Nutritional And Anti – Nutritional Composition Of Black – Plum (Vitex Doniana)

The search for more nutrition sources among forest products has called for the analysis of nutritional and  anti – nutritional composition of Vitex doniana.  Although, Vitex doniana had been  known to be very useful among people across tropical Africa and beyond, but there is lack of adequate data on its nutritional composition. The result of this study presented Vitex doniana as highly nutritious plant that contain moisture of about, 77.03%, ash content: 1.65%, fat: 2.9%, fibre: 2.75, protein: 8.10 and carbohydrate: 7.57. Vitex doniana contains vitamins, macro and micro – nutrient in different proportions. Among anti –nutritive factors found in Vitex doniana are: tannins, saponin, alkaloids and trace of cardiac glycoside, yet this can be controlled by boiling. It is concluded that the young leaf is highly rich in nutrients and contains the nutrient levels that fall within other popular edible vegetables. It is therefore recommended for human consumption in every household. It is also suggested that further research should be carried out on its economic status and feasibility of the seed as feed supplement in animal feed

Ascorbic acid retention of freshly harvested seven Nigerian green leafy vegetables after soaking in water

Vitamins are micronutrients needed in the body for important biologic functions. The current study examined the influence of steeping on vitamin C retention of seven Nigerian vegetable leaves after soaking for 8 h. One kilograme each was purchased and 6 lots of 100 g were sorted out, cleaned and treated as follow; whole leaf 1, whole leaf 2, sliced leaf 1, sliced leaf 2, sliced and salted leaf 1 and sliced and salted leaf 2. Each of the treatments 1 was soaked in 1 litre of distilled water while each of treatments 2 was soaked in 2 litres of distilled water. All treatments were kept for 8 h while monitoring the trend of reduction in vitamin C contents at 2 h intervals. Moisture (%) was determined following AOAC (2002) methods while dry matter content was estimated from moisture by calculating the difference. Ascorbic acid content (mg/100 g) was determined following the method of Ndawula et al. (2004). Result showed that; moisture, dry matter, and ascorbic acid contents of raw leaves ranged from 67.63–86.70%, 13.30–32.37%, and 103.00–1199.23 mg/100g respectively. During soaking, ascorbic acid retained by the seven green vegetables reduced as follows; 73.39–24.26% (Amaranthus viridis), 100.26–19.62% (Gnetum africanum), 129.05–27.72% (Gongronema latifolium), 66.84–7.55% (Ocimum gratissmum), 42.59–4.14% (Piper guinense), 77.38–10.26% (Pterocapus mildbedii) and 120.02–17.97% (Telfaria occidentalis). The study showed that ascorbic acid retention (%) of seven Nigerian green vegetable leaves decreased with increasing soaking duration

Evaluating Polygenic Risk Scores for Breast Cancer in Women of African Ancestry

Background: Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) have been demonstrated to identify women of European, Asian, and Latino ancestry at elevated risk of developing breast cancer (BC). We evaluated the performance of existing PRSs trained in European ancestry populations among women of African ancestry. Methods: We assembled genotype data for women of African ancestry, including 9241 case subjects and 10 193 control subjects. We evaluated associations of 179- and 313-variant PRSs with overall and subtype-specific BC risk. PRS discriminatory accuracy was assessed using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. We also evaluated a recalibrated PRS, replacing the index variant with variants in each region that better captured risk in women of African ancestry and estimated lifetime absolute risk of BC in African Americans by PRS category. Results: For overall BC, the odds ratio per SD of the 313-variant PRS (PRS313) was 1.27 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.23 to 1.31), with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.571 (95% CI = 0.562 to 0.579). Compared with women with average risk (40th-60th PRS percentile), women in the top decile of PRS313 had a 1.54-fold increased risk (95% CI = 1.38-fold to 1.72-fold). By age 85 years, the absolute risk of overall BC was 19.6% for African American women in the top 1% of PRS313 and 6.7% for those in the lowest 1%. The recalibrated PRS did not improve BC risk prediction. Conclusion: The PRSs stratify BC risk in women of African ancestry, with attenuated performance compared with that reported in European, Asian, and Latina populations. Future work is needed to improve BC risk stratification for women of African ancestry

Cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analysis identifies six breast cancer loci in African and European ancestry women

Our study describes breast cancer risk loci using a cross-ancestry GWAS approach. We first identify variants that are associated with breast cancer at P < 0.05 from African ancestry GWAS meta-analysis (9241 cases and 10193 controls), then meta-analyze with European ancestry GWAS data (122977 cases and 105974 controls) from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. The approach identifies four loci for overall breast cancer risk [1p13.3, 5q31.1, 15q24 (two independent signals), and 15q26.3] and two loci for estrogen receptor-negative disease (1q41 and 7q11.23) at genome-wide significance. Four of the index single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) lie within introns of genes (KCNK2, C5orf56, SCAMP2, and SIN3A) and the other index SNPs are located close to GSTM4, AMPD2, CASTOR2, and RP11-168G16.2. Here we present risk loci with consistent direction of associations in African and European descendants. The study suggests that replication across multiple ancestry populations can help improve the understanding of breast cancer genetics and identify causal variants

Effects of poultry manure on the growth of mansonia altissima seedlings

The effects of poultry manure on the growth of Mansonia altissima seedlings was evaluated. The poultry manure and top soil were measured at different levels by the use of container at ratio 2:2 (TA) and 1:2 (TB) ratios of poultry manure to topsoil. The control contained only the top soil (TC) and each treatment was replicated 15 times. The experiment was set up in a completely randomized design and analysis of variance was used to determine the variation among the treatments. The morphological parameters assessed include: Shoot height, number of leaves and stem diameter. The mean value for stem diameter ranged from 0.210cm, 0.184cm and 0.173cm for treatment A, B and C (control) respectively, and the value for shoot height ranged from 8 for (TA) and (TB) with 8 leaves and (TC) with 6 leaves. Effect of organic manure did not reflect on the growth development of collar diameter of Mansonia altissima. Analysis of variance revealed that there was significant difference among the treatments for shoot height and number of leaves, but there was no significant difference among the treatments for collar diameter. It is concluded that Mansonia altissima generally responded positively to the application of poultry manure.Keywords: Mansonia altissima, poultry manure, collar diameter, shoot height number of leave

Growth performance, haematological and serum biochemical indices of broiler chicken fed cassava (Manihot esculentum crantz var. umucass 36) composite meal

An experiment was conducted to examine the growth performance, haematological indices and serum biochemistry of broiler  chicken fed cassava (Manihot esculentum crantz var. UMUCASS 36) composite meal. One hundred and fifty Arbor Acre broilerchickens were randomly assigned to five treatment diets replicated into three of ten birds per replicate in a completely  randomized design. The cassava root was  washed, peeled and chopped into small pieces. This was oven dried and milled to form cassava root meal. The harvested leaf, petiole and tender stem was chopped, oven dried and milled as cassava foliage meal while the cassava composite meal  was a mixture of the root meal and foliage meal at the ratio of 10:1. This was used to formulate straight diets designated A, B, C, D and E at levels of inclusion of 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20% respectively. The final weight and total weight gain were significantly (P&lt;0.05) different across the diets but followed the same pattern with broilers on  diet B having superior weights (1865.33g and 1740.67g) while others decreased as level of inclusion increased. Broilers on diet B had the least feed conversion ratio (1.89) followed by broilers on diet A (2.15) while others were comparable, The haematological indices fell within the normal range, except mean corpuscular haemoglobin. The serum biochemistry differed significantly (P&lt;0.05) in all the measured parameters. Total protein (4.03g/l) and globulin (2.63g/dl) were highest in broilers on diet B and least values of urea (16.00 mg/dl) and alkaline phosphatase (64.75μ/l). In conclusion diet B was best considering the growth performance, haematology and serum biochemistry of the broiler chickens fed cassava composite meal.Keywords: haematology, serum, digestibility, cassava composit

Effects of pre-treatment with extracts of Ocimum gratissimum and Vermonia amygdalina on proximate and organoleptic properties of processed Clarias gariepinus (Burchell, 1822)

The study evaluated nutritional and organoleptic properties of Clarias gariepinus pre-treated with aqueous leave extracts of Ocimum gratissimum and Vernonia amygdalina before processing. Thirty-six (36) C. gariepinus (live weight = 1.2± 0.2kg) samples were procured and processed for the study. Fish samples were divided into three parts of twelve fish each. Each part was grouped into three treatments having four fish in each group using a completely randomized design. Treatment one (T1) had fish immersed in 5% brine without herbal extract (control). In Treatment two (T2), fish were soaked in mixture of 5% brine and 5% O. gratissium (scent leaf) extracts while Treatment three (T3) had fish soaked in mixture of 5% brine and 5% V. amygdalina (bitter leaf) extracts all for 30 minutes. Treated fish samples were smoke-dried using charcoal kiln for 5 hours at temperature of 80 – 90° C. Samples were then cooled under ambient condition (30+3oC) for 4 hours. The smoke-dried fish samples were labeled according to treatments and stored for 7 days under aseptic condition. Organoleptic properties of the samples were conducted at every 24-hour of storage using a 9-point hedonic scale. Mean values of proximate composition of samples were significantly different (p&lt;0.05). Protein content (70.01%) in T3 was higher than 68.31% and 66.62% in T2 and T1 respectively. Similarly, fat (5.12%) and ash (4.68%) levels for T3 were higher than 4.85% and 4.46% fat with 4.36% and 3.98% ash contents for T2 and T1 respectively. Results of mean scores for each organoleptic property decreased significantly (p&lt;0.05) during storage period with no consistent trend in score pattern. Keywords: Clarias gariepinus, extract pretreatment, Ocimum gratissimum, organoleptic, Vernonia amygdalina

The predictive value of syndromic approach to diagnosis of malaria among adults attending the outpatient clinic of a tertiary hospital in Ikeja, Lagos

Background: Malaria is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Nigeria-a country known for high prevalence of malaria. Available records show that ≥ 50% of the population of the country suffers from at least one episode of malaria each year. In all settings, ideally clinical suspicion of malaria should be confirmed with a parasitological diagnosis. However, in settings where parasitological diagnosis is not possible, the use of detailed weighting and scoring systems for clinical symptoms and signs of malaria may improve the accuracy of clinical diagnosis. This study evaluated the complementary role of a syndromic approach to the diagnosis of malaria with the use of a structured algorithm as a tool to improve upon the presumptive diagnosis of malaria.Methods: A hospital based descriptive cross-sectional study was done. Participants were selected using a systematic sampling method. A total of 386 adult participants with subjective experience of fever who had presumptive diagnosis of malaria were studied. Common presenting symptoms and signs were evaluated for those associated with positive malaria microscopy in order to determine their utility in syndromic diagnosis of malaria. The clinical predictors of malaria were determined by the logistic regression model. The level of statistical significance was set at p ≤ 0.05. Sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values were calculated for the various clinical predictors and the algorithm score.Results: The data of 386 participants who presented with complaint of fever were analysed. There were 49.48% male and 50.52% female respondents. The respondents aged 31-40 years were in the majority (44.82%). The prevalence of malaria as indicated by positive malaria microscopy was 71.76%. The clinical features significantly associated with positive malaria microscopy in the bivariate analysis were joint pains, reduced appetite, and normal chest examination, however, following logistic regression, reduced appetite (OR 1.65; 95% CI: 1.04- 2.64, p value = 0.035) and normal chest examination (OR 3.07; 95% C.I: 1.41-6.70, p value= 0.005) were features found to be significant. Syndromic positivity for malaria assigned to total scores &gt;7, had a sensitivity of 97.5%, specificity of 7.3%, positive predictive value of 72.8%, and negative predictive value of 53.3%.Conclusion: A total score &gt; 7 as syndromic positivity for malaria in this study had a very high sensitivity (97.5%) but low specificity (7.3%) for malaria infection. A respondent with a history of fever who had been presumed to have malaria, and has a total score &gt; 7, is three times more likely to have malaria infection. Such patient should be treated for malaria in settings with no facility for parasitological diagnosis. However, on account of the low specificity of this syndromic approach, it is important for clinicians to examine patients properly to rule out other causes of fever such as urinary tract infection, gastrointestinal infection.Keywords: Syndrome, Malaria, Adult, Outpatient, Hospita