Explaining coronary heart disease trends in Hong Kong: creation of a model for policy and planning.

1. The largest contribution of coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality reductions was from medical treatment. 2. A smaller contribution was estimated to be due to risk factors changes. 3. Improvement of treatment uptake levels can have a substantial effect in reducing CHD mortality.published_or_final_versio

Effect of particle size on adsorption of heavy metals using chemically modified and unmodified fluted pumpkin and broad-leafed pumpkin pods

The effect of particle size on the bioremediation of Pb(II), Zn(II), Cd (II) and Hg(II) ions from synthetic aqueous effluents using unmodified and carboxymethylated fluted pumpkin and broad-leafed pumpkin pods was investigated in a batch system. 1.2 g of adsorbents was used in each sorption experiment at 25 °C and pH 6.5-8.5 for one hour interval. The results showed that the two adsorbents were good for the removal of these metal ions. Unmodified fluted pumpkin pod was found to be better than the other tested adsorbents with removal efficiencies of 92.62%, 81.88%, 75.21% and 49.67% for Pb (II), Zn (II), Cd (II) and Hg (II), respectively. Carboxymethylation decreased the adsorption capacity of the cellulose materials mostly for fluted pumpkin pod. Particle size below 600 μm was found to be the optimum size for unmodified absorbent, while 600-1000 μm was observed for modified adsorbent. Fluted pumpkin pod was found to be a more effective adsorbent for these metal ions than the broad leafed pumpkin pod especially when unmodified. Therefore these results show that fluted pumpkin and broad-leafed pumpkin pods could serve as very good adsorbents in the treatment of these metal ions from aqueous effluents.Keywords: agricultural waste, bioremediation, heavy metals, pollution control, surface chemistry

Evaluation of herbal ointment formulation of Milicia excelsa (Welw) C.C berg for wound healing

The wound healing effect of Milicia excelsa ointment was evaluated in three groups of rats using the excision wound model. Also the antibacterial effect of M. excelsa extract on Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus was investigated. The result of the study showed that the ointment of M. excelsa significantly enhanced wound contraction and epithelialization. The epithelialization time in the M. excelsa ointment treated group was significantly shorter than time of epithelialization in the base treated group. On day 7, wound sections of rats treated with M. excelsa ointment showed abundant neutrophils, few macrophages and few fibroblasts while in the base treated rats, abundant neutrophils, few macrophages and few fibroblasts were seen. By day 14, wound sections of M. excelsa ointment treated rats showed abundant fibroblasts, mild collagenization, moderate macrophages and vascularization whereas moderate neutrophils, few macrophages and few fibroblasts were seen in the sections of base treated rats. M. excelsa extract at 100, 50, 25 and 12.5 mg/ml inhibited the growth of S. aureus but not P. aeruginosa. In this study, daily application of M. excelsa ointment enhanced wound contraction, epithelialization and fibroplasia. These results provide scientific evidence showing the efficacy of M. excelsa leaves in wound healing.Keywords: Milicia excelsa, ointment, excision wounds, contraction, epithelializationAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(21), pp. 3351-335

Ontologies, Mental Disorders and Prototypes

As it emerged from philosophical analyses and cognitive research, most concepts exhibit typicality effects, and resist to the efforts of defining them in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. This holds also in the case of many medical concepts. This is a problem for the design of computer science ontologies, since knowledge representation formalisms commonly adopted in this field do not allow for the representation of concepts in terms of typical traits. However, the need of representing concepts in terms of typical traits concerns almost every domain of real world knowledge, including medical domains. In particular, in this article we take into account the domain of mental disorders, starting from the DSM-5 descriptions of some specific mental disorders. On this respect, we favor a hybrid approach to the representation of psychiatric concepts, in which ontology oriented formalisms are combined to a geometric representation of knowledge based on conceptual spaces

The Clinical Utility of SUDOSCAN in Chronic Kidney Disease in Chinese Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

published_or_final_versio

Broadening Risk Factor or Disease Definition as a Driver for Overdiagnosis: A Narrative Review

Medical overuse-defined as the provision of health services for which potential harms exceed potential benefits-constitutes a paradigm of low-value care and is seen as a threat to the quality of care. Value in healthcare implies a precise definition of disease. However, defining a disease may not be straightforward since clinical data do not show discrete boundaries, calling for some clinical judgment. And, if in time a redefinition of disease is needed, it is important to recognize that it can induce overdiagnosis, the identification of medical conditions that would, otherwise, never cause any significant symptoms or lead to clinical harm. A classic example is the impact of recommendations from professional societies in the late 1990s, lowering the threshold for abnormal total cholesterol from 240 mg/dl to 200 mg/dl. Due to these changes in risk factor definition, literally overnight there were 42 million new cases eligible for treatment in the United States. The same happened with hypertension-using either the 2019 NICE guidelines or the 2018 ESC/ECC guidelines criteria for arterial hypertension, the proportion of people overdiagnosed with hypertension was calculated to be between 14% and 33%. In this review, we will start by discussing resource overuse. We then present the basis for disease definition and its conceptual problems. Finally, we will discuss the impact of changing risk factor/disease definitions in the prevalence of disease and its consequences in overdiagnosis and overtreatment (a problem particularly relevant when definitions are widened to include earlier or milder disease).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Abrasive water jet drilling of advanced sustainable bio-fibre-reinforced polymer/hybrid composites : a comprehensive analysis of machining-induced damage responses

This paper aims at investigating the effects of variable traverse speeds on machining-induced damage of fibre-reinforced composites, using the abrasive water jet (AWJ) drilling. Three different types of epoxy-based composites laminates fabricated by vacuum bagging technique containing unidirectional (UD) flax, hybrid carbon-flax and carbon fibre-reinforced composite were used. The drilling parameters used were traverse speeds of 20, 40, 60 and 80 mm/min, constant water jet pressure of 300 MPa and a hole diameter of 10 mm. The results obtained depict that the traverse speed had a significant effect with respect to both surface roughness and delamination drilling-induced damage responses. Evidently, an increase in water jet traverse speed caused an increase in both damage responses of the three samples. Significantly, the CFRP composite sample recorded the lowest surface roughness damage response, followed by C-FFRP, while FFRP exhibited the highest. However, samples of FFRP and hybrid C-FFRP recorded lowest and highest delamination damage responses, respectively. The discrepancy in both damage responses, as further validated with micrographs of colour video microscopy (CVM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray micro-computed tomography (X-ray μCT), is attributed to the different mechanical properties of the reinforced fibres, fibre orientation/ply stacking and hybridisation of the samples.Peer reviewe

Abstract Argumentation / Persuasion / Dynamics

The act of persuasion, a key component in rhetoric argumentation, may be viewed as a dynamics modifier. We extend Dung's frameworks with acts of persuasion among agents, and consider interactions among attack, persuasion and defence that have been largely unheeded so far. We characterise basic notions of admissibilities in this framework, and show a way of enriching them through, effectively, CTL (computation tree logic) encoding, which also permits importation of the theoretical results known to the logic into our argumentation frameworks. Our aim is to complement the growing interest in coordination of static and dynamic argumentation.Comment: Arisaka R., Satoh K. (2018) Abstract Argumentation / Persuasion / Dynamics. In: Miller T., Oren N., Sakurai Y., Noda I., Savarimuthu B., Cao Son T. (eds) PRIMA 2018: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11224. Springer, Cha

From design to implementation - The Joint Asia Diabetes Evaluation (JADE) program: A descriptive report of an electronic web-based diabetes management program

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Joint Asia Diabetes Evaluation (JADE) Program is a web-based program incorporating a comprehensive risk engine, care protocols, and clinical decision support to improve ambulatory diabetes care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The JADE Program uses information technology to facilitate healthcare professionals to create a diabetes registry and to deliver an evidence-based care and education protocol tailored to patients' risk profiles. With written informed consent from participating patients and care providers, all data are anonymized and stored in a databank to establish an Asian Diabetes Database for research and publication purpose.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The JADE electronic portal (e-portal: <url>http://www.jade-adf.org</url>) is implemented as a Java application using the Apache web server, the mySQL database and the Cocoon framework. The JADE e-portal comprises a risk engine which predicts 5-year probability of major clinical events based on parameters collected during an annual comprehensive assessment. Based on this risk stratification, the JADE e-portal recommends a care protocol tailored to these risk levels with decision support triggered by various risk factors. Apart from establishing a registry for quality assurance and data tracking, the JADE e-portal also displays trends of risk factor control at each visit to promote doctor-patient dialogues and to empower both parties to make informed decisions.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The JADE Program is a prototype using information technology to facilitate implementation of a comprehensive care model, as recommended by the International Diabetes Federation. It also enables health care teams to record, manage, track and analyze the clinical course and outcomes of people with diabetes.</p