Saliva Testing: A New Tool added to the Pathologist’s Armamentarium

Saliva harbors a wide spectrum of proteins/ peptides, nucleic acids, electrolytes, and hormones, that originate from multiple local and systemic sources. Research has identified many of these biomolecules as disease specific, which, along with recent availability of highly sensitive detection technology, has become the driving force for the development of saliva based diagnostic tools. Although saliva offers many advantages over blood, including ease of collection and minimal risk of contracting infections, there are some limitations in its application in clinical setting. These include diurnal variation in salivary composition, influenced by the method of collection, and 1000 folds less concentration of salivary biomolecules as compared to blood etc. Studies have shown mixed results regarding the clinical relevance of analytical tools developed so far. There is a need for further round robin testing, validation studies for reproducibility, sensitivity and specificity and clinical trials on large number of patients. The development of specific and standardized analytical tools, establishing reference ranges, individual cut- off values, and standardization of collection devices and methods will be other major challenges. In future we are likely to see the increased utilization of saliva as a diagnostic fluid in routine clinical practice and it may become the first choice over blood, especially in some specific situations such as in obese and hemophilic patient

COVID Infodemic is turning public into Covidiots: What can be done?

An unprecedented pandemic of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID 19) has overwhelmed the health systems of countries across the world. The government and other scientific bodies are providing authentic information to educate the public and promote desirable behavior to prevent new infections and reduce deaths.  COVID-19 pandemic is the first in human history in which social media and new digital technologies are being used as key tools to inform the public. However, there is a lot of misinformation also being spread through these channels. Misinformation is false, inaccurate, or misleading information that is communicated regardless of an intention to deceive. Access to social media has improved substantially, which has contributed to spread of misinformation. Today, anybody can write anything on social media such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube etc without any evidence or falsely attribute the wrong information to well-known experts or renowned institutions. They may be doing it to support their own biases or malign the government purposefully or innocently without checking authenticity. The number of mentions in media for Ebola were 11.1 million, for MERS, 23.2 million, HIV, 40 million, SARS, 56.2 million and COVID19 it has crossed 1.1 billion.3. A google search for COVID 19 on 08 June 2021 gave 5340 million hits compared to 216 million for a much older disease HIV/AIDS. This editorial is an attempt to help spot the false information and deal with it

Importance of Talk and Chalk Method of Teaching: Dental Students’ view in Preclinical Years

Introduction: New teaching techniques are emerging with increasing use of computer and advancement of technology. There is a dilemma in the minds of senior teachers whether to totally abandon traditional method of “talk and chalk” and use power point method for lecture delivery. It is important to know the students’ perception regarding their preference of the teaching method to help them to learn and score better.Methods: The opinion of first year dental students was sought in the classroom after one month of teaching physiology by different teachers using talk and chalk or power point method. A pretested questionnaire was used to collect the opinion of 400 students over the period of 8 years.Results: Majority (95%) students preferred the lecture by conventional “Talk and chalk” method over the power point presentation. About 15% were of the opinion that the teaching should be by conventional lecture by “talk and chalk” but diagrams should be shown by power point slides.Conclusion: The present study shows that for effective learning and teaching the conventional method of talk and chalk lectures should be combined wherever necessary with newer techniques like power point presentations

To Lie or Not to Lie: Revisiting Albert Camus’ The Outsider

Meursault is different. He will not lie. He will not pretend. He is true to himself. So when his mother dies and he is unmoved, he refuses to do the proper thing and grieve. Returning to his native place after the funeral, he carries on life as usual until he becomes involved in a climatic murder scene. In court, it is clear that Meursault’s guilt or innocence will not be determined by what he did or did not do. He is on trial for being different- an outsider. For example in court when the police man asked Meursault if “he is ‘nervous’. He said no. Infact, in a way it would be interesting to watch a trail” (Camus, The Outsider 81)

Educational needs and causes of false diagnosis of atypical squamous cells of unknown significance at a university hospital

The entity of atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) in The Bethesda System 2001 for reporting cervical cytology is characterized by equivocal diagnosis, poor reproducibility and debatable management. This retrospective study was done to analyse the causes of false ASCUS if any and identify the educational needs as part of quality assurance programme. Cervical smears of all ASCUS cases reported over the one-year period were reviewed by the Cytopathologist. Relevant clinical data was retrieved. ASCUS was the most common type of abnormality representing 43.0 % cases among 294 abnormal smears reported during study period. 16.0% cases were found to be non ASCUS on review. The main four causes of over use of ASCUS diagnosis were poor quality smears and cellular atypia associated with Candida infection, atrophy and squamous metaplasia. Educational measures are being undertaken to avoid over diagnosis and improve the patient management (Afr J Reprod Health 2011; 15[1]: 111-114)

Diagnosis of Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis on Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology: A Case Report and Review of the Cytology Literature

A case of multifocal Langerhans cell histiocytosis in a two-year-old child is presented where fine needle aspiration was helpful in achieving a rapid and accurate diagnosis in an appropriate clinical and radiological setting. This can avoid unnecessary biopsy and guide the management especially where access to histopathology is limited. The highly characteristic common and rare cytological features are highlighted with focus on differential diagnoses and causes of pitfalls

Role of Vitamin D from sun in breast cancer Prevention

For our vitamin-D needs the solar ultraviolet B photons (290-315 nm) penetrates into the skin where they cause the photolysis of 7-dehydrocholesterol to precholecalciferol. Once formed, precholecalciferol undergoes a thermally induced rearrangement of its double bonds to form cholecalciferol.The majority of South Asians never reached sufficiency in vitamin D status. Lifestyle differences, with lower oral intake, sun exposure and rates of cutaneous production due to darker skin, indicate that standard advice on obtaining sufficient vitamin D needs modification for the South Asian community. This becomes more important when required for cancer prevention. In view of ample evidences,1-6 of protective role of sun exposure especially in breast cancer as it raises vitamin D leve7, It is felt that there is need that it be highlighted in cancer preventionguidelines. There is need to generate country/region specific data also to document quantitative narration ontime and type of sun exposure for cancer prevention. Serum vitamin D status of American people using data of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2012 in USA(NHANES)8reported serum 25 (OH) D among 20-49 yrs age group (n=5454) 62.06±0.84 nmol/L, higher than average 25nmol/L in south Asian population in this report. Some of the reasons for low vitamin D are old age, female gender, high altitude, dark skin, less sun light, dietary habits and absence of vitamin D in diet

Multilingual Speaker Identification using analysis of Pitch and Formant frequencies

In the modern digital automated world, speaker identification system plays a very important role in the field of fast growing internet based communications. In India there are many people who are bi-lingual or multilingual, so the requirements to design such system which is used to identify the multilingual speakers. Present paper explores the idea to identify multi-lingual person by basic features. For this the speech signals of three indian languages i.e Hindi, Marathi and Rajasthani are recorded and basic features pitch, first three formant frequency calculated from PRAAT software. The observation has been presented that the pitch and first three formant frequencies F1,F2 and F3 of speaker are increases when speaker change the language from rajasthani to hindi to marathi. The percentage deviation in pitch as well as formant frequencies for Rajasthani and Marathi from hindi are positive and negative respectively for utterance “p”. Similar analysis has been perform for ’k aand >. This observation will help to make such system which is used to identify the speaker in multilingual environments

Analyzing The Effect of Alternative Banking Channels on the Employees Productivity of the Commercial Banks: Evidence from the State Bank of India

Alternative Banking Channel is a branchless access channel to banking institutions at a lower cost, convenience, high subscription rate, faster transaction speed, and expanded income sources. The purpose of this study is to look on the other side also i.e. the productivity of the employees. For the study, State Bank of India has been selected (largest Public Sector Bank of India). Only secondary sources such as annual reports, published publications, conference papers, books, and banking websites were used to obtain the data. With the help of regression model, an attempt has been made to analyze the impact of alternative banking channels on the productivity of SBI's employees. According to this research, the rate of use of ABC products such as Online Banking, ATM Card, POS, Internet Banking, Mobile-Cash, Electronic Fund Transfer, and Real-Time Gross Settlement is increasing which has not only boosted the profitability of SBI but also increased the Business productivity of employees