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Fulltext Prevention and control of COVID-19 in pastoral community through One Health Approach

Yousuf A, Arifin SRM, Musa R, Isa MLM

One Health, 2020 Dec 20;11:100181.
PMID: 33072837 DOI: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100181

The vast majority of its population being a pastoralist community, the Somali region in Ethiopia shares the longest border with its neighboring east African countries. These communities face a high risk for transmission of imported COVID-19 cases and remain vulnerable due to lack of access to health delivery and low utilisation of services. Valuable lessons from other countries, has placed the One Health Approach as an appropriate, feasible and applicable preventive and control measure for COVID-19. This paper discusses the epidemiological and social susceptibility of pastoral communities in the transmission of COVID-19 and the introduction of One Health Approach as an effective inter-disciplinary response and management.
Fulltext Depression and HIV Disease Progression: A Mini-Review

Yousuf A, Mohd Arifin SR, Musa R, Md Isa ML

Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health, 2019;15:153-159.
PMID: 32174997 DOI: 10.2174/1745017901915010153

Background: Depression is the most common mental disorder and a leading cause of disability, which commonly presents unexplained psychological and physical symptoms. Depression and HIV/AIDS are commonly comorbid. This review provides an insight into the effect of depression on disease progression among people living with HIV.
Methods: A search for relevant articles was conducted using a database like MEDLINE, Scopus, PsycINFO and CINAHL. Peer-reviewed English journals published between 2015 and 2019 were included in the review.
Results: A total of eight studies conducted in different settings were included in the review. This review has found that psychosocial, neurohormonal and virologic factors associated with depression affect HIV disease progression. Yet, the chronicity of depression, absence of the hormones that have a buffer effect on depression and lack of examination if depression is a predictor, or an outcome of disease progression, were some of the gaps that require further investigation.
Conclusion: Considerably, more research is needed to better understand the effect of mental disorder, especially depression, on HIV disease progression to AIDS and future interventions should, therefore, concentrate on the integration of mental health screening in HIV clinical setup.
Fulltext The Malaysian Women's Experience of Care and Management of Postnatal Depression

Arifin SRBM, Cheyne H, Maxwell M, Yousuf A

Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health, 2021;17:10-18.
PMID: 34040649 DOI: 10.2174/1745017902117010010

Objectives: Early detection and intervention for Maternal Postnatal Depression (PND) are imperative to prevent devastating consequences for mothers, babies, and families. However, there are no guidelines that explicitly focus on the management of PND in Malaysia. Consequently, it is unclear whether women with PND are receiving proper care and treatment. Therefore, this study aimed to explore Malaysian Women's experience in managing PND symptoms.
Methods: A qualitative study was conducted among 33 women attending Maternal and Child Health (MCH) clinics in Kuala Lumpur. Data were obtained through a face-to-face semi-structured interview and analysed using framework analysis.
Results: The women considered PND as a personal and temporary issue. Therefore, professional care was deemed unnecessary for them. Additionally, all Malay women considered religious approach as their primary coping strategy for PND. However, this was not the case for most Indian and Chinese women.
Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that women did not acknowledge the roles of Healthcare Practitioners (HCPs) in alleviating their emotional distress.Also, they perceived PND as a personal problem and less serious emotional condition. It is due to this perception that the women adopted self-help care as their primary coping strategy for PND. However, the coping strategy varied between different cultures. These findings underscore the importance of HCPs' proactive action to detect and alleviate PND symptoms as their attitude towards PND may influence Women's help-seeking behaviour.
The Dynamic Nexus Between International Tourism and Environmental Degradation in Top Twenty Tourist Destinations: New Insights From Quantile-on-Quantile Approach

Ozturk I, Sharif A, Godil DI, Yousuf A, Tahir I

Eval Rev, 2023 Jun;47(3):532-562.
PMID: 36632679 DOI: 10.1177/0193841X221149809

Tourism is one of the important factors that can affect the environmental and economic situation of any economy. This study investigates the relationship between tourist arrivals and CO2 emission in the top 20 tourist destinations using data from quarterly observations from 1995 to 2018. A unique technique via quantile-on-quantile regression and Granger causality in quantiles was used. In particular, how the quantiles of tourist arrivals impact quantiles of CO2 emission was analyzed. The empirical results suggest a combination of both positive and negative effects of tourist arrivals and CO2 emission in most tourist destinations. Predominantly, at both high and low tails, in the USA, Spain, Hong Kong, and Austria, tourist arrival has a positive effect on CO2 emission, whereas in the case of Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, and Malaysia, the association was negative. On the other hand, China, Greece, Russia, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey have both positive and negative effects of tourism on CO2 emissions at low and high tails. Tourism can be an important factor while formulating policy for environmental and climate aspects.
Fulltext Anxiety and Depression Among Women Living with HIV: Prevalence and Correlations

Yousuf A, Musa R, Isa MLM, Arifin SRM

Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health, 2020;16:59-66.
PMID: 32742296 DOI: 10.2174/1745017902016010059

INTRODUCTION: It has been found that HIV positive women are becoming increasingly affected by various illnesses, including Common Mental Disorders (CMDs) such as depression. Such comorbidity escalates the disease progression to the severe stage and commonly hinders treatment adherence. This study determined the prevalence of anxiety and depression amidst women living with HIV.
METHODS: Based on a cross-sectional and facility-based study, 357 HIV positive women were recruited using the systematic sampling technique from two public hospitals in Jijiga town, Ethiopia. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) was administered for screening, and followed by a pre-tested questionnaire that comprised of Perceived Social Support and HIV stigma.
RESULTS: The results revealed that the prevalence of both anxiety and depression amidst HIV positive women was 28.9% and 32.5%, respectively. In the multivariate analysis, it was discovered that lack of formal education, being divorced, unemployed, and earning a monthly income less than 1400 ETB (37.5 USD) were significantly associated with depression. Women with symptomatic HIV clinical stage III (AOR =2.06, 95% C.I (0.75-5.61), with CD4 cell count below 250 (AOR = 1.14, 95% C.I (0.57-2.28), and with co-infections (AOR= 1.04, 95% C.I (0.40-2.71) also suffered from depression.
CONCLUSION: The study outcomes show that the prevalence of depression in women with HIV was 32.5%, but they were more likely to be depressed if they were illiterate, divorced, unemployed or had a financial burden. In addition, HIV positive women with less CD4 cell count and in the final clinical stage or suffered from a co-infection were also associated with depressive symptoms. This signifies the public health implications of psychological and cognitive morbidities of the illness among these women with chronic illnesses. Hence, future mental health interventions and HIV care should be integrated with substantial emphasis given to vulnerable groups, including HIV positive women.
The asymmetric role of freight and passenger transportation in testing EKC in the US economy: evidence from QARDL approach

Godil DI, Sharif A, Afshan S, Yousuf A, Khan SAR

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int, 2020 Aug;27(24):30108-30117.
PMID: 32447733 DOI: 10.1007/s11356-020-09299-7

This study examines the association between transportation services (i.e., passenger and freight) and carbon emissions concerning the US economy. The monthly data for this study were collected for the period from 2000 M1 to 2019 M8. In this study, QARDL econometric approach as discussed by Cho et al. (2015) has been used to tests the relationship between transportation services and CO2 emissions. Due to the chaotic and nonlinear behavior of our concerning variables, it was quite difficult to gauge the principle properties of their variations. Therefore, we relied on QARDL, which has been missing in previous researches. By utilizing the QARDL method, this research assesses the long-term stability of the nexus across the quantiles to provide an econometric framework that is more flexible than the traditional ones. In particular, the authors have analyzed how the quantiles of transportation (i.e., passenger and freight) influence the quantiles of CO2 emissions (environmental degradation). The empirical evidence revealed the negative significant relationship of both the transportation system (i.e., passenger and freight) with carbon emissions; however, this relationship holds at low quantiles of freight transport, whereas the same relationship has been observed at the majority of quantiles of passenger transport. So, this depicts that the transportation system of the USA helps to reduce CO2 emissions. Therefore, to maintain this situation, the government shall introduce more technologies that are fuel-efficient and promote clean consumption, thus reducing CO2 emissions, boosting economic growth, and making green transportation services.
Microbial synergistic interactions enhanced power generation in co-culture driven microbial fuel cell

Islam MA, Karim A, Mishra P, Dubowski JJ, Yousuf A, Sarmin S, et al.

Sci Total Environ, 2020 Oct 10;738:140138.
PMID: 32806344 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140138

An understanding of the inter-species relationships, especially their metabolic network in a mixed-culture system, is crucial to design an effective inoculum for enhancing the power generation of wastewater fed microbial fuel cell (MFC). In the present study, the influence of microbial mutualistic interactions on the power generation of palm oil mill effluent fed MFCs has been widely investigated by designing several co-culture and mixed culture inoculums. Among the different inoculum compositions, the highest power density of 14.8 W/m3 was achieved by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella variicola co-culture inoculum due to their synergistic relationships which were inter-linked via fermentation-based metabolites. Besides, the interaction of K. variicola and Bacillus cereus positively influenced the power generation resulting in a maximum power density of 11.8 W/m3 whereas the antagonistic relationship between B. cereus and P. aeruginosa resulted in a lower power generation of 1.9 W/m3. The microbial mutualistic interactions were investigated with polarization, cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), as well as by using metabolite and biofilm analysis. It was observed that the synergism between bacteria enhanced power generation through the production of higher electron shuttling mediators and efficient biofilm formation as evidenced by polarization, CV and EIS analysis. In contrast, the antagonistic relationship resulted in production of cell inhibiting metabolites leading to the formation of ineffective biofilm. These findings demonstrate that the synergistic interaction between or within microorganisms is emergent in designing co-culture or mixed-culture inoculum for achieving maximum power generation in MFCs.
Technical difficulties and solutions of direct transesterification process of microbial oil for biodiesel synthesis

Yousuf A, Khan MR, Islam MA, Wahid ZA, Pirozzi D

Biotechnol Lett, 2017 Jan;39(1):13-23.
PMID: 27659031 DOI: 10.1007/s10529-016-2217-x

Microbial oils are considered as alternative to vegetable oils or animal fats as biodiesel feedstock. Microalgae and oleaginous yeast are the main candidates of microbial oil producers' community. However, biodiesel synthesis from these sources is associated with high cost and process complexity. The traditional transesterification method includes several steps such as biomass drying, cell disruption, oil extraction and solvent recovery. Therefore, direct transesterification or in situ transesterification, which combines all the steps in a single reactor, has been suggested to make the process cost effective. Nevertheless, the process is not applicable for large-scale biodiesel production having some difficulties such as high water content of biomass that makes the reaction rate slower and hurdles of cell disruption makes the efficiency of oil extraction lower. Additionally, it requires high heating energy in the solvent extraction and recovery stage. To resolve these difficulties, this review suggests the application of antimicrobial peptides and high electric fields to foster the microbial cell wall disruption.
Microbial lipid extraction from Lipomyces starkeyi using irreversible electroporation

Karim A, Yousuf A, Islam MA, Naif YH, Faizal CKM, Alam MZ, et al.

Biotechnol Prog, 2018 07;34(4):838-845.
PMID: 29464927 DOI: 10.1002/btpr.2625

The aim of the study was to investigate the feasibility of using irreversible electroporation (EP) as a microbial cell disruption technique to extract intracellular lipid within short time and in an eco-friendly manner. An EP circuit was designed and fabricated to obtain 4 kV with frequency of 100 Hz of square waves. The yeast cells of Lipomyces starkeyi (L. starkeyi) were treated by EP for 2-10 min where the distance between electrodes was maintained at 2, 4, and 6 cm. Colony forming units (CFU) were counted to observe the cell viability under the high voltage electric field. The forces of the pulsing electric field caused significant damage to the cell wall of L. starkeyi and the disruption of microbial cells was visualized by field emission scanning electron microscopic (FESEM) image. After breaking the cell wall, lipid was extracted and measured to assess the efficiency of EP over other techniques. The extent of cell inactivation was up to 95% when the electrodes were placed at the distance of 2 cm, which provided high treatment intensity (36.7 kWh m-3 ). At this condition, maximum lipid (63 mg g-1 ) was extracted when the biomass was treated for 10 min. During the comparison, EP could extract 31.88% lipid while the amount was 11.89% for ultrasonic and 16.8% for Fenton's reagent. The results recommend that the EP is a promising technique for lowering the time and solvent usage for lipid extraction from microbial biomass. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 34:838-845, 2018.