Gall Bladder Calculus in reproductive age group females attending the ultrasound clinic at a tertiary care hospital: A comparative Cross-sectional study

Background: Pregnant females are at risk for cholelithiasis' progress, and the obstruction in the bile duct produced by gallstones is responsible for jaundice and abdominal pain. Objective: The objectives of the present study were to see the burden of gall stones, relation with parity, and trimester among reproductive age group females. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 467 females of age between 15 to 45 years. The gall bladder was thoroughly examined by an ultrasound probe of frequency 2-5 MHz in all planes. Results: In most females who had gallstones, single (68.8 percent) gall stone was common as compared to multiple (31.2 percent). More nonpregnant women had gall bladder stones than pregnant women (p-value <0.005). Among the current nonpregnant group, the percentage of presence of gallbladder stones was greater in the female having parity of two or more (27.4 percent) than the females having parity of less than two (8.2 percent) with p-value <0.05. Conclusion: Since Gallstones can further complicate the situation in the form of gallbladder carcinoma, and females with higher parity have more chances of developing gallstones. Therefore, it becomes necessary to know the trimester of gallstone formation and its role in the progression of symptoms

Analysis of human collagen sequences

The extracellular matrix is fast emerging as important component mediating cell-cell interactions, along with its established role as a scaffold for cell support. Collagen, being the principal component of extracellular matrix, has been implicated in a number of pathological conditions. However, collagens are complex protein structures belonging to a large family consisting of 28 members in humans; hence, there exists a lack of in depth information about their structural features. Annotating and appreciating the functions of these proteins is possible with the help of the numerous biocomputational tools that are currently available. This study reports a comparative analysis and characterization of the alpha-1 chain of human collagen sequences. Physico-chemical, secondary structural, functional and phylogenetic classification was carried out, based on which, collagens 12, 14 and 20, which belong to the FACIT collagen family, have been identified as potential players in diseased conditions, owing to certain atypical properties such as very high aliphatic index, low percentage of glycine and proline residues and their proximity in evolutionary history. These collagen molecules might be important candidates to be investigated further for their role in skeletal disorders

Preliminary Research on a COVID-19 Test Strategy to Guide Quarantine Interval in University Students

Following COVID-19 exposure, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends a 10–14-day quarantine for asymptomatic individuals and more recently a 7-day quarantine with a negative PCR test. A university-based prospective cohort study to determine if early polymerase chain reaction (PCR) negativity predicts day 14 negativity was performed. A total of 741 asymptomatic students in quarantine was screened and 101 enrolled. Nasopharyngeal swabs were tested on days 3 or 4, 5, 7, 10, and 14, and the proportion of concordant negative results for each day versus day 14 with a two-sided 95% exact binomial confidence interval was determined. Rates of concordant negative test results were as follows: day 5 vs. day 14 = 45/50 (90%, 95% CI: 78–97%); day 7 vs. day 14 = 47/52 (90%, 95% CI: 79–97%); day 10 vs. day 14 = 48/53 (91%, 95% CI:79–97%), with no evidence of different negative rates between earlier days and day 14 by McNemar’s test, p \u3e 0.05. Overall, 14 of 90 (16%, 95% CI: 9–25%) tested positive while in quarantine, with seven initial positive tests on day 3 or 4, 5 on day 5, 2 on day 7, and none on day 10 or 14. Based on concordance rates between day 7 and 14, we anticipate that 90% (range: 79–97%) of individuals who are negative on day 7 will remain negative on day 14, providing the first direct evidence that exposed asymptomatic students ages 18–44 years in a university setting are at low risk if released from quarantine at 7 days if they have a negative PCR test prior to release. In addition, the 16% positive rate supports the ongoing need to quarantine close contacts of COVID-19 cases

Data-mining of potential antitubercular activities from molecular ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines

Background. Traditional Chinese medicine encompasses a well established alternate system of medicine based on a broad range of herbal formulations and is practiced extensively in the region for the treatment of a wide variety of diseases. In recent years, several reports describe in depth studies of the molecular ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines on the biological activities including anti-bacterial activities. The availability of a well-curated dataset of molecular ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines and accurate in-silico cheminformatics models for data mining for antitubercular agents and computational filters to prioritize molecules has prompted us to search for potential hits from these datasets.Results. We used a consensus approach to predict molecules with potential antitubercular activities from a large dataset of molecular ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines available in the public domain. We further prioritized 160 molecules based on five computational filters (SMARTSfilter) so as to avoid potentially undesirable molecules. We further examined the molecules for permeability across Mycobacterial cell wall and for potential activities against non-replicating and drug tolerant Mycobacteria. Additional in-depth literature surveys for the reported antitubercular activities of the molecular ingredients and their sources were considered for drawing support to prioritization.Conclusions. Our analysis suggests that datasets of molecular ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines offer a new opportunity to mine for potential biological activities. In this report, we suggest a proof-of-concept methodology to prioritize molecules for further experimental assays using a variety of computational tools. We also additionally suggest that a subset of prioritized molecules could be used for evaluation for tuberculosis due to their additional effect against non-replicating tuberculosis as well as the additional hepato-protection offered by the source of these ingredients

The ontologies community of practice: a CGIAR initiative for Big Data in agrifood systems

Heterogeneous and multidisciplinary data generated by research on sustainable global agriculture and agrifood systems requires quality data labeling or annotation in order to be interoperable. As recommended by the FAIR principles, data, labels, and metadata must use controlled vocabularies and ontologies that are popular in the knowledge domain and commonly used by the community. Despite the existence of robust ontologies in the Life Sciences, there is currently no comprehensive full set of ontologies recommended for data annotation across agricultural research disciplines. In this paper, we discuss the added value of the Ontologies Community of Practice (CoP) of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture for harnessing relevant expertise in ontology development and identifying innovative solutions that support quality data annotation. The Ontologies CoP stimulates knowledge sharing among stakeholders, such as researchers, data managers, domain experts, experts in ontology design, and platform development teams

Expanding the Color Spectrum: increasing on-screen colorblindness accessibility through personalized color selection

Although there exist tools to help colorblind individuals have better access to technology, there are many problems and limitations with the current solutions, especially for individuals with less common forms of colorblindness. We created Rangeen, a macOS application that aims to address these limitations. Our goals were to avoid constraining users with pre-set colorblindness categories, apply to the entire system rather than just browsers, and be created in a way that is intuitive to use and pleasing to the eye. We tested our final version of Rangeen with 7 users, and 5 of them reported that they would definitely use a product like this. Future work includes improving interactivity, creating options for saving images, building a phone app version, and enhancing the user interface further

Haploidentical Transplantation in Children with Acute Leukemia: The Unresolved Issues

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) remains a curative option for children with high risk and advanced acute leukemia. Yet availability of matched family donor limits its use and although matched unrelated donor or mismatched umbilical cord blood (UCB) are viable options, they fail to meet the global need. Haploidentical family donor is almost universally available and is emerging as the alternate donor of choice in adult patients. However, the same is not true in the case of children. The studies of haploidentical HSCT in children are largely limited to T cell depleted grafts with not so encouraging results in advanced leukemia. At the same time, emerging data from UCBT are challenging the existing paradigm of less stringent HLA match requirements as perceived in the past. The use of posttransplantation cyclophosphamide (PTCY) has yielded encouraging results in adults, but data in children is sorely lacking. Our experience of using PTCY based haploidentical HSCT in children shows inadequacy of this approach in younger children compared to excellent outcome in older children. In this context, we discuss the current status of haploidentical HSCT in children with acute leukemia in a global perspective and dwell on its future prospects

Haploidentical Transplantation in Children with Acute Leukemia: The Unresolved Issues

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) remains a curative option for children with high risk and advanced acute leukemia. Yet availability of matched family donor limits its use and although matched unrelated donor or mismatched umbilical cord blood (UCB) are viable options, they fail to meet the global need. Haploidentical family donor is almost universally available and is emerging as the alternate donor of choice in adult patients. However, the same is not true in the case of children. The studies of haploidentical HSCT in children are largely limited to T cell depleted grafts with not so encouraging results in advanced leukemia. At the same time, emerging data from UCBT are challenging the existing paradigm of less stringent HLA match requirements as perceived in the past. The use of posttransplantation cyclophosphamide (PTCY) has yielded encouraging results in adults, but data in children is sorely lacking. Our experience of using PTCY based haploidentical HSCT in children shows inadequacy of this approach in younger children compared to excellent outcome in older children. In this context, we discuss the current status of haploidentical HSCT in children with acute leukemia in a global perspective and dwell on its future prospects