Diss. (sammanfattning) Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2006. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is an auditory-specific perceptual deficit in the processing of auditory stimuli that occurs in spite of normal peripheral hearing thresholds and normal intellectual capacity American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA, 2005). The diagnostic process of APD typically involves a test battery consisting of sub-tests designed to examine the integrity of various auditory processes of the central auditory nervous system (CANS). One category of these sub-tests is the low-pass filtered speech test (FST), whereby a speech signal is distorted by using filtering to modify its frequency content. One limitation of the various versions of the FST currently available is that they are administered using a constant level of low-pass filtering (e.g. a fixed 1 kHz corner frequency) which makes them prone to ceiling and floor effects (Farrer & Keith, 1981). As a consequence, the efficacy and accuracy of these tests is significantly compromised (Martin & Clark, 1977). The purpose of the present study was to counter these effects by utilising the University of Canterbury Adaptive Filtered Speech Test (UCAST) which uses a computer-based adaptive procedure intended to improve the efficiency and sensitivity of the test over its constant-level counterparts. A comprehensive APD test battery was carried out on 18 children aged 7-13 suspected of APD and on an aged-matched control group of 10 children. Fifteen of the APD suspected children were diagnosed with APD based on their performance on a traditional APD test battery, comprising the Compressed and Reverberated Words Test (CRWT), the Double Digits test (DDT), the Frequency Pattern test (FPT) and the Random Gap Detection test (RGDT). In addition, the UCAST was administered to examine whether the low-pass filter limit at which children score 62.5% of words correct i) differed significantly between children who either passed or failed the APD test battery; ii) correlated with their score on the traditional APD battery (TAPDB); and iii) correlated with their score on a commercially available low-pass filtered speech test, the Filtered Words Subtest of SCAN-C (Keith, 2000b). Results demonstrated a significant difference between the UCAST low-pass filter limit at which APD and control children scored 62.5% words correct (two-way repeated measures ANOVA, p < 0.01). Significant correlations were found between the UCAST and three of the four tests used in the TAPD - the DDT, the RGDT and the FPT (Pearson Correlation coefficient, p < 0.01). No correlation was found between the UCAST and the CRWT or between the UCAST and the SCAN-C (FW) test (p > 0.05). These findings provide evidence that an adaptive filtered speech test may discriminate between children with and without APD with greater sensitivity and specificity than its constant-level counterparts.

Thesis (M.H.A.)--University of Michigan, 1974. / "Program in Hospital Administration."

Thesis (M.H.A.)--University of Michigan, 1974. / "Program in Hospital Administration."

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-101).

Long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons are autonomous eukaryotic repetitive elements which may elicit prolonged genomic and immunological stress on their host organism. LTR retrotransposons comprise approximately 10 % of the mammalian genome, but previous work identified only 1.35 % of the chicken genome as LTR retrotransposon sequence. This deficit appears inconsistent across birds, as studied Neoaves have contents comparable with mammals, although all birds contain only one LTR retrotransposon class: endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). One group of chicken-specific ERVs (Avian Leukosis Virus subgroup E; ALVEs) remain active and have been linked to commercially detrimental phenotypes, such as reduced lifetime egg count, but their full diversity and range of phenotypic effects are poorly understood. A novel identification pipeline, LocaTR, was developed to identify LTR retrotransposon sequences in the chicken genome. This enabled the annotation of 3.01 % of the genome, including 1,073 structurally intact elements with replicative potential. Elements were depleted within coding regions, and over 40 % of intact elements were found in clusters in gene sparse, poorly recombining regions. RNAseq analysis showed that elements were generally not expressed, but intact transcripts were identified in four cases, supporting the potential for viral recombination and retrotransposition of non-autonomous repeats. LocaTR analysis of seventy-two additional sauropsid genomes revealed highly lineage-specific repeat content, and did not support the proposed deficit in Galliformes. A second, novel bioinformatic pipeline was constructed to identify ALVE insertions in whole genome resequencing data and was applied to eight elite layer lines from Hy-Line International. Twenty ALVEs were identified and diagnostic assays were developed to validate the bioinformatic approach. Each ALVE was sequenced and characterised, with many exhibiting high structural intactness. In addition, a K locus revertant line was identified due to the unexpected presence of ALVE21, confirmed using BioNano optic maps. The ALVE identification pipeline was then applied to ninety chicken lines and 322 different ALVEs were identified, 81 % of which were novel. Overall, broilers and non-commercial chickens had a greater number of ALVEs than were found in layers. Taken together, these two analyses have enabled a thorough characterisation of both the abundance and diversity of chicken ERVs.

Pneumonia is the greatest cause of childhood mortality outside the neonatal period, yet the pathogen-specific aetiology of childhood pneumonia remains poorly defined. Vaccine probe studies estimate that approximately one third of children &LT;5 years of age with radiographic endpoint consolidation have pneumococcal pneumonia in settings prior to the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccination (PCV), such as much of South Asia. 10-valent PCV was introduced to the Nepali infant immunisation schedule in August 2015. I investigated childhood pneumococcal pneumonia in Nepal. I aimed to describe the prevalence of pneumococcal infection in children with suspected invasive bacterial disease admitted to Patan Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal; to assess the impact of 10- valent PCV on pneumococcal pneumonia; and to assess two potential diagnostic tests for pneumococcal pneumonia based on the childhood response to pneumococci - assay of antibodies from lymphocyte supernatant (ALS) and analysis of differential gene expression (transcriptomics) - in children with pneumonia at Patan Hospital. Pneumococci were the second-most most prevalent pathogen isolated from the blood of children between 2005 and 2016. Interrupted time series analyses of data from children admitted with pneumonia from March 2014 - December 2016, showed a small increase (approximately 4%) in the odds of admission with pneumonia in comparison to non-pneumonia admis- sions temporally associated with 10-valent PCV introduction. However, it was not possible to adjust these time series analyses for extreme events including earthquakes (April 2015) and clean fuel shortages/increased air pollution (winter 2015/2016). In contrast, the indirect cohort method (a case-control approach in vaccinated vs unvaccinated children) showed vaccine effectiveness of 84% on the odds of nasopharyngeal carriage of vaccine-type pneumococci, but no effectiveness on pneumonia in these early data. Assay of IgG ALS pneumococcal capsular polysaccharides was complicated by what appear to be non-specific binding to capsular polysaccharides (of both S. pneumoniae, particularly serotype 3, and H. influenzae). Assay of IgG ALS to the best-performing of five pneumococcal proteins assessed had a sensitivity of 88% and specificity of 71% for the discrimination of pneumococcal pneumonia from other bacterial pneumonia. A transcriptomic signature discriminated between pneumococcal pneumonia and other bacterial pneumonia with a sensitivity of 91% and specificity of 100%. This thesis therefore contributes to knowledge of the clinical epidemiology of pneumococcal disease in South Asia. These data may also contribute to public health policy-making in the region. In addition, the development of two diagnostic tests for the aetiology of childhood pneumonia may be useful for future studies of childhood pneumonia aetiology.

This thesis aims to address the challenges of the development of cost-effective and rapid assays for the accurate counting of CD4+ T cells and quantification of HIV-1 viral load for resource-constrained settings. The lack of such assays has severely affected people living in disease prevalent areas. CD4+ T cells count information plays a vital role in the effective management of HIV-1 disease. Here, we present a flow-free magnetic actuation platform that uses antibody-coated magnetic beads to efficiently capture CD4+ T cells from a 30 μL drop of whole blood. On-chip cell lysate electrical impedance spectroscopy has been utilized to quantify the isolated CD4 cells. The developed assay has a limit of detection of 25 cells per μL and provides accurate CD4 counts in the range of 25–800 cells per μL. The whole immunoassay along with the enumeration process is very rapid and provides CD4 quantification results within 5 min time frame. The assay does not require off-chip sample preparation steps and minimizes human involvement to a greater extent. The developed impedance-based immunoassay has the potential to significantly improve the CD4 enumeration process especially for POC settings. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

No description available.

Latent class modelling is one method used in the evaluation of diagnostic tests when there is no gold standard test that is perfectly accurate. The technique demonstrates maximum likelihood estimates of the prevalence of a disease or a condition and the error rates of diagnostic tests or observers. This study reports the effect of departures from the latent class model assumption of independent misclassifications between observers or tests conditional on the true state of the individual being tested. It is found that estimates become biased in the presence of dependence. Most commonly the prevalence of the disease is overestimated when the true prevalence is at less than 50% and the error rates of dependent observers are underestimated. If there are also independent observers in the group, their error rates are overestimated. The most dangerous scenario in which to use latent class methods int he evaluation of tests is when the true prevalence is low and the false positive rate is high. This is common to many screening situations. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)