Current situation related to antiretroviral therapy and related influential factors on HIV infected injection drug users in the methadone maintenance treatment clinics / 中华流行病学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To find out the current coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART) among HIV positive subjects and to identify the major influential factors associated with the participation in ART among them.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>291 HIV positive subjects from 6 methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) clinics in Guangxi and Yunnan province were surveyed by questionnaires.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>217 males (74.6%) and 74 females (25.4%) were under investigation, with the average age of 38.4 +/- 5.9. Most of them received less than senior high school education, married and unemployed. Results from the single factor logistic regression analysis showed that: working status, living alone, self-reported history of drinking alcohol in the last month, negative attitude towards MMT among family members,poor self-reported compliance to MMT in the last month,lack of incentives in the MMT clinics, reluctance on disclosure of their own HIV status, good self-perception on their health status, lack of communication on ART related topics among family members in the last 6 months, lack of correct attitude and knowledge on ART etc. appeared as the main factors that influencing the participation in ART program among the patients. Data from the multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that factors as: living alone, unwilling to tell others about the status of HIV infection, poor self-perception on HIV infection, lack of discussion of ART related topics within family members in the last 6 months and poor awareness towards ART among the family members etc., were associated with the low participation rate of ART. Conclusion Strengthening the publicity and education programs on HIV positive patients and their family members at the MMT clinics seemed to be effective in extending the ART coverage. Attention should also be paid to increase the family support to the patients.</p>

Subtraction technique of 64-slice spiral CT angiography for intra- and extra-cranial artery imaging / 第二军医大学学报

Objective: To employ the subtraction technique of 64-slice spiral CT angiography for intra- and extra-cranial arteries imaging, so as to study the managing method and assess the clinical outcome. Methods: The pre-contrast and post-contrast images of 100 patients were obtained by 64-slice spiral CT angiography. A special head holder was used during the scanning to guarantee the accurate overlapping of the pre-contrast and post-contrast images. A reconstructed three-dimensional model of the pre-contrast bone dataset was subtracted from the post-contrast dataset to produce the subtracted images. (1) An experienced operator performed the conventional and subtraction reconstructions; the periods for image generation of both methods were recorded and compared. (2) The quality of the images were evaluated and graded (grade 1-5) by 2 experienced radiologists in a double-blinded manner. Results: (1) The new subtraction technique using 64-slice spiral CT angiography needed significantly less time than the conventional method did (11.01±1.89 min vs 14.30±2.25 min, P<0.01). (2)The correlation coefficient of the results of 2 radiologists was 0.87. The score of image quality by subtraction 64-slice spiral CT angiography was significantly higher than that by the conventional method (4.22±050 vs 2.93±0.36, P<0.05). Conclusion: Subtraction 64-slice spiral CT angiography is easy to use and time saving for intra- and extra-cranial artery imaging; it does not has the difficulty of separating artery from bone and is worth popularizing in clinic.