Estimation of salivary cortisol level in post-menopausal women with psychosomatic disorders

Background: Stress is an undesirable or health threatening response of the body, which is brought on by deleterious external influences (stressors). Objective measurement of psychosocial stress helps in assessment of pivotal role of stress in precipitation of multitude of health problems and a solution to the same. Salivary biomarkers are suggested to provide a reliable and non-invasive method for the estimation of these general health problems. Salivary cortisol is such biomarker used as tool in the examination of human physiological stress response. Post-menopausal women show an increase in stress levels and hence suffer with multiple health related problems. Hence the present study aimed to estimate salivary cortisol levels in post-menopausal women with clinically diagnosed psychosomatic disorder/disorders of the head and neck region, so as to establish salivary cortisol as a biochemical indicator of stress.Methods: Thorough intra-oral and extra-oral examination was performed to check for the presence of psychosomatic disorder of head and neck. Unstimulated saliva was collected from 100 post-menopausal women with and 100 without clinically diagnosed psychosomatic disorder/disorders through ‘Spit Technique’. Salivary cortisol was estimated using ELISA method.Results: The results were statistically significant as they showed that the salivary cortisol was in higher levels in post- menopausal women with clinically diagnosed psychosomatic disorder/disorders.Conclusion: The geriatric patients feel that they have very little skills or resources to deal with the high levels of stress that they are experiencing and hence suffer from lack of self-worth. The results of this study recommend that stress evaluation should be done on a regular basis for all post- menopausal women. For individuals who do not reveal their psychological distress, salivary analysis of cortisol may be used as an aid to diagnose their situation in conjunction with clinical diagnosis.Keywords: Post-menopausal women, psychosomatic disorder, head and neck, salivary cortisol, biomarker

Comparison Of Serum Lipid Levels In Periodontal Health And Disease In Systemically Healthy Subjects – A Clinical And Biochemical Study

Aim: To compare the serum lipid levels in systemically healthy subjects with and without periodontal disease and to correlate the results between hyperlipidemia and periodontitis.  Material and Methods: A total of 80 subjects of both sexes (42 males and 38 females), in the age group of 35-55 yrs were divided into two groups of 40 each as study and controls. All the patients were evaluated for serum cholesterol, serum triglycerides, LDL and HDL cholesterol. Variables related to high cholesterol levels, including age, sex and body mass index were also evaluated. The dental parameters recorded consisted of probing pocket depth (PPD), community periodontal index (CPI) and periodontal disease index (PDI).   Results: Total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides were marginally increased in study group but were not found to be statistically significant (p=0.106, p=0.100 & p=0.199 respectively). Triglycerides showed a positive correlation with CPI and PDI after adjusting for age and disease. However, the correlation of triglycerides with PDI was minimal compared to the correlation of triglyceride with CPI.  Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that there was no significant relationship between periodontal disease, regardless of its intensity, and blood lipid levels in the study population

Galaxy Manifold: Characterizing and understanding galaxies with two parameters

We report the discovery of a two-dimensional Galaxy Manifold within the multi-dimensional luminosity space of local galaxies. The multi-dimensional luminosity space is constructed using 11 bands that span from far ultraviolet to near-infrared for redshift < 0.1 galaxies observed with GALEX, SDSS, and UKIDSS. The two latent parameters are sufficient to express 93.2% of the variance in the galaxy sample, suggesting that this Galaxy Manifold is one of the most efficient representations of galaxies. The transformation between the observed luminosities and the manifold parameters as an analytic mapping is provided. The manifold representation provides accurate (85%) morphological classifications with a simple linear boundary, and galaxy properties can be estimated with minimal scatter (0.12 dex and 0.04 dex for star formation rate and stellar mass, respectively) by calibrating with the two-dimensional manifold location. Under the assumption that the manifold expresses the possible parameter space of galaxies, the evolution on the manifold is considered. We find that constant and exponentially decreasing star formation histories form almost orthogonal modes of evolution on the manifold. Through these simple models, we understand that the two modes are closely related to gas content, which suggests the close relationship of the manifold to gas accretion. Without assuming a star formation history, a gas-regulated model reproduces an exponentially declining star formation history with a timescale of $\sim$1.2 Gyrs on the manifold. Lastly, the found manifold suggests a paradigm where galaxies are characterized by their mass/scale and specific SFR, which agrees with previous studies of dimensionality reduction.Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. 15 pages and 17 figures. All comments are welcom

Analyzing historical diagnosis code data from NIH N3C and RECOVER Programs using deep learning to determine risk factors for Long Covid

Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) or Long COVID is an emerging medical condition that has been observed in several patients with a positive diagnosis for COVID-19. Historical Electronic Health Records (EHR) like diagnosis codes, lab results and clinical notes have been analyzed using deep learning and have been used to predict future clinical events. In this paper, we propose an interpretable deep learning approach to analyze historical diagnosis code data from the National COVID Cohort Collective (N3C) to find the risk factors contributing to developing Long COVID. Using our deep learning approach, we are able to predict if a patient is suffering from Long COVID from a temporally ordered list of diagnosis codes up to 45 days post the first COVID positive test or diagnosis for each patient, with an accuracy of 70.48\%. We are then able to examine the trained model using Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (GradCAM) to give each input diagnoses a score. The highest scored diagnosis were deemed to be the most important for making the correct prediction for a patient. We also propose a way to summarize these top diagnoses for each patient in our cohort and look at their temporal trends to determine which codes contribute towards a positive Long COVID diagnosis

Estimation of salivary cortisol level in post-menopausal women with psychosomatic disorders

Background: Stress is an undesirable or health threatening response of the body, which is brought on by deleterious external influences (stressors). Objective measurement of psychosocial stress helps in assessment of pivotal role of stress in precipitation of multitude of health problems and a solution to the same. Salivary biomarkers are suggested to provide a reliable and non-invasive method for the estimation of these general health problems. Salivary cortisol is such biomarker used as tool in the examination of human physiological stress response. Post-menopausal women show an increase in stress levels and hence suffer with multiple health related problems. Hence the present study aimed to estimate salivary cortisol levels in post-menopausal women with clinically diagnosed psychosomatic disorder/disorders of the head and neck region, so as to establish salivary cortisol as a biochemical indicator of stress. Methods: Thorough intra-oral and extra-oral examination was performed to check for the presence of psychosomatic disorder of head and neck. Unstimulated saliva was collected from 100 post-menopausal women with and 100 without clinically diagnosed psychosomatic disorder/disorders through \u2018Spit Technique\u2019. Salivary cortisol was estimated using ELISA method. Results: The results were statistically significant as they showed that the salivary cortisol was in higher levels in post- menopausal women with clinically diagnosed psychosomatic disorder/disorders. Conclusion: The geriatric patients feel that they have very little skills or resources to deal with the high levels of stress that they are experiencing and hence suffer from lack of self-worth. The results of this study recommend that stress evaluation should be done on a regular basis for all post- menopausal women. For individuals who do not reveal their psychological distress, salivary analysis of cortisol may be used as an aid to diagnose their situation in conjunction with clinical diagnosis

Probiotics-A Legacy of Good Health

Probiotics-means live microorganisms, which when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host. Probiotics can be bacteria, moulds, yeast. But most Probiotics are bacteria mainly lactic acid bacteria. The Probiotics have a three step action mechanism i. Stimulates and modulates immune response ii. Normalize intestinal micro flora iii. And also have the metabolic effects like. Probiotics have been analyzed for treatment and prevention of various diseases and disorders of human body and the results obtained are very encouraging. Probiotics have turned out to be very promising in ensuring oral health and general well being

Laterally stretched polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: synthesis of dibenzophenanthroheptaphene and tetrabenzotriphenylenopyranthrene derivatives

Efficient methods for the synthesis of dibenzophenanthroheptaphene (DBPH) and tetrabenzotriphenylenopyranthrene (TBTP) were developed. As a result, a series of unprecedented derivatives of DBPH (1a–c) and TBTP (2a–b) were conventionally obtained from the Scholl cyclodehydrogenation reaction of their respective tribenzopentaphene synthons. An alternative convergent synthesis of DBPH is also shown herein. The novel compounds were fully characterized by high-resolution matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (HR-MALDI-TOF-MS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), UV-Vis absorption and emission spectroscopy. In addition, density functional calculations were carried out to gain insight into the structure and electronic properties of these novel molecules, which corroborates the experimental observations

Detection of a Single Identical Cytomegalovirus (CMV) Strain in Recently Seroconverted Young Women

Infection with multiple CMV strains is common in immunocompromised hosts, but its occurrence in normal hosts has not been well-studied.We analyzed CMV strains longitudinally in women who acquired CMV while enrolled in a CMV glycoprotein B (gB) vaccine trial. Sequencing of four variable genes was performed in samples collected from seroconversion and up to 34 months thereafter.199 cultured isolates from 53 women and 65 original fluids from a subset of 19 women were sequenced. 51 women were infected with one strain each without evidence for genetic drift; only two women shed multiple strains. Genetic variability among strains increased with the number of sequenced genetic loci. Nevertheless, 13 of 53 women proved to be infected with an identical CMV strain based on sequencing at all four variable genes. CMV vaccine did not alter the degree of genetic diversity amongst strains.Primary CMV infection in healthy women nearly always involves shedding of one strain that remains stable over time. Immunization with CMVgB-1 vaccine strain is not selective against specific strains. Although 75% of women harbored their unique strain, or a strain shared with only one other woman, 25% shared a single common strain, suggesting that this predominant strain with a particular combination of genetic loci is advantageous in this large urban area