Doctors’ Knowledge of Hypertension Guidelines Recommendations Reflected in Their Practice

Aim. To evaluate doctors’ knowledge, attitude, and practices and predictors of adherence to Malaysian hypertension guidelines (CPG 2008). Methods. Twenty-six doctors involved in hypertension management at Penang General Hospital were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Doctors’ knowledge and attitudes towards guidelines were evaluated through a self-administered questionnaire. Their practices were evaluated by noting their prescriptions written to 520 established hypertensive outpatients (20 prescriptions/doctor). SPSS 17 was used for data analysis. Results. Nineteen doctors (73.07%) had adequate knowledge of guidelines. Specialists and consultants had significantly better knowledge about guidelines’ recommendations. Doctors were positive towards guidelines with mean attitude score of 23.15±1.34 points on a 30-point scale. The median number of guidelines compliant prescriptions was 13 (range 5–20). Statistically significant correlation (rs = 0.635, P<0.001) was observed between doctors’ knowledge and practice scores. A total of 349 (67.1%) prescriptions written were guidelines compliant. In multivariate analysis hypertension clinic (OR = 0.398, P=0.008), left ventricular hypertrophy (OR = 0.091, P=0.001) and heart failure (OR = 1.923, P=0.039) were significantly associated with guidelines adherence. Conclusion. Doctors’ knowledge of guidelines is reflected in their practice. The gap between guidelines recommendations and practice was seen in the pharmacotherapy of uncomplicated hypertension and hypertension with left ventricular hypertrophy, renal disease, and diabetes mellitus

Rational Use of Antibiotics and Requisition of Pharmacist

ABSTRACT Background: Direct consequence of microbes developing resistance against antibiotics is prolonged hospitalization, increased treatment cost and duration. Increased duration of hospitalization causes prolonged use antibiotics which results towards side effects. Primary Study Objective: The purpose of antibiotics use is either to kill the microbes (bactericidal) or slows down their growth (bacteriostatic). Irrational use of antibiotics makes them do their exact opposite. Instead of killing microbes or slowing down their growth, it allows microbes to develop resistance against antibiotics. Methods/Design: An observational concurrent study was performed in which data was collected. Individuals were interviewed using structured questionnaire. Percentage of rationality and irrationality of antibiotics use was observed. Additionally percentage of prescribed class of antibiotics was also observed in patients. Setting: Health care system includes: Quaid e Azam International Hospital Islamabad, Benazir Hospital Rawalpindi, CMH Rawalakot AJK, Amna Hospital Rawalakot AJK, DHQ Kotli AJK Pakistan. Participants: This study was conducted on 100 patients of different health care systems, to whom antibiotics were prescribed. Most patients interviewed were female with UTI aged above 30 and adults male with RTI or chest infection. Intervention: Different patients were interviewed in different hospital settings to evaluate the rational use of antibiotics Primary Outcome Measures: Rational use of antibiotics is using antibiotics according to the guidelines provided by WHO. Major guidelines include:&nbsp; patient receives medication according to their clinical needs, dosage appropriate to the individual requirements and for specific duration of time with low cost. Results: 47 percent of these patients were using antibiotics rationally and 53 percent were taking antibiotics medication irrationally. The most prevalent form of irrational use was patients without counseling about the antibiotics use. Patients with poor knowledge about the use of antibiotics were 84 among the 100. Irrational use of antibiotics in the form of pre-mature discontinuation was reported 56 patients among the 100. Patient who irrationally use antibiotics as OTC or Self medications were 38 among the 100. Conclusion: Major form of irrationality found in the study was no proper counseling provided to the patients by specialist physician or Pharmacists. The reason we critically observed for this is the burden of patients on physicians due to which they are not able to properly guide patients. The community on which this study was conducted has a major absence of pharmacist. Dispensers and pharmacy technicians are performing pharmacist’s tasks. Absence of pharmacist leads to dosage dispensing errors, lack of professional medical counseling, and no drug utilization revie

Overhead Based Cluster Scheduling of Mixed Criticality Systems on Multicore Platform

The cluster-based technique is gaining focus for scheduling tasks of mixed-criticality (MC) real-time multicore systems. In this technique, the cores of the MC system are distributed in groups known as clusters. When all cores are distributed in clusters, the tasks are partitioned into clusters, which are scheduled on the cores within each cluster using a global approach. In this study, a cluster-based technique is adopted for scheduling tasks of real-time mixed-criticality systems (MCS). The Decreasing Criticality Decreasing Utilization with the worst-fit (DCDU-WF) technique is used for partitioning of tasks to clusters, whereas a novel mixed-criticality cluster-based boundary fair (MC-Bfair) scheduling approach is used for scheduling tasks on cores within clusters. The MC-Bfair scheduling algorithm reduces the number context switches and migration of tasks, which minimizes the overhead of mixed-criticality tasks. The migration and context switch overhead time is added at the time of each migration and context switch respectively for a task. In low critical mode, the low mode context switch and migration overhead time is added to task execution time, while the high mode overhead time of migration and context switch is added to the execution time of a task in high critical mode. The results obtained from experiments show the better schedulablity performance of proposed cluster-based technique as compared to cluster-based fixed priority (CB-FP), MC-EKG-VD-1, global and partitioned scheduling techniques e.g., for target utilization U=0.6, the proposed technique schedule 66.7% task sets while MC-EKG-VD-1, CB-FP, partitioned and global techniques schedule 50%, 33.3%, 16.7% and 0% task sets respectively

The Impact of CRISPR-Cas System on Antiviral Therapy

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated protein nuclease (Cas) is identified as an adaptive immune system in archaea and bacteria. Type II of this system, CRISPR-Cas9, is the most versatile form that has enabled facile and efficient targeted genome editing. Viral infections have serious impacts on global health and conventional antiviral therapies have not yielded a successful solution hitherto. The CRISPR-Cas9 system represents a promising tool for eliminating viral infections. In this review, we highlight 1) the recent progress of CRISPR-Cas technology in decoding and diagnosis of viral outbreaks, 2) its applications to eliminate viral infections in both pre-integration and provirus stages, and 3) various delivery systems that are employed to introduce the platform into target cells

Humanizing glycosylation pathways in eukaryotic expression systems

Glycosylation represents the most widespread posttranslational modifications, found in a broad spectrum of natural and therapeutic recombinant proteins. It highly affects bioactivity, site-specificity, stability, solubility, immunogenicity, and serum half-life of glycoproteins. Numerous expression hosts including yeasts, insect cells, transgenic plants, and mammalian cells have been explored for synthesizing therapeutic glycoproteins. However, glycosylation profile of eukaryotic expression systems differs from human. Glycosylation strategies have been proposed for humanizing the glycosylation pathways in expression hosts which is the main theme of this review. Besides, we also highlighted the glycosylation potential of protozoan parasites by emphasizing on the mammalian-like glycosylation potential of Leishmania tarentolae known as Leishmania expression system

Humanizing glycosylation pathways in eukaryotic expression systems

Glycosylation represents the most widespread posttranslational modifications, found in a broad spectrum of natural and therapeutic recombinant proteins. It highly affects bioactivity, site-specificity, stability, solubility, immunogenicity, and serum half-life of glycoproteins. Numerous expression hosts including yeasts, insect cells, transgenic plants, and mammalian cells have been explored for synthesizing therapeutic glycoproteins. However, glycosylation profile of eukaryotic expression systems differs from human. Glycosylation strategies have been proposed for humanizing the glycosylation pathways in expression hosts which is the main theme of this review. Besides, we also highlighted the glycosylation potential of protozoan parasites by emphasizing on the mammalian-like glycosylation potential of Leishmania tarentolae known as Leishmania expression system

Awareness of Nephrolithiasis in Educated Community of Azad Kashmir Pakistan: -

Background: Renal stone is an important health problem in the world and is the most common disease in the urinary tract system. It is particularly a common problem in many countries Knowledge and lifestyle attitude of individuals toward renal stone plays a role in delivering optimum management. Primary Study Objective: To determine the public awareness of renal stones causes, symptoms, and management among the population of AJK Pakistan Setting: General population of all the ages was under consideration and data were taken from the general population Participants: This study was conducted on 100 patients from different areas &nbsp;Methods: The data of this quantitative cross-sectional study was collected from participants of AJK. Participants were given a self-administered questionnaire written in English. August 2020 to September 2020. individuals of all ages are included in this study. Results: Out of hundred participants we determine the awareness among the educational community of AJK. All category of individuals is involved in our research married and unmarried people and students with arts and science subjects. About 13% of males and 87% of females are involved in our research with different ages. Conclusion: This data indicates that the participants are to some degree aware of some aspects of renal stone prevention, symptoms, and modes of diagnosis and treatment. Individuals who experienced renal stones were more knowledgeable in some respects. Further emphasis on public awareness of renal stones is recommended