Prevalence of Muscle Dysmorphia and Associated Health Activities in Male Medical Students in Karachi, Pakistan

Background: Muscle Dysmorphia (MD) is a subtype of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and is currently classified under anxiety disorders (subheading: Obsessive-compulsive disorder) in DSM 5. MD is hypothesized to affect the self-esteem and social outlook of the younger generation. MD shows a higher rate in males and may influence their self-confidence rendering them more prone towards using steroids, supplementary proteins and other drugs to alter their physical outlooks as shown in previous studies. This problem has been on the rise lately due to revolutionary advancement in the media and film industry and the abrupt changes about the standards of physical good looks and body shapes. With the lack of studies done in our population, our study will be helpful to consider the prevalence of the disease in our setting and increase awareness in the general public and clinicians. We hope to help clinicians/ therapists find better options in managing the disease. Materials: We performed a cross-sectional study with a sample size of 246 medical school students in Karachi to collect data through self-administered questionnaires. We used the DSM 5 criteria for the diagnosis of BDD and additional questions on the presence of MD. Nutritional habits, exercise routines, use of supplements and drugs were also obtained for exploratory analysis. Results: Our study predicted the prevalence of MD to be 25%. Other main findings included statistical significant associations between MD and the thoughts and practice of steroid use for muscularity. Conclusion: MD is an underdiagnosed and often unrecognized disease that we believe has significant consequences for the young male population. Further work is needed on this in our part of the world. Our research, we believe, can be a stepping stone for further studies that would incorporate wider populations

Efficient red electroluminescence from diketopyrrolopyrrole copolymerised with a polyfluorene

We thank the EC Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement No. 212311 (ONE-P), the RTN THREADMILL (EU-Contract No.: MRTN-CT-2006-036040), the ITNs SUPERIOR (PITN-CT-2009-238177), and CONTEST (PITN-CT-2012-317488) as well as the Royal Society, and EPSRC for funding

Bisphenol A and declining semen quality: A systematic review to support the derivation of a reference dose for mixture risk assessments

To support a mixture risk assessment with a focus on male reproductive health, we conducted a systematic review of associations between bisphenol A (BPA) exposures and declines in semen quality, based on animal and epidemiological studies. Contrary to a widely held view that there is “conflicting” evidence of such associations, our review and confidence rating approach reveals that animal studies provide convincing evidence of declines of semen quality after gestational BPA exposures. Many of the reported negative findings can be attributed to deficiencies in study sensitivity, insufficient control of background contamination and probable confounding through hormonal interference due to the use of soy-containing diets. We did not evaluate animal studies of adult BPA exposures. Divergent findings in “medium to high” and “medium” confidence epidemiological studies can be explained in terms of differences in exposure conditions. We attempted the estimation of a BPA reference dose based on animal studies. Due to variations in the no-observed adverse effect levels (NOAELs) in high confidence studies, possible reference doses ranged from 0.0001 to 0.0099 μg/kg/d. In choosing 0.003 μg/kg/d we struck a balance between caution suggested by studies at the lower end of the doses and the weight of evidence from studies with higher NOAELs. This weighting was motivated by the intended use of the value in a mixture risk assessment which meant arriving at a reasonable estimate of BPA exposures likely without effects on semen quality. We realise that our approach does not conform with the standards necessary for deriving tolerable daily intakes (TDIs) for single chemical exposures, which is not our interest here. BPA exposures currently experienced by European populations and beyond are in excess of 0.003 μg/kg/d and even fall in the range where some epidemiological studies observed effects on semen quality as a result of BPA exposures in adulthood.This work was conducted with funding from the European HBM4EU project (www.hbm4eu.eu), contract number 733032, Horizon 2020 programme, which is gratefully acknowledged

Security and Efficiency Analysis of the Hamming Distance Computation Protocol Based on Oblivious Transfer

open access articleBringer et al. proposed two cryptographic protocols for the computation of Hamming distance. Their first scheme uses Oblivious Transfer and provides security in the semi-honest model. The other scheme uses Committed Oblivious Transfer and is claimed to provide full security in the malicious case. The proposed protocols have direct implications to biometric authentication schemes between a prover and a verifier where the verifier has biometric data of the users in plain form. In this paper, we show that their protocol is not actually fully secure against malicious adversaries. More precisely, our attack breaks the soundness property of their protocol where a malicious user can compute a Hamming distance which is different from the actual value. For biometric authentication systems, this attack allows a malicious adversary to pass the authentication without knowledge of the honest user's input with at most $O(n)$ complexity instead of $O(2^n)$, where $n$ is the input length. We propose an enhanced version of their protocol where this attack is eliminated. The security of our modified protocol is proven using the simulation-based paradigm. Furthermore, as for efficiency concerns, the modified protocol utilizes Verifiable Oblivious Transfer which does not require the commitments to outputs which improves its efficiency significantly

An Effective Model for Crumpling in Two Dimensions?

We investigate the crumpling transition for a dynamically triangulated random surface embedded in two dimensions using an effective model in which the disordering effect of the $X$ variables on the correlations of the normals is replaced by a long-range ``antiferromagnetic'' term. We compare the results from a Monte Carlo simulation with those obtained for the standard action which retains the $X$'s and discuss the nature of the phase transition.Comment: 5 page

A missense mutation in the PISA domain of HsSAS-6 causes autosomal recessive primary microcephaly in a large consanguineous Pakistani family

Asymmetric cell division is essential for normal human brain development. Mutations in several genes encoding centrosomal proteins that participate in accurate cell division have been reported to cause autosomal recessive primary microcephaly (MCPH). By homozygosity mapping including three affected individuals from a consanguineous MCPH family from Pakistan, we delineated a critical region of 18.53 Mb on Chromosome 1p21.3-1p13.1. This region contains the gene encoding HsSAS-6, a centrosomal protein primordial for seeding the formation of new centrioles during the cell cycle. Both next-generation and Sanger sequencing revealed a homozygous c.185T>C missense mutation in the HsSAS-6 gene, resulting in a p.Ile62Thr substitution within a highly conserved region of the PISA domain of HsSAS-6. This variant is neither present in any single-nucleotide polymorphism or exome sequencing databases nor in a Pakistani control cohort. Experiments in tissue culture cells revealed that the Ile62Thr mutant of HsSAS-6 is substantially less efficient than the wild-type protein in sustaining centriole formation. Together, our findings demonstrate a dramatic impact of the mutation p.Ile62Thr on HsSAS-6 function and add this component to the list of genes mutated in primary microcephal

Global, regional, and national burden of stroke and its risk factors, 1990-2019 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background Regularly updated data on stroke and its pathological types, including data on their incidence, prevalence, mortality, disability, risk factors, and epidemiological trends, are important for evidence-based stroke care planning and resource allocation. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) aims to provide a standardised and comprehensive measurement of these metrics at global, regional, and national levels. Methods We applied GBD 2019 analytical tools to calculate stroke incidence, prevalence, mortality, disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), and the population attributable fraction (PAF) of DALYs (with corresponding 95% uncertainty intervals [UIs]) associated with 19 risk factors, for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019. These estimates were provided for ischaemic stroke, intracerebral haemorrhage, subarachnoid haemorrhage, and all strokes combined, and stratified by sex, age group, and World Bank country income level. Findings In 2019, there were 12·2 million (95% UI 11·0–13·6) incident cases of stroke, 101 million (93·2–111) prevalent cases of stroke, 143 million (133–153) DALYs due to stroke, and 6·55 million (6·00–7·02) deaths from stroke. Globally, stroke remained the second-leading cause of death (11·6% [10·8–12·2] of total deaths) and the third-leading cause of death and disability combined (5·7% [5·1–6·2] of total DALYs) in 2019. From 1990 to 2019, the absolute number of incident strokes increased by 70·0% (67·0–73·0), prevalent strokes increased by 85·0% (83·0–88·0), deaths from stroke increased by 43·0% (31·0–55·0), and DALYs due to stroke increased by 32·0% (22·0–42·0). During the same period, age-standardised rates of stroke incidence decreased by 17·0% (15·0–18·0), mortality decreased by 36·0% (31·0–42·0), prevalence decreased by 6·0% (5·0–7·0), and DALYs decreased by 36·0% (31·0–42·0). However, among people younger than 70 years, prevalence rates increased by 22·0% (21·0–24·0) and incidence rates increased by 15·0% (12·0–18·0). In 2019, the age-standardised stroke-related mortality rate was 3·6 (3·5–3·8) times higher in the World Bank low-income group than in the World Bank high-income group, and the age-standardised stroke-related DALY rate was 3·7 (3·5–3·9) times higher in the low-income group than the high-income group. Ischaemic stroke constituted 62·4% of all incident strokes in 2019 (7·63 million [6·57–8·96]), while intracerebral haemorrhage constituted 27·9% (3·41 million [2·97–3·91]) and subarachnoid haemorrhage constituted 9·7% (1·18 million [1·01–1·39]). In 2019, the five leading risk factors for stroke were high systolic blood pressure (contributing to 79·6 million [67·7–90·8] DALYs or 55·5% [48·2–62·0] of total stroke DALYs), high bodymass index (34·9 million [22·3–48·6] DALYs or 24·3% [15·7–33·2]), high fasting plasma glucose (28·9 million [19·8–41·5] DALYs or 20·2% [13·8–29·1]), ambient particulate matter pollution (28·7 million [23·4–33·4] DALYs or 20·1% [16·6–23·0]), and smoking (25·3 million [22·6–28·2] DALYs or 17·6% [16·4–19·0]). Interpretation The annual number of strokes and deaths due to stroke increased substantially from 1990 to 2019, despite substantial reductions in age-standardised rates, particularly among people older than 70 years. The highest age-standardised stroke-related mortality and DALY rates were in the World Bank low-income group. The fastest growing risk factor for stroke between 1990 and 2019 was high body-mass index. Without urgent implementation of effective primary prevention strategies, the stroke burden will probably continue to grow across the world, particularly in low-income countries