacy of PEG-IFN alpha-2b with or without entecavir in HBeAg-negative CHB and to investigate predictors of response. A total of 126 treatment-naïve patients were randomly assigned to receive monotherapy (n = 63) or combination therapy (n = 63) for 48 weeks. Virological response (VR) was defined as HBV DNA level less then 2000 IU/mL at week 96. Baseline factors including polymorphisms in the IFNL3 (rs12979860) and HLA-DPA1 (rs3077) genes and on-treatment viral kinetics were determined. At week 48, rates of undetectable HBV DNA were lower in the monotherapy than combination groups, but rates of HBsAg clearance and decline were comparable. At week 96, there was no difference between the corresponding groups regarding virological response (41.3% vs 38.1%, P = 0.856), HBsAg clearance (9.5% vs 4.8%, P = 0.491) and HBsAg decline.