The Construction of a Monoclonal Diagnostic System for the Field Detection of V. cholerae

Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease that is characterized by massive loss of fluids and electrolytes. If it remains untreated, in its most severe form it may result in death. The causative agent is Vibrio cholerae, which was first described by Robert Koch (1884). The disease is contracted by the ingestion of water or food contaminated by the excreta of persons harbouring the bacilli. Since it is exquisitely sensitive to gastric acid, at least 100 million vibrios are required for infection in a reasonably healthy person, but in a malnourished victim or someone with no gastric acidity, 10,000 to 1 million vibrios can produce disease. The human is the only host of V. cholerae (Smith, 1985)

Clinicopathologic Results of the Surgical Management of Thyroid Gland Pathologies

Objective: The aim of this study is to share our surgical approach and results in patients with benign and malignant thyroid diseases.Methods: All patients who underwent thyroid gland surgery at our University Hospital Ear, Nose, and Throat Department between 2012 and 2017 were retrospectively analyzed. The study included 293 patients.Results: Of the 293 patients included in the study, 76 (25.9%) were male and 217 (74.1%) were female. Mean follow-up period was 47.1 months. Patients’ ages ranged from 4 to 77 years. In terms of the pathology, 160 patients had benign and 133 had neoplastic thyroid diseases. None of the patients who underwent thyroid surgery due to benign diseases required revision surgery. Recurrence occurred in 15 out of the 116 patients that were operated on for well-differentiated thyroid cancer. Out of these 15 patients with disease recurrence, 11 had biochemically incomplete responses and four had structurally recurrent diseases.Conclusion: Thyroidectomy, when performed safely and correctly, is a very effective way of treating both benign and malignant thyroid diseases. Total thyroidectomy or total lobectomy and isthmectomy are the gold-standard surgical approaches to prevent recurrence. A national form is needed regarding thyroid surgery for following up on patients and for the regular and systematic collection of data

Pengembangan Karakter Religius Melalui Pembiasaan Shalat Dhuha Di Smp Al Azhar Syifa Budi Surakarta Tahun Pelajaran 2018/2019

Character is a characteristic that someone has attached. What is expected in a character education certainly shapes a person to have a positive character. Character education must be planted as early as possible and continuously become an inherent habit. Character education is certainly a solution that should be expected, developed through educational institutions, in families and communities. There are many and varied methods and strategies for education, one of which is the development of religious character through the habituation of duha prayer at Middle School the Al Azhar Syifa Budi in Surakarta. The purpose of this study in general is to add insight and knowledge of researchers regarding the development of religious character. In particular, this study aims to find out the development of religious character through habituating the duha prayer at Middle School Al Azhar Syifa Budi in Surakarta. This research is a qualitative descriptive study taking the background of Syifa Budi Al Azhar Middle School in Surakarta. Data sources were obtained from the principal and the teacher council. Data collection is done by observation, interviews and documentation. Data analysis is done by giving meaning to the data that has been collected and from the meaning drawn conclusions. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that the development of religious character through the habituation of the dhuha prayer is carried out routinely every morning before the teacher and learning activities accompanied by teacher and the mother, with a number of two raka'ats that aim to familiarize students with the good things namely the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, and teach students about discipline and form good religious character that can be applied not only in schools but everywhere. Keywords: moral education, character education, religious character, dhuha praye

From Diagnosis to Treatment of Human Otoacariasis: Demographic and Clinical Characteristics of Patients

Objective:Otoacariasis is the presence of ticks and mites in the ear canals of humans or animals, and particularly common in rural areas. This study aimed to present the clinical characteristics of patients that presented with ticks in their ear canal.Methods:The study was conducted with a total of 425 patients with 527 ticks in their ear canal at the Muş Malazgirt State Hospital Ear-Nose-Throat Clinic between June 2019 and June 2020. The removed ticks were examined at the parasitology laboratory of Van Yüzüncü Yıl University.Results:Of the 425 cases included in the study, 72% (n=306) were female and 28% (n=119) were male (mean age 40±20, minimum-maximum: 4 months–81 years). A total of 527 ticks were removed in the one-year period. Three-hundred-and-fifty-one patients had adult or nymph ticks, and 74 patients had a larval form of the tick. Of the patients with adult or nymph tick, foreign body sensation was the dominant symptom in 68.7% (n=242), whereas pain was the dominant symptom in 62% (n=46) of those with larval tick. In the comparison between groups, foreign body sensation was statistically significantly higher in the adult tick group, and pain was higher in the larval tick group (p<0.001). There were no systemic diseases related to the ticks in any of the cases.Conclusion:Ticks in the ear is endemic in Eastern Anatolia and poses a public health problem. Tick infestations could be minimized with various precautions and educating the general public on preventive methods. Our study is the largest series in the literature on cases with ear ticks.

Variants in Hormone Biosynthesis Genes and Risk of Endometrial Cancer.

We investigated the risk associated with variants in three genes involved in estrogen biosynthesis, CYP11A1, CYP17A1, and CYP19A1, in the population-based case-control study of Estrogen, Diet, Genetics, and Endometrial Cancer. This study was conducted in New Jersey in 2001-2006 with 417 cases and 402 controls. For CYP11A1, there was no association between the number of [TTTTA]( n ) repeats (D15S520) and risk. For CYP17A1, risk was somewhat lower among women with the C/C genotype at T-34C (rs743572) (adjusted OR = 0.65, 95% CI 0.41-1.02). For CYP19A1, risk was lower among women homozygous for the 3-bp deletion (rs11575899) in exon 4 (adjusted OR = 0.44, 95% CI 0.26-0.76), while the number of [TTTA]( n ) repeats was not significantly related to risk: the adjusted OR for n = 7/7 repeats versus n \u3e 7/\u3e7 repeats was 0.81 (95% CI 0.54-1.23). In stratified analyses, results for CYP19A1 were stronger among women with higher (\u3e or =27.4) body mass index: for the homozygous deletion, OR = 0.30 (95% CI 0.15-0.62); for the n = 7/7 genotype, OR = 0.49 (95% CI 0.26-0.93). The interaction between the n = 7/7 genotype and BMI was statistically significant (p = 0.01). The insertion/deletion variant in CYP19A1 appears to be related to risk of endometrial cancer; risk associated with variants in this gene may vary according to BMI

Human germline heterozygous gain-of-function STAT6 variants cause severe allergic disease

STAT6 (signal transducer and activator of transcription 6) is a transcription factor that plays a central role in the pathophysiology of allergic inflammation. We have identified 16 patients from 10 families spanning three continents with a profound phenotype of early-life onset allergic immune dysregulation, widespread treatment-resistant atopic dermatitis, hypereosinophilia with esosinophilic gastrointestinal disease, asthma, elevated serum IgE, IgE-mediated food allergies, and anaphylaxis. The cases were either sporadic (seven kindreds) or followed an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern (three kindreds). All patients carried monoallelic rare variants in STAT6 and functional studies established their gain-of-function (GOF) phenotype with sustained STAT6 phosphorylation, increased STAT6 target gene expression, and TH2 skewing. Precision treatment with the anti-IL-4Rα antibody, dupilumab, was highly effective improving both clinical manifestations and immunological biomarkers. This study identifies heterozygous GOF variants in STAT6 as a novel autosomal dominant allergic disorder. We anticipate that our discovery of multiple kindreds with germline STAT6 GOF variants will facilitate the recognition of more affected individuals and the full definition of this new primary atopic disorder

Does being international make companies more sustainable? Evidence based on corporate sustainability indices

The existing literature on the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and being a domestic or international company doubt on which type of operating has more potential to be corporate sustainable. It might be expected that two types of firms can have different advantages. We take this as an empirical question and bring it to data to find an answer. We created a methodology to compare the corporate sustainability level of different companies. In this methodology, we developed different internationality indices and evaluate the effects of those on corporate sustainability. We used firm level financial variables, time and firm effects for controlling some aspects of firm heterogeneity. We estimate the indices of the internationality using the performance ratings from MSCI KLD 400 Social Index and financial information from Wharton Research Data Services' COMPUSTAT dataset. Our results present empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that being an international firm is increasing the sustainability of the company on average. Furthermore, to better understand the mechanism of this result, we examined the effect of being international separately for the factors (these are named as strengths and concerns in KLD) that increase and decrease the sustainability score of the companies respectively. We found surprisingly that being an international firm increases both strengths and concerns more compared to a domestic firm. This suggests that international companies perform higher standards on the strengths but also face hard time to reduce the concerns due to possibly multiple regulations that they face, or coordination issues in different counties etc. Keywords: Corporate sustainability, Internationality, MSCI KLD 400 social index ratings, Compusta

Prevalence of asthma symptoms in Omani schoolchildren

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of asthma in Omani schoolchildren using the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Children (ISAAC) protocols. Method: The ISAAC-written questionnaire was completed by a total of 7,067 Omani schoolchildren (3,893 children aged 6–7 years of which 56% were boys and 3,174 aged 13–14 years of which 51% were boys) from the 10 health regions in the country. Results: The estimated mean national 12-month prevalence of any wheeze, night waking with wheeze, speech limiting wheeze and exercise wheeze were respectively 7.8%, 3.5%, 3.2% and 6.9% for the 6–7 year age group and 8.9%, 2.9%, 4.0% and 19.2% for the 13–14 year age group. Both age groups reported high prevalence of night cough (19.6% and 20.9% in the younger and the older children respectively). The prevalence of self-reported asthma diagnosis was higher in the older age group (20.7% vs. 10.5%, p&lt;0.001). In the younger age group, the diagnosis of asthma was more common in boys (12.5% vs. 8.0%, p&gt;0.001), but there was no significant difference between the two sexes in the older age group (22.0% of boys vs. 20.5% of girls). There was nearly three-fold difference in the prevalence of self-reported diagnosis of asthma between the regions with the highest and the lowest prevalence of asthma for both young and older children (from 5.3% and 9.5% in Musandam to 14.2% and 30.6% in South Sharqiya, respectively). Conclusion: The results of this first epidemiological survey of asthma in Oman indicate that asthma is common in Omani children and adolescents. Night cough is the most frequent symptom. There is also significant regional variation in prevalence of asthma symptoms and diagnosis within the country and this requires further investigation

A single-center multidisciplinary study analyzing thyroid nodule risk stratification by comparing the thyroid imaging reporting and data system (TI-RADS) and American thyroid association (ATA) risk of malignancy for thyroid nodules

© 2022 Elsevier LtdObjectives: The thyroid imaging reporting and data system (TI-RADS) and 2015 American Thyroid Association (ATA) guidelines are two well-known risk stratification systems for classifying thyroid nodules based on cancer risk. This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of these two systems in predicting malignancy in patients undergoing thyroid surgery. Methods: We studied data on 120 individuals who were scheduled to undergo surgery for benign or malignant nodular diseases of the thyroid gland between October 2017 and October 2019. The TI-RADS category and ultrasound pattern based on ATA guidelines were assigned to dominant thyroid nodule categories by two experienced radiologists blinded to patients’ previous thyroid ultrasonography and fine-needle aspiration biopsy results. A pathologist with experience in thyroid diseases blinded to patients’ sonographic and clinical data reviewed the thyroidectomy specimens. Results: A total of 120 patients, 88 women and 32 men, were included in our study. Final histopathological results were as follows: 50% (n=60) papillary thyroid carcinoma, 36.6% (n=44) benign nodular thyroid diseases, 4.1% (n=5) follicular adenoma, 2.5% (n=3) hurtle cell adenoma, 1.7% (n=2) follicular thyroid carcinoma, 1.7% (n=2) medullary thyroid carcinoma, 1.7% (n=2) hurtle cell carcinoma, and 1.7% (n=2) follicular tumor of uncertain malignancy potential. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for TI-RADS were 80%, 56%, 72%, and 67%, respectively, and that for ATA were 80%, 64%, 76%, and 69%, respectively. Conclusion: The TI-RADS and ATA showed similar rates of sensitivity, specificity, NPV, and PPV. Our observed risk of malignancy was higher than expected for the ACR TI-RADS 3–5 categories and the very low, low, and intermediate suspicion risk strata in the ATA guidelines. We found no difference between observed and expected malignancy risk for the ACR TI-RADS 2’s and ATA\"s high suspicion categories