Effect In Asia Research Articles

Genotypic resistance of antiretroviral drugs among drug-naive HIV type 1 patients with the background of long-term access-easy zidovudine therapy.

The prevalence of transmitted resistance to antiretroviral drugs varies geographically, with little known about this effect in Asia. In Korea, zidovudine has been widely administered, without charge, through the National AIDS program since the early 1990s; with other potent antiretroviral agents also being introduced in the late 1990s. An analysis of the drug susceptibility to antiretroviral drugs was performed by genotyping of the drug-resistant mutations in HIV on plasma samples from 50 HIV-infected patients who had received no treatment, between February 1998 and November 2002, which was interpreted according to the consensus guidelines of the International AIDS Society-USA panel. The median CD4 cell count was 100 cells/mm3; the mean plasma RNA level was (5.19 +/- 0.56) log copies per milliliter. Of the 50 subjects tested 4 (8.0%) had one or more major drug-resistance mutation. The prevalence of resistance to multiple classes of drugs was 2.0%. No mutations, associated with resistance to non nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, were identified. Resistant mutations of the reverse-transcriptase gene were found at codons 67, 70, 118, 215, and 219, and a resistant mutation of the protease gene was found only at codon 46 (2.6%, 1 of 39). There was an 8.0% prevalence of primary drug resistance to antiretroviral drugs in Korean patients infected with HIV-1.

World Poverty and the Role of Agricultural Technology: Direct and Indirect Effects

Agricultural technology can help reduce poverty through direct and indirect effects. Direct effects are gains for the adopters while indirect effects are gains derived from adoption by others leading to lower food prices, employment creation, and growth linkage effects. Conceptualising and measuring these effects is highly complex, yet is needed for each region if technology is to be used as an effective instrument for poverty reduction. We propose a methodology for doing this in the context of computable general equilibrium modelling and apply it to archetype models for Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Results show that the dominant effect of technology on poverty is through direct effects in Africa, indirect agricultural employment effects in Asia, and linkage effects through the rest of the economy in Latin America. In each case, increasing the poverty reduction effect through the targeting of technology across crops and through complementary rural development programmes is also explored.

Determinants of private investment: a cross-regional empirical investigation

This study investigates the determinants of private investment in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Latin America with panel data for the period 1975-1992. Econometric tests indicated a preference for the random effects estimation procedure over other alternatives. The results, with pooled data for all the 31 countries in the sample, confirm some results found elsewhere in the empirical literature. Namely, private investment in developing countries is stimulated by real GDP growth, increases in government investment, improvements in financial intermediation, reductions in credit to the government, and declines in world interest rates. Another interesting result relates to the important role played by educational development in stimulating private investment. Nevertheless, statistically significant adverse effects of external debt on private investment found by other studies could not be confirmed by this study. In addition, the results for the full sample of countries are by no means common across the regions. While real GDP growth stimulated private investment in Asia and Latin America, its effect was not significant in SSA. Also, while government investment stimulated private investment in SSA, it had the opposite effect in Asia and Latin America. In addition, private investment was stimulated by increases in private sector credit in Asia and SSA, but not in Latin America. Also, increases in credit to the government had significant adverse effects on private investment in SSA and Latin America. Further, the adverse effects of external shocks were statistically significant only in SSA, a result that confirms the view that the region is vulnerable to these shocks.

Colorectal carcinoma among ethnic Chinese in Singapore: trends in incidence rate by anatomic subsite from 1968 to 1992.

Recent epidemiologic studies have suggested that the anatomic distribution of colorectal carcinoma may have undergone a distal to proximal shift over several decades, which has been attributed variously to environmental and genetic factors as well as preventive intervention. Trends in subsite distribution and the incidence rate of colorectal carcinoma among Chinese in Singapore between 1968 and 1992 were explored using data from the Singapore Cancer Registry (n = 10,489). Age-standardized incidence rates were computed and compared further using age-period-cohort models by subsite and gender. The proportion of lesions in the distal colon was found to have increased from 23.2% to 24.4% whereas that for the proximal colon and rectum were fairly consistent over the past 25 years. Our results also showed that age-standardized rates have doubled in proximal lesions (2-3% annually) and more than doubled in distal lesions (3-4% annually) whereas rates in rectal carcinoma have shown a slight increase or stability over time. The patterns of change in all subsite tumors could be attributed to a significant birth cohort effect. The results of the current study suggest that incidence rates have increased rapidly with no distal to proximal shift observed among ethnic Chinese in Singapore over the past 25 years. The pattern of change differs from findings reported in high incidence countries such as the U. S. and parts of Europe, suggesting that the preventive intervention and early diagnostic capabilities that may have played an important role in these countries have had less effect in Asia. The rapid overall increase in the incidence rate of colon carcinoma supports the role of dietary and other environmental factors as possible risk factors.