[Prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in semi-rural area in Senegal]. / Prévalence des facteurs de risque cardio-vasculaire en milieu semi-rural au Sénégal.

OBJECTIVES: We aim to determine the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in the semi-rural population of the community of Gueoul in Senegal. PATIENTS AND METHOD: This is a cross-sectional, observational and descriptive study. We conducted an exhaustive survey in 2012 according to the STEPS wise approach of the world health organization against Senegalese aged of 35 years and over who resided for at least 6 months in semi-rural area in the community of Gueoul. Pregnant women were excluded. Classical cardiovascular risk factors were collected and data analyzed using SPSS 18.0 software. The significance level was agreed for a value of P<0.05. RESULTS: We examined 1411 subjects (1052 women) with a mean age of 48.5±12.68 years. The main cardiovascular risk factors were dyslipidemia (61,1%), physical inactivity (56.2%), abdominal obesity according to the International Diabetes Federation (53.9%), hypertension (46.4%), global obesity (13%), diabetes (7.2%) and smoking (2.5%). Hypertension was significantly associated with diabetes (P=0.001), abdominal obesity (P=0.001) and global obesity (P=0.0001). Sedentarity (P=0.001), global obesity (P=0.0001) and hypertension (P=0.001) were more frequent in women. CONCLUSION: Cardiovascular risk factors are frequent and often associated in semi-rural area of Senegal, particularly in women. This condition should lead to develop prevention strategies of cardiovascular complications.

Follow-up of HIV western blot indeterminate results.

Indeterminate results obtained with the Western blot (WB) confirmatory test on HIV enzyme immunoassay (EIA)-positive samples, constituted 15.6% (444/2849) over a 2.5-year period at the referral laboratory for the Western region at the King Fahd General Hospital, Jeddah. Two hundred and fourteen WB-indeterminate samples were followed up by repeat WB testing of subsequent samples from the same patients over a 3-12 month period. One hundred and forty-two samples (66.4%) gave negative results. Sixty-five samples (30%) remained indeterminate. Only seven samples (3.3%) not initially meeting WHO criteria for positivity turned clear-cut positive, with high EIA readings on follow-up. It was discovered initally that a significant proportion of indeterminates was due to low-grade cross-contamination between samples as a result of aerosol backflow during aspiration in the washing procedure. This was eliminated by rinsing the lines between samples, separating samples with high EIA from those with low EIA, and rerunning indeterminate samples. A reduction of indeterminates from 21% to 8.5% subsequently followed. After this improvement, most of the samples that remained indeterminate had low EIA readings, and few bands of mainly anti-gag (p55, p24 or p18) or anti-pol (p51) antibodies, while the few turning positive all had anti-gp160, in addition to anti-p24 or p55. Interestingly, over the last year and a half of the study, 1.4% of the total samples (21/1506) had repeatedly high EIA readings but were negative by WB. In addition, 16 samples (1.1%) were positive for HIV-2. A separate computer-based system for the storage of data was very helpful in ascertaining proper follow-up of indeterminate WB results.