Healthcare resource use and costs of severe, uncontrolled eosinophilic asthma in the UK general population

Acknowledgments The authors thank Derek Skinner (Cambridge Research Support Ltd, Oakington, Cambridge, UK) for assistance with data extraction.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The characteristics of the current drug policies in India, Nepal and Bangladesh

The current Indian national drug policy has its roots in two documents originated in the 70-ties and the 80-ties of the XX. century. Although the first National Drug Policy was declared in 1978, it has been revised thrice since then, in 1986, 1994 and 2002. Also, in 1986 another document on the Indian drug policy, titled “Measures for Rationalisation, Quality Control and Growth of Drugs and Pharmaceutical Industry in India” was evolved. The drug policy has been implemented under some legal acts related mainly to the fields of health care, family welfare, scientific research and development, and industry. It emerged from the findings of the Hathi Committee (a committee commissioned to study the operations of multinational drug companies vis-à-vis indigenous companies and public sector undertakings)

Adam Deep Learning with SOM for Human Sentiment Classification

Nowadays, with the improvement in communication through social network services, a massive amount of data is being generated from user's perceptions, emotions, posts, comments, reactions, etc., and extracting significant information from those massive data, like sentiment, has become one of the complex and convoluted tasks. On other hand, traditional Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches are less feasible to be applied and therefore, this research work proposes an approach by integrating unsupervised machine learning (Self-Organizing Map), dimensionality reduction (Principal Component Analysis) and computational classification (Adam Deep Learning) to overcome the problem. Moreover, for further clarification, a comparative study between various well known approaches and the proposed approach was conducted. The proposed approach was also used in different sizes of social network data sets to verify its superior efficient and feasibility, mainly in the case of Big Data. Overall, the experiments and their analysis suggest that the proposed approach is very promissing

Optimization of stocking weight in carp polyculture ponds under drought prone Barind area of Bangladesh

Increased temperature, decreased water level and reduced culture period of the ponds are considered major problems for aquaculture promotion in drought prone Barind area of Bangladesh. In order to address these problems, an experiment was conducted to optimize the stocking weight for carp polyculture ponds in Tanore Upazila of Rajshahi district. Three different stocking weights were tested under three treatments (T1: 25±0.12 g; T2: 50±0.15 g; T3: 100±0.19 g), each with three replications. Fish growing period (July–December), carp species (Catla catla, Hypopthalmichthys molitrix, Aristichthis nobilis, Labeo rohita and Cirrhinus mrigala), stocking density (7,410 individuals/ha), lime and ash treatment, fertilization and feeding were same for all the treatments. Water quality (water temperature, dissolved oxygen, transparency, pH and alkalinity) and fish growth parameters were monitored monthly. Mean values of water quality parameters were found within the suitable range for fish culture. Treatment T3 varied significantly (P<0.05) than that of other treatments for the mean values of final weight, weight gain, specific growth rate, survival rate and yield of fish. Net benefit of carp polyculture was also found the highest in treatment T3. Use of higher stocking weight can be a suitable option for carp polyculture in ponds under drought prone Barind area

Healthcare resource utilization and costs associated with incremental systemic corticosteroid exposure in asthma

Editorial support was provided by Mike Jaqua, PhD, and AlanSaltzman, PhD, of JK Associates, Inc., and Michael A. Nissen, ELS, ofAstraZeneca. This support was funded by AstraZeneca.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The burden of mild asthma : clinical burden and healthcare resource utilisation in the NOVELTY study

Background: Patients with mild asthma represent a substantial proportion of the population with asthma, yet there are limited data on their true burden of disease. We aimed to describe the clinical and healthcare resource utilisation (HCRU) burden of physician-assessed mild asthma. Methods: Patients with mild asthma were included from the NOVEL observational longiTudinal studY (NOVELTY; NCT02760329), a global, 3-year, real-world prospective study of patients with asthma and/or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from community practice (specialised and primary care). Diagnosis and severity were based on physician discretion. Clinical burden included physician-reported exacerbations and patient-reported measures. HCRU included inpatient and outpatient visits. Results: Overall, 2004 patients with mild asthma were included; 22.8% experienced ≥1 exacerbation in the previous 12 months, of whom 72.3% experienced ≥1 severe exacerbation. Of 625 exacerbations reported, 48.0% lasted >1 week, 27.7% were preceded by symptomatic worsening lasting >3 days, and 50.1% required oral corticosteroid treatment. Health status was moderately impacted (St George's Respiratory Questionnaire score: 23.5 [standard deviation ± 17.9]). At baseline, 29.7% of patients had asthma symptoms that were not well controlled or very poorly controlled (Asthma Control Test score <20), increasing to 55.6% for those with ≥2 exacerbations in the previous year. In terms of HCRU, at least one unscheduled ambulatory visit for exacerbations was required by 9.5% of patients, including 9.2% requiring ≥1 emergency department visit and 1.1% requiring ≥1 hospital admission. Conclusions: In this global sample representing community practice, a significant proportion of patients with physician-assessed mild asthma had considerable clinical burden and HCRU

Production and economics of carp polyculture in ponds stocked with wild and hatchery produced seeds

Lack of quality carp seeds is one of the major problems for fish production in Bangladesh. This experiment was conducted during July to December 2013 to study the production and economics of carp polyculture using wild and hatchery produced seeds in ponds in Faridpur district, Bangladesh.&nbsp; Seeds of native major carps (NMCs) (Catla catla, Labeo rohita and Cirrhinus mrigala) and non-native carps (NNCs) (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix, Ctenophryngodon idella, Aristichthys nobilis and Cyprinus carpio) from four different sources were tested in feed and fertilizer based polyculture ponds under controlled mesocosm trials with four treatments (T1–T4), each with four replications. Combination, weight and density of the stocked species were same for all the treatments. Water quality parameters were monitored monthly and mean values were found within suitable range for fish farming. Mean final weight, weight gain, specific growth rate and yield of L. rohita, C. catla and C. mrigala were found significantly (P &lt; 0.05) higher with treatment T1, T3 and T2 respectively. Treatments T1-T3 varied more significantly (P &lt; 0.05) than treatment T4 for total fish yield and cost benefit ratio.&nbsp; Polyculture of wild sourced NMCs and hatchery produced NNCs were found more profitable than aquaculture of hatchery produced NMCs and NNCs