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Lessons learned from chemotherapeutic and immunosuppressant induced Hepatitis B reactivation - a case series

Nida' Ul-Huda A, Haniza O

Med J Malaysia, 2021 09;76(5):719-724.
PMID: 34508381

This case series is to create awareness among clinicians on the importance of Hepatitis B screening prior to administration of chemotherapeutic agents and immunosuppressant in preventing Hepatitis B reactivation (HBVr). We also highlight the importance of identifying patients who are at risk of HBVr and when to initiate antiviral prophylaxis based on the current evidence-based guidelines. The case series consists of four patients seen in Hospital Selayang, Malaysia who developed fulminant liver failure secondary to chemotherapeutic agents or immunosuppressant induced HBVr. HBVr is likely to be of increasing clinical significance as potent immunosuppressive regimens are used more widely across all medical specialties. Clinicians should be made aware of the potential risk of patients developing fulminant liver failure following HBVr and its association with high morbidity and mortality. In the era of inexpensive Hepatitis B blood screening tests and safe potent antivirals, there is now a paradigm shift to make the test compulsory to screen all patient prior to initiation of chemotherapeutic agents or immunosuppressive therapy. Antiviral prophylaxis may be offered to more patients who are at risk of HBVr and the duration of both prophylaxis and subsequent monitoring may be extended until 6 to 18 months following completion of treatment.
Simultaneous removal of potent cyanotoxins from water using magnetophoretic nanoparticle of polypyrrole: adsorption kinetic and isotherm study

Hena S, Rozi R, Tabassum S, Huda A

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int, 2016 Aug;23(15):14868-80.
PMID: 27072032 DOI: 10.1007/s11356-016-6540-5

Cyanotoxins, microcystins and cylindrospermopsin, are potent toxins produced by cyanobacteria in potable water supplies. This study investigated the removal of cyanotoxins from aqueous media by magnetophoretic nanoparticle of polypyrrole adsorbent. The adsorption process was pH dependent with maximum adsorption occurring at pH 7 for microcystin-LA, LR, and YR and at pH 9 for microcystin-RR and cylindrospermopsin (CYN). Kinetic studies and adsorption isotherms reflected better fit for pseudo-second-order rate and Langmuir isotherm model, respectively. Thermodynamic calculations showed that the cyanotoxin adsorption process is endothermic and spontaneous in nature. The regenerated adsorbent can be successfully reused without appreciable loss of its original capacity.
Protective role of pectin against cadmium-induced testicular toxicity and oxidative stress in rats

Koriem KM, Fathi GE, Salem HA, Akram NH, Gamil SA

Toxicol. Mech. Methods, 2013 May;23(4):263-72.
PMID: 23193971 DOI: 10.3109/15376516.2012.748857

Cadmium has been classified as an environmental pollutant and human carcinogen. Pectin is a family of complex polysaccharides that function as hydrating agents and cementing materials for the cellulosic network. The aim of this study was to evaluate the protective role of pectin against cadmium-induced testicular toxicity and oxidative stress in rats. Forty male Wistar rats were divided into five equal groups. Groups 1 and 2 were injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) saline (1 mg/kg) and pectin (50 mg/kg), respectively, two days/weeks over three weeks period. Groups 3-5 were injected i.p. with 1 mg/kg cadmium two days/week while groups 4 and 5 co-administrated i.p. with 25 and 50 mg/kg pectin, respectively, three days/week over three weeks period. The results of the present work revealed that cadmium-exposed rats showed decrease in serum testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and lactate dehydrogenase. Testicular cholesterol, total protein, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, 3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, catalase, glutathione S-transferase and reduced glutathione levels were also decreased while testicular malondialdehyde level was increased after cadmium injection. On the other hand, serum luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, sex hormone binding globulin and γ-glutamyl transpeptidase were increased after cadmium exposure. Cadmium also induced sperms loss. Co-administration of pectin with cadmium restores all the above parameters and sperms to the normal levels where pectin at higher dose was more effective than lower one. These results were supported by histochemical investigations. In conclusion, pectin can counteract the testicular toxicity and oxidative stress induced by cadmium and the effect was dose-dependent.
An assessment of self-care knowledge among patients with diabetes mellitus

Alhaik S, Anshasi HA, Alkhawaldeh J, Soh KL, Naji AM

Diabetes Metab Syndr, 2018 10 10;13(1):390-394.
PMID: 30641730 DOI: 10.1016/j.dsx.2018.10.010

PURPOSES: This study aimed to (1) assess the level of diabetes self-care knowledge among patients with diabetes mellitus and (2) examine the relationship between patients' diabetes self-care knowledge and their demographic and medical characteristics.

METHODS: A cross-sectional design was used to implement the study. A convenience sample of 273 diabetic patients were recruited from five primary health-care centers in Amman- Jordan.

RESULTS: The overall level of knowledge of diabetes self-care in the total sample was moderate (58.28% (SD = 18.24)). The highest level of knowledge was meal planning (70.2%) followed by monitoring, causes of diabetes, foot care, symptoms and complication, diabetic medication, and the lowest level was exercise (42.5%). Furthermore, knowledge of diabetes self-care was found to be associated with age, educational status, diabetic medications and years with diabetes.

CONCLUSION: and Practice implications: The study findings emphasized that diabetic patients had a moderate level of knowledge and there were many of the learning needs for each area of knowledge. The health-care professional has an important role in developing the appropriate diabetes educational programs based on patients' learning needs and patients' characteristics. These programs that enhances knowledge on diabetes could be reduced or prevented diabetes-related complications.
Stress management training program for stress reduction and coping improvement in public health nurses: A randomized controlled trial

Alkhawaldeh JM, Soh KL, Mukhtar F, Peng OC, Alkhawaldeh HM, Al-Amer R, et al.

J Adv Nurs, 2020 Nov;76(11):3123-3135.
PMID: 32856353 DOI: 10.1111/jan.14506

AIMS: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the stress management interventional program in reducing occupational stress and improving coping strategies among public health nurses.
DESIGN: A double-blind, cluster-randomized approach was used as a randomization method for this study to evaluate the stress management interventional program.
METHODS: A cluster-randomized controlled trial was carried out in eight comprehensive healthcare centres in Amman city, Jordan; four centres were randomly assigned to each experimental and control group. One hundred and seventy nurses were selected randomly from March 2019 - August 2019 and data were collected by using the Nursing Stress Scale & brief COPE over three data collection times. Both descriptive and inferential statistics (repeated measure ANOVA, Independent t test, and chi-squared) were used to answer the research questions of this study.
RESULTS: The results showed that both the levels of occupational stress and coping strategies were significantly different between the two study groups over the three data collection points (p
Stress management interventions for intensive and critical care nurses: A systematic review

Alkhawaldeh JMA, Soh KL, Mukhtar FBM, Peng OC, Anshasi HA

Nurs Crit Care, 2020 03;25(2):84-92.
PMID: 31840391 DOI: 10.1111/nicc.12489

BACKGROUND: The level of occupational stress of nurses working in intensive and critical care units is high. Although many studies have assessed the effectiveness of stress management interventions among intensive and critical care nurses, the methodological quality of these studies remains unclear.
PURPOSE: The purpose of this review was to summarize and appraise the methodological quality of primary studies on interventions for management of occupational stress among intensive and critical care nurses.
METHODS: This review was reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify primary studies that assessed the effectiveness of interventions in managing occupational stress among intensive and critical care nurses using multiple databases from January 2009 to June 2019.
RESULTS: Twelve studies published between 2011 and 2019 were eligible for inclusion. These included studies were classified as being of good or fair quality. The consensus across the included studies was that, compared with control condition, cognitive-behavioural skills training and mindfulness-based intervention were more effective in reducing occupational stress among intensive and critical care unit nurses.
CONCLUSION: Further research should focus on methodologically strong studies by blinding the outcome assessors, using Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) design with an active control group, using standardized assessment tools, and reporting enough details about the stress management intervention-related adverse events.
RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This review demonstrates the need for high methodological quality studies to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of stress management interventions before it can be recommended for use in clinical practice to reduce stress in intensive and critical care unit nurses. In addition, attention should be given to developing research protocols that place more emphasis on interventions aimed at the organization level to address the growing problem of occupational stress among intensive and critical care nurses.
A new thermographic NDT for condition monitoring of electrical components using ANN with confidence level analysis

Huda AS, Taib S, Ghazali KH, Jadin MS

ISA Trans, 2014 May;53(3):717-24.
PMID: 24593986 DOI: 10.1016/j.isatra.2014.02.003

Infrared thermography technology is one of the most effective non-destructive testing techniques for predictive faults diagnosis of electrical components. Faults in electrical system show overheating of components which is a common indicator of poor connection, overloading, load imbalance or any defect. Thermographic inspection is employed for finding such heat related problems before eventual failure of the system. However, an automatic diagnostic system based on artificial neural network reduces operating time, human efforts and also increases the reliability of system. In the present study, statistical features and artificial neural network (ANN) with confidence level analysis are utilized for inspection of electrical components and their thermal conditions are classified into two classes namely normal and overheated. All the features extracted from images do not produce good performance. Features having low performance reduce the diagnostic performance. The study reveals the performance of each feature individually for selecting the suitable feature set. In order to find the individual feature performance, each feature of thermal image was used as input for neural network and the classification of condition types were used as output target. The multilayered perceptron network using Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm was used as classifier. The performances were determined in terms of percentage of accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, false positive and false negative. After selecting the suitable features, the study introduces the intelligent diagnosis system using suitable features as inputs of neural network. Finally, confidence percentage and confidence level were used to find out the strength of the network outputs for condition monitoring. The experimental result shows that multilayered perceptron network produced 79.4% of testing accuracy with 43.60%, 12.60%, 21.40, 9.20% and 13.40% highest, high, moderate, low and lowest confidence level respectively.
Fulltext Reconfigurable Radiation Pattern of Planar Antenna Using Metamaterial for 5G Applications

Ali Esmail B, Majid HA, Zainal Abidin Z, Haimi Dahlan S, Himdi M, Dewan R, et al.

Materials (Basel), 2020 Jan 26;13(3).
PMID: 31991912 DOI: 10.3390/ma13030582

In this research, a reconfigurable metamaterial (MM) structure was designed using a millimeter-wave (MMW) band with two configurations that exhibit different refractive indices. These two MM configurations are used to guide the antenna's main beam in the desired direction in the 5th generation (5G) band of 28 GHz. The different refractive indices of the two MM configurations created phase change for the electromagnetic (EM) wave of the antenna, which deflected the main beam. A contiguous squares resonator (CSR) is proposed as an MM structure to operate at MMW band. The CSR is reconfigured using three switches to achieve two MM configurations with different refractive indices. The simulation results of the proposed antenna loaded by MM unit cells demonstrate that the radiation beam is deflected by angles of +30° and -27° in the E-plane, depending on the arrangement of the two MM configurations on the antenna substrate. Furthermore, these deflections are accompanied by gain enhancements of 1.9 dB (26.7%) and 1.5 dB (22.4%) for the positive and negative deflections, respectively. The reflection coefficients of the MM antenna are kept below -10 dB for both deflection angles at 28 GHz. The MM antennas are manufactured and measured to validate the simulated results.
Fulltext Recent Advances in Metal Decorated Nanomaterials and Their Various Biological Applications: A Review

Yaqoob AA, Ahmad H, Parveen T, Ahmad A, Oves M, Ismail IMI, et al.

Front Chem, 2020;8:341.
PMID: 32509720 DOI: 10.3389/fchem.2020.00341

Nanoparticles (nanoparticles) have received much attention in biological application because of their unique physicochemical properties. The metal- and metal oxide-supported nanomaterials have shown significant therapeutic effect in medical science. The mechanisms related to the interaction of nanoparticles with animal and plant cells can be used to establish its significant role and to improve their activity in health and medical applications. Various attempts have been made to discuss the antibiotic resistance and antimicrobial activity of metal-supported nanoparticles. Despite all these developments, there is still a need to investigate their performance to overcome modern challenges. In this regard, the present review examines the role of various types of metal-supported nanomaterials in different areas such as antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, and so on. Based on the significant ongoing research and applications, it is expected that metal-supported nanomaterials play an outstanding role not only in medical but also in other important areas.
Distribution of detritivores in tropical forest streams of peninsular Malaysia: role of temperature, canopy cover and altitude variability

Che Salmah MR, Al-Shami SA, Abu Hassan A, Madrus MR, Nurul Huda A

Int J Biometeorol, 2014 Jul;58(5):679-90.
PMID: 23483291 DOI: 10.1007/s00484-013-0648-9

The diversity and abundance of macroinvertebrate shredders were investigated in 52 forested streams (local scale) from nine catchments (regional scale) covering a large area of peninsular Malaysia. A total of 10,642 individuals of aquatic macroinvertebrates were collected, of which 18.22% were shredders. Biodiversity of shredders was described by alpha (αaverage), beta (β) and gamma diversity (γ) measures. We found high diversity and abundance of shredders in all catchments, represented by 1,939 individuals (range 6-115 and average per site of 37.29±3.48 SE) from 31 taxa with 2-13 taxa per site (αaverage=6.98±0.33 SE) and 10-15 taxa per catchment (γ=13.33±0.55 SE). At the local scale, water temperature, stream width, depth and altitude were correlated significantly with diversity (Adj-R2=0.205). Meanwhile, dissolved oxygen, stream velocity, water temperature, stream width and altitude were correlated to shredder abundance (Adj-R2=0.242). At regional scale, however, water temperature was correlated negatively with β and γ diversity (r2=0.161 and 0.237, respectively) as well as abundance of shredders (r2=0.235). Canopy cover was correlated positively with β diversity (r2=0.378) and abundance (r2=0.266), meanwhile altitude was correlated positively with β (quadratic: r2=0.175), γ diversity (quadratic: r2=0.848) as well as abundance (quadratic: r2=0.299). The present study is considered as the first report describing the biodiversity and abundance of shredders in forested headwater streams across a large spatial scale in peninsular Malaysia. We concluded that water temperature has a negative effect while altitude showed a positive relationship with diversity and abundance of shredders. However, it was difficult to detect an influence of canopy cover on shredder diversity.
Fulltext Pollination Services of Mango Flower Pollinators

Huda AN, Salmah MR, Hassan AA, Hamdan A, Razak MN

J Insect Sci, 2015;15.
PMID: 26246439 DOI: 10.1093/jisesa/iev090

Measuring wild pollinator services in agricultural production is very important in the context of sustainable management. In this study, we estimated the contribution of native pollinators to mango fruit set production of two mango cultivars Mangifera indica (L). cv. 'Sala' and 'Chok Anan'. Visitation rates of pollinators on mango flowers and number of pollen grains adhering to their bodies determined pollinator efficiency for reproductive success of the crop. Chok Anan failed to produce any fruit set in the absence of pollinators. In natural condition, we found that Sala produced 4.8% fruit set per hermaphrodite flower while Chok Anan produced 3.1% per flower. Hand pollination tremendously increased fruit set of naturally pollinated flower for Sala (>100%), but only 33% for Chok Anan. Pollinator contribution to mango fruit set was estimated at 53% of total fruit set production. Our results highlighted the importance of insect pollinations in mango production. Large size flies Eristalinus spp. and Chrysomya spp. were found to be effective pollen carriers and visited more mango flowers compared with other flower visitors.

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