Acute pancreatitis in pregnancy: a rare case report

Acute pancreatitis (AP) during pregnancy is a rare condition characterized by acute inflammation of pancreas due to premature activation of enzymes resulting in local pancreatic destruction and activation of an inflammatory cascade. This condition is most commonly caused by gall stones, hypertriglyceridemia, idiopathic factors. It’s very rare, incidence being 1 in 1000 to 1 in 12,000 pregnancies. Its more common in multigravida (75%) and relatively uncommon in first trimester. Patient usually present with acute severe pain abdomen radiating to back, nausea, vomiting, fever and anorexia. On examination there can be tachycardia, jaundice, epigastric tenderness, abdominal guarding and rigidity in severe cases. Serum amylase and lipase levels three times upper limit of normal value is diagnostic. Ultrasound remains imaging modality of choice. Vigorous fluid replacement is recommended. Prompt diagnosis and early treatment can prevent maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. 23 years primigravida with 14 weeks of pregnancy came to outpatient with nausea and vomiting (10-15 episodes per day) and pain abdomen for 3 days. On abdomen examination epigastric tenderness was present. Serum amylase was 1246 Units/litre and serum lipase was 507.3 units/litre. She was given supportive care with IV fluids. Analgesics, antiemetics and antihistaminics were given. Gradually liquids were started and she recovered in 5 days

AN OVERVIEW OF MEDICINAL VALUE OF CURCUMA SPECIES

Curcuma is a genus of about 100 accepted species in the family Zingiberaceae that contains such species as turmeric and Siam tulip. They are native to Southeast Asia, southern China, ISSN (Online): 2319-7064 ISSN (Online): 2319-7064 naturalized in other warm parts of the world such as Tropical Africa, Central America, Florida, and various islands of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans. Few known species of Curcuma with reported pharmacological activity are Curcuma longa, Curcuma aeruginosa, Curcuma pseudomontana, Curcuma aromatica, Curcuma xanthorrhiza, Curcuma zedoaria, Curcuma angustifolia. Among them, C. longa is the one species extensively studied and has ancient traditional medicinal uses. These Curcuma species have been used in traditional medicine as a household remedy for various diseases, including biliary disorders, anorexia, cough, diabetic wounds, hepatic disorders, rheumatism, and sinusitis. For the past few decades, extensive work has been done to establish the biological activities and pharmacological actions of Curcuma species and its extracts. This review article is created with an intention to give an overview on the reported research carried out on the Curcuma species such as anticancer activity, antitumor, antitubercular, antibacterial, antimicrobial, toxicity activity, and wound healing. And also, these Curcuma species can be considered as herbal medicinal plant having a plethora of research opportunities based on its traditional use and biological activity

A Study on Invisible Digital Image and Video Watermarking Techniques

Digital watermarking was introduced as a result of rapid advancement of networked multimedia systems. It had been developed to enforce copyright technologies for cover of copyright possession. This technology is first used for still images however recently they need been developed for different multimedia objects like audio, video etc. Watermarking, that belong to the information hiding field, has seen plenty of research interest. There's a lot of work begin conducted in numerous branches in this field. The image watermarking techniques might divide on the idea of domain like spatial domain or transform domain or on the basis of wavelets. The copyright protection, capacity, security, strength etc are a number of the necessary factors that are taken in account whereas the watermarking system is intended. This paper aims to produce a detailed survey of all watermarking techniques specially focuses on image watermarking types and its applications in today’s world

Importance of Spoken English Language in our Professional Development and Life

 Spoken English Language has become the life blood of our professional development and social life. In the worldwide market place spoken English has emerged as the lingua franca. There is a huge and growing demand, for training in Spoken English skills from individuals and companies in all sectors and in all parts of the world. The Importance of Spoken English Language in this age of globalization is essential. English language is the most important language of communication between different countries. UN has recognized 5 languages as its official languages one of them English takes the 1st position. English is spoken by communities on every continent and on oceanic islands in all the major oceans. English is the dominant international language in science, business, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy, and also on the Internet. In most fields of work your ability to speak English can help you advance your career; helping you get the job you want and earn more money. No matter what your area of expertise, skill in English will contribute substantially to your success. Speaking and understanding English will allow a person to communicate with each other, besides this it offers you more chances of doing professional jobs not in your own country but around the world

Assessing the predictive value of neutrophil percentage to albumin ratio for ICU admission in ischemic stroke patients

BackgroundAcute ischemic stroke (AIS) remains a substantial global health challenge, contributing to increased morbidity, disability, and mortality. This study aimed at investigating the predictive value of the neutrophil percentage to albumin ratio (NPAR) in determining intensive care unit (ICU) admission among AIS patients.MethodsA retrospective observational study was conducted, involving AIS cases admitted to a tertiary hospital in Jordan between 2015 and 2020. Lab data were collected upon admission, and the primary outcome was ICU admission during hospitalization. Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed using SPSS version 29.ResultsIn this study involving 364 AIS patients, a subset of 77 (21.2%) required admission to the ICU during their hospital stay, most frequently within the first week of admission. Univariable analysis revealed significantly higher NPAR levels in ICU-admitted ischemic stroke patients compared to those who were not admitted (23.3 vs. 15.7, p < 0.001), and multivariable regression models confirmed that higher NPAR (≥19.107) independently predicted ICU admission in ischemic stroke patients (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 4.85, 95% CI: 1.83–12.83). Additionally, lower GCS scores and higher neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) were also associated with increased likelihood of ICU admission. In terms of predictive performance, NPAR showed the highest accuracy with an AUC of 0.885, sensitivity of 0.805, and specificity of 0.854, using a cutoff value of 19.107. NPAR exhibits an AUC of 0.058, significantly outperforming NLR (Z = 2.782, p = 0.005).ConclusionNPAR emerged as a robust independent predictor of ICU admission in ischemic stroke patients, surpassing the predictive performance of the NLR

Diagnosis and treatment of stroke associated pneumonia: qualitative exploration of clinicians' practice

Background: Establishing and implementing a gold standard criteria for diagnosing and treating stroke-associated pneumonia (SAP) would have a significant positive impact on stroke outcomes and antibiotic stewardship. This study aimed to qualitatively explore current diagnostic and treatment practice for SAP among clinicians. Methods: A qualitative study was employed to conduct semi-structured interviews at the tertiary-care Jordan University Hospital. A purposive sampling technique was employed to recruit the participants, including respiratory consultants (n=3) and residents (n=9) practicing in the internal medicine wards and intensive care unit, where stroke patients are treated. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, translated, and analyzed thematically using framework analysis. Results: Clinicians expressed their experiences, which were organized into two themes and eight emerged sub-themes: Terminology and diagnostic approach of SAP involved; no definite terminology, reliance on both clinical evidence and X-ray findings to decide, reliance on clinical evidence alone to suspect SAP and initiate empirical therapy, and SAP overdiagnosis. The treatment strategies include early treatment of SAP, treating SAP the same as CAP/HAP, predominant anaerobes coverage, and SAP overtreatment. Conclusion: Our findings show a wide range of physician-based diagnostic and treatment approaches for SAP, with clinical criteria serving as the main driver for antibiotic initiation. Standard validated algorithmic-based criteria need to be established and implemented

Understanding the electromagnetic interaction of metal organic framework reactants in aqueous solution at microwave frequencies

Preparation of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) via microwave heating is becoming increasingly popular due to reduced reaction times and enhanced control of MOF particle size. However, there is little understanding about the detailed interaction of the electric field portion of the wave with reactants during the synthesis of MOFs. In order to overcome this lack of fundamental understanding, information about the dielectric properties of the reactants is required. In this work the dielectric constants (ε′) and loss factors (ε′′) of benzene-1,4-dicarboxylic acid (H2BDC; also known as terephthalic acid) and a number of M(III) (M = metal) salts dissolved in deionized water were measured as a function of frequency, temperature and concentration and with varying anions and cations. Dielectric data confirm the aqueous M(III) salts to be strong microwave absorbers, particularly at 915 MHz. M(III) salts with mono-anionic ligands (for example chlorides and nitrates) exhibit higher losses than di-anionic salts (sulfates) demonstrating that the former are heated more effectively in an applied microwave field. Of the M(III) salts containing either singly- or doubly-charged anions, those containing Fe(III) have the highest loss indicating that they will heat more efficiently than other M(III) salts such as Cr(III) and Al(III). Interestingly, H2BDC exhibits little interaction with the electric field at microwave frequencies

In vitro inhibition of biofilm and virulence factor production in azole-resistant strains of Candida albicans isolated from diabetic foot by Artemisia vulgaris stabilized tin (IV) oxide nanoparticles

The advent of nanotechnology has been instrumental in the development of new drugs with novel targets. Recently, metallic nanoparticles have emerged as potential candidates to combat the threat of drug-resistant infections. Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are one of the dreadful complications of diabetes mellitus due to the colonization of numerous drug-resistant pathogenic microbes leading to biofilm formation. Biofilms are difficult to treat due to limited penetration and non-specificity of drugs. Therefore, in the current investigation, SnO2 nanoparticles were biosynthesized using Artemisia vulgaris (AvTO-NPs) as a stabilizing agent and were characterized using ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Furthermore, the efficacy of AvTO-NPs against biofilms and virulence factors of drug-resistant Candida albicans strains isolated from DFUs was assessed. AvTO-NPs displayed minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) ranging from 1 mg/mL to 2 mg/mL against four strains of C. albicans. AvTO-NPs significantly inhibited biofilm formation by 54.8%–87%, germ tube formation by 72%–90%, cell surface hydrophobicity by 68.2%–82.8%, and exopolysaccharide (EPS) production by 69%–86.3% in the test strains at respective 1/2xMIC. Biosynthesized NPs were effective in disrupting established mature biofilms of test strains significantly. Elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in the AvTO-NPs-treated C. albicans could be the possible cause of cell death leading to biofilm inhibition. The useful insights of the present study could be exploited in the current line of treatment to mitigate the threat of biofilm-related persistent DFUs and expedite wound healing

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