Upper body segment to lower body segment and arm span to height ratios among children with sickle cell anaemia in Lagos

Objective: To determine ratios of upper body segment to lower body segment and arm span to height in the sickle cell anaemia patientsBackground: Sickle cell anaemia may adversely affect linear growth and body proportions.Methods: Height, upper segment and arm span were measured in100 sickle cell anaemia patients aged eight months to 15 years and100 age/sex matched controls. Lower body segment length, upper body segment to lower body segment ratio, and arm-span to height ratio were derived.Results: Sickle cell anaemia subjects older than 10 years had significantly shorter upper body segment than controls (p = 0.035 and p = 0.004 for males and females respectively). The mean upper segment/lower segment ratio decreased with age among primary subjects (SS) and AAcontrols. In comparison with AA controls, female sickle cell anaemia subjects older than 10years had significantly lower mean upper bodysegment to lower body segment ratio (p = 0.005). Mean arm span was significantly shorter in male sickle cell anaemia patients older than 5 years (p = 0.034 at 5 to 10 years and p = 0.029 at . 10 years) and in females older than 10 years than in controls (p = 0.025). The mean arm  span/height ratio was lower in sickle cell anaemia subjects than controls, except in males younger than five years.Conclusions: Sickle cell anaemia patients older than 10 years haveshorter mean upper segment. In this age group, females also hadsignificantly lower upper segment to lower segment ratio.Keywords: sickle cell anaemia, upper body segment, lower body segment, rati

Surgical Management of Prepubertal Urethral Prolapse: A report of 3 cases.

Background: Urethral Prolapse is rare but a differential diagnosis of interlabial masses in prepubertal females. It usually presents with vaginal bleeding and may heighten the suspicion of sexual abuse.Methods: Our series of 3 cases all presented with vaginal bleeding and all had primary surgical excision of the prolapsed urethral mucosa.Results and Conclusion: Surgical management is definitive and should be considered as the first line treatment in our environment.Parents, caregivers and medical personnel in our environment should be able to identify and recognise it

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Patterns of Voluntary Counselling and Testing among Undergraduate University Students in Lagos, Nigeria

It is critically important for individuals to learn about their HIV status and make informed decisions about their future. The study aimed at determining the patterns of voluntary counselling and testing among undergraduate university students in Lagos, Nigeria. The study was conducted in May 2010 among students recruited from seven faculties within two of the campuses of Lagos State University, Ojo and Ikeja campuses. A total of 200 respondents were recruited using systematic random sampling method and surveyed with the aid of structured questionnaire. A high percentage of respondents (54.0%) had not performed HIV counselling and testing before the survey interview. 54.1% and 53.8% of male and female respondents, respectively, had not performed HIV counselling and testing before the survey. The commonest reasons given for not doing HIV counselling and testing is that respondents are too busy which accounted for 35.1% of total respondents. Ahigh percentage of respondents (65.5%) are aware of location of HIV counselling and testing centre within their institution. Students are not particularly interested in HIV counselling despite the high awareness of availability of HIV counselling and testing centre located within their educational institution; they invest their time and interest more in academics

Ethical Issues And Challenges Of Managing Severe Anaemia In Jehovah Witness Paediatric Patients: 2 Case Reports

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a rapidly growing religious group in the Western world and in Nigeria with an  estimated 7 million members worldwide. Procedures generally regarded as unacceptable by Jehovah’s  witnesses include transfusion of whole blood, packed red cells, white cells, plasma, platelets and preoperative autologous blood collection with storage for later reinfusion. In the event of a refusal when seriously indicated, it creates an ethical dilemma for the health care professional, as well as being a frustrating experience. Central to modern medical ethics is a respect for the patient’s autonomy, while the Physician respects this, he also must abide with the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and Justice. In the case of minors of Jehovah’s Witnesses requiring blood transfusion, a standard of care procedure should be designed for use in emergency care and elective procedures. Standard steps of procedures must be agreed upon by management as well as the ethics committee of every hospital. This report examines two cases of Jehovah’s Witnessesminors whose parents refused a much needed blood transfusion for emergency procedures due to religious reasons.Key words:  Jehovah’s Witnesses; Blood Transfusion; Anaemia

Caregivers’ perception of oral health‑related quality of life in a group of Nigerian children living with human immunodeficiency virus

Aim: This study examined the caregivers’ perception of the effect of dental conditions on general well‑being and family life of a group of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)‑infected Nigerian children. A secondary aim was to investigate correlations between the children’s sociodemographic and health‑related variables and caregivers’ global ratings of oral health and well‑being.Study Design: A cross‑sectional questionnaire‑based survey was conducted among parents/caregivers of 95 HIV‑positive children receiving care at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria.Materials and Methods: The “Parental‑Caregivers Perception Questionnaire” which included measures of global ratings of oral health and well‑being as well as effects of oral health on domains of oral symptoms, functional limitations, emotional well‑being, and family well‑being/parental distress was used. Assessment was based on the child’s oral health within the preceding 3 months of the study.Results: The most affected subscale of the oral health‑related quality of life was functional limitation followed by parental distress and then oral symptoms. Caregivers of older children were 2½ times more likely to view oral health as impacting their child’s overall health (P = 0.034). Furthermore, caregivers of children who had not yet commenced antiretroviral therapy were 15% more likely to report oral symptoms (P = 0.024) and 11% were more likely to be distressed. Statistics: Data entry, validation, and analysis were done using SPSS version 17.0. Findings were considered to be statistically significant when 95% confidence intervals were not overlapping.Conclusions: According to caregivers’ perceptions, oral symptoms, functional limitations, and parental distress outweighed emotional well‑being in impacting a child’s oral health quality of life. Oral health programs to improve the knowledge of caregivers on the importance of oral health in HIV‑positive children are necessary for improvement in overall quality of life.Keywords: Caregivers, human immunodeficiency virus infection, Nigerian children, oral health‑related quality of lif

Osteosarcoma with Orbital Metastasis in a Nigerian Child: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone tumour with a peak occurrence in adolescence. The occurrence of osteosarcoma in preadolescents is rare with a paucity of data in the developing world. Metastasis of osteosarcoma to the orbit is even a rarer presentation with few cases reported in the literature but to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, none of the previous cases had contralateral orbital metastasis to osteosarcoma. This is the first case report of orbital metastasis of osteosarcoma in Nigeria. The present case is presented for its rarity, to increase awareness and add to knowledge on the possibility of metastasis to contralateral orbit in osteosarcoma