Role of Spexin and Leptin in Obesity Among Male Pakistani Population

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Self-reported academic performance in relation to health behaviours among Bahria University students

Objective: To find an association between self-reported academic performance with different socio-demographic factors, health behaviours and mental health amongst university students.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Bahria University, Karachi, from January 2012 to December 2013, and comprised university students of different disciplines. An anonymous, self-reported questionnaire was distributed among the subjects. Convenient sampling technique was used. Demographic information, including age, gender and field of study, were obtained. Depresion was evaluated via Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. SPSS 22 was used to analyse data.Results: Of the 813 respondents, 334(41.1%) were males and 479(58.9%) females. The mean age was 19.9±1.8 years. Overall, 126(15.5%) subjects reported excellent, 242(29.8%) very good, 310(38.1%) good, 100(12.3%) satisfactory and 35(4.3%) not satisfactory academic performance. Residential status of students played a significant role on their academic performance (p=0.011). Breakfast eating behaviour depicted a significant association with the academic performance (p=0.04).The proportion of unsatisfactory academic performances among students having severe sleep disorder was the highest, followed by mild/moderate (p=0.01). The depression scale\u27s item \u27troubling in mind\u27 was highly associated with academic performance (p\u3c0.05).Conclusions: A constructive association existed among healthy behaviours and academic performance.

Influence of body mass index and polycystic ovarian syndrome on ICSI/IVF treatment outcomes: A study conducted in Pakistani women

Background: Obesity may establish a crucial barrier for effective fertility treatment in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) females.Objective: To compare results of intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in females with and without polycystic ovarian syndrome and further appraise the effect of obesity in PCOS females.Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study from June 2015 to July 2016 included non-PCOS and PCOS (recognized by Rotterdam criteria) females who underwent ICSI. The PCOS were further stratified into non-obese and Obese according to the South Asian criteria for body mass index. Results were categorized on the basis of beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (β-hCG) and transvaginal scan into non-pregnant (β-hCG /ml), preclinical abortion (β-hCG \u3e25 mIU/ml with no fetal cardiac activity) and clinical pregnancy (β-hCG \u3e25 mIU/ml with fetal cardiac activity on transvaginal scan). In addition, reproductive outcomes; implantation rate, clinical pregnancy rate and miscarriage rate among obese and non-obese PCOS and non-PCOS patients were compared.Results: Our results revealed 38.5% clinical pregnancy rate in non-PCOs females, 23.8% in non-obese PCOS females whereas 26.4% in obese PCOS. Preclinical abortions were found to be highest (31.5%) in non-obese PCOS females and were the lowest (26.2%) in non-PCOS females. In non-PCOS group and non-obese PCOS females 35.4% and 44.6%, respectively, failed to become pregnant.Conclusion: The success after ICSI in terms of number of clinical pregnancies was more in non-PCOS patients as compared to PCOS. Increase in body mass index reflected a negative impact on the reproductive outcome in PCOS patients

COVID-19 pandemic awareness, attitudes, and practices among the Pakistani general public

Background: Outbreak of COVID-19, in many countries, has imposed a lockdown on their residents. The usefulness of extenuative actions is extremely reliant on society\u27s knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) toward pandemic control. Objective: This study aimed to explore the awareness, attitudes, and practices of the general Pakistani population to COVID-19. Methods: From June 13, 2020, until June 30, 2020, a cross-sectional online KAP survey was conducted among the Pakistani public. For data collection, a validated self-administered questionnaire was used. The survey instrument consisted of six demographic characteristics, 14 items on knowledge, four on attitudes, and six items on practices, modified from a previously published questionnaire on COVID-19. Results: The present study included 2,307 participants, 58.3% males and 41.7% of females. The majority (86.7%) sought information from social media (SM) and television, 95% had good practices, 89.9% had positive attitudes, and two-thirds (67.4%) of the respondents had adequate knowledge. The students and people from younger age groups had more positive attitudes compared with others. Highly educated w with other groups (p \u3c 0.001). In logistic regression analysis, the odds ratio indicated that the private job was negatively associated, and high monthly income was positively associated with adequate knowledge (OR = 0.595). Old age was the predictor of negative attitude, and high school degrees and master\u27s degrees were associated with good practice scores. Conclusion: The Pakistani general population has an overall positive attitude and proactive practices against COVID-19, but their knowledge is inadequate. The most important source of information was SM, followed by television. These are playing a crucial role in educating the Pakistani public

Implication of Connexin 43 as a Tumor Suppressor in Pathogenesis of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer (BC) is a global public health burden, constituting the highest cancer incidence in women worldwide. Connexins 43 proteins propagate intercellular communication, gap junction intercellular communication (GJIC), remarkably expressed in several tumor types including liver, prostate, and breast. This domain of Cx43 possesses functionally critical sites identical to those involved in gating of channel and phosphorylation sites for various kinases. However, the mechanism by which Cx43 down regulation occurs in breast cancer is far from clear. Several mechanisms like Cx43 promoter hyper-methylation or a cancer-specific reduction of Cx43 expression/trafficking by the modulation of various components of the Cx43 life cycle give the idea to be involved in the down regulation of Connexins in mammary glands, but irreversible mutational alterations have not yet been proved to be among them. Summarily, the efficacy or specificity of these drugs can be increased by a combinatory approach considering an effect on both the Connexins and their regulatory molecules. This chapter will summarize the knowledge about the connexins and gap junction activities in breast cancer highlighting the differential expression and functional dynamics of connexins in the pathogenesis of the disease

Hamstring Injury Recurrence and Prevention: A Review

Football stands to be the most favorite sport with approximately four billion fans worldwide. Injuries in thegame can often be frustrating to the fans, athletes and the club, affecting performance and financialoperations. An avoidance curriculum to help cut down risks of such injuries seems obligatory, concerning thesocioeconomic and financial repercussions. An issue that is frequently discussed in sports medicine isHamstring Strain Injuries (HSI) that is widely seen amongst players which could prevent them from engaging inimportant games. HSI are one of the most frequently occurring injuries in sport representing approximately 12-24% of all athletic injuries. There is a high prevalence of hamstring strain injuries in many sports, includingsoccer.This review consists of summary of hamstring injury causes, prevention and current practices of treatment . Italso evaluates a contemporary method that uses whole-body vibration and its benefits to neuromuscularinvigoration and defiance exercises

Hospital-based ultra-sonographic prevalence and spectrum of thyroid incidentalomas in Pakistani population

Introduction: Thyroid incidentalomas (TIs) are clinically asymptomatic nodules found accidentally during imaging studies ordered for some other reasons. Being easily accessible, non-invasive, and inexpensive, thyroid ultrasound (US) is a key investigation in the management of thyroid nodules.Methods: This ultrasound-based cross-sectional study was performed in the radiology department of a major tertiary care hospital. Every second patient visiting the emergency department was a potential candidate for a thyroid ultrasound. Patients having ages greater than 20 years were included in the study.Results: A total of 250 patients were included in the study. Out of these, 175 were female and 75 were male. The majority (54.80%) were in the age group 21-30 years. Nodules were found in 65 (26%) patients and in the majority of cases (67.7%) they were multiple in number. Associated lymphadenopathy was seen in only one patient. Thyroid nodules were more common in females as compared to males (75.38% versus 24.62%). According to Thyroid Imaging and Reporting Data System (TI-RADS) classification, the majority of the nodules were falling in TI-RADS 1 (74%) followed by TI-RADS 3 (9.60%) and 4A (8.80%).Conclusion: The thyroid nodules are more commonly seen in females as compared to males. A significant association is seen between the frequency of thyroid nodules and increasing age. The majority of thyroid nodules fall in TI-RADS 1 category followed by TI-RADS 3 and 4A

An Efficient and Secure Energy Trading Approach with Machine Learning Technique and Consortium Blockchain

In this paper, a secure energy trading mechanism based on blockchain technology is proposed. The proposed model deals with energy trading problems such as insecure energy trading and inefficient charging mechanisms for electric vehicles (EVs) in a vehicular energy network (VEN). EVs face two major problems: finding an optimal charging station and calculating the exact amount of energy required to reach the selected charging station. Moreover, in traditional trading approaches, centralized parties are involved in energy trading, which leads to various issues such as increased computational cost, increased computational delay, data tempering and a single point of failure. Furthermore, EVs face various energy challenges, such as imbalanced load supply and fluctuations in voltage level. Therefore, a demand-response (DR) pricing strategy enables EV users to flatten load curves and efficiently adjust electricity usage. In this work, communication between EVs and aggregators is efficiently performed through blockchain. Moreover, a branching concept is involved in the proposed system, which divides EV data into two different branches: a Fraud Chain (F-chain) and an Integrity Chain (I-chain). The proposed branching mechanism helps solve the storage problem and reduces computational time. Moreover, an attacker model is designed to check the robustness of the proposed system against double-spending and replay attacks. Security analysis of the proposed smart contract is also given in this paper. Simulation results show that the proposed work efficiently reduces the charging cost and time in a VEN.publishedVersio

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Evaluating the publications output of Pakistan Journal of Information Management and Libraries based on the Scopus Database

Aim: This study is aimed to evaluate the bibliometric parameters of the literature published in the Pakistan Journal of Information Management and Libraries (PJIM&L) for the period of 2010 to 2019 and indexed in the Scopus database. Methods: The retrospective method has been applied to the dataset that was downloaded from the Scopus-Elsevier database on 5th January 2021. Two source titles PJIM&L, and its earlier version “Pakistan Journal of Library and Information Science”, were selected and all the available bibliographic records of publications were downloaded in Comma Separated Value (CSV) file for analysis. The data was examined by chronological order, by the pattern of authorship and enlist the productive authors, further distribution of documents by affiliated country, keywords occurrence and most cited papers were presented. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to calculate the Mean and Standard Error of Means and the VOSviewer software was applied to visualize the keywords occurrence and author’s productivity. Results: A total of 96 papers were identified by the Scopus database published in PJIM&L between 2010 to 2019 with an average of 9.6 papers per year with an average annual growth rate of 44.89. These papers were written by 127 authors and most of the papers (n=37; 40.21%) were written by a two-author pattern. Kanwal Ameen has emerged as a most productive author and most of the papers were contributed by the authors who belonged from Lahore and University of the Punjab found a productive institution. The research contributions from 15 foreign countries showed that international authors have trust in the credibility of the journal. Top-cited papers with their number of citations in Scopus and Google Scholar have been identified. Conclusion: PJIM&L is a reputed and internationally recognized LIS journal. The citation analysis showed that its papers are being cited regularly worldwide. There is a need to change the frequency of publications from annual to biannual to attract more researchers