OBJECTIVES: To determine how women perceived their ANBE experience in the first 8 weeks postpartum including what was useful and what they would like to have been included, sources of ANBE and infant feeding practices at the time of survey.
METHODS: Women during their first 8 weeks postpartum who attended MOH clinics in Penang State, Malaysia were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire in April and May 2015. Categorical responses were presented as numbers and proportions while free text responses were compiled verbatim and categorised into themes. The perceptions of primiparous and multiparous women were compared. Multivariate logistic regression adjusted to known confounders was used to determine if ANBE was associated with exclusive breastfeeding at the time of survey.
RESULTS: A total of 421 women completed the 15-item questionnaire (84% response rate) of which 282 were complete and available for analysis. Of these, 95% had received ANBE, majority (88%) from MOH clinics. Almost all women found it useful. However, there were areas both in the delivery (e.g. too short) and the content (e.g. nothing new) that were described as not useful; and areas they would like more coverage (e.g. milk expression, storage and overcoming low milk supply). The exclusive breastfeeding prevalence at the time of survey was 61%. ANBE was significantly associated with exclusive breastfeeding even after adjusting for confounders (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 8.1, 95% confidence interval 1.7, 38.3).
CONCLUSIONS: ANBE is widely implemented and perceived as useful and may be associated with exclusive breastfeeding. Our findings give insight into content that women would like more of and how delivery of ANBE could be improved, including individualized sessions and communicating at a suitable level and language. Future studies could focus on the quality of ANBE delivery.
OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the metabolite variations in A. elliptica leaves and the correlation with antioxidant activities.
METHODOLOGY: Total phenolic content (TPC), 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and nitric oxide (NO) radicals scavenging assays were performed on A. elliptica leaves extracted with four different ethanol ratios (0%, 50%, 70% and absolute ethanol). The correlation of metabolites with antioxidant activities was evaluated using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics approach.
RESULTS: The results showed that the 50% and 70% ethanolic extracts retained the highest TPC, and the 70% ethanolic extract was the most active, exhibiting half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50 ) values of 10.18 ± 0.83 and 43.05 ± 1.69 μg/mL, respectively, in both radical scavenging assays. A total of 46 metabolites were tentatively identified, including flavonoids, benzoquinones, triterpenes and phenolic derivatives. The 50% and 70% ethanolic extracts showed similarities in metabolites content and were well discriminated from water and absolute ethanol extracts in a principal component analysis (PCA) model. Moreover, 31 metabolites were found to contribute significantly to the differentiation and antioxidant activity.
CONCLUSION: This study provides information on bioactive compounds in A. elliptica leaves, which is promising as a functional ingredient for food production or for the development of phytomedicinal products.
METHODS: In this work, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to precisely examine the association between circulating levels of leptin and adiponectin and CRC risk. A systematic literature search was performed in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and EMBASE databases from inception until October 2020. The pooled effect size was then estimated by calculating the odds ratio (OR).
RESULTS: A total of 23 records (comprising 26 studies) were included in the meta-analysis. The overall analysis found that circulating levels of leptin and adiponectin were not significantly associated with CRC risk (P > 0.05). Interestingly, subgroup analysis revealed that a higher level of adiponectin was significantly associated with an increased CRC risk among overweight individuals (OR = 1.16; 95 % CI: 1.02, 1.32), and a decreased CRC risk among normal weight individuals (OR = 0.76; 95 % CI: 0.62, 0.92). Besides, a higher level of adiponectin was also significantly associated with a decreased risk of CRC in men (OR = 0.76; 95 % CI: 0.59, 0.98).
CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, circulating leptin level was not associated with CRC risk, but that of adiponectin was associated with CRC risk only in specific subgroups.
METHODS: A systematic search was conducted on PubMed, EBSCOHost, and Web of Science. We identified 22 casecontrol studies that matched our inclusion and exclusion criteria. Information such as study characteristics, genetic polymorphisms associated with SLE, and organ manifestations was extracted and reported in this review.
RESULTS: In total, 30 polymorphisms in 16 genes were found to be associated with SLE among Asians. All included polymorphisms also reported associations with various SLE clinical features. The association of rs1234315 in TNFSF4 linking to SLE susceptibility (P=4.17x10-17 OR=1.45 95% CI=1.34-1.59) and musculoskeletal manifestation (P=3.35x10-9, OR=1.37, 95%CI= 1.23-1.51) might be the most potential biomarkers to differentiate SLE between Asian and other populations. In fact, these associated genetic variants were found in loci that were implicated in immune systems, signal transduction, gene expression that play important roles in SLE pathogenesis.
DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS: This review summarized the potential correlation between 30 genetic polymorphisms associated with SLE and its clinical manifestations among Asians. More efforts in dissecting the functional implications and linkage disequilibrium of associated variants may be required to validate these findings.
METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study on T2DM patients. Modest alcohol intake was defined as alcohol intake ≤ 21 units/week in men and ≤ 14 units/week in women. Significant hepatic steatosis was diagnosed on the basis of controlled attenuation parameter > 263 dB/m, while advanced fibrosis was diagnosed on the basis of liver stiffness measurement ≥ 9.6 kPa using M probe or ≥ 9.3 kPa using XL probe. Patients with liver stiffness measurement ≥ 8.0 kPa were offered liver biopsy.
RESULTS: Five hundred fifty-seven patients underwent transient elastography, and 71 patients underwent liver biopsy. The prevalence of modest drinking was 16.5%. Modest drinking was equally prevalent among ethnic Indians and Chinese at 22.9% and 23.3%, respectively, but uncommon among ethnic Malays at 1.7%. Modest drinkers were more likely to be male, smoked, and had significantly lower glycated hemoglobin, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, alkaline phosphatase, and platelet count. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of significant hepatic steatosis or advanced fibrosis based on transient elastography and steatohepatitis or advanced fibrosis between modest drinkers and nondrinkers. The prevalence of significant hepatic steatosis was higher among ethnic Malays and Indians compared with ethnic Chinese, but the Chinese did not have a lower prevalence of more severe liver disease.
CONCLUSION: Modest alcohol intake is not associated with higher prevalence of significant hepatic steatosis or more severe liver disease among patients with T2DM.
Methods: A total of 174 samples of seven cephalopod species were collected from the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Both upper and lower beaks were extracted from the samples and the left lateral views of upper and lower beak images were acquired. Three types of traditional morphometric features were extracted namely grey histogram of oriented gradient (HOG), colour HOG, and morphological shape descriptor (MSD). In addition, deep features were extracted by using three pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNN) models which are VGG19, InceptionV3, and Resnet50. Eight machine learning approaches were used in the classification step and compared for model performance.
Results: The results showed that the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model achieved the best testing accuracy of 91.14%, using the deep features extracted from the VGG19 model from lower beak images. The results indicated that the deep features were more accurate than the traditional features in highlighting morphometric differences from the beak images of cephalopod species. In addition, the use of lower beaks of cephalopod species provided better results compared to the upper beaks, suggesting that the lower beaks possess more significant morphological differences between the studied cephalopod species. Future works should include more cephalopod species and sample size to enhance the identification accuracy and comprehensiveness of the developed model.