Assessment of factors affecting quality of life in oral squamous cell carcinoma patients using university of washington quality of life questionnaire

Introduction Post-treatment Quality of Life (QOL) is considered an important outcome in cancer patients. A number of questionnaire tools have been designed for its assessment. University of Washington Quality of Life (UW QOL) questionnaire version four is a reliable tool for assessment of post-treatment QOL in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) patients. Our aim was to identify the post-treatment problems faced by OSCC patients and to assess the impact of clinical factors affecting post-treatment QOL by using UW QOL (version four) questionnaire. Methods The study was conducted on 59 patients with OSCC who were treated with curative intent at Patel Hospital, Karachi from August 2015 to September 2015. Patients were asked to fill the UW QOL questionnaire (version four) on their follow-up visit. Results Overall mean composite QOL score was 66.59 ± 16.98. Chewing and saliva (dryness of mouth) had the lowest scores (38.98 ± 37.2 and 56.78 ± 41.4, respectively) among all domains while pain and anxiety had the highest scores (80.93 ± 20.4 and 79.66 ± 29.8, respectively). Patients having tumors of the tongue, late stage (III and IV) tumors, and restricted mouth opening had significantly lower mean composite QOL scores. Patients with tongue tumors revealed significantly lower scores for pain, swallowing, mood, and anxiety. Patients with late-stage tumors showed significantly lower scores for chewing, swallowing, taste, saliva, appearance, anxiety, and recreation. Patients with restricted mouth opening had significantly lower scores for pain, speech, appearance, recreation, and anxiety domains. Conclusion Different clinical features have different impacts on QOL in terms of problems faced by the patients. Features having a significant effect should be identified, and measures focused on most relevant problems should be employed in order to improve the post-treatment QOL

Realization of Autonomous Sensor Networks with AI based Self-reconfiguration and Optimal Data Transmission Algorithms in resource constrained nodes

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) prove to be an enabling technology for Industry 4.0 for their ability to perform in autonomous manner even in regions of extreme conditions. Autonomy brings in independent decision making and exerting controls without manual intervention and frequent maintenance. This paper aims to inculcate intelligence to the WSN exploiting the merits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms in cheap and most preferred ESP8266 and ESP32 based nodes. Autonomy is brought in by means of optimal data transmission, compressive sensing fault detection and network reconfiguration and energy efficiency. Optimal data transmission is achieved using Q-learning based exploration exploitation algorithm. Compressive sensing performed using Autoencoders ensure reduction in transmission overhead. Fault detection is done using Binary SVM classifier and the net- work re-configures based on physical redundancy. This paper high- lights the implementation of such autonomous WSN in real time along with their performance statistics

Early surgical results with intent to treat by radical retropubic prostatectomy for clinically localized prostate cancer

Aims: To evaluate the early cancer control rates, morbidity and mortality in men undergoing radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP) for clinicallylocalized adenocarcinoma prostate.Methods: Patient\u27s characteristics, operative data, progressive-free survival rates, morbidity and mortality were analyzed for 23 men with clinical T1-2 prostate cancer who underwent surgery with an intent to treat by RRP between December 1997 to July 2001.Results: Patient\u27s mean age was 63 +/- 6.2 years (range 51 to 76 years) with American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA) status I in 4%, II in 65% and III in 31%. Two third of the patients had lower urinary tract obstructive symptoms, followed by hematuria (9%) and back pain (4%). Clinical stages were T1b in 4%, T1c in 9%, T2a in 17%, T2b in 22% and T2c in 48% of the patients. Mean pre-operative serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) was 25 +/- 29 ng/ml (1.1 to 99.3). Bilateral pelvic lymphnode disection(PLND) and RRP was performed in 20 cases (nerve-sparing RRP 5 cases). In 3 cases with gross lymph node metastasis at frozen section, only bilateral orchidectomy was done. The mean operative time was 270 +/- 65 minutes and mean blood loss was 1097 +/- 654 mls. Packed cell transfusions were nil in 26%, 1-2 units in 44%, 3-4 units in 26% and 5 units in 4% of the patients who underwent RRP. The mean length of hospital stay was 10.2 +/- 1 days. Out of 20 patients who underwent RRP, 65% of tumors were confined to the specimen, 20% had seminal vesicle invasion and 15% had nodal metastasis. There was no peri-operative mortality while 2 patients developed epididymo-orchitis and 1 had myocardial ischemia (without infarction). Overall 87% of the patients were fully continent and 13% had mild to moderate stress urinary incontinence. The mean time of return of continence was 11.5 +/- 11.6 weeks. Two of the 3 patients (66%) with follow up information and having undergone nerve-sparing RRP are potent. At a mean follow up of 19.4 +/- 13 months (range 3-45 months), 20 of 23 total patients (87%) and 17 of 20 RRP patients (85%) remained free of disease recurrence with PSA \u3c or = 0.4 ng/ml. Conclusion: Our early results confirm the excellent potential for cancer control and low morbidity of radical prostatectomy for men with localizedprostate cancer. These results are in conformity with the vast Western experience. Long-term results will be provided

Silencing of MBD1 and MeCP2 in prostate-cancer-derived PC3 cells produces differential gene expression profiles and cellular phenotypes

Alterations in genomic CpG methylation patterns have been found to be associated with cell transformation and neoplasia. Although it is recognized that methylation of CpG residues negatively regulates gene expression, how the various MBPs (methyl-binding proteins) contribute to this process remains elusive. To determine whether the two well characterized proteins MeCP2 (methyl-CpG-binding protein 2) and MBD1 (methyl-CpG-binding domain 1) have distinct or redundant functions, we employed RNAi (RNA interference) to silence their expression in the prostate cancer-derived PC3cell line, and subsequently compared cell growth, invasion and migration properties of these cell lines in addition to their respective mRNA-expressionprofiles. Cells devoid of MeCP2 proliferated more poorly compared with MBD1-deficient cells and the parental PC3 cells. Enhanced apoptosis was observed in MeCP2-deficient cells, whereas apoptosis in parental and MBD1-deficient cells appeared to be equivalent. Boyden chamber invasion and wound-healing migration assays showed that MBD1-silenced cells were both more invasive and migratory compared with MeCP2-silenced cells. Finally, gene chip microarray analyses showed striking differences in the mRNA-expression profiles obtained from MeCP2- and MBD1-depleted cellsrelative to each other as well as when compared with control cells. The results of the present study suggest that MeCP2 and MBD1 silencing appear to affect cellular processes independently in vivo and that discrete sets of genes involved in cellular proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and migration are targeted by each protein

Costs analysis of a population level rabies control programme in Tamil Nadu, India

The study aimed to determine costs to the state government of implementing different interventions for controlling rabies among the entire human and animal populations of Tamil Nadu. This built upon an earlier assessment of Tamil Nadu’s efforts to control rabies. Anti-rabies vaccines were made available at all health facilities. Costs were estimated for five different combinations of animal and human interventions using an activity-based costing approach from the provider perspective. Disease and population data were sourced from the state surveillance data, human census and livestock census. Program costs were extrapolated from official documents. All capital costs were depreciated to estimate annualized costs. All costs were inflated to 2012 Rupees. Sensitivity analysis was conducted across all major cost centres to assess their relative impact on program costs. It was found that the annual costs of providing Anti-rabies vaccine alone and in combination with Immunoglobulins was \$0.7 million (Rs 36 million) and \$2.2 million (Rs 119 million), respectively. For animal sector interventions, the annualised costs of rolling out surgical sterilisation-immunization, injectable immunization and oral immunizations were estimated to be \$ 44 million (Rs 2,350 million), \$23 million (Rs 1,230 million) and \$ 11 million (Rs 590 million), respectively. Dog bite incidence, health systems coverage and cost of rabies biologicals were found to be important drivers of costs for human interventions. For the animal sector interventions, the size of dog catching team, dog population and vaccine costs were found to be driving the costs. Rabies control in Tamil Nadu seems a costly proposition the way it is currently structured. Policy makers in Tamil Nadu and other similar settings should consider the long-term financial sustainability before embarking upon a state or nation-wide rabies control programme

Integration of TTF, UTAUT, and ITM for mobile Banking Adoption

The introduction of mobile banking facility has enabled customers to carry out banking transactionswith the use of smartphones and other handheld devices from anywhere. It has become a luxurious and exclusive method of online payments. The recent growth of telecommunication sector and a tremendous increase in mobile USAge has opened new doors for sparking future of banking sector industry. The following research is aimed to find out the mobile banking adoption attitudes with the integration of TTF, UTAUT,and ITM models

Heavy metal content determination in locally available traditional medicines using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS)

Traditional medicine (TM) is a system of health care that has ancient roots. It has been defined as practices designed to promote mental, physical and spiritual well-being of mankind. Usually (TM) are made from various types of medicinal plants. Sometimes they contain other ingredients such as animal parts and minerals however, the primary source of remedies is botanical. The use of traditional medicine has started beyond recorded history, but has increased tremendously in recent years. It is considered as alternative treatments which are widely used in developing countries. Recently became more popular in most developed countries as well. According to the world health Organization (WHO) reports that more than 70% of the population all over the world relies on non-conventional medicine. This high percentage indicates the positive attitudes towards herbal medicine in various places in the world, probably due to the people’s believe that such products are more likely to be safe ‘natural’ rather than ‘synthetic’ origin. In Malaysia, folk medicines are widely used .The huge demand of TM has been driven the total Malaysian market for TM to US $ 1.29 billion in 2005. The global popularity of(TM) has created great concern about the safety and efficacy of traditional medicines. Although WHO has developed guidelines for the quality control of herbal drugs, there is still a gap between available knowledge and implementation. Processors of herbal drugs are still not much aware of WHO’s guidelines yet they continue their work without proper quality control which results in products with lots of contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides residues and microbes, therefore inappropriate consumption of herbal preparation can cause serious health complication even toxicity.. In our study we are focusing on identifying the presence of toxic heavy metals in locally available traditional medicines in the east coast region of Malaysia. Traditional medicine samples were collected from different sources such as shops, open market, night market and weekend market. Most of them are not registered with the Malaysian drug authority. All samples were digested using freshly prepared aqua regia (mixture of concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid 1:3 ratio). 0.5 g of each sample was weighed and placed in 100 ml PTFE beaker, after which 9 ml of freshly prepared aqua regia was added. The mixture was then heated over water bath for 4-5 hours or until the sample had completely dissolved. The mixture was then allowed to cool and filtered; the residue was then washed with deionised water, and the extract was then made up to 50 ml with deionised water. The samples were then analysed by using atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). Out of twenty over traditional medicine samples most of them has shown the presence of lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), ferrum (Fe) and zinc (Zn). The results for nickel (Ni) and cadmium (Cd) were found below the detection limit using flame ionization technique and expected to be detected using graphite furnace AAS (GFAAS) method which will be the second part of this study. From the results we conclude that the traditional medicines available in local markets contain heavy metals which are considered toxic for human if consumed more than the permissible amount. Key word: Traditional medicine, heavy metal, Toxicity, Aqua regia, AAS

Hop aware scheduling algorithm for TCP performance enhancement in multi hop relay wimax

Mobile Multi-hop Relay (MMR) WiMAX networks allow the number of hops between the user and the MMR-BS to be more than two hops when the non transparent relay station is used. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) protocol is optimized to be used in wired networks where the main cause of loss is the congestion. TCP throughput is highly affected by packet losses or timeout occurrences because of its congestion control mechanism. Upon the occurrence of timeout, TCP decreases the transmission window which results in throughput degradation, even if such losses are not due to congestion. This paper presents link layer scheduling algorithm to enhance the TCP in IEEE 802.16j MMR WiMAX networks. The aim is to reduce the Retransmission Timeout (RTO) occurrences and enhance the throughput. The results showed that the hop aware scheduling algorithm gives higher throughput, and less timeout occurrence for different BER values

A framework for social science in epidemics

In epidemic preparedness and response, it is now commonly accepted that insights from social science disciplines are important in shaping action. Unfortunately, the role of social science is often confined to risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) efforts. In this article, we propose an analytical framework that would allow researchers and practitioners from different disciplines to employ social science insights to enrich their understanding of epidemics and formulate more effective and sustainable responses. The framework goes beyond simply unpacking social, political, economic and cultural dimensions of context; it situates disease itself – as it is shaped by the contexts in which it circulates – and views it in dynamic relation to response. It also explores how different individuals, social groups and institutions shift their knowledge and practices during an epidemic through power-laden processes of dialogue and learning, or even through silencing and side-lining. It is our hope that this framework will enable responders to engage more deeply and systematically with the contexts of emergencies, so as to ensure activities are more adaptive to local dynamics