METHODS: The cross-sectionalstudy was conducted at the Federal Government Polyclinic Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan, in July and August, 2020 during the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic, and comprised healthcare professionals from the obstetrics and gynaecology department. Data was collected online using the 25-item Oldenburg Burnout Inventory. Data was analysed using SPSS 26.
RESULTS: Ofthe 142 individuals approached, 102(71.83%)responded; 55(53.92%) doctors, 43(42.15%) nurses and 4(3.92%) operation theatre technicians. Overall, there were 98(96.1%) females, and 67(65.7%) married subjects. Mean exhaustion scorewas 2.53±0.54 anddisengagementscorewas 2.14±0.57. Burnoutwasfoundin40(39.2%)participants, 83 (81.4%)were exhausted, 44(43.1%)weredisengaged, and4(3.1%)weredisengagedbutnot exhausted. Participants aged>50 yearswere significantly more exhausted and disengaged than the younger ones(p<0.05). Those with work hours >60 per week were significantly more exhausted and disengaged than the rest (p<0.05).
CONCLUSION: Health care professionals inobstetrics and gynaecology teams showed considerably highburnout levels during the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic in Pakistan.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: 30 live Sprague-Dawley rats were used in this study. The rats' mandibular first molar tooth was extracted, and an incision wound was made on the tongue. The extraction socket and incision wound were irrigated using normal saline and different concentrations of locally processed miswak plant extracts (0.05%, 10%, and 20%) for 7 days. The rats were sacrificed for gross examination of the tooth socket and tongue healing. Both soft tissue and alveolar bone were examined microscopically.
RESULTS: Complete closure of the incision wound was observed on all rats' tongues; miswak groups showed better wound healing than control and placebo groups in the oral mucosa overlying the alveolar bones. 0.05% and 20% miswak extracts showed prominent wound healing effects in the sagittal sections of the tongue, with moderate formation of connective tissue under the wound site and notable wound contraction. The 20% miswak extract group showed the highest percentage of healed oral mucosa on the alveolar bone and higher bone deposition at the alveolar base.
CONCLUSION: A concentration of 20% miswak extract enhances the initial phase of wound healing both in oral soft and hard tissues. Miswak extract at this concentration was not toxic to the tissues and had potential therapeutic effects in oral tissue healing.
METHODS: Available databases such as Medline/Pubmed, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane Library and Embase/OVID were used in the search. Case-control studies reporting on periodontal disease and dementia parameters were selected based on PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison and Outcomes) framework. A Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to assess the quality reporting of the studies and PRISMA guideline was used for screening.
RESULTS: A total of ten studies were identified for analysis. Most studies reported higher plaque index score (PI), bleeding on probing (BoP), pocket depth (PD) and clinical attachment loss (CAL) among individuals diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease compared with clinically healthy controls or individual diagnosed without dementia. A higher prevalence of subjects with severe periodontal disease was also observed in individuals diagnosed with dementia/Alzheimer's disease. The quality of the studies was found to be moderate with lower comparability and ascertainment criteria scores.
CONCLUSION: This qualitative analysis has shown poor periodontal health and increased inflammatory mediators in case groups compared to the control groups. Thus, more quality studies and novel intervention are warranted to reduce the impact of periodontal health on dementia globally.
OBJECTIVES: To identify genetic variants associated with statin treatment responses among Asian populations with a focus on four commonly prescribed statins: atorvastatin, rosuvastatin, simvastatin, and pravastatin.
METHODS: A literature search was conducted in Medline and Embase databases. Studies published from 2008 to 2021 were included. The title and abstract of each article were screened by two reviewers and verified by another two reviewers. Data charted include information on authors, year of study, study population, statin studied, gene studied, study findings, and data of significant statistical value.
RESULTS: A total of 35 articles were included from the 1,939 original studies related to treatment efficacy and 5 articles out of the 284 original studies related to adverse effects. Genetic variants in transmembrane transporters, cytochrome P450 isoenzymes, and apolipoproteins are the most extensively studied among Asian populations, with a main focus on ethnic Chinese. However, Asia consists of genetically different populations, and the results of this review indicated that there is a paucity of studies on other ethnic groups within Asia.
CONCLUSIONS: Considering the ethnicity of patients could provide a potential value to personalized medicine in statin therapy.
METHODS: A literature search on PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and EBSCO was conducted. Articles were included if they studied ergonomic problems among farmers from 11 countries in the Southeast Asia region and were published during 2015-2022. The Critical Appraisal Skills Program was used to evaluate the quality of the articles. The search process and retrieval process reflected PRISMA's recommendation.
RESULT: There were 14 studies found from 3 countries that had published articles in PubMed and ScienceDirect, including Thailand [8], Indonesia [4], and Malaysia [2]. The prevalence of WMSDs in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia was 78,31%, 81,27%, and 88,39%, respectively. Common factors associated with WMSDs include age, sex, smoking habits, drinking alcohol habits, working period (years), type of work, awkward position, non-ergonomic equipment, repetitive movements, and lifting heavy loads.
CONCLUSION: The prevalence of WMSDs among farmers in Southeast Asia is considerably high. Effective intervention is essential for reducing the prevalence and protecting workers' health and well-being.
METHODS AND RESULTS: A contrastive trajectories inference approach was applied to data collected from three UK studies of young adults. Low-dimensional variance was identified in 66 echocardiography variables from participants with hypertension (systolic ≥160 mmHg) relative to a normotensive group (systolic < 120 mmHg) using a contrasted principal component analysis. A minimum spanning tree was constructed to derive a normalized score for each individual reflecting extent of cardiac remodelling between zero (health) and one (disease). Model stability and clinical interpretability were evaluated as well as modifiability in response to a 16-week exercise intervention. A total of 411 young adults (29 ± 6 years) were included in the analysis, and, after contrastive dimensionality reduction, 21 variables characterized >80% of data variance. Repeated scores for an individual in cross-validation were stable (root mean squared deviation = 0.1 ± 0.002) with good differentiation of normotensive and hypertensive individuals (area under the receiver operating characteristics 0.98). The derived score followed expected hypertension-related patterns in individual cardiac parameters at baseline and reduced after exercise, proportional to intervention compliance (P = 0.04) and improvement in ventilatory threshold (P = 0.01).
CONCLUSION: A quantitative score that summarizes hypertension-related cardiac remodelling in young adults can be generated from a computational model. This score might allow more personalized early prevention advice, but further evaluation of clinical applicability is required.
PROBLEM: Most of the existing solutions use the traditional term of frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) technique or its concept to represent malware behaviors. However, the traditional TF-IDF and the developed techniques represent the features, especially the shared ones, inaccurately because those techniques calculate a weight for each feature without considering its distribution in each class; instead, the generated weight is generated based on the distribution of the feature among all the documents. Such presumption can reduce the meaning of those features, and when those features are used to classify malware, they lead to a high false alarms.
METHOD: This study proposes a Kullback-Liebler Divergence-based Term Frequency-Probability Class Distribution (KLD-based TF-PCD) algorithm to represent the extracted features based on the differences between the probability distributions of the terms in malware and benign classes. Unlike the existing solution, the proposed algorithm increases the weights of the important features by using the Kullback-Liebler Divergence tool to measure the differences between their probability distributions in malware and benign classes.
RESULTS: The experimental results show that the proposed KLD-based TF-PCD algorithm achieved an accuracy of 0.972, the false positive rate of 0.037, and the F-measure of 0.978. Such results were significant compared to the related work studies. Thus, the proposed KLD-based TF-PCD algorithm contributes to improving the security of cyberspace.
CONCLUSION: New meaningful characteristics have been added by the proposed algorithm to promote the learned knowledge of the classifiers, and thus increase their ability to classify malicious behaviors accurately.
METHODOLOGY: Here, we further confirmed and characterized this bacterial species using PCR, histological staining, whole-genome sequencing, and bioinformatics approaches. PCR assays with in-house designed primer sets and 16S universal primers showed clear positive bands in the cerebrum, cerebellum, lung, and blood of UM3 suggesting that UM3 might have developed septicaemia. Histological staining showed the presence of Gram-negative rod-shaped bacteria in the pangolin brain and lungs, indicating the colonization of the bacteria in these two organs. In addition, PCR screening of UM3's fetal tissues revealed the presence of P. fungorum in the gastrocnemius muscle, but not in other tissues that we examined. We also sequenced and reconstructed the genome of pangolin P. fungorum, which has a genome size of 7.7 Mbps.
CONCLUSION: Our study is the first to present detailed evidence of the presence of P. fungorum in a pangolin and her fetus (although preliminary results were presented in our previous article). Here, we raise the concern that P. fungorum may potentially infect humans, especially YOPI (young, old, pregnant, and immunocompromised) people. Therefore, caution should be exercised when using this bacterial species as biodegradation or bioremediation agents in agriculture.