The compliance with drug regimens and follow-up visits of 225 known cases of relapsed schizophrenia was assessed. About 27% of the patients met the criteria for good compliance. The compliance was found to be significantly related to the patients' view of usefulness of the medication, treatment duration of less than 5 years, dosage schedule of once or twice per day and the supervision of medication at home. Patients with poor compliance who were prescribed drug dosage of not more than twice per day throughout follow-up and underwent counseling to enhance treatment compliance had a significantly lower relapse rate than the controlled group at the end of 1 year of follow-up. The importance of family support and understanding patients' cultural background in ensuring good compliance was highlighted.
The roasting of barley and malt products generates colour and flavour, controlled principally by the time course of product temperature and moisture content. Samples were taken throughout the industrial manufacture of three classes of roasted product (roasted barley, crystal malt and black malt) and analysed for moisture content, colour and flavour volatiles. Despite having distinct flavour characteristics, the three products contained many compounds in common. The product concentrations through manufacture of 15 flavour compounds are used to consider the mechanisms (Maillard reaction, caramelisation, pyrolysis) by which they were formed. The use of water sprays resulted in transient increases in formation of certain compounds (e.g., 2-cyclopentene-1,4-dione) and a decrease in others (e.g., pyrrole). The study highlights rapid changes in colour and particularly flavour which occur at the end of roasting and onwards to the cooling floor. This highlights the need for commercial maltsters to ensure consistency of procedures from batch to batch.
Advances in iterative image reconstruction enable absolute quantification of SPECT/CT studies by incorporating compensations for collimator-detector response, attenuation, and scatter. This study aimed to assess the quantitative accuracy of SPECT/CT based on different levels of 99mTc activity (low/high) using different SUV metrics (SUVmean, SUVmax, SUV0.6 max, and SUV0.75 max [the average values that include pixels greater than 60% and 75% of the SUVmax in the volume of interest, respectively]). Methods: A Jaszczak phantom equipped with 6 fillable spheres was set up with low and high activity ratios of 1:4 and 1:10 (background-to-sphere) on background activities of 10 and 60 kBq/mL, respectively. The fixed-size volume of interest based on the diameter of each sphere was drawn on SPECT images using various metrics for SUV quantification purposes. Results: The convergence of activity concentration was dependent on the number of iterations and application of postfiltering. For the background-to-sphere ratio of 1:10 with a low background activity concentration, the SUVmean metric showed an underestimation of about 38% from the actual SUV, and SUVmax exhibited an overestimation of about 24% for the largest sphere diameter. Meanwhile, bias reductions of as much as -6% and -7% for SUV0.6 max and SUV0.75 max, respectively, were observed. SUVmax gave a more accurate reading than the others, although points that exceeded the actual value were detected. At 1:4 and 1:10 background activity of 10 kBq/mL, a low activity concentration attained a value close to the actual ratio. Use of 2 iterations and 10 subsets without postfiltering gave the most accurate values for reconstruction and the best image overall. Conclusion: SUVmax is the best metric in a high- or low-contrast-ratio phantom with at least 2 iterations, 10 subsets, and no postfiltering.
Non-O1 vibrio cholerae infections are associated with sporadic cases of gastroenteritis and extraintestinal infections. Septicaemia due to non-O1 vibrio cholerae is rare and are mainly reported in adults, particularly in immunocompromised patients. We report a case of non-O1 vibrio cholerae septicaemia and gastroenteritis in an 8-year-old child. The patient presented with bloody diarrhoea, fever and severe dehydration. Non-O1 vibrio cholerae were isolated from blood and stool cultures. The clinical course was uneventful after starting appropriate rehydration and supportive therapy.
The emergence of a third wave of COVID-19 infection in Malaysia since September 2020 has led to imminent changes in public health prevention and control measures. As high as 96.2% of registered COVID-19 cases and 88.5% of confirmed deaths in Malaysia occurred during this third wave of infection. A phylogenomic study on 258 SARS-CoV-2 full genomes from February 2020-February 2021 has led to the discovery of a novel Malaysian lineage B.1.524. This lineage contains another spike mutation A701V that co-exists with the D614G spike mutation that was predominant in most of the third-wave clusters. The study provides vital genomic insights on the rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 variants in Malaysia in conjunction with the presence of a dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage during the third wave of COVID-19 infection.