SELF-REPORTED HEALTH, ILLNESS AND SELF-CARE AMONG DOCTORS OF MEERUT

Abstract: This document provides insight on lifestyle and healthcare status of doctors based on key findings from a survey conducted in Meerut City, (U.P.) India. Objectives: 1.To study the lifestyle pattern among the doctors of Allopathy and Ayurveda & teachers of local private Medical college, local private Dental college. 2. To study the (self-reported) prevalence of common non-communicable diseases in the same. 3. To know the pattern of healthy lifestyle practices adopted by the doctors. Material & Methods: The Cross-sectional study was conducted with the help of a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire which was filled by the faculty of local private Medical College, Dental college, Ayurvedic doctors and local practicing doctors of allopathy and Ayurveda. Verbal consent was implied. A purposive sample of 240 doctors [60 each from Medical and Dental colleges and 60 each from allopathy private practitioners (p.p.allo.) and ayurvedic private practitioners (p.p.ayur.)] were given the questionnaire-and response rate was 84%. The data was entered in Microsoft excel 2007 to know the frequency of the various lifestyle pattern. Results: 47.5% of the doctors had raised B.M.I. (Body Mass Index- more than 25); 21% of the doctors were smokers, 10% were current drinkers and 32% were hypertensive. Only 2.5% were found to be diabetic in our study. About 52% of the doctors exercised regularly. 32.5% were trained for yoga. Conclusion:This study implies that a large proportion of doctors themselves do not follow the healthy lifestyle and are having lifestyle diseases like obesity, hypertension etc. Interestingly, there was not much difference between doctors doing private practice or teaching in Medical/Dental College

Enhanced biocidal activity of Au nanoparticles synthesized in one pot using 2, 4-dihydroxybenzene carbodithioic acid as a reducing and stabilizing agent

Background The conjugation of gold nanoparticles with biocides such as natural products, oligosaccharides, DNA, proteins has attracted great attention of scientists recently. Gold NPs covered with biologically important molecules showed significant enhancement in biological activity in comparison with the activity of the free biocides. However, these reports are not very systematic and do not allow to draw definitive conclusions. We therefore embarked in a systematic study related to the synthesis and characterization of biocidal activities of Au nanoparticles conjugated to a wide variety of synthetic and natural biomolecules. In this specific report, we investigated the activity of a synthetic biocide, 2-4, Dihydroxybenzene carbodithioic acid (DHT). Results Au nanoparticles (NP) with a mean size of about 20 nm were synthesized and functionalized in one pot with the help of biocide 2,4-Dihydroxybenzene carbodithioic acid (DHT) to reduce HAuCl4 in aqueous solution. Conjugation of DHT with gold was confirmed by FT-IR and the amount of DHT conjugated to the Au nanoparticles was found to be 7% by weight by measuring the concentration of DHT in the supernatant after centrifugation of the Au NPs. To ascertain the potential for in vivo applications, the stability of the suspensions was investigated as a function of pH, temperature and salt concentration. Antibacterial, antifungal, insecticidal and cytotoxic activities of the Au-DHT conjugates were compared with those of pure DHT and of commercially available biocides. In all cases, the biocidal activity of the Au-DHT conjugates was comparable to that of commercial products and of DHT. Conclusions Since the DHT concentration in the Au-DHT conjugates was only about 7%, our results indicate that conjugation to the Au NPs boosts the biocidal activity of DHT by about 14 times. The suspensions were found to be stable for several days at temperatures of up to 100°C, salt concentrations up to 4 mol/L and a pH range of 2-13

Early results of surgical and Endovascular intervention procedures in Lower extremity arterial disease

Objective : To assess the early results of surgical and endovascular intervention in peripheral arterial disease Materials and methods : Retrospectively, we analysed the early results of treatment of lower extremity arterial diseases, managed at our institute. Depending up on the lesion characters and the distal run-off as evident from imaging, patients underwent either surgical or endovascular intervention for their disease. Over a period of one-year form July 2018 to July 2019, twenty-two patients were managed in total. Nine of them underwent surgical bypass for either aortoiliac or femoro-popliteal lesions. Another thirteen patients underwent endovascular intervention for lesions at aorto-iliac, femoro-popliteal and “Below the Knee” lesions. Procedure related morbidity, procedural success rate, postoperative pain score, hospital stay, flow patency and symptomatic improvement at follow-up at three and six months were analysed. Results: The results were optimistic with ischemic ulcers showing signs of healing, patients symptomatically better with improved walking distance and relieved of rest pain. Due to a smaller study population, limited study time and the study itself being a non- randomised one, no intragroup comparisons were made. The procedural success was 100% for each group, no periprocedural morbidity. The hospital stay was 9 days for surgical aorto bifemoral bypass patients, 5.8 days for femoropopliteal patients. For those who underwent endovascular intervention, average hospital stay was 3.4, 2.5 and 3 days respectively for the aorto-iliac, femoropopliteal and “Below the Knee” level groups. The average pain score was 6.3 and 5.8 for surgical aortobifemoral bypass and femoropopliteal bypass. Pain scores for the endovascular intervention group was 4.4, 3.2 and 4.7 respectively for the aortoiliac, femoropopliteal and “Below the Knee” level groups. The improvement in the Rutherford gradings at six months were Aorto bifemoral Bypass (4.6 to 3.6), Femoro-popliteal (4.1 to 2.6) in the surgical group and Aortiliac (4.4 to 3.4), Femoropopliteal (4.2 to 2) and no change in the score for the “Below the Knee” group. At six-month follow-up, Doppler interrogation revealed a triphasic flow pattern in surgical and endovascular bypasses involving the aortoiliac and femoropopliteal segments. The doppler interrogation for the “Below the Knee” lesions at six-month follow-up was biphasic (n=3) to monophasic (n=1). Conclusion: Surgical bypass and endovascular intervention either as an independent treatment modality or in combination as a Hybrid procedure looks promising in the management of LEAD. Surgical bypass is no doubt morbid, but early results are satisfactory in terms of patency rates and clinical improvement. The early six months results of endovascular intervention, are particularly encouraging in the femoropopliteal segment with poor distal run off. The results are inconsistent for the “Below the Knee” segment disease. TASC II- A and B lesions are addressed by endovascular interventions, whereas TASC II- C and D lesions are addressed by surgical bypass. Multidisciplinary individualised treatment approach should be adopted in deciding which treatment to be provided for a particular patient based on clinical, imaging findings and institutional protocols

Peripheral proinsulin expression controls low-avidity proinsulin-reactive CD8 T Cells in type 1 diabetes

Low-avidity autoreactive CD8 T cells (CTLs) escape from thymic negative selection, and peripheral tolerance mechanisms are essential for their regulation. We report the role of proinsulin (PI) expression on the development and activation of insulin-specific CTLs in the NOD mouse model of type 1 diabetes. We studied insulin B-chain–specific CTL from different T-cell receptor transgenic mice (G9Cα−/−) expressing normal PI1 and PI2 or altered PI expression levels. In the absence of PI2 (Ins2−/−), CTL in pancreatic lymph nodes (PLNs) were more activated, and male G9Cα−/− mice developed T1D. Furthermore, when the insulin-specific CTLs developed in transgenic mice lacking their specific PI epitope, the CTLs demonstrated increased cytotoxicity and proliferation in vitro and in vivo in the PLNs after adoptive transfer into NOD recipients. Dendritic cell–stimulated proliferation of insulin-specific T cells was reduced in the presence of lymph node stromal cells (LNSCs) from NOD mice but not from mice lacking the PI epitope. Our study shows that LNSCs regulate CTL activation and suggests that exposure to PI in the periphery is very important in maintenance of tolerance of autoreactive T cells. This is relevant for human type 1 diabetes and has implications for the use of antigen-specific therapy in tolerance induction

Blind Mechanism for Demodulating Offset QPSK Signals in the Presence of Carrier Phase Error

A computer-implemented system and method for blind demodulation of an offset QPSK input signal, involving repeatedly performing a set of operations, including: (a) applying a phase correction to the input signal based on an estimate of a carrier phase offset of the input signal to obtain a first modified signal; (b) shifting a quadrature component of the first modified signal by half a symbol period relative to an inphase component to obtain a second modified signal; (c) extracting a first sequence of symbols from the second modified signal, where the extraction includes estimating a symbol timing offset from the second modified signal; (d) performing hard-decision demodulation on the first sequence of symbols to obtain a second sequence of reference symbols; (e) computing a phase difference between the first sequence of symbols and second sequence of reference symbols; and (f) updating the carrier phase offset estimate using the phase difference. QC 20141024</p

Blind Mechanism for Demodulating Offset QPSK Signals in the Presence of Carrier Phase Error

A computer-implemented system and method for blind demodulation of an offset QPSK input signal, involving repeatedly performing a set of operations, including: (a) applying a phase correction to the input signal based on an estimate of a carrier phase offset of the input signal to obtain a first modified signal; (b) shifting a quadrature component of the first modified signal by half a symbol period relative to an inphase component to obtain a second modified signal; (c) extracting a first sequence of symbols from the second modified signal, where the extraction includes estimating a symbol timing offset from the second modified signal; (d) performing hard-decision demodulation on the first sequence of symbols to obtain a second sequence of reference symbols; (e) computing a phase difference between the first sequence of symbols and second sequence of reference symbols; and (f) updating the carrier phase offset estimate using the phase difference. QC 20141024</p

SDFPoseGraphNet: Spatial Deep Feature Pose Graph Network for 2D Hand Pose Estimation

In the field of computer vision, hand pose estimation (HPE) has attracted significant attention from researchers, especially in the fields of human–computer interaction (HCI) and virtual reality (VR). Despite advancements in 2D HPE, challenges persist due to hand dynamics and occlusions. Accurate extraction of hand features, such as edges, textures, and unique patterns, is crucial for enhancing HPE. To address these challenges, we propose SDFPoseGraphNet, a novel framework that combines the strengths of the VGG-19 architecture with spatial attention (SA), enabling a more refined extraction of deep feature maps from hand images. By incorporating the Pose Graph Model (PGM), the network adaptively processes these feature maps to provide tailored pose estimations. First Inference Module (FIM) potentials, alongside adaptively learned parameters, contribute to the PGM’s final pose estimation. The SDFPoseGraphNet, with its end-to-end trainable design, optimizes across all components, ensuring enhanced precision in hand pose estimation. Our proposed model outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods, achieving an average precision of 7.49% against the Convolution Pose Machine (CPM) and 3.84% in comparison to the Adaptive Graphical Model Network (AGMN)

Functional Connectivity Based Classification of ADHD Using Different Atlases

These days, computational diagnosis strategies of neuropsychiatric disorders are gaining attention day by day. It's critical to determine the brain's functional connectivity based on Functional-Magnetic-Resonance-Imaging(fMRI) to diagnose the disorder. It's known as a chronic disease, and millions of children amass the symptoms of this disease, so there is much vacuum for the researcher to formulate a model to improve the accuracy to diagnose ADHD accurately. In this paper, we consider the functional connectivity of a brain extracted using various time templates/Atlases. Local-Binary Encoding-Method (LBEM) algorithm is utilized for feature extraction, while Hierarchical- Extreme-Learning-Machine (HELM) is used to classify the extracted features. To validate our approach, fMRI data of 143 normal and 100 ADHD affected children is used for experimental purpose. Our experimental results are based on comparing various Atlases given as CC400, CC200, and AAL. Our model achieves high performance with CC400 as compared to other Atlase

Study of Water Resources and Waterborne Diseases in Rural Population of Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India

Background- Human health and survival depend upon use of uncontaminated and clean water for drinking and other purposes. Groundwater is a good source of fresh water available on the earth, due to its relatively low susceptibility to pollution in comparison to surface water and its large storage capacity. Methods- An observational study was conducted in five villages of Lodha Block of Aligarh District in Uttar Pradesh predominantly having Scheduled Caste population. The objectives of the study were to find out the sources of water, sanitary conditions and prevalence of water-borne diseases in the villages. Results-Main source of water in the area of present study was ground water which is obtained by Hand Pump, Submersible or Tube Well. Sanitary conditions of the villages observed in the study was not satisfactory. Lack of proper sanitation and management of water results in the contamination of the water and causes water-borne diseases. Skin diseases like Pruritus, Fungal Infection were found to be most prevalent followed by diseases of gastro-intestinal diseases like Diarrhoea, Amoebiasis, and Typhoid. Conclusion- Improper disposal of waste water from houses and factories is also continuously contaminating the water resources and resulting in the waterborne diseases. There is need to deliver health education in areas with dominated Scheduled caste population