Mean-Variance Serum Sodium Associations with Diabetes Patients

Serum sodium (SNa) is a critically significant component of hyponatremia and bones, has firmly been established as a risk factor correlated with many diseases such as diabetes, heart, anaemia, etc and the incidence of fragility fractures. Note that the fragility fractures are a general complication in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients, contributing to high rates of mortality and morbidity together with mounting public health costs. SNa is a fundamental component for normal physiological processes, and T2D patients may experience osmotic diuresis as a consequence of disease-related hyperglycemia, contributing to the excess excretion of sodium in the urine and resulting in hyponatremia. Dysnatremias [hyponatremia (<136 mmol/L) and hypernatremia (>145mmol/L)] can severely affect several physiologic organ systems and functions. Diabetes is correlated with many important electrolyte disorders, predominantly affecting magnesium, SNa, and potassium. However, the correlation/ association of SNa with diabetes patients is not clear. This can be confirmed based on the proper probabilistic model of SNa with diabetes status along with the other explanatory factors of the disease. On the other hand, this type of association can be obtained based on the models of fasting glucose/post glucose/random glucose/HbA1c level  with SNa and other explanatory factors of the diabetes disease

Radiological significance of high-resolution computed tomography for elderly pulmonary tuberculosis patients : an analysis with culture test

Purpose: Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) is one of the major health problems in the elderly population, causing significant morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study is to evaluate the significance of the high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) modality for the diagnosis of PTB, in comparison to culture test. Material and methods: Thoracic HRCT images of the study population, comprising 124 patients clinically suspected for PTB with smear and culture reports, were analysed for sensitivity and specificity of the HRCT test. Features of active PTB were centrilobular nodules, 'tree-in-bud' pattern densities, macro-nodules, consolidations, cavitary lesions, ground-glass opacities, and miliary nodules. Results: Among the study population, 108 cases presented HRCT features of active PTB and the remaining cases were negative but had presented a few features mimicking PTB. As inferred from positive culture test results, 106 cases had active PTB, the remaining cases were culture negative for PTB. False-positive (FP) or 'type I error' cases, and false-negative (FN) or 'type II error' cases were ascertained by Bayes' theorem. Sensitivity (true positive rate) and specificity (true negative rate) of HRCT test were 0.8125 and 0.8571, respectively. Conclusions: For proper diagnosis the predictive capability, as two values of 'a posteriori probability', was computed; the mean value of 'a posteriori probability' for HRCT was 0.6358. When its culture test was positive, the HRCT test was 69.56-92.85% efficient in ascertaining positive results with a sample; on the other hand, when its culture test was negative it was 66.66-100% efficient for a negative result. Thus, the HRCT test is considerably dependable

Strong Single- and Two-Photon Luminescence Enhancement by Nonradiative Energy Transfer across Layered Heterostructure

The strong light-matter interaction in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is promising for nanoscale optoelectronics with their direct band gap nature and the ultra-fast radiative decay of the strongly bound excitons these materials host. However, the impeded amount of light absorption imposed by the ultra-thin nature of the monolayers impairs their viability in photonic applications. Using a layered heterostructure of a monolayer TMD stacked on top of strongly absorbing, non-luminescent, multi-layer SnSe2, we show that both single-photon and two-photon luminescence from the TMD monolayer can be enhanced by a factor of 14 and 7.5, respectively. This is enabled through inter-layer dipole-dipole coupling induced non-radiative Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) from SnSe2 underneath which acts as a scavenger of the light unabsorbed by the monolayer TMD. The design strategy exploits the near-resonance between the direct energy gap of SnSe2 and the excitonic gap of monolayer TMD, the smallest possible separation between donor and acceptor facilitated by van der Waals heterojunction, and the in-plane orientation of dipoles in these layered materials. The FRET driven uniform single- and twophoton luminescence enhancement over the entire junction area is advantageous over the local enhancement in quantum dot or plasmonic structure integrated 2D layers, and is promising for improving quantum efficiency in imaging, optoelectronic, and photonic applications

Seropositivity of Toxoplasmosis in Antenatal Women with Bad Obstetric History in a Tertiary-care Hospital of Andhra Pradesh, India

Toxoplasmosis is a well-documented cause of bad obstetric history (BOH) and a major reason of congenitally-acquired infection. The study was conducted to determine the seropositivity of toxoplasmosis in women with BOH, attending the antenatal clinic of the Mamata General Hospital, Khammam, Andhra Pradesh, India. The study subjects included 105 antenatal women with BOH and 105 antenatal women who had previous normal deliveries. A serological evaluation was carried out to determine the presence of Toxoplasma gondii-specific IgG and IgM antibodies, using commercial diagnostic kits, by the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method. The seropositivity for Toxoplasma was 49.52% in the study group compared to 12.38% in the control group. The difference in seropositivity was significant (p=0.00). The seroprevalence gradually increased with advancing age. Abortion (51.92%) was the commonest form of pregnancy wastage, followed by stillbirths (36.53%) and premature deliveries (7.69%). The seropositivity of toxoplasmosis was significantly higher in the study group than that in the control group, and the seropositivity played an important role in determining the foetal outcome. Considering the subclinical pattern of infection, routine serological test is recommended for all pregnant women for both IgG and IgM antibodies

Associations between Body Mass Index and Breast Cancer Markers

Body mass index (BMI) and breast cancer biomarkers (BCBs) such asresistin, leptin adiponectin, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1)and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) arehighly associated with each other. The report has focused the inter-relationship between BMI and BCBs based on probabilistic modeling. It hasbeen shown that mean BMI is directly associated with leptin (P<0.0001)and MCP-1 (P=0.0002), while it is inversely associated with adiponectin(P=0.0003), HOMA-IR (P<0.0001), and it is higher for healthy women(P=0.0116) than breast cancer women. In addition, variance of BMIis inversely associated with resistin (P=0.1450). On the other hand,mean MCP-1 is directly associated with BMI (P<0.0001). Mean resistin is directly associated with the interaction effect of BMI and leptin(BMI*Leptin) (P=0.0415), while its variance is directly associated withBMI (P=0.0942), and it is inversely associated with BMI*Adiponectin(P=0.1518). Leptin is directly associated with BMI (P<0.0001). Alsoadiponectin is inversely associated with BMI (P<0.0001), BMI*Leptin(P=0.1729), while it is directly associated with Age*BMI (P=0.0017)and BMI*Resistin (P=0.0615). It can be concluded that BMI and BCBsare strongly associated with each other. Care should be taken on BMI forbreast cancer women

A Correlation Technique to Reduce the Number of Predictors to Estimate the Survival Time of HIV/ AIDS Patients on ART

Till now, many research papers have been published which aims to estimate the survivle time of the HIV/AIDS patients taking into consideration all the predictors viz, Age, Sex, CD4, MOT, Smoking, Weight, HB, Coinfection, Time, BMI, Location Status, Marital Status, Drug etc, although all the predictors need not to be included in the model. Since some of the predictors may be correlated/ associated and may have some influence on the outcome variable, therefore, instead of taking both the significantly correlated/ associated predictors, we may take only one of the two. In this way, we may be able to reduce the number of predictors without affecting the estimated survival time. In this paper we have tried to reduce the number of predictors by determining the highly positively correlated predictors and then evaluating the effect of correlation/ association on the survival time of HIV/AIDS patients. These predictors that we have considered in the starting are Age, Sex, State, Smoking, Alcohol, Drugs, Opportunistic Infections (OI), Living Status (LS), Occupation (OC), Marital Status (MS) and Spouse for the data collected from 2004 to 2014 of AIDS patients in an ART center of Delhi, India. We have performed one – way ANOVA to test the association between a quantitative and a categorical variable and Chi-square test to test between two categorical variables. To select one of the two highly correlated/ associated predictors, a suitable model is fitted keeping one predictor independent at a time and other dependent and the model having the smaller AIC is considered and the independent variable in the model is included in the modified model. The fitted models are logistic, linear and multinomial logistic depending on the type of the independent variable to be fitted. Then the true model (having all the predictors) and the modified model (with reduced number of predictors) are compared on the basis of their AICs and the model having minimum AIC is chosen. In this way we could reduce the number of predictors by almost 50% without affecting the estimated survival time with a reduced standard error

Comparative pharmacokinetics of ceftriaxone and tazobactam (8:1) between healthy and Escherichia coli induced diarrhoeic birds

Antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli infection of poultry causes significant economic losses. Extended spectrum β lactamases (ESBL) producing E. coli was inoculated in a broiler, Rhode Island Red and Haringhata Black birds orally at 56×108 c.f.u. mL-1 for induction of diarrhoea. Pharmacokinetics of ceftriaxone-tazobactam combination (8:1) was studied following a single intramuscular injection at 28.125 mg kg-1 and the combination was administered twice daily to treat such infection. Plasma concentration of both ceftriaxone persisted up to 8 h in experimental birds and maintained an approximate ratio of 8:1 with tazobactam for a period of 2 h, 0.25 h and 0.75 h, respectively in a broiler, Rhode Island Red and Haringhata Black birds. The Kel was significantly lower in all experimental birds compared to healthy birds. Efficacy study was conducted in diarrhoeic birds by administration of ceftriaxone-tazobactam combination at 28.125 mg kg-1 body weight twice daily intramuscularly for three days which caused an increase in specific antibody titre in the broiler on 5th day and in Rhode Island Red birds 10th day. However, Haringhata black birds were inherently showed more resistance towards the infection. The combination of ceftriaxone and tazobactam in the ratio of 8:1 can be an effective treatment to combat ESBL producing E. coli infections