Awareness of over the counter antibiotics to combat antimicrobial resistance

Background: In India there is wide use of over the counter (OTC) antibiotics and unawareness of its harmful effects. In India dispensing antibiotics without prescription is a major contribution factor in development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The objectives of the present study were to evaluate awareness and proper use of OTC antibiotics in the community.Methods: Responses to a questionnaire covering various aspects on awareness and usage of OTC antibiotics were obtained from 100 families and 100 pharmacy shops in the community by second year MBBS students after permission from institutional ethical committee. The study period was from January 2019 to June 2019.Results: Among 100 responders 78% used OTC antibiotics for frequently reported illness like common cold (58%), body- ache (19%), fever (13%) and cough (10%). Most common reason for using OTC antibiotic is to avoid high consultation fees (64%).76% pharmacy dispense antibiotics without prescription. 60% pharmacy unaware of increase chance of developing resistance due to OTC antibiotics. 80% pharmacy maintain register book and were aware of laws and regulations of OTC prescription but still 70% dispense drugs due to fear of losing sales and profit. 50% pharmacy said they encourage patients to consult the physician and get the prescription. Most common antibiotic sold without prescription is amoxicillin (51%) and azithromycin (38%).Conclusions: We have identified unawareness among people about use and harmful effects of using OTC antibiotics. Also pharmacies are not following rules and regulations for OTC drugs. So our aim is to increase public knowledge of proper use and harmful effects of OTC antibiotics and help our global program to reduce AMR

Acute hemorrhagic edema in a nursing infant - An unusual diagnosis

Acute hemorrhagic edema of infancy is a rare, small vessel vasculitis of young children with characteristic skin findings. We have described an 8-month-old male infant who presented with upper respiratory infection followed by acute onset of generalized swelling of both lower limbs and appearance of erythematous, purpuric, and ecchymotic lesions on the lower limbs, face, and ear lobules. There were no systemic complications and the lesions resolved completely

Profile of Clients & HIV positive patients attending the ICTC of a tertiary care center of Bihar: A situational analysis

Background: The services provided in an ICTC help in awareness about HIV and help the clients to undergo HIV test in a comfortable and confidential environment. Periodical evaluation of counseling, testing, and referral services is mandatory to find out any existing deficits and barriers of all functions of ICTCs. Objectives: To study the socio-demographic profile of ICTC attendees and to find out sero-positivity of these clients. Methods: The present study was carried out among ICTC attendees in the ICTC unit, at All India Institute of Medical Sciences of Patna district. A retrospective collection of data from available records of all clients who attended ICTC of our hospital between January 2019 and December 2019 was carried out after approval from institutional research and ethics committee. Results: A total of 28876 clients were tested during January-December 2019 and among them all (100%) of tests were provider initiated. Out of the total attendees, 223 (0.77%) were found to be positive. It was also observed that the number of clients attending the ICTC has increased every month. Conclusion: It shows a high illiteracy and high spouse positive rate among the reactive cases. The young age group was found to be affected more and it definitely raises a cocern

SICKLE: A Multi-Sensor Satellite Imagery Dataset Annotated with Multiple Key Cropping Parameters

The availability of well-curated datasets has driven the success of Machine Learning (ML) models. Despite greater access to earth observation data in agriculture, there is a scarcity of curated and labelled datasets, which limits the potential of its use in training ML models for remote sensing (RS) in agriculture. To this end, we introduce a first-of-its-kind dataset called SICKLE, which constitutes a time-series of multi-resolution imagery from 3 distinct satellites: Landsat-8, Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2. Our dataset constitutes multi-spectral, thermal and microwave sensors during January 2018 - March 2021 period. We construct each temporal sequence by considering the cropping practices followed by farmers primarily engaged in paddy cultivation in the Cauvery Delta region of Tamil Nadu, India; and annotate the corresponding imagery with key cropping parameters at multiple resolutions (i.e. 3m, 10m and 30m). Our dataset comprises 2,370 season-wise samples from 388 unique plots, having an average size of 0.38 acres, for classifying 21 crop types across 4 districts in the Delta, which amounts to approximately 209,000 satellite images. Out of the 2,370 samples, 351 paddy samples from 145 plots are annotated with multiple crop parameters; such as the variety of paddy, its growing season and productivity in terms of per-acre yields. Ours is also one among the first studies that consider the growing season activities pertinent to crop phenology (spans sowing, transplanting and harvesting dates) as parameters of interest. We benchmark SICKLE on three tasks: crop type, crop phenology (sowing, transplanting, harvesting), and yield predictionComment: Accepted as an oral presentation at WACV 202

Natural Products as Prominent Source of Bioactive Components with Anti-diabetic Potential

Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) is a chronic metabolic condition characterized by elevated blood sugar levels. It is caused by a combination of insulin resistance and insulin production impairment. The nuclear transcription factor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-gamma) is essential for glucose homeostasis and lipid metabolism. PPAR-g agonists are a family of medicines used to manage type 2 diabetes by improving blood sugar management and enhancing insulin sensitivity. For decades, natural materials have been utilized as traditional remedies, and many of them have been demonstrated to have anti-diabetic properties. Some natural compounds have been proven in recent investigations to activate PPAR-g. We employed molecular docking and physicochemical screening in this investigation to discover natural compounds with the potential to be developed as novel anti-diabetic medicines. A library of more than 50 natural compounds was tested against the PPAR-g ligand binding domain. We also assessed the ADMET and physicochemical features of the compounds found to determine that they are drug-like. Our study shows the Drug-likeness, bioactivity score along with good ADMEt profile of various phytoconstituents with their high binding affinity toward PPAR-g (PDB ID: 2XKW) as a major target for T2DM. Physicochemical properties of selected compounds were done with SWISS ADME server while ADMEt screening was done by pkCSM server. The binding affinity and molecular interaction study of natural compounds with PPAR-g was done by using Molegro Virtual Docker (MVD). The MolDock and Rerank score of the top one compound of each category was taken to check the binding interaction with tubulin