Psychological well-being of the Elderly in Nigeria

In Nigeria, growing old is usually feared because of the multi-faceted problems associated with ageing. Research has shown that conditions such as insufficient savings after retirement, poor access to health care, poor dietary intakes and poverty affect the psychological well-being of the elderly. Yet, there is paucity of research on the psychological condition of the elderly in Nigeria. This study examined the psychological well-being of the elderly in Ijumu local government area (LGA) of Kogi State Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was adopted and 1,217 elderly aged 65+ were randomly selected. Psychological well-being was operationalized as whether the respondent experienced good or poor psychological well-being. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Chi Square tests and binary logistic regression. The mean age of the elderly was 72.3±8.4 years and a higher proportion (53.3%) experienced good psychological well-being. Age, level of education, current working status and financial assistance from children were the main determinants of good psychological well-being. Specifically, good psychological well-being decreased with increasing age. Also, the odds of having good psychological well-being was lower among those with no education and primary education compared with their counterparts with secondary education or more. Those who were currently working and who received financial assistance from children had better psychological wellbeing. This study showed that effective financial mechanisms need to be put in place by government, NGOs and/or children of the elderly to help improve the financial status of the elderly in order to enhance their psychological well-being

Complete Chloroplast Genome Sequences of Important Oilseed Crop Sesamum indicum L

Sesamum indicum is an important crop plant species for yielding oil. The complete chloroplast (cp) genome of S. indicum (GenBank acc no. JN637766) is 153,324 bp in length, and has a pair of inverted repeat (IR) regions consisting of 25,141 bp each. The lengths of the large single copy (LSC) and the small single copy (SSC) regions are 85,170 bp and 17,872 bp, respectively. Comparative cp DNA sequence analyses of S. indicum with other cp genomes reveal that the genome structure, gene order, gene and intron contents, AT contents, codon usage, and transcription units are similar to the typical angiosperm cp genomes. Nucleotide diversity of the IR region between Sesamum and three other cp genomes is much lower than that of the LSC and SSC regions in both the coding region and noncoding region. As a summary, the regional constraints strongly affect the sequence evolution of the cp genomes, while the functional constraints weakly affect the sequence evolution of cp genomes. Five short inversions associated with short palindromic sequences that form step-loop structures were observed in the chloroplast genome of S. indicum. Twenty-eight different simple sequence repeat loci have been detected in the chloroplast genome of S. indicum. Almost all of the SSR loci were composed of A or T, so this may also contribute to the A-T richness of the cp genome of S. indicum. Seven large repeated loci in the chloroplast genome of S. indicum were also identified and these loci are useful to developing S. indicum-specific cp genome vectors. The complete cp DNA sequences of S. indicum reported in this paper are prerequisite to modifying this important oilseed crop by cp genetic engineering techniques

Domestic violence and decision-making power of married women in Myanmar: analysis of a nationally representative sample

BACKGROUND: Women in Myanmar are not considered decision makers in the community and the physical and psychological effect of violence makes them more vulnerable. There is a strong negative reaction, usually violent, to any economic activity generated by women among poorer and middle-class families in Myanmar because a woman's income is not considered necessary for basic survival. OBJECTIVE: Explore the relationship between domestic violence on the decision-making power of married women in Myanmar. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: National, both urban and rural areas of Myanmar. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Data from the Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey 2015-16 were used in this analysis. In that survey, married women aged between 15 to 49 years were selected for interview using a multistage cluster sampling technique. The dependent variables were domestic violence and the decision-making power of women. Independent variables were age of the respondents, educational level, place of residence, employment status, number of children younger than 5 years of age and wealth index. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Domestic violence and decision-making power of women. SAMPLE SIZE: 7870 currently married women. RESULTS: About 50% respondents were 35 to 49 years of age and the mean (SD) age was 35 (8.4) years. Women's place of residence and employment status had a significant impact on decision-making power whereas age group and decision-making power of women had a relationship with domestic violence. CONCLUSION: Giving women decision making power will be indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development goals. Government and other stakeholders should emphasize this to eliminate violence against women. LIMITATIONS: Use of secondary data analysis of cross-sectional study design and cross-sectional studies are not suitable design to assess this causality. Secondly the self-reported data on violence may be subject to recall bias. CONFLICT OF INTEREST: None

Genetic variants in novel pathways influence blood pressure and cardiovascular disease risk.

Blood pressure is a heritable trait influenced by several biological pathways and responsive to environmental stimuli. Over one billion people worldwide have hypertension (≥140 mm Hg systolic blood pressure or  ≥90 mm Hg diastolic blood pressure). Even small increments in blood pressure are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events. This genome-wide association study of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, which used a multi-stage design in 200,000 individuals of European descent, identified sixteen novel loci: six of these loci contain genes previously known or suspected to regulate blood pressure (GUCY1A3-GUCY1B3, NPR3-C5orf23, ADM, FURIN-FES, GOSR2, GNAS-EDN3); the other ten provide new clues to blood pressure physiology. A genetic risk score based on 29 genome-wide significant variants was associated with hypertension, left ventricular wall thickness, stroke and coronary artery disease, but not kidney disease or kidney function. We also observed associations with blood pressure in East Asian, South Asian and African ancestry individuals. Our findings provide new insights into the genetics and biology of blood pressure, and suggest potential novel therapeutic pathways for cardiovascular disease prevention

Current and Predicted Fertility using Poisson Regression Model: Evidence from 2008 Nigerian Demographic Health Survey

Nigeria with persistent high growth rate is among top ten most populous countries. Monitoring key mechanisms of population dynamics particularly fertility in Nigeria is long overdue. Periodical availability of data on fertility and other demographic indices is scarce, hence this study. Our objective was to build a non-linear model to identify fertility determinants and predict fertility using women’s background characteristics. We used 2008 Nigeria Demography and Health Survey dataset consisting of 33,385 women with 31.4% from urban area. Fertility was measured using children ever born (CEB) and fitted into multi -factors additive Poisson regression models. Respondents mean age was 28.64±9.59years, average CEB of 3.13±3.07 but higher among rural women than urban women (3.42±3.16 vs 2.53±2.79). Women aged 20-24years were about twice as likely to have higher CEB as those aged 15-19years (IRR=2.06, 95% CI: 1.95-2.18). Model with minimum deviance was selected and was used to predict CEB by the woman. (Afr J Reprod Health 2014; 18[1]: 71-83).Keywords: Fertility, Incidence rate ratio, Poisson prediction, children ever born, Nigeria

Physical, proximate, and cooking properties of selected Nigerian cowpea varieties

No Abstract. Nigerian Food Journal Vol. 24(1) 2006: 34-4