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Background: The main mode of transmission of Hepatitis C in North America is through injection drug use. Availability of accessible care for people who inject drugs is crucial for achieving hepatitis C elimination., Objective: The objective of this analysis is to compare the changes in injection drug use frequency and high-risk injection behaviors in participants who were randomized to accessible hepatitis c care versus usual hepatitis c care., Methods: Participants who were hepatitis C virus RNA positive and had injected drugs in the last 90 days were enrolled and randomized 1:1 to an on-site, low threshold accessible care arm or a standard, referral-based usual care arm. Participants attended follow-up appointments at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months during which they answered questions regarding injection drug use frequency, behaviors, and treatment for opioid use disorder., Primary Outcomes: The primary outcomes of this secondary analysis are the changes in the frequency of injection drug use, high-risk injection behaviors, and receiving medication for opioid use disorder in the last 30 days., Results: A total of 165 participants were enrolled in the study, with 82 participants in the accessible care arm and 83 participants in the usual care arm. Participants in the accessible care arm were found to have a statistically significant higher likelihood of reporting a lower range of injection days (accessible care-by-time effect OR = 0.78, 95% CI = 0.62-0.98) and injection events (accessible care-by-time effect OR = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.56-0.88) in the last 30 days at a follow-up interview relative to those in the usual care arm. There were no statistically significant differences in the rates of decrease in receptive sharing of injection equipment or in the percentage of participants receiving treatment for opioid use disorders in the two arms., Conclusion: Hepatitis C treatment through an accessible care model resulted in statistically higher rates of decrease in injection drug use frequency in people who inject drugs., Competing Interests: I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: B. E., S. N. K., and K. M. M. have received research grants to their respective institutions from Gilead Sciences Inc., (Copyright: © 2024 Lee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

We investigate a new method of coercive field engineering for periodic poling of RbKTiOPO 4 (RKTP). By ion exchanging RKTP in a molten salt containing 7 mol% Ba(NO 3 ) 2 and 93 mol% KNO 3 we achieve more than an order of magnitude difference in polarization switching time between the exchanged and non-exchanged regions. This method is used to fabricate periodic gratings of 2.92 µm in 1 mm thick bulk RKTP for second harmonic generation at 779 nm with a normalized conversion efficiency of 2%/Wcm. We show that the poled domain structures are stable at 300 °C, and that there is no bulk refractive index modification associated with the periodic ion exchange.

A stable, narrow-bandwidth (274 MHz) backward wave optical parametric oscillator (BWOPO) generating mJ-level backward signal at 1885nm and forward idler at 2495 nm is presented. The BWOPO was pumped by a single-longitudinal mode, Q-switched Nd:YAG high-energy laser at 1064 nm. We show that multi-transversal mode pumping leads to the spectral broadening of the BWOPO backward signal and the generation of nanosecond pulses 2.7 times above the Fourier transform limit. We demonstrate over 100 GHz continuous tuning of the parametric output by adjusting the temperature of the BWOPO crystal, showcasing the significant role of thermal expansion in tuning performance. The BWOPO signal was used as a seed for a single-stage PPRKTP optical parametric amplifier (OPA) to boost the narrowband signal and idler energies to 20 mJ. This combination of mJ-level BWOPO seed with a single-stage PPRKTP OPA comprises a simple concept that would benefit long-range differential absorption lidar (DIAL) in the near and mid-infrared regions.

Objectives: To describe children hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia complicated by effusion (cCAP)., Design: Retrospective cohort study., Setting: A Canadian children's hospital., Participants: Children without significant medical comorbidities aged < 18 years admitted from January 2015-December 2019 to either the Paediatric Medicine or Paediatric General Surgery services with any pneumonia discharge code who were documented to have an effusion/empyaema using ultrasound., Outcome Measures: Length of stay; admission to the paediatric intensive care unit; microbiologic diagnosis; antibiotic use., Results: There were 109 children without significant medical comorbidities hospitalized for confirmed cCAP during the study period. Their median length of stay was 9 days (Q1-Q3 6-11 days) and 35/109 (32%) were admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit. Most (89/109, 74%) underwent procedural drainage. Length of stay was not associated with effusion size but was associated with time to drainage (0.60 days longer stay per day delay in drainage, 95%CI 0.19-1.0 days). Microbiologic diagnosis was more often made via molecular testing of pleural fluids (43/59, 73%) than via blood culture (12/109, 11%); the main aetiologic pathogens were S. pneumoniae (40/109, 37%), S. pyogenes (15/109, 14%), and S. aureus (7/109, 6%). Discharge on a narrow spectrum antibiotic (i.e. amoxicillin) was much more common when the cCAP pathogen was identified as compared to when it was not (68% vs. 24%, p < 0.001)., Conclusions: Children with cCAP were commonly hospitalized for prolonged periods. Prompt procedural drainage was associated with shorter hospital stays. Pleural fluid testing often facilitated microbiologic diagnosis, which itself was associated with more appropriate antibiotic therapy., (© 2023. The Author(s).)