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  1. Abdul Aziz AF, Mohamed AR, Murugesu S, Siti Zarina AH, Lee BN
    Med J Malaysia, 2021 07;76(4):502-509.
    PMID: 34305111
    BACKGROUND: Scalp video electroencephalography monitoring (VEM) and brain MRI sometime fail to identify the epileptogenic focus (EF) in patients with drug resistant epilepsy (DRE). 18F-FDG PET/CT has been shown to improve the detection of EF in patients but is not widely used in Malaysia. Thus, the objective of this study was to identify whether 18F-FDG PET/CT conferred an added benefit in the pre-surgical evaluation of DRE.

    METHODS: Retrospective review of 119 consecutive paediatric patients referred for 18F-FDG-PET/CT at the Department of Nuclear Medicine of the National Cancer Institute, Putrajaya. All had DRE and underwent evaluation at the Paediatric Institute, Hospital Kuala Lumpur. Visually detected areas of 18F-FDG-PET/CT hypometabolism were correlated with clinical, MRI and VEM findings.

    RESULTS: Hypometabolism was detected in 102/119 (86%) 18FFDG- PET/CT scans. The pattern of hypometabolism in 73 patients with normal MRI was focal unilobar in 16/73 (22%), multilobar unilateral in 8/73 (11%), bilateral in 27/73 (37%) and global in 5/73 (7%) of patients; whilst 17/73 (23%) showed normal metabolism. In 46 patients with lesions on MRI, 18F-FDG-PET/CT showed concordant localisation and lateralization of the EF in 30/46 (65%) patients, and bilateral or widespread hypometabolism in the rest. Addition of 18FFDG PET/CT impacted decision making in 66/119 (55%) of patients; 24/73 with non-lesional and 30/46 patients with lesional epilepsies were recommended for surgery or further surgical work up, whilst surgery was not recommended in 11/46 patients with lesional epilepsy due to bilateral or widespread hypometabolism. 25 patients subsequently underwent epilepsy surgery, with 16/25 becoming seizure free following surgery.

    CONCLUSION: 18F-FDG-PET/CT has an added benefit for the localization and lateralization of EF, particularly in patients with normal or inconclusive MRI.

  2. Sideek MA, Smith J, Menz C, Adams JRJ, Cowin AJ, Gibson MA
    Int J Mol Sci, 2017 Oct 09;18(10).
    PMID: 28991210 DOI: 10.3390/ijms18102114
    Latent transforming growth factor-β-1 binding protein-2 (LTBP-2) belongs to the LTBP-fibrillin superfamily of extracellular proteins. Unlike other LTBPs, LTBP-2 does not covalently bind transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) but appears to be implicated in the regulation of TGF-β1 bioactivity, although the mechanisms are largely unknown. In experiments originally designed to study the displacement of latent TGF-β1 complexes from matrix storage, we found that the addition of exogenous LTBP-2 to cultured human MSU-1.1 fibroblasts caused an increase in TGF-β1 levels in the medium. However, the TGF-β1 increase was due to an upregulation of TGF-β1 expression and secretion rather than a displacement of matrix-stored TGF-β1. The secreted TGF-β1 was mainly in an inactive form, and its concentration peaked around 15 h after addition of LTBP-2. Using a series of recombinant LTBP-2 fragments, the bioactivity was identified to a small region of LTBP-2 consisting of an 8-Cys motif flanked by four epidermal growth factor (EGF)-like repeats. The LTBP-2 stimulation of TGF-β expression involved the phosphorylation of both Akt and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling proteins, and specific inactivation of each protein individually blocked TGF-β1 increase. The search for the cell surface receptor mediating this LTBP-2 activity proved inconclusive. Inhibitory antibodies to integrins β1 and αVβ5 showed no reduction of LTBP-2 stimulation of TGF-β1. However, TGF-β1 upregulation was partially inhibited by anti-αVβ3 integrin antibodies, suggestive of a direct or indirect role for this integrin. Overall, the study indicates that LTBP-2 can directly upregulate cellular TGF-β1 expression and secretion by interaction with cells via a short central bioactive region. This may be significant in connective tissue disorders involving aberrant TGF-β1 signalling.
  3. Sarker MR, Mohamed A, Mohamed R
    Micromachines (Basel), 2016 Sep 23;7(10).
    PMID: 30404344 DOI: 10.3390/mi7100171
    This paper presents a new method for a vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvesting system using a backtracking search algorithm (BSA)-based proportional-integral (PI) voltage controller. This technique eliminates the exhaustive conventional trial-and-error procedure for obtaining optimized parameter values of proportional gain (Kp), and integral gain (Ki) for PI voltage controllers. The generated estimate values of Kp and Ki are executed in the PI voltage controller that is developed through the BSA optimization technique. In this study, mean absolute error (MAE) is used as an objective function to minimize output error for a piezoelectric energy harvesting system (PEHS). The model for the PEHS is designed and analyzed using the BSA optimization technique. The BSA-based PI voltage controller of the PEHS produces a significant improvement in minimizing the output error of the converter and a robust, regulated pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal to convert a MOSFET switch, with the best response in terms of rise time and settling time under various load conditions.
  4. Abdulameer SA, Sahib MN, Sulaiman SAS, Hassali MA
    Pharm Pract (Granada), 2019 12 13;17(4):1636.
    PMID: 31897262 DOI: 10.18549/PharmPract.2019.4.1636
    Background: osteoporosis and diabetes mellitus are highly prevalent diseases that have potentially devastating effects on health and socioeconomic status.

    Objective: The aims of this study were to assess: 1) the level of osteoporosis knowledge among T2DM patients; 2) the correlation, associations or differences of demographic characteristics, diabetes-related variable, as well as, lipid and blood pressure profiles with osteoporosis knowledge; and 3) the correlation between T-score measurement using quantitative ultrasound scan (QUS) and osteoporosis knowledge.

    Methods: A cross-sectional study design was chosen, where data was collected using a self-report structured questionnaire using osteoporosis knowledge - Malay version questionnaire (OKT-M) among T2DM patients. Furthermore, the clinical data regarding the patients were collected retrospectively from the hospital medical record after patient interview was completed.

    Results: The average age of the patients was 62.67 (SD 9.24) years (ranged from 33 to 87 years). Males (231, 51.30%) slightly outnumbered females. Among the racial distribution, the proportion of Chinese patients (204, 45.30%) was higher than Malay (127, 28.20%) and Indian patients (119, 26.40%). In addition, more than three quarters (343, 76.20%) of patients had poor glycaemic control. The average OKT-M total score, OKT-M Exercise subscale and OKT-M Calcium subscale were 12.55 (SD 4.06), 8.60 (SD 2.89) and 8.40 (SD 3.36), respectively. Only 33.30% of the T2DM patients were found to have high level of osteoporosis knowledge. There was a lack of identification and recognition of osteoporosis risk factors. There were significant differences or associations between osteoporosis knowledge and education level, monthly income, employment status, family history of fracture, smoking habit, alcoholic status, insulin use, therapy type and diastolic blood pressure. In addition, significant and positive correlations were found between T-scores and OKT-M total score (n=450, rs= 0.244, P=0.000), OKT-M Exercise subscale (n=450, rs= 0.219, P=0.000) and OKT-M Calcium subscale (n=450, rs=0.199, P=0.000) among T2DM patients (all Ps<0.05).

    Conclusions: Overall, the study results showed a valuable insight into the knowledge toward osteoporosis, as well as its relation to the bone loss among T2DM patients. It is important to understand the basics of osteoporosis prevention behaviours such as adequate calcium intake and regular exercise which are essential to build and maintain healthy bones throughout life among T2DM.
  5. Alsharqi M, Lapidaire W, Iturria-Medina Y, Xiong Z, Williamson W, Mohamed A, et al.
    Eur Heart J Imaging Methods Pract, 2023 Sep;1(2):qyad029.
    PMID: 37818310 DOI: 10.1093/ehjimp/qyad029
    AIMS: Accurate staging of hypertension-related cardiac changes, before the development of significant left ventricular hypertrophy, could help guide early prevention advice. We evaluated whether a novel semi-supervised machine learning approach could generate a clinically meaningful summary score of cardiac remodelling in hypertension.

    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.

  6. Abdi Beshir S, Ahmed Elnour A, Soorya A, Parveen Mohamed A, Sir Loon Goh S, Hussain N, et al.
    Saudi Pharm J, 2023 Oct;31(10):101757.
    PMID: 37712012 DOI: 10.1016/j.jsps.2023.101757
    BACKGROUND: Recently, many drugs have been approved for halting overweight and obesity-few types of research shifted to using Anti-obesity medications (AOM) solely for well-being and shape-keeping.

    OBJECTIVE: This narrative review's objective was to explore the use of AOM in relation to their medical indications, efficacy, and cardiovascular safety.

    METHODS AND MATERIALS: We have conducted a narrative review of the literature on approved/non-approved AOM used for obesity and overweight. We have shed light on the emerging trials of therapies and evolving remedies.

    RESULTS: Recently, there has been an enormous change in the use of AOM with high consumption that deserves extensive surveillance for the long-term consequences and impact on social, mental, and physical health. Nearly six AOMs and combined therapy are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The recent guidelines for obesity management have shifted the focus from weight loss to goals that the patient considers essential and toward targeting the root cause of obesity.

    CONCLUSION: The use of AOM increased enormously despite its sometimes-dubious safety and ineffectiveness. The public and medical professionals should be vigilant to the real-world benefits of anti-obesity drugs and their achieved effectiveness with an improved safety profile.

  7. Al-Gedadi NA, Hassali MA, Shafie AA
    Pharm Pract (Granada), 2008 Apr;6(2):93-7.
    PMID: 25157287
    OBJECTIVE: To explore the consumers' perceptions and knowledge towards issues surrounding generic medicines utilization in Penang, Malaysia.

    METHODS: A cross sectional survey was conducted with consumers who attended the annual University open day. Using convenience sampling, survey forms were distributed to the respective consumers via the help of a group of trained 1st year pharmacy students. For a period of 5 days, 400 respondents had participated in the survey. Analysis of the response from the collected forms yielded in 396 usable forms.

    RESULTS: Only 28.3% (n=112) of the respondents were familiar with the term "generic medicines". More than 70% of the respondents do not know that generic medicines can be marketed under different names. About 34% (n=38) of consumers stated that they had been given information regarding generics by their pharmacists. In terms of side effects, about 32% (n=127) of the respondents felt that generic medicines may cause more side effects than branded medicines. Majority of the consumers surveyed (64%) understand that generic cost less compared to their branded counterparts.

    CONCLUSION: This survey showed that there is a gap in consumers' knowledge and understanding about generic medicines. The findings also suggest that direct patient education by the healthcare providers on issues relating to safety and efficacy of generic medicines could further enhance their uptake.

  8. Farooqui M, Hassali MA, Shatar AK, Shafie AA, Seang TB, Farooqui MA
    BMC Public Health, 2011;11:525.
    PMID: 21718547 DOI: 10.1186/1471-2458-11-525
    BACKGROUND: Cancer patients' knowledge about cancer and experiences with its treatment play an important role in long-term adherence in their disease management. This study aimed to explore cancer patients' knowledge about cancer, their perceptions of conventional therapies and the factors that contribute to medication adherence in the Malaysian population.
    METHODS: A qualitative research approach was adopted to gain a better understanding of the current perceptions and knowledge held by cancer patients. Twenty patients were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. A saturation point was reached after the 18th interview, and no new information emerged with the subsequent 2 interviews. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed by means of a standard content analysis framework.
    RESULTS: The majority of patients related the cause of their cancer to be God's will. Participants perceived conventional therapies as effective due to their scientific methods of preparations. A fear of side effects was main reasons given for delay in seeking treatment; however, perceptions were reported to change after receiving treatment when effective management to reduce the risk of side effects had been experienced.
    CONCLUSIONS: This study provides basic information about cancer patients' perceptions towards cancer and its treatment. These findings can help in the design of educational programs to enhance awareness and acceptances of cancer screening. Priorities for future research should focus on patients who refused the conventional therapies at any stage.
  9. Tan CS, Hassali MA, Neoh CF, Saleem F
    Pharm Pract (Granada), 2017 12 18;15(4):1074.
    PMID: 29317924 DOI: 10.18549/PharmPract.2017.04.1074
    Objective: This study aimed to explore hypertensive patients' perspectives on quality use of medication and issues related to hypertension management at the community level in Malaysia.

    Methods: Focus groups discussion was employed in this qualitative study. A total of 17 hypertensive patients were purposively recruited. Three focus group discussions with semi-structured interview were carried out at Flat Desa Wawasan, Penang. All the conversations were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.

    Results: Three major themes were developed, including medication adherence among hypertensive patients, self-management of hypertension and patients' knowledge towards hypertension. Poor medication adherence was found and different strategies were taken to overcome the barriers towards adherence. Use of herbal and traditional therapies was perceived as alternative method in controlling blood pressure instead of taking antihypertensive medication. The participants were found to have poor knowledge on side effect and mechanism of action of hypertensive medication.

    Conclusions: The misconception about the side effect of antihypertensive medication has led to poor adherence among the participants. Lack of knowledge on targeted blood pressure level has led to poor blood pressure monitoring among the participants. Health awareness program and counselling from health care professional should be advocated among the hypertensive patients in addressing the above gaps.

  10. Dawood OT, Hassali MA, Saleem F
    Pharm Pract (Granada), 2016 06 15;14(2):740.
    PMID: 27382428 DOI: 10.18549/PharmPract.2016.02.740
    OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to explore the pattern and practice of medicine use among the general public; and to explore the key factors influencing medicine use among medicine users.

    METHODS: A qualitative approach using focus group discussions was conducted to get in-depth information about medicines use pattern and practice from the general public. Adult people who reported using medicines at the time of study or in the previous month were approached. Two focus group discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The obtained data were analysed using thematic content analysis.

    RESULTS: This study found that there are some misunderstanding about the appropriate use of medicines. The majority of the participants reported that they were complying with their medication regimen. However, forgetting to take medicines was stated by 4 participants while 2 participants stopped taking medicines when they felt better. In addition, 10 participants reporting using medicines according to their own knowledge and past experience. Whereas 4 participants took medicines according to other informal resources such as family, friends or the media. Seven participants have experienced side effects with using medicines, 4 of them informed their doctor while 3 participants stopped taking medicines without informing their doctor.

    CONCLUSION: There was a misunderstanding about medicines use in terms of medication compliance, self-management of the illness and the resources of information about using medicines. Many efforts are still needed from health care professionals to provide sufficient information about medicines use in order to decrease the risk of inappropriate use of medicines and to achieve better therapeutic outcome.

  11. Iftikhar B, Alih SC, Vafaei M, Alrowais R, Bashir MT, Khalil A, et al.
    Heliyon, 2023 Mar;9(3):e14457.
    PMID: 36950647 DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14457
    The purpose of this research was to conduct a scientometric evaluation of the literature pertaining to plastic sand in order to evaluate its many aspects. Conventional review studies have several limitations when it comes to their capacity to completely and properly link different sections of the published research. Some of the more complicated features of advanced research are co-occurrence analysis, science mapping and co-citation analysis. During the study, the most inventive authors/researchers renowned for citations, the sources with the largest number of publications, the actively involved domains, and co-occurrences of keywords in the research on plastic sand are investigated. This study is limited to scientometric analysis of the available literature data on plastic sand. The VOSviewer application (version 1.6.18) was used to perform the analysis after bibliometric data for 4512 publications were extracted from the Scopus database and utilised in the extraction process from the year 2021 to June 2022. With the support of a statistical and graphical description of researchers and nations that are contributing, this study will aid researchers in the establishment of collaborative ventures and the exchange of fresh techniques and ideas with one another.
  12. Khachatryan V, Sirunyan AM, Tumasyan A, Adam W, Asilar E, Bergauer T, et al.
    Eur Phys J C Part Fields, 2017;77(5):294.
    PMID: 28579921 DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4787-8
    A search for new phenomena is performed in final states containing one or more jets and an imbalance in transverse momentum in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13[Formula: see text]. The analysed data sample, recorded with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC, corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.3[Formula: see text]. Several kinematic variables are employed to suppress the dominant background, multijet production, as well as to discriminate between other standard model and new physics processes. The search provides sensitivity to a broad range of new-physics models that yield a stable weakly interacting massive particle. The number of observed candidate events is found to agree with the expected contributions from standard model processes, and the result is interpreted in the mass parameter space of fourteen simplified supersymmetric models that assume the pair production of gluinos or squarks and a range of decay modes. For models that assume gluino pair production, masses up to 1575 and 975[Formula: see text] are excluded for gluinos and neutralinos, respectively. For models involving the pair production of top squarks and compressed mass spectra, top squark masses up to 400[Formula: see text] are excluded.
  13. Selvaratnam G, Philips RH, Mohamed AK, Radzi A
    Adverse Drug React Toxicol Rev, 1997 Aug;16(3):171-97.
    PMID: 9512763
  14. Burchert H, Lapidaire W, Williamson W, McCourt A, Dockerill C, Woodward W, et al.
    Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 2023 May 01;207(9):1227-1236.
    PMID: 36459100 DOI: 10.1164/rccm.202205-0858OC
    Rationale: Premature birth is an independent predictor of long-term cardiovascular risk. Individuals affected are reported to have a lower rate of [Formula: see text]o2 at peak exercise intensity ([Formula: see text]o2PEAK) and at the ventilatory anaerobic threshold ([Formula: see text]o2VAT), but little is known about their response to exercise training. Objectives: The primary objective was to determine whether the [Formula: see text]o2PEAK response to exercise training differed between preterm-born and term-born individuals; the secondary objective was to quantify group differences in [Formula: see text]o2VAT response. Methods: Fifty-two preterm-born and 151 term-born participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to 16 weeks of aerobic exercise training (n = 102) or a control group (n = 101). Cardiopulmonary exercise tests were conducted before and after the intervention to measure [Formula: see text]o2PEAK and the [Formula: see text]o2VAT. A prespecified subgroup analysis was conducted by fitting an interaction term for preterm and term birth histories and exercise group allocation. Measurements and Main Results: For term-born participants, [Formula: see text]o2PEAK increased by 3.1 ml/kg/min (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.7 to 4.4), and the [Formula: see text]o2VAT increased by 2.3 ml/kg/min (95% CI, 0.7 to 3.8) in the intervention group versus controls. For preterm-born participants, [Formula: see text]o2PEAK increased by 1.8 ml/kg/min (95% CI, -0.4 to 3.9), and the [Formula: see text]o2VAT increased by 4.6 ml/kg/min (95% CI, 2.1 to 7.0) in the intervention group versus controls. No significant interaction was observed with birth history for [Formula: see text]o2PEAK (P = 0.32) or the [Formula: see text]o2VAT (P = 0.12). Conclusions: The training intervention led to significant improvements in [Formula: see text]o2PEAK and [Formula: see text]o2VAT, with no evidence of a statistically different response based on birth history. Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT02723552).
  15. Lapidaire W, Forkert ND, Williamson W, Huckstep O, Tan CM, Alsharqi M, et al.
    Neuroimage Clin, 2023;37:103337.
    PMID: 36709637 DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2023.103337
    IMPORTANCE: Cerebrovascular changes are already evident in young adults with hypertension and exercise is recommended to reduce cardiovascular risk. To what extent exercise benefits the cerebrovasculature at an early stage of the disease remains unclear.

    OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether structured aerobic exercise increases brain vessel lumen diameter or cerebral blood flow (CBF) and whether lumen diameter is associated with CBF.

    DESIGN: Open, parallel, two-arm superiority randomized controlled (1:1) trial in the TEPHRA study on an intention-to-treat basis. The MRI sub-study was an optional part of the protocol. The outcome assessors remained blinded until the data lock.

    SETTING: Single-centre trial in Oxford, UK.

    PARTICIPANTS: Participants were physically inactive (<150 min/week moderate to vigorous physical activity), 18 to 35 years old, 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure 115/75 mmHg-159/99 mmHg, body mass index below 35 kg/m2 and never been on prescribed hypertension medications. Out of 203 randomized participants, 135 participated in the MRI sub-study. Randomisation was stratified for sex, age (<24, 24-29, 30-35 years) and gestational age at birth (<32, 32-37, >37 weeks).

    INTERVENTION: Study participants were randomised to a 16 week aerobic exercise intervention targeting 3×60 min sessions per week at 60 to 80 % peak heart rate.

    MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: cerebral blood flow (CBF) maps from ASL MRI scans, internal carotid artery (ICA), middle cerebral artery (MCA) M1 and M2 segments, anterior cerebral artery (ACA), basilar artery (BA), and posterior cerebral artery (PCA) diameters extracted from TOF MRI scans.

    RESULTS: Of the 135 randomized participants (median age 28 years, 58 % women) who had high quality baseline MRI data available, 93 participants also had high quality follow-up data available. The exercise group showed an increase in ICA (0.1 cm, 95 % CI 0.01 to 0.18, p =.03) and MCA M1 (0.05 cm, 95 % CI 0.01 to 0.10, p =.03) vessel diameter compared to the control group. Differences in the MCA M2 (0.03 cm, 95 % CI 0.0 to 0.06, p =.08), ACA (0.04 cm, 95 % CI 0.0 to 0.08, p =.06), BA (0.02 cm, 95 % CI -0.04 to 0.09, p =.48), and PCA (0.03 cm, 95 % CI -0.01 to 0.06, p =.17) diameters or CBF were not statistically significant. The increase in ICA vessel diameter in the exercise group was associated with local increases in CBF.

    CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Aerobic exercise induces positive cerebrovascular remodelling in young people with early hypertension, independent of blood pressure. The long-term benefit of these changes requires further study.

    TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02723552, 30 March 2016.

  16. Mohamed AL, Katiman E, Hassan JA
    Malays J Med Sci, 2003 Jul;10(2):76-83.
    PMID: 23386801
    Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) devices are increasingly being used in the assessment of hypertension. The purpose of the study was to investigate patient's diurnal BP variation and to further determine the differences of BP readings between male and female patients and the effects of age in patients who attended the clinic with essential hypertension. In addition, evidence of relationship between the parameters recorded by 24-hour ABPM was also investigated. This study was conducted in an outpatient specialist clinic. Two indices were used to demonstrate the diurnal BP variation. Firstly, the diurnal systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) variations which were calculated as night/day BP ratio for SBP and DBP respectively. Anyone scoring less than 100% were categorised as dippers. Secondly, nocturnal falls in SBP and DBP were calculated as (awake SBP-sleep SBP)/awake SBP x 100 and (awake DBP-sleep DBP)/awake DBP x 100 respectively. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the mean BP between male and female patients. In general, the study sample were categorised as dippers and non dippers. There were more male dippers than female dippers. Finally correlation analysis revealed that age is related to SBP variables whilst night HR showed positive correlation with night time BP. It is concluded that ABPM was shown to be a useful tool to analyse the variation and prevalence of cardiovascular risk markers in hypertensive patients and can easily be done in an outpatient set-up.
  17. Lishen W, In Meei T, Marny Mohamed A, Abdullah D
    Iran Endod J, 2018;13(3):403-406.
    PMID: 30083215 DOI: 10.22037/iej.v13i3.20871
    The principle of ferrule effect is of prime importance when restoring an endodontically treated tooth. A severely broken down tooth due to subgingival caries almost always end up with extraction as inadequate ferrule effect would compromise the predictability of restorative treatment. This clinical case report describes a treatment approach that combines non-surgical endodontic treatment, orthodontic extrusion and prosthetic rehabilitation to restore the function and aesthetic aspect of an extensively carious premolar with compromised prognosis. One year follow-up indicated stable periodontal health with evidence of periapical healing radiographically.
  18. Al-Nasheri A, Muhammad G, Alsulaiman M, Ali Z, Mesallam TA, Farahat M, et al.
    J Voice, 2017 Jan;31(1):113.e9-113.e18.
    PMID: 27105857 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2016.03.019
    BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Automatic voice-pathology detection and classification systems may help clinicians to detect the existence of any voice pathologies and the type of pathology from which patients suffer in the early stages. The main aim of this paper is to investigate Multidimensional Voice Program (MDVP) parameters to automatically detect and classify the voice pathologies in multiple databases, and then to find out which parameters performed well in these two processes.

    MATERIALS AND METHODS: Samples of the sustained vowel /a/ of normal and pathological voices were extracted from three different databases, which have three voice pathologies in common. The selected databases in this study represent three distinct languages: (1) the Arabic voice pathology database; (2) the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary database (English database); and (3) the Saarbruecken Voice Database (German database). A computerized speech lab program was used to extract MDVP parameters as features, and an acoustical analysis was performed. The Fisher discrimination ratio was applied to rank the parameters. A t test was performed to highlight any significant differences in the means of the normal and pathological samples.

    RESULTS: The experimental results demonstrate a clear difference in the performance of the MDVP parameters using these databases. The highly ranked parameters also differed from one database to another. The best accuracies were obtained by using the three highest ranked MDVP parameters arranged according to the Fisher discrimination ratio: these accuracies were 99.68%, 88.21%, and 72.53% for the Saarbruecken Voice Database, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary database, and the Arabic voice pathology database, respectively.

  19. Lee HS, Singh JK, Ismail MA
    Sci Rep, 2017 02 03;7:41935.
    PMID: 28157233 DOI: 10.1038/srep41935
    A new technique was accepted to fill the porosity of Al coating applied by arc thermal spray process to enhance corrosion resistance performance in artificial ocean water. The porosity is the inherent property of arc thermal spray coating process. In this study, applied coating was treated with different concentrations of ammonium phosphate mono basic (NH4H2PO4: AP) solution thereafter dried at room temperature and kept in humidity chamber for 7d to deposit uniform film. The corrosion resistance of Al coating and treated samples have been evaluated using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and potentiodynamic techniques with exposure periods in artificial ocean water. Electrochemical techniques, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) indicated that phosphate ion would have been retarding corrosion of Al coating effectively. The formation of AHP (Ammonium Aluminum Hydrogen Phosphate Hydrate: NH4)3Al5H6(PO4)8.18H2O) on Al coating surface after treatment with AP is nano sized, crystalline and uniformly deposited but after exposure them in artificial ocean water, they form AHPH (Aluminum hydroxide phosphate hydrate Al3(PO4)2(OH)3(H2O)5) that is very protective, adherent, uniform and plate like morphology of corrosion products. The AHPH is sparingly soluble and adherent to surface and imparted improved corrosion resistance.
  20. Axtner J, Crampton-Platt A, Hörig LA, Mohamed A, Xu CCY, Yu DW, et al.
    Gigascience, 2019 Apr 01;8(4).
    PMID: 30997489 DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giz029
    BACKGROUND: The use of environmental DNA for species detection via metabarcoding is growing rapidly. We present a co-designed lab workflow and bioinformatic pipeline to mitigate the 2 most important risks of environmental DNA use: sample contamination and taxonomic misassignment. These risks arise from the need for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification to detect the trace amounts of DNA combined with the necessity of using short target regions due to DNA degradation.

    FINDINGS: Our high-throughput workflow minimizes these risks via a 4-step strategy: (i) technical replication with 2 PCR replicates and 2 extraction replicates; (ii) using multi-markers (12S,16S,CytB); (iii) a "twin-tagging," 2-step PCR protocol; and (iv) use of the probabilistic taxonomic assignment method PROTAX, which can account for incomplete reference databases. Because annotation errors in the reference sequences can result in taxonomic misassignment, we supply a protocol for curating sequence datasets. For some taxonomic groups and some markers, curation resulted in >50% of sequences being deleted from public reference databases, owing to (i) limited overlap between our target amplicon and reference sequences, (ii) mislabelling of reference sequences, and (iii) redundancy. Finally, we provide a bioinformatic pipeline to process amplicons and conduct PROTAX assignment and tested it on an invertebrate-derived DNA dataset from 1,532 leeches from Sabah, Malaysia. Twin-tagging allowed us to detect and exclude sequences with non-matching tags. The smallest DNA fragment (16S) amplified most frequently for all samples but was less powerful for discriminating at species rank. Using a stringent and lax acceptance criterion we found 162 (stringent) and 190 (lax) vertebrate detections of 95 (stringent) and 109 (lax) leech samples.

    CONCLUSIONS: Our metabarcoding workflow should help research groups increase the robustness of their results and therefore facilitate wider use of environmental and invertebrate-derived DNA, which is turning into a valuable source of ecological and conservation information on tetrapods.

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