https://hdl.handle.net/10646/786 2026-04-11T00:34:30Z https://hdl.handle.net/10646/2752 Prevalence and intensity of the schistosomiasis situation along the Zimbabwean urban and peri-urban shoreline of Lake Kariba Chimbari, M. J.; Chirundu, D. The potential health impacts of Lake Kariba were recognised before the construction of Kariba Dam.1 A medical team that assessed health impacts associated with the construction of the dam did not consider schistosomiasis as a major problem around the dam site because the incidence of the disease in the population living along the Zambezi River was low. Furthermore, it was believed that transmission would not take place at the proposed dam site because it was rocky and therefore unsuitable for snail colonisation. It was. however, realized that most dam construction employees were drawn from distant areas in Malawi. Zambia and the then Rhodesia where schistosomiasis was endemic. Thus, all immigrants were screened for S. haematobium and those found infected were treated.' The medical report, however, did not mention S. mansoni nor the intermediate host snail tBiomphalaria pjcijferii involved in its transmission 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10646/1060 An Experimental Pharmacokinetic Computer Program to Predict Potential Drug-Drug Interactions Zvada, Simbarashe Peter; Chagwedera, Tangai Edwin; Chigwanda, Rosemary; Masimirembwa, Collen Mutowembwa Polypharmacy as a result of combating co-infections, or combination therapy for better efficacy and reducing the emergency of drug resistance, is on the increase in the African clinical setting in the advent of HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis (TB) co-infections, and increasing incidences of malaria and other tropical infections. The clinicians and pharmacists are therefore faced with the challenge of prescribing drugs in combinations that are likely to result in severe adverse effects or compromising treatment success. The aim of this study was, therefore, to develop a simple stand alone or network based experimental computational tool to assist doctors and pharmacists in detecting drug combinations likely to result in undesirable metabolism based drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and offer alternate safe prescription options. The mechanism of most drug-drug interactions is through inhibition and induction of drug metabolising enzymes. Models for the prediction of reversible and irreversible inhibitors of the major drug metabolising enzyme system, cytochrome P450, were used in developing the pharmacoinformatic tool. These models enable the prediction of likely in vivo drug-drug interactions from in vitro data. In vivo drug-drug interaction data from the literature was also loaded into the software to validate the system and to give clinical guidance on specific drug-drug interactions. In this first phase of the project, focus was on medications used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and other diseases common in Africa. The prototypic tool was based on a Standard Query Language (SQL) database with DELPHI 6.0 as the user interface. Its user friendly pages lead the doctor or pharmacist through drug combination entry functions and gives warning if an interaction is likely. Subsequent actions enable the operator to retrieve more information on the mechanism of interactions, the quantitative measure of the interaction, access to published abstracts on studies, and possible prescription options to minimise DDIs. The software currently has data for 50 drugs used in the design and focuses on the treatment of tropical diseases in addition to classical cases of drug-drug interactions involving other general classes of drugs. The tool can be distributed on Compaq Disk (CD) and be run on any Personal Computer (PC) on windows. We have successfully developed a pharmacokinetic- based tool with a potential to assist clinicians and pharmacists in detecting and rationalizing DDIs. The tool has proved very useful as a teaching tool on DDIs by using the more advanced functions that explore the performance of current drug-drug interactions prediction models. From the available literature, it is clear that more studies need to be done to establish the prevalence and mechanisms of DDIs in the treatment of infectious diseases. We are now adding more data, validating the tool and finally testing the acceptability of this tool among clinicians and pharmacists for routine use. Publisher's version available from http://aibst.com/pdf/Masimirembwa_TODMJ%5B1%5D.pdf 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10646/787 Distinctive Features of Surface-Anchored Proteins of Streptococcus agalactiae Strains from Zimbabwe Revealed by PCR and Dot Blotting Mavenyengwa, Rooyen T.; Maeland, Johan A.; Moyo, Sylvester R. The distribution of capsular polysaccharide (CPS) types and subtypes (serovariants) among 121 group B streptococcus (GBS) strains from Zimbabwe was examined. PCR was used for the detection of both CPS types and the surface-anchored and strain-variable proteins C , C , Alp1, Alp2, Alp3, R4/Rib, and Alp4. The R3 protein was detected by an antibody-based method using monoclonal anti-R3 antibody in dot blotting. The CPS types detected, Ia (15.7% of strains), Ib (11.6%), II (8.3%), III (38.8%), V (24.0%), and nontypeable (1.7%), were essentially as expected on the basis of data from Western countries. The type V strains showed distinctive features with respect to protein markers in that Alp3 was detected in only 6.9% of the isolates while R3 occurred in 75.9% and R4/Rib occurred in 37.9% of the isolates. R3 occurred nearly always in combination with one of the alpha-like (Alp) proteins, and it was the third most common of the proteins studied. These results show that type V GBS strains from Zimbabwe differed from type V strains from other geographical areas and also emphasize the importance of the R3 protein in GBS serotyping and its potential importance in the immunobiology of GBS, including a potential role in a future GBS vaccine. Post print original as published on http://cvi.asm.org/ 2008-09-01T00:00:00Z