The measurement of mental fatigue following an overnight on-call duty among doctors using electroencephalogram

This study aimed to measure the spectral power differences in the brain rhythms among a group of hospital doctors before and after an overnight on-call duty. Thirty-two healthy doctors who performed regular on-call duty in a tertiary hospital in Sarawak, Malaysia were voluntarily recruited into this study. All participants were interviewed to collect relevant background information, followed by a self-administered questionnaire using Chalder Fatigue Scale and electroencephalogram test before and after an overnight on-call duty. The average overnight sleep duration during the on-call period was 2.2 hours (p<0.001, significantly shorter than usual sleep duration) among the participants. The mean (SD) Chalder Fatigue Scale score of the participants were 10.8 (5.3) before on-call and 18.4 (6.6) after on-call (p-value < 0.001). The theta rhythm showed significant increase in spectral power globally after an overnight on-call duty, especially when measured at eye closure. In contrast, the alpha and beta rhythms showed reduction in spectral power, significantly at temporal region, at eye closure, following an overnight on-call duty. These effects are more statistically significant when we derived the respective relative theta, alpha, and beta values. The finding of this study could be useful for development of electroencephalogram screening tool to detect mental fatigue

Pegylated granulocyte colony stimulating factor versus nonpegylated granulocyte colony stimulating factor for patients after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (Protocol)

This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: To compare the efficacy and safety of pegylated G-CSF versus non-pegylated G-CSF for patients after HSCT

Aleukemic bcr-abl positive granulocytic sarcoma

Granulocytic sarcoma (GS) can occur de novo or in association with intramedullary myeloid disorders. With the advent of sophisticated molecular detection techniques to detect diagnostic genes such as bcrabl, PML-RARAandCBFB/MYH11 in bone marrowor peripheral blood,many cases of the so called ‘primary’ GS are questionable. We report a case of primary GS where the tumor mass bcr-abl translocation was demonstrated by fluorescent in situ hybridization in which there was no evidence of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). This is an important finding as it highlights the possibility that CML may present as a sole extramedullary form, and illustrates potential treatment by tyrosine kinase inhibitor

Parental affordability and willingness to pay for universal masking amongst government school students in Kuching, Sarawak

Introduction: Financial affordability to purchase commodities for disease prevention is an important public health issue. The objective of this paper is to report the financial affordability and willingness to pay amongst the parents of government students for their children’s nonmedical mask use, using a newly created Household Face Mask Affordability Questionnaire (MAQ). Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study involving the parents or guardians of 50.6% (44/87) government schools in the whole of Kuching Division of Sarawak. The sampling method was multistage cluster sampling, whereby stage one involved random sampling of 49.2% (30/61) primary schools and 53.8% (14/46) secondary schools in the Kuching Division, followed by stage two cluster sampling of one class per non-examination standard in each randomly sampled school. All students in the sampled classes were asked to bring a face-validated questionnaire (MAQ) back home to be answered by one of their parents or a guardian. A total of 2559 out of 3661 distributed questionnaires were collected, with a response rate of 70%. The data collection period was between April and June of 2022 so as the recall bias of the information collected, especially on the actual spending on the face masks for the school going students, was minimised. The relevant summary statistics for self-perceived face masks characteristics, face mask expenses, affordability and willingness to pay were calculated. We regress separately the monthly affordability and willingness to pay amount against age, occupation, marital status, total number of children, monthly income and monthly saving to build predictive models for affordability and willingness to pay amount per child per month. Results: The average Scale-level Face Validity Indexes for all aspects of validity (clarity, comprehension, relevancy, representativeness) are high (0.91 to 1.00) for MAQ. Most of the respondents were mothers, married, working as private employees with a mean age of 41 and belonged to the B40 and M40 group. The average monthly saving per family was RM540, which was about 15% of the total income. The average actual monthly spending to purchase face masks for one child is RM24. On average, a family can afford to pay RM23.80 for one child per month to purchase face masks. The willingness to pay for the same was RM25.27. The median affordability, willingness to pay and actual spending for face masks per child was RM16.67 per month. Taking 75th percentile as the reasonable maximum expenses per child for face masks per month, the affordable amount by most parents is RM30, with the willingness to pay at 10% higher. Affordability to purchase a face mask is influenced by the marital status, occupation, income, saving and the number of dependent of the breadwinner of a household. The most important face mask characteristics expected by the parents are better filtration efficiency and easier breathability. Conclusion: The affordability and willingness to pay the amount to purchase face masks amongst parents of government students in Sarawak were RM30 and RM33 per child per month, respectively

Systematic review of pre-clinical chronic myeloid leukaemia

The author would like to correct the error in the publication of the original article. The corrected detail is given below for your reading: The first sentence in the last paragraph on page 481 in ‘‘Discussion’’ section under the subheading “Overall completeness and applicability of evidence” should read as “Clonal haematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) was first named in 2015 [27].

Systematic Review of Normal Subjects Harbouring BCR-ABL1 Fusion Gene

The treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) requires quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to monitor BCR-ABL1 in International Scale (IS). Some normal subjects were found to harbour BCR-ABL1. We performed a systematic review on normal subjects harbouring BCR-ABL1. A literature search was done on July 16, 2017 using EBSCOhost Research Databases interface and Western Pacific Region Index Medicus. Two authors selected the studies, extracted the data, and evaluated the quality of studies using the modified Appraisal Tool for Cross-Sectional Studies independently. The outcomes were prevalence, level of BCR-ABL1IS, proportion, and time of progression to CML. The initial search returned 4,770 studies. Eleven studies, all having used convenient sampling, were included, with total of 1,360 subjects. Ten studies used qualitative PCR and one used qPCR (not IS). The mean prevalence of M-BCR was 5.9, 15.5, and 15.9% in cord blood/newborns/infants (CB/NB/I) (n = 170), children (n = 90), and adults (n = 454), respectively, while m-BCR was 15, 26.9, and 23.1% in CB/NB/I (n = 786), children (n = 67), and adults (n = 208), respectively. No study reported the proportion and time of progression to CML. Nine studies were graded as moderate quality, one study as poor quality, and one study as unacceptable. The result of the studies could neither be inferred to the general normal population nor compared. Follow-up data were scarc

The epidemiology of haematological cancers in Sarawak, Malaysia (1996 to 2015)

Background Published epidemiological studies of haematological cancers are few. Hereby we present a 20-year epidemiological data of haematological cancers in Sarawak from a population-based cancer registry. Methods Haematological cancer cases with ICD-10 coded C81-C96 and ICD-O coded /3 diagnosed from 1996 to 2015 were retrieved from Sarawak Cancer Registry. Adult was defined as those 15 years and above. Incidence rate (IR) was calculated based on yearly Sarawak citizen population stratified to age, gender, and ethnic groups. Age-standardised IR (ASR) was calculated using Segi World Standard Population. Results A total of 3,947 cases were retrieved and analysed. ASR was 10 and male predominance (IR ratio 1.32, 95%CI 1.24,1.41). Haematological cancers generally had a U-shaped distribution with lowest IR at age 10–14 years and exponential increment from age 40 years onwards, except acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) with highest IR in paediatric 2.8 versus adult 0.5. There was a significant difference in ethnic and specific categories of haematological cancers, of which, in general, Bidayuh (IR ratio 1.13, 95%CI 1.00, 1.27) and Melanau (IR ratio 0.54, 95%CI 0.45, 0.65) had the highest and lowest ethnic-specific IR, respectively, in comparison to Malay. The ASR (non-Hodgkin lymphoma, acute myeloid leukaemia, ALL, chronic myeloid leukaemia, and plasma cell neoplasm) showed a decreasing trend over the 20 years, -2.09 in general, while Hodgkin lymphoma showed an increasing trend of+2.80. There was crude rate difference between the 11 administrative divisions of Sarawak. Conclusions This study provided the IR and ASR of haematological cancers in Sarawak for comparison to other regions of the world. Ethnic diversity in Sarawak resulted in significant differences in IR and ASR