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Fulltext Vitamins and minerals, education, and self-care need during preconception to 1000 days of life in Southeast Asia: An expert panel opinion

Jaisamrarn U, Esteban-Habana MA, Padolina CS, Decena DCD, Dee MT, Damodaran P, et al.

SAGE Open Med, 2023;11:20503121231173377.
PMID: 37223672 DOI: 10.1177/20503121231173377

Addressing maternal malnutrition and its drivers is paramount in Southeast Asia. This article summarizes the key clinical learnings and evidence-based opinions from the experts to understand the need for vitamins and minerals supplementation, education, and self-care from preconception to the first 1000 days of life, which warranted further attention since COVID-19 pandemic. Evidence describing the importance of vitamins and minerals during preconception, pregnancy, and lactation stages was identified using literature databases. A pre-meeting survey was conducted to determine the current practices and challenges in Southeast Asia. Based on the literature review and clinical experience, experts defined the topics, and an online meeting was held on 13th July 2021. During the meeting, nine experts from Southeast Asia provided evidence-based opinion on the vitamins and minerals supplementation, education, and self-care need during preconception, pregnancy, and lactation stages. The expert opinions underpin maternal malnutrition as a prevalent issue and discuss appropriate interventions and prevention strategies for women in Southeast Asia. The recent pandemic further impacted nutrition status, pregnancy, and neonatal health outcomes. The expert panel emphasized a need to improve existing inadequacies in education, self-care, and social support, and discussed the role of policymakers in addressing the barriers to dietary changes. As inadequacies in regular vitamins and minerals supplementation, education, and self-care for women of reproductive age implicate maternal and child health outcomes, there is an urgent need for addressing malnutrition concerns in this population. Thus, a strong partnership between policymakers, healthcare professionals, and other relevant sectors is required.
Fulltext Community responses to COVID-19 pandemic first wave containment measures: a multinational study

Aung MN, Stein C, Chen WT, Garg V, Saraswati Sitepu M, Thu NTD, et al.

J Infect Dev Ctries, 2021 Aug 31;15(8):1107-1116.
PMID: 34516418 DOI: 10.3855/jidc.15254

INTRODUCTION: National strategies to control COVID-19 pandemic consisted mostly of social distancing measures such as lockdowns, curfews, and stay-home guidelines, personal protection such as hand hygiene and mask wearing, as well as contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. Whilst policy interventions were broadly similar across the globe, there were some differences in individual and community responses. This study explored community responses to COVID-19 containment measures in different countries and synthesized a model. This exaplains the community response to pandemic containment measures in the local context, so as to be suitably prepared for future interventions and research.
METHODOLOGY: A mutlinational study was conducted from April-June 2020 involving researchers from 12 countries (Japan, Austria, U.S., Taiwan, India, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand). Steps in this research consisted of carrying out open-ended questionnaires, qualitative analyses in NVivo, and a multinational meeting to reflect, exchange, and validate results. Lastly, a commuinty response model was synthesized from multinational experiences.
RESULTS: Effective communication is key in promoting collective action for preventing virus transmission. Health literacy, habits and social norms in different populations are core components of public health interventions. To enable people to stay home while sustaining livelihoods, economic and social support are essential. Countries could benefit from previous pandemic experience in their community response. Whilst contact tracing and isolation are crucial intervention components, issues of privacy and human rights need to be considered.
CONCLUSIONS: Understanding community responses to containment policies will help in ending current and future pandemics in the world.
Fulltext The Scales Project, a cross-national dataset on the interpretation of thermal perception scales

Schweiker M, Abdul-Zahra A, André M, Al-Atrash F, Al-Khatri H, Alprianti RR, et al.

Sci Data, 2019 11 26;6(1):289.
PMID: 31772199 DOI: 10.1038/s41597-019-0272-6

Thermal discomfort is one of the main triggers for occupants' interactions with components of the built environment such as adjustments of thermostats and/or opening windows and strongly related to the energy use in buildings. Understanding causes for thermal (dis-)comfort is crucial for design and operation of any type of building. The assessment of human thermal perception through rating scales, for example in post-occupancy studies, has been applied for several decades; however, long-existing assumptions related to these rating scales had been questioned by several researchers. The aim of this study was to gain deeper knowledge on contextual influences on the interpretation of thermal perception scales and their verbal anchors by survey participants. A questionnaire was designed and consequently applied in 21 language versions. These surveys were conducted in 57 cities in 30 countries resulting in a dataset containing responses from 8225 participants. The database offers potential for further analysis in the areas of building design and operation, psycho-physical relationships between human perception and the built environment, and linguistic analyses.
Correction to: Acute-on-chronic liver failure: consensus recommendations of the Asian Pacific association for the study of the liver (APASL): an update

Sarin SK, Choudhury A, Sharma MK, Maiwall R, Al Mahtab M, Rahman S, et al.

Hepatol Int, 2019 11;13(6):826-828.
PMID: 31595462 DOI: 10.1007/s12072-019-09980-1

The article Acute-on-chronic liver failure: consensus recommendations of the Asian Pacific association for the study of the liver (APASL): an update, written by [Shiv Sarin], was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on June 06, 2019 without open access.
Fulltext Publisher Correction: The Scales Project, a cross-national dataset on the interpretation of thermal perception scales

Schweiker M, Abdul-Zahra A, André M, Al-Atrash F, Al-Khatri H, Alprianti RR, et al.

Sci Data, 2020 01 06;7(1):11.
PMID: 31907360 DOI: 10.1038/s41597-019-0348-3

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Fulltext Acute-on-chronic liver failure: consensus recommendations of the Asian Pacific association for the study of the liver (APASL): an update

Sarin SK, Choudhury A, Sharma MK, Maiwall R, Al Mahtab M, Rahman S, et al.

Hepatol Int, 2019 Jul;13(4):353-390.
PMID: 31172417 DOI: 10.1007/s12072-019-09946-3

The first consensus report of the working party of the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL) set up in 2004 on acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) was published in 2009. With international groups volunteering to join, the "APASL ACLF Research Consortium (AARC)" was formed in 2012, which continued to collect prospective ACLF patient data. Based on the prospective data analysis of nearly 1400 patients, the AARC consensus was published in 2014. In the past nearly four-and-a-half years, the AARC database has been enriched to about 5200 cases by major hepatology centers across Asia. The data published during the interim period were carefully analyzed and areas of contention and new developments in the field of ACLF were prioritized in a systematic manner. The AARC database was also approached for answering some of the issues where published data were limited, such as liver failure grading, its impact on the 'Golden Therapeutic Window', extrahepatic organ dysfunction and failure, development of sepsis, distinctive features of acute decompensation from ACLF and pediatric ACLF and the issues were analyzed. These initiatives concluded in a two-day meeting in October 2018 at New Delhi with finalization of the new AARC consensus. Only those statements, which were based on evidence using the Grade System and were unanimously recommended, were accepted. Finalized statements were again circulated to all the experts and subsequently presented at the AARC investigators meeting at the AASLD in November 2018. The suggestions from the experts were used to revise and finalize the consensus. After detailed deliberations and data analysis, the original definition of ACLF was found to withstand the test of time and be able to identify a homogenous group of patients presenting with liver failure. New management options including the algorithms for the management of coagulation disorders, renal replacement therapy, sepsis, variceal bleed, antivirals and criteria for liver transplantation for ACLF patients were proposed. The final consensus statements along with the relevant background information and areas requiring future studies are presented here.