Seroprevalence of hepatitis C in type 2 diabetes: evidence for a positive association

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is a growing body of literature on the relationship of Hepatitis C virus infection (HCV) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, there are certain gaps in literature and the data is inconclusive. This study was, therefore, carried out to determine the prevalence of HCV infection in diabetic patients and to elucidate the presence of any possible relationship between HCV and T2DM in this region.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Serologic testing for anti-HCV antibody was done on a sample of 3000 individuals with T2DM visiting Diabetes Clinic of Nishtar Medical College Hospital, Multan and 10,000 volunteer blood donors visiting blood bank of the same hospital during the study period using Accurate rapid immunochromatographic kits which was later confirmed by using Chemelex S.A third generation ELISA kit for positive cases. Data about various variables was collected from diabetic patients using a structured questionnaire after taking informed consent.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Prevalence rate of 13.7% for HCV infection was recorded among subjects having T2DM with seropositivity rate of 4.9% among the control group of volunteer blood donors without diabetes. The patients with T2DM were more likely to have HCV infection as compared to the control group (OR = 3.03, 95%CI = 2.64-3.48, p = 0.001). Diabetic patients with age above 55 years had higher prevalence rate as compared to younger individuals. Male patients had significantly high seropositivity as compared to female patients (15.3% vs. 12.4%, p = 0.02). Those with duration of diabetes 11 years and above and the ones with good glycemic control had higher seroprevalence rates of 18.2% and 18.7% respectively. There was no statistically significant difference among subjects when the distribution of HCV was studied on the basis of marital status, locality, or family history of diabetes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results show that there is a strong association between HCV and T2DM in the region as evident from significantly higher prevalence of HCV infection in diabetics as compared to the control group in the present study.</p

The Most Common Comorbidities in Dandy-Walker Syndrome Patients: A Systematic Review of Case Reports.

OBJECTIVE: Dandy-Walker syndrome (DWS) is a rare neurologic multi-entity malformation. This review aimed at reporting its main nonneurologic comorbidities. METHODS: Following PRISMA guidelines, search in Medline was conducted (2000-2014, keyword: dandy-walker). Age, sex, country, DWS type, consanguinity or siblings with DWS, and recorded coexistent conditions (by ICD10 category) were extracted for 187 patients (46.5% male, 43% from Asia) from 168 case reports. RESULTS: Diagnosis was most often set in 12 years old (27.8%). One-third of cases had a chromosomal abnormality or syndrome (n = 8 PHACE), 27% had a cardiovascular condition (n = 7 Patent Ductus Arteriosus), 24% had a disease of eye and ear (n = 9 cataract); most common malignancy was nephroblastoma (n = 8, all Asian). Almost one-fifth had a mental illness diagnosis; only 6.4% had mild or severe intellectual disability. CONCLUSION: The spread of comorbidities calls for early diagnosis and multidisciplinary research and practice, especially as many cases remain clinically asymptomatic for years

Contextual and individual factors associated with dental services utilisation by Brazilian adults: A multilevel analysis

BACKGROUND: Inequalities in the utilisation of dental services in Brazil are remarkable. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of contextual and individual factors with the utilisation of dental services by Brazilian adults using the Andersen's behavioural model. METHODS: Individual-level data from 27,017 adults residents in the State capitals who were interviewed in the 2013 Brazilian National Health Survey were pooled with contextual city-level data. The outcomes were non-utilisation of dental services and last dental visit over 12 months ago. Individual predisposing variables were age, sex, race/skin colour, schooling and social network. Individual enabling variables included income, health insurance and registration in primary health care. Individual need variables were self-perceived dental health and self-reported missing teeth. Multilevel logistic regression models were performed to estimate odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) of the association of contextual and individual predisposing, enabling and need-related variables with dental services outcomes. RESULTS: Predisposing (OR = 0.89; 95% CI 0.81-0.97) and enabling (OR = 0.90; 95% CI 0.85-0.96) contextual factors were associated with non-utilisation of dental services. Individual predisposing (sex, race/skin colour, schooling), enabling (income, health insurance) and need (self-perceived oral health, missing teeth) were associated with non-utilisation of dental services and last dental visit over 12 months ago. The latter was also associated with other individual predisposing (age, social network) and need (eating difficulties due to oral problems) characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: Individual and contextual determinants influenced dental services utilisation in Brazilian adults. These factors should be on the policy agenda and considered in the organisation of health services aiming to reduce oral health inequalities related to access and utilisation of dental services

Coping strategies, vision-related quality of life, and emotional health in managing retinitis pigmentosa: a survey study.

Background Retinitis pigmentosa is a group of genetic progressive retinal dystrophies that may adversely affect daily life. Those with RP should develop adaptive coping strategies to manage their condition. This study investigates the relationship between engaging (ECS) and disengaging coping strategies (DCS), vision-related quality of life (VRQoL), and emotional health, in adults living at home with retinitis pigmentosa. Method One hundred and five participants (70 female; meanage of 46.98, SD age  = 13.77) completed a cross-sectional survey. The questionnaire booklet consisted of the Coping Strategies Inventory – Short Form (32 items), the National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire 25 (25 items), Marylands Trait Depression Scale (18 items), the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (14 items), and the Subjective Happiness Scale (4 items). Results Data was analysed with a two-block hierarchical multiple regression, with the first block controlling for the demographic data (age, sex, years since retinitis pigmentosa diagnosis, number of comorbidities, participant-perceived retinitis pigmentosa severity, and knowing RP type) and the second block consisting of primary measures (type of coping strategy, VRQoL, and Emotional Health). Type of coping strategy was found to impact psychosocial variables of VRQoL, not overall VRQoL. These psychosocial VRQoL variables had a positive association with ECS and a negative association with DCS. Emotional Health increased with ECS and decreased with DCS. There was a larger impact of DCS on VRQoL and Emotional Health compared to ECS, that is, VRQoL and Emotional Health decreased more with increasing DCS than VRQoL, and Emotional Health increased with increasing ECS. Conclusion In concordance with previous research, ECS increased with increasing VRQoL and DCS decreased with increasing VRQoL. However, the findings also indicated that DCS had a greater impact than ECS on VRQoL and Emotional Health. This suggests that diminishing DCS should be prioritised over developing ECS to positively influence VRQoL and Emotional Health. Further research should investigate the impact of reducing DCS compared to increasing ECS, and how this may influence VRQoL and Emotional Health.N/

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

A research on phenolic and cyanogenic compounds in sweet and bitter kernelled apricot varieties

12th Symposium on Apricot Culture and Decline -- SEP 10-14, 2001 -- Avignon, FRANCEWOS: 000237601100025In this study, phenolic compounds situation were determined in sweet and bitter apricot varieties. For this purpose, sweet apricot varieties such as Kabaasi, Sam and Hasanbey and bitter varieties such as Adilcevaz-2, Adilcevaz-4 and X.1 Zerdali were used. Leaf and root samples were taken in May and September. Phenolics and cyanogenic glycosides were analysed by using thin layer chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography, respectively. Consequently, it was found that bitter kernelled apricots contain higher levels of phenolic and cyanogenic compounds in the leaves, roots and seeds than sweet kernelled ones. http://www.actahort.org/members/showpdf?booknrarnr=701_25Int Soc Hort Sci, INRA, Agri Obtent, Conseil Reg Provence Alpes Cotes Azur, Conseil Reg Languedoc Roussillon, Conseil Reg Rhone Alpes, CIHEAM, IAMZ, CIHEAM, IAMB, CEP, CTIFL, SERFEL, RMG Avignon, Coteaux Tricastin, GIE, PROMEGA FranceINCO-DC "APRIMED" [ICI 18 CT 98-0310]This research is supported by No: ICI 18 CT 98-0310 (INCO-DC "APRIMED"

Determination of phenolic compounds in male and female figs

1st International Symposium on Fig -- JUN 24-28, 1997 -- IZMIR, TURKEYWOS: 000079157300043In this trial, leaf extracts of some male and female cultivars and Sarilop clones were investigated by using thin layer chromatography. It was seen that tannin contents of male varieties were higher than those of the female varieties. Some spots that were determined in female figs did not appear in caprifigs.Int Soc Hort Sc