METHODS: This study analyzed death records from January 2017 to June 2022, sourced from Malaysia's Health Informatics Centre, coded into ICD-10. Data anonymization adhered to ethical standards, with 387,650 death registrations included after quality checks. The dataset, limited to three-digit ICD-10 codes, underwent cleaning and an 80:20 training-testing split. Preprocessing involved HTML tag removal and tokenization. ML approaches, including BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), Gzip+KNN (K-Nearest Neighbors), XGBoost (Extreme Gradient Boosting), TensorFlow, SVM (Support Vector Machine), and Naive Bayes, were evaluated for automated ICD-10 coding. Models were fine-tuned and assessed across accuracy, F1-score, precision, recall, specificity, and precision-recall curves using Amazon SageMaker (Amazon Web Services, Seattle, WA). Sensitivity analysis addressed unbalanced data scenarios, enhancing model robustness.

RESULTS: In assessing ICD-10 coding with ML, Gzip+KNN had the longest training time at 10 hours, with BERT leading in memory use. BERT performed best for the F1-score (0.71) and accuracy (0.82), closely followed by Gzip+KNN. TensorFlow excelled in recall, whereas SVM had the highest specificity but lower overall performance. XGBoost was notably less effective across metrics. Precision-recall analysis showed Gzip+KNN's superiority. On an unbalanced dataset, BERT and Gzip+KNN demonstrated consistent accuracy.

METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was performed. Case records of consecutive patients with culture-positive melioidosis who underwent computed tomography (CT) thorax from January 1, 2018-February 28, 2022, were reviewed.

RESULTS: 486 culture-positive melioidosis patients were identified, of which 70 underwent CT thorax. 41 patients demonstrating mediastinal involvement were included in the final analysis, of which four were mediastinal collections, while the rest were classified into those with necrotic or matted appearances, and subcentimeter and larger than 1 cm. Culture-positivity was proven from blood in 83 % of patients (n = 34), with the remaining from chest wall pus, neck abscess pus, sputum, liver abscess, seminal vesicle, pleural, pericardial and peritoneal fluid. The most commonly associated pulmonary manifestations were consolidation and pleural effusion. Half had diabetes; a quarter had chronic kidney disease, while one had syphilis. Exposure to soil was present in six patients: quarry (n = 1), construction (n = 2), farmer (n = 1), living environment (n = 2). Seven patients succumbed before the end of 6-week intensive phase antibiotic treatment.

METHODS: A school-based cluster randomized controlled trial of the MyBFF@school obesity intervention program was conducted among overweight and obese schoolchildren aged 9-11. Out of 1,196 eligible government primary schools in central Peninsular Malaysia, 23 were randomly assigned into seven intervention schools (647 children) and 16 control schools (750 children). A standard nutrition education module was delivered for 24 weeks to the intervention group, whereas children in the control group followed only the currently existing school nutrition education program. The main outcome measures were nutrition knowledge and attitude scores. Changes of nutrition knowledge and attitude scores from follow up until end of 6 months was assessed using the mixed effect model taking into account the cluster effect.

RESULTS: A total of 563 children in the intervention group and 482 in the control group completed the six-month program and were included in the analysis. The overall nutrition knowledge score was significantly higher in the intervention group (adjusted mean difference (AMD): 4.75%, p = 0.028 ) after controlling for mean nutrition knowledge score at baseline, gender, location school group (intervention vs control) and ethnicity. There was also a significant improvement in the nutrition knowledge score with AMD among boys (6.02%), urban children (8.07%), and non-Malays (10.4%). In contrast, after controlling for mean nutrition attitude score at baseline, gender, location, school group (intervention vs control) and ethnicity, there was no significant difference in the nutrition attitude scores between the intervention and the control groups in the overall, gender, location and ethnicity.

CONCLUSIONS: The MyBFF@school program with an adjunct NEI improves the overall knowledge on nutrition but has no positive effect on the nutrition attitude of younger schoolchildren, necessitating additional improvements.

RESULTS: A maximum protein yield of 12.05 g/100 g with purity level 91.94 g/100 g was obtained using an optimized extraction with pH 11.0, seed:water ratio 50:1, 360 min duration, and temperature 50 °C. The oil and water retention capacities of KSPI were 1.14 mL g-1 and 1.37 mL g-1 respectively. After 30 min at pH 7, KSPIs demonstrated remarkable emulsion capacity (83.12%) and stability (75.63%), along with high foaming capacity (106%) and stability (18.3%). As per high-performance liquid chromatography analysis, arginine, glutamic acid, leucine, phenylalanine, and lysine were the most abundant amino acids detected in KPSIs. The KSPIs' globular protein structure was successfully verified using analytical approaches, including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, protein fraction ratios, and differential scanning calorimetry. Sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis revealed that KPSI has a molecular weight distribution ranging from 10 kDa to 50 kDa.

METHODS: In this study we used the docking, molecular dynamics simulation and binding free energy approaches to identify the potent inhibitor of NLRP3 by screening the African phytocompounds and traditional Chinese medicine databases.

RESULTS: Our virtual drug screening analysis identified two lead compounds from each database, characterized by high docking scores such as SA-21676268 (-8.135 kcal/mol), SA-167673 (-10.251 kcal/mol), EA-45360194 (-10.376 kcal/mol), EA-46881231 (-10.011 kcal/mol), NEA-44258150 (-9.856 kcal/mol), NEA-135926572 (-7.662 kcal/mol), NA-163089376 (-9.237 kcal/mol), NA-440735 (-8.826 kcal/mol), TCM-392442 (-10.438 kcal/mol), and TCM-10043097 (-9.046 kcal/mol) which highlighted the strong binding affinity as compared to the control NP3-146 drug (-5.09 kcal/mol). Moreover, the values of dissociation constant further validated the strong binding affinity between the identified lead compounds and NLRP3. The dynamic stability and strong bonding energies of the lead compounds-NLRP3 complexes were confirmed by the molecular dynamic simulation and binding free energy calculation. The analysis of ADMET properties for all compounds indicated high intestinal absorption, water solubility, absence of hepatotoxicity, and skin sensitivity.

METHODOLOGY: This cross-sectional study enrolled 162 patients with suspected DF symptoms. The diagnosis was confirmed through dengue immunoglobulin M (IgM) capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) or Dengue Early ELISA for nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) antigen detection. Hematological parameters were measured using the Coulter DxH 800 hematology analyzer (Beckman Coulter, Brea, CA), and the statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 22 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY).

RESULTS: A total of 108 patients tested positive for DF, while 54 tested negative. We observed significant differences in WBC count, platelet count, and monocyte percentage between patients with DF and non-DF, while no significant correlation was noted for MMV. Subsequent statistical analysis, including receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, revealed that monocyte percentage exhibited the largest area under the curve (0.715), indicating its potential as moderate discriminative power in diagnosing DF.

OBJECTIVES: To conduct an extensive literature review and meta-analysis of CBD use for DRE in adult PWE.

DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

DATA SOURCES AND METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of the literature according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and two electronic resources; we searched Ovid MEDLINE and Scopus using appropriate keywords until August 2023. Data were presented as standardized mean difference (SMD) and odds ratio with confidence interval (CI) via random effect. We appraised the risk of bias of the included studies using the Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tool while their strength of evidence with the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (OCEBM) and Grading of Recommendations Assessment Development and Education (GRADE) Levels of Evidence.