Prevalence of HBV and HCV in blood donors in Kanpur during the period 1997 through 2005

Viral hepatitis transmitted by parenteral route is emerging as a far more dreaded public health challenge than any other illness. We have collected the data of HBV and HCV seropositivity in replacement and voluntary donors in our Blood Bank during the period January 1997 to December 2005. The results were as follows: Total number of cases studied in 1997 to 2005 — 115073 HbsAg positive cases — 1976 (1.7172%) Anti HCV positive cases — 463 (0.4024%) The overall picture is showing a more or less stable prevalence rate of hepatitis cases among blood donors, who were apparently healthy.     

Understanding successful behaviour change: the role of intentions, attitudes to the target and motivations and the example of diet

Although many attempts to change health behaviour fail, some individuals do show successful behaviour change. This study assessed the role of behavioural intentions, motivations and attitudes to the target in explaining successful changes in diet with a particular focus on positive and negative intentions and positive and negative attitudes. Participants (n=282) completed a questionnaire describing a recent change in eating behaviour (becoming a vegetarian, cutting out a food group, eating fewer calories), their intentions, their attitudes to the food being avoided, a range of motivations and their degree of success. The results showed that the three behaviour change groups differed in terms of their cognitions with those trying to eat fewer calories reporting less success in changing their behaviour. Successful vegetarianism was associated with a lower positive attitude; successfully cutting out a food group was related to ethical motivations, a lower positive attitude and greater positive and negative intentions, and reducing calorie intake was associated with greater positive intentions and a lower positive attitude. Therefore, success was associated with different cognitions depending upon the type of change being made, although cognitions such as 'I will eat more vegetables' and 'I no longer find high fat foods palatable' were consistently most predictive of success. Suggestions for the development of more effective interventions to change health behaviours are made.     

HCV genotype 1-6 NS3 residue 80 substitutions impact protease inhibitor activity and promote viral escape

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Multiplication-combination tests for incomplete paired data

We consider statistical procedures for hypothesis testing of real valued functionals of matched pairs with missing values. In order to improve the accuracy of existing methods, we propose a novel multiplication combination procedure. Dividing the observed data into dependent (completely observed) pairs and independent (incompletely observed) components, it is based on combining separate results of adequate tests for the two sub data sets. Our methods can be applied for parametric as well as semiparametric and nonparametric models and make use of all available data. In particular, the approaches are flexible and can be used to test different hypotheses in various models of interest. This is exemplified by a detailed study of mean- as well as rank-based approaches under different missingness mechanisms with different amount of missing data. Extensive simulations show that in most considered situations, the proposed procedures are more accurate than existing competitors particularly for the nonparametric Behrens-Fisher problem. A real data set illustrates the application of the methods.