The study of harmful and beneficial drug interactions in intensive care, Kerman, Iran

Since multidrug therapy is common in the intensive care unit (ICU), the risk of drug interactions is high. This study aimed to examine the prevalence of drug interactions and risk factors in patients who were admitted to ICUs. In a crosssectional study, the medication flow sheet of 101 patients was investigated in terms of the number and the type of drug interactions. The Drug Interaction Facts reference text book (2010 edition) was used to determine the type and the number of drug interactions. In total, 609 potential drug interactions were found. The mean number of drug interactions per patient was 6.1 (SD=5.6). Of all observed drug interactions, 66.9 were classified as harmful and 33.1 beneficial. In terms of the nature of interactions, delayed, moderate, and possible were the most common types. The most frequent harmful interaction was between phenytoin and omeprazole (63 occasions). Critically ill patients are at a higher risk of drug interactions. Although 33.1 of the drug interactions were considered beneficial, medical teams should be awarethat even beneficial interactions can have undesirable side-effects in the critically ill. © The Intensive Care Society 2013

Impact of Patients’ Gender on Parkinson’s disease using Classification Algorithms

In this paper the accuracy of two machine learning algorithms including SVM and Bayesian Network are investigated as two important algorithms in diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. We use Parkinson's disease data in the University of California, Irvine (UCI). In order to optimize the SVM algorithm, different kernel functions and C parameters have been used and our results show that SVM with C parameter (C-SVM) with average of 99.18% accuracy with Polynomial Kernel function in testing step, has better performance compared to the other Kernel functions such as RBF and Sigmoid as well as Bayesian Network algorithm. It is also shown that ten important factors in SVM algorithm are Jitter (Abs), Subject #, RPDE, PPE, Age, NHR, Shimmer APQ 11, NHR, Total-UPDRS, Shimmer (dB) and Shimmer. We also prove that the accuracy of our proposed C-SVM and RBF approaches is in direct proportion to the value of C parameter such that with increasing the amount of C, accuracy in both Kernel functions is increased. But unlike Polynomial and RBF, Sigmoid has an inverse relation with the amount of C. Indeed, by using these methods, we can find the most effective factors common in both genders (male and female). To the best of our knowledge there is no study on Parkinson's disease for identifying the most effective factors which are common in both genders

A STUDY ON THE DIVERSITY OF MILLIPEDES (DIPLOPODA) IN VARIOUS HABITATS OF SATARA TAHSIL, WESTERN GHAT, MAHARASHTRA

Diplopods are common in temperate, tropical, and subtropical plantation environments, as well as further atmospheres. Millipedes (Diplopoda) form a diverse group of invertebrates, playing an important role in distributing soil ecosystem facilities, though often poorly known. They act as decomposers, conserving soil erosion and nutrient cycling, and are among the greatest vital foliage litter creatures. Sympathetic soil invertebrate groups, together with the habitually essential millipedes, are vital (David 2015). The present study aims to know the diversity of millipedes in the exact habitations of Satara tahsil and to study how seasonal and edaphic structures affect their diversity. The present paper emphasizes the influence of these structures on millipede-type diversity, which originates from field studies conducted at three selected sites. These work efforts are focused on recording various millipede species found in the different habitats of Satara's study area. The study took place over a year, starting from 2023-24 and continuing to the present, focusing on the study area region in Satara. Our results showed that there are four genera present in the region, namely Anoplodesmus, Gyrodrepanum, Trigoniulus, and Xenobolus. The importance of millipedes in soil plays a direct role in its fertility. We distinguish various millipedes as indicators of ecological situations. The presence of millipedes is correlated with the content of organic matter and nutrient elements in the soil. The present assessment is attentive to their diversity, communication with fauna, food and feeding habits, and protection

It is time to reassess reporting of electroconvulsive therapy data in New Zealand: A 17-year retrospective analysis of treatment data from Waikato

Objective: The New Zealand Government has provided brief annual reports on electroconvulsive therapy treatment since 2004. Despite this, only limited information is made available to clinicians to guide clinical improvement and refine guidelines. Beyond an audit from Otago detailing 10 years of electroconvulsive therapy treatments, limited information is available about electroconvulsive therapy treatments in New Zealand. This paper reports on the use of electroconvulsive therapy over the past 17 years in one New Zealand District Health Board. Methods: It covers 7126 treatments for 333 patients between 2004 and 2020. Results: Despite an increasing number of treatments, there has been no per capita growth when corrected for the population. Despite criticism for the disproportionate use of electroconvulsive therapy in women, treatment equity for men and women has been evidenced over the latter 3 years. The majority of treatments were given under voluntary consent, even among patients admitted under the Mental Health Act. Clinical practice is moving towards bifrontal treatment over other electrode placements in response to clinical guidance. Conclusion: While COVID-19 had broad impacts across healthcare services, it has not led to an overall change in treatments. There was, however, a noticeable shift towards more psychotic disorders treated during the pandemic. This study also provides data that Māori and Pacific Islanders are accessing electroconvulsive therapy, though rates of electroconvulsive therapy usage are still lesser on a proportional population basis. Conclusions are provided to improve national data collection and reporting standards

MCUa: Multi-Level Context and Uncertainty Aware Dynamic Deep Ensemble for Breast Cancer Histology Image Classification

Breast histology image classification is a crucial step in the early diagnosis of breast cancer. In breast pathological diagnosis, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have demonstrated great success using digitized histology slides. However, tissue classification is still challenging due to the high visual variability of the large-sized digitized samples and the lack of contextual information. In this paper, we propose a novel CNN, called Multi-level Context and Uncertainty aware ( MCUa ) dynamic deep learning ensemble model. MCUa model consists of several multi-level context-aware models to learn the spatial dependency between image patches in a layer-wise fashion. It exploits the high sensitivity to the multi-level contextual information using an uncertainty quantification component to accomplish a novel dynamic ensemble model. MCUa model has achieved a high accuracy of 98.11% on a breast cancer histology image dataset. Experimental results show the superior effectiveness of the proposed solution compared to the state-of-the-art histology classification models

SpinalNet: Deep Neural Network with Gradual Input

Over the past few years, deep neural networks (DNNs) have garnered remarkable success in a diverse range of real-world applications. However, DNNs consider a large number of inputs and consist of a large number of parameters, resulting in high computational demand. We study the human somatosensory system and propose the SpinalNet to achieve higher accuracy with less computational resources. In a typical neural network (NN) architecture, the hidden layers receive inputs in the first layer and then transfer the intermediate outcomes to the next layer. In the proposed SpinalNet, the structure of hidden layers allocates to three sectors: 1) Input row, 2) Intermediate row, and 3) output row. The intermediate row of the SpinalNet contains a few neurons. The role of input segmentation is in enabling each hidden layer to receive a part of the inputs and outputs of the previous layer. Therefore, the number of incoming weights in a hidden layer is significantly lower than traditional DNNs. As all layers of the SpinalNet directly contributes to the output row, the vanishing gradient problem does not exist. We also investigate the SpinalNet fully-connected layer to several well-known DNN models and perform traditional learning and transfer learning. We observe significant error reductions with lower computational costs in most of the DNNs. We have also obtained the state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance for QMNIST, Kuzushiji-MNIST, EMNIST (Letters, Digits, and Balanced), STL-10, Bird225, Fruits 360, and Caltech-101 datasets. The scripts of the proposed SpinalNet are available with the following link: https://github.com/dipuk0506/SpinalNe

A STUDY ON THE DIVERSITY OF MILLIPEDES (DIPLOPODA) IN VARIOUS HABITATS OF SATARA TAHSIL, WESTERN GHAT, MAHARASHTRA

Diplopods are common in temperate, tropical, and subtropical plantation environments, as well as further atmospheres. Millipedes (Diplopoda) form a diverse group of invertebrates, playing an important role in distributing soil ecosystem facilities, though often poorly known. They act as decomposers, conserving soil erosion and nutrient cycling, and are among the greatest vital foliage litter creatures. Sympathetic soil invertebrate groups, together with the habitually essential millipedes, are vital (David 2015). The present study aims to know the diversity of millipedes in the exact habitations of Satara tahsil and to study how seasonal and edaphic structures affect their diversity. The present paper emphasizes the influence of these structures on millipede-type diversity, which originates from field studies conducted at three selected sites. These work efforts are focused on recording various millipede species found in the different habitats of Satara's study area. The study took place over a year, starting from 2023-24 and continuing to the present, focusing on the study area region in Satara. Our results showed that there are four genera present in the region, namely Anoplodesmus, Gyrodrepanum, Trigoniulus, and Xenobolus. The importance of millipedes in soil plays a direct role in its fertility. We distinguish various millipedes as indicators of ecological situations. The presence of millipedes is correlated with the content of organic matter and nutrient elements in the soil. The present assessment is attentive to their diversity, communication with fauna, food and feeding habits, and protection

Food and nutrition literacy status and its correlates in Iranian senior high-school students

Background: Planning interventions to promote food and nutrition literacy (FNL) require a better understanding of the FNL status of the target group and its correlates. Aims: This study aimed to examine the FNL status and its determinants in Iranian senior high-school students. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, FNL and its components (food and nutrition knowledge, functional skills, interactive skills, advocacy, critical analysis of information, and food label reading skill) were evaluated by a locally designed and validated, self-administered questionnaire. Besides, socioeconomic, demographic, anthropometric measures, as well as academic performance of 626 senior high-school students were assessed. Results: The mean ± SD of the total FNL score (within potential range of 0 to 100) was 52.1 ± 10.96, which is below the minimum adequate level of 60. The probability of high FNL knowledge score was significantly higher among students who majored in Natural Sciences (OR = 1.73, CI = 1.09�2.75), had better school performance (OR = 1.13, CI = 1.06�1.20) and higher SES score (OR = 1.20, CI = 1.01�1.44). The score for food label reading was significantly lower in girls (OR = 0.45, CI = 0.31�0.67), while those who had a family member with the nutrition-related disease were more likely to have a higher score of food label reading skill (OR = 1.48, CI = 1.01�1.64). Conclusion: The level of FNL in senior high-school students in Tehran was relatively low. These findings have key messages for the education system and curriculum designers to have more consideration for food and nutrition-related knowledge and skills in schools. © 2021, The Author(s)

The outbreak fingolimod cardiovascular side effects in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patient: A longitudinal study in an Iranian population

BACKGROUND: Fingolimod (FTY-720) has shown efficacy in relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS), while some side effects of this drug have been recognized that the most important is cardiovascular side effects. The aim of this study was to evaluate the cardiovascular side effects of FTY-720. However, the effect of fingolimod on cardiac has not been well recognized. This study was designed to evaluate the cardiovascular side effects of fingolimod in relapsingremitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) patient in an Iranian population. METHODS: This prospective clinical trial study was performed on 200 RRMS patients. The patients received a single daily oral dose of fingolimod 0.5 mg. During the first 6 hours after the first fingolimod dose, the patients' vital signs and electrocardiographic traces were continuously monitored. Moreover, the patients followed up over 6 months after receiving fingolimod. RESULTS: The results showed that pulse rate (P < 0.001), systolic blood pressure (BP) (P < 0.001), and diastolic BP (P < 0.001) were decreased significantly during 6 hours after receiving the first dose of fingolimod. The most reduction in vital sign was observed in 3 hours. Arrhythmia, bradycardia, and dizziness were the other complications of fingolimod, which were detected in our study. CONCLUSION: All the side effects such as hypotension and bradycardia were happened in first 3 hours after receiving the fingolimod. Indeed, we advise clinicians to monitor the patients for first 6 hours after initiation of fingolimod to decrease worse side effects

Difficulties of Patients With Replaced Heart Valve in Kashan, 2001

Background: A great number of patients in our country have had valve replacement operation. Considering much problems and not being clear the rate of them in valve replaced patients in this area, this study was done in order to determine the difficulties of these people in Kashan in 2001.Materials and Methods: In a descriptive study patients with replaced heart valve were examined. For each patient a questionnaire was completed consisting variables such as: age, sex, occupation, valve type, place and duration of valve replacement, dyspnea, hemoptysis, continuous cough, wheezing, palpitation, edema, blood pressure under 95 mm Hg, diet and nutritional habits like salt consumption, abnormal hemorrhage, contraception status, altered daily activities, and sleep difficulties like difficulty in onset of sleep, frequently and unwanted waking up during the sleep and insomnia. Using descriptive statistics, data were classified and presented. Chi square and Fischer exact tests were used for analysis.Results: Of 140 patients with replaced heart valve, 20 cases had died and 20 people had migrated. The others were 60 women and 40 men. Seventy-five patients ranged 21 - 50 years old. Mean age was 36 years old. Two patients had biologic and 98 patients had mechanical valve. Of participants, 70 cases had at least one respiratory problem. Most common respiratory problems including dyspnea and hemoptysis were associated with Biork Shaily valve (46.6 and 36.7 respectively). Wheezing was mostly related to Sent Jude valve (28.5). Highest rates of palpitation, edema and atrial fibrillation were observed in patients over 51(85.7, 14.3 and 90.4 respectively). Rates of sleep problems and altered daily activities were 60 and 70 respectively. Fifty-five percent of patients were not educated about care plan after surgery.Conclusion : dyspnea, hemorrhage, hemoptysis, decreased tolerance to activity, sleep disorders, atrial fibrillation and low blood pressure were the most common problems of patients with heart valve. On the other hand, rate of these problems were higher in uneducated patients than educated ones. Therefore, paying more attention to education of patients after cardiac valve surgery, and also more studies in this field are recommended