Utilization patterns of antihypertensive drugs in the management of hypertension among patients with chronic kidney disease at a tertiary hospital

Background: Objective of the current investigation was to identify the utilization patterns of antihypertensive drugs among hypertensive patients with chronic kidney disease at Sultan Qaboos university hospital.Methods: This is a retrospective study of the utilization patterns of antihypertensive drugs that were prescribed to 181 hypertensive patients with CKD. Patients’ data and drugs’ data were collected from the hospital track care system and analysed.Results: The results show that diuretics were prescribed for 63.53% of the patients followed by β-blockers (61.3%). Drugs were prescribed orally to 90% of the patients. Furosemide was prescribed to 55.8% of patients followed by amlodipine (55.2%). The majority of the patients were on multiple antihypertensive medications (84%). There was no significant difference between drug utilization in patients with albuminuria and those without albuminuria. Among patients with CKD stages two and three, β-blockers were the most common antihypertensive drugs being utilized. Among patients with stage 4 and stage 5, calcium channel blockers and diuretics were the most common antihypertensive drugs being utilized. The prescription of angiotensin II receptor blockers and direct vasodilators showed a significant difference among different stages of CKD.Conclusions: This study showed that diuretics were the most commonly prescribed antihypertensive drugs among the study cohort. The majority of the patients were on multiple antihypertensive medications

A Systematic Review of the Selected Evidences on the Effectiveness of Inter-professional Education (IPE) in Developing Interprofessional Learning Environment

Purpose: This systematic review aimed to provide available evidence in determining for the effectiveness of IPE as a modality in developing interprofessional learning environment for healthcare students.Methods: The computerized searches from 2009-2015 in ten electronic databases were performed. Two independent reviewers were consulted to assess the eligibility, level of evidences and methodological quality in each study. Result: nine out of ten studies were retrieved. These studies include (a) two RCT studies; scored eight and seven out of eight, (b) Three quasi-experimental pretestposttest design; scored seven, six, and six out of eight, (c) Three controlled before and after study; scored six, six, five and five out of eight, and (d) one controlled longitudinal; scored six out of eight respectively.Conclusion: Based on the systematic review, evidence showed that IPE was effective in building strong interprofessional learning environment. On the other hand, the authors recommend considering conduct of similar systematic review grounded on IPE with larger sample size within the health allied discipline

FLOW INJECTION SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC DETERMINATION OF NARINGENIN IN SUPPLEMENTS USING SOLID-PHASE REACTOR CONTAINING IMMOBILIZED MANGANESE DIOXIDE

Objective: Naringenin (NAR) is a part of the human daily diet, and it plays an important role in human health for its biological functions. This study describes a new, sensitive, simple, and accurate method for determining NAR in supplements.Methods: The method is based on oxidative coupling reaction between NAR and N, N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamine in an alkaline medium using manganese dioxide immobilized in cellulose acetate as online oxidant agent to form a colored product which can be monitored at λ max598 nm. Results: Several operating parameters such as reactor column length, particles size, chemicals, and physicals reaction conditions were studied. The proposed method was sensitive and good repeatable, the linear range of NAR concentration was from 1 to 70 μg/ml with a limit of detection of 0.292 μg/ml, and recovery range of analysis was 99.55–100.48%. Conclusion: The proposed method was successfully applied for determining NAR in supplements

A feature extraction method for Arabic Offline Handwritten Recognition System using Naïve Bayes classifier

Handwriting recognition in the Arabic language is considered one of the most challenging problems and the accuracies in recognizing still need more enhancements due to the Arabic character’s nature, cursive writing, style, and size of writing in contrast to working with other languages. In this paper, we propose a system for Arabic Offline Handwritten Character Recognition based on Naïve Bayes classifier (NB). Extraction features preceded by divided the image of character into three horizontal and vertical zones and 3x3 zones in one and two dimensions respectively, then classified by Naïve Bayes. The performance of the system proposes evaluated by using the benchmark CENPARMI database reached up to 97.05% accuracy rate. Experimental results confirm a high enhancement inaccuracy rate in comparison with other Arabic Optical Character Recognition systems

Biotic and Abiotic Stresses of Major Fruit Crops in Oman: A Review

Oman is located in an arid region of the world that is characterized by adverse climatic conditions, including heat and drought. In recent years, it has also been affected by climate turbulence and the occurrence of severe weather, such as cyclones and heat/cold waves affecting large agricultural areas of the country. Fruit cultivation area represents 31% of the total cultivated area (97,239.58 ha) in the country. However, the production share is only 17% of the total crop production in the country (2.6 million tons). About 90% of the fruit cultivation area is dominated by date palm, banana, lime, and mango. In addition to the abiotic stresses, such as drought, heat, and salinity, major fruit crops have declined in recent years due to various biotic stressors, primarily insect pests, and diseases. For several decades, the date palm has suffered from the Dubas bug and in recent years from Red Palm Weevil. Lime has been infected with Witch’s Broom Disease of Lime (WBDL) caused by ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma aurantifolia’ that has led to the decline of production to 25% from its peak in the nineties. Banana is Oman`s second-largest fruit crop in production and export. It has also been the subject of studies due to losses incurred by farmers during pre-and post-harvest stages, in addition to several pests and diseases that affect bananas in Oman. Mango is another major fruit crop that is primarily cultivated in northern Oman. Severe infection with mango decline has led to the eradication of mango orchards from many regions of Oman, particularly in Batinah Coast, where increased salinity has led to a decline in mango yield. Research conducted in Oman has investigated several aspects of these challenges. This review paper summarizes the outcome from studies conducted in the country and proposes directions towards resolving current and future challenges to the fruit industry

Mechanical and Physical Properties of Nano Carbon Tube with Carbon Fiber Reinforced with Polyester Resin

In this research, study some physical and mechanical properties of polymernano composites. The polymernano composites based on unsaturated polyester resin reinforced with carbon fibers (C.F). The samples are attended by hand lay – up method. The samples constituent were polyester resin as matrix with 3% volume fraction from carbon fiber and (0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2 %( volume fractions of carbon nanotube. The water absorption, hardness (shore D), flexural test, impact test and toughness fracture properties are studied. Results showed that water absorption increase with addition 3% volume fraction of carbon fiber and Carbon Nanotube, the sample (polyester+3%C.F+0.5% CNTs) has lower water absorption than other samples. The hardness (shore D), flexural test, impact testand toughness fracture for the sample (polyester+3%C.F+0.5% CNTs) has higher value for Nano- composites

Classifying The Shape Of Aggregate Using Hybrid Multilayered Perceptron Network.

In concrete production, shape of aggregate reflects the quality of concrete produced. The well-shaped aggregates are said to produce high quality concrete by reducing water to cement ratio. On the contrary, poor-shaped aggregates often require higher water to cement ratio in concrete production

Low-cost activated carbon production from organic waste and its utilization for wastewater treatment

In the present study, organic waste materials, like coconut shell, orange peels, and banana peels were used to produce activated carbon. Chemical activation was carried out using phosphoric acid (H3PO4). The activation temperatures were selected at the range of 200–300 °C. Surface morphology of the different activated carbon derived from the different waste materials was investigated using scanning electron microscope. Pollution removal efficiency of different activated carbons was carried out by Jar test. The jar test was carried out at 120 rpm, at 20 °C temperature for 1 h. Three different sizes; 75 μm, 150 μm and 425 μm, and three concentration; 100 mg/l, 200 mg/l and 500 mg/l of the activated carbon were selected for the pollution removal experiments. Water quality parameters like pH, TSS, and COD were analyzed using standard AWWA/APHA methods to know the pollution removal efficiency. COD removal varies from 48 to 99% in different activated carbon at different size and concentration. TSS removal varies from 43 to 100% by different activated carbon. The highest adsorption was observed by 75 µm activated carbon. Among all the experimented materials activated carbon made from orange peels performed better than others possibly due to the formation of more C–O and C=O functional groups due to the presence of more carbon and oxygen elements than others. This study opens a new way of wastewater treatment in Oman by using low-cost activated carbon made from locally available organic waste and at the same time, it shall help in managing organic waste