Fungal Species Detection in Onychomycosis by Culture and Direct Microscopy at Tertiary Care Hospital, Bahawalpur, Pakistan

Background: Fungal nail infection is common clinically identified in OPD irrespective of age and gender in our population. The treatment is initiated that mostly resistant to overcome the problem. A mycological confirmation is valuable to eradicate the disease as usefulness of antifungal against particular fungi. The laboratory diagnosis like microscopy and culture to identify the species level.   Objective: This study was aimed as comparison of mycological culture with KOH mount microscopy of nail infections. Study Design:  comparative cross sectional study. Duration:1st July, 2018 to 31th July 2021 Setting: 360 clinically diagnosed cases collected from Dermatology OPD –removed for blind review— Method: The nail specimen was directly inoculated on SDA culture media and aerobically incubate at 25 Ć to 30 Ć for 3 to 4 weeks. The growth was identified on colony characteristics by using of cotton blue stains. Whereas nail is immersed in 20% KOH solution. Microscopic study was revealed the hyphae or spores and that considered as a positive for test. Result: out of three hundred sixty cases the culture positivity was 56.94% specimen while KOH mount were positive in 60.83% specimens and combination of Culture with KOH were 66.67%. Conclusion: Combination of fungal culture and KOH mount microscopy is subtle laboratory methods for eradication of onychomycosis precisely. The sensitivity of diagnosis that limit the complications and quality of public health considerably raised.   Key words: SDA (Sabouraud's dextrose agar), KOH (Potassium hydroxide). Mycological culture and Outpatient Department (OPD)

Fungal Species Detection in Onychomycosis by Culture and Direct Microscopy at Tertiary Care Hospital, Bahawalpur, Pakistan

Background: Fungal nail infection is common clinically identified in OPD irrespective of age and gender in our population. The treatment is initiated that mostly resistant to overcome the problem. A mycological confirmation is valuable to eradicate the disease as usefulness of antifungal against particular fungi. The laboratory diagnosis like microscopy and culture to identify the species level.   Objective: This study was aimed as comparison of mycological culture with KOH mount microscopy of nail infections. Study Design:  comparative cross sectional study. Duration:1st July, 2018 to 31th July 2021 Setting: 360 clinically diagnosed cases collected from Dermatology OPD –removed for blind review— Method: The nail specimen was directly inoculated on SDA culture media and aerobically incubate at 25 Ć to 30 Ć for 3 to 4 weeks. The growth was identified on colony characteristics by using of cotton blue stains. Whereas nail is immersed in 20% KOH solution. Microscopic study was revealed the hyphae or spores and that considered as a positive for test. Result: out of three hundred sixty cases the culture positivity was 56.94% specimen while KOH mount were positive in 60.83% specimens and combination of Culture with KOH were 66.67%. Conclusion: Combination of fungal culture and KOH mount microscopy is subtle laboratory methods for eradication of onychomycosis precisely. The sensitivity of diagnosis that limit the complications and quality of public health considerably raised.   Key words: SDA (Sabouraud's dextrose agar), KOH (Potassium hydroxide). Mycological culture and Outpatient Department (OPD)

Clinical severity spectrum of re-infected cov-19 patients in Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa (KPK)

Background: Re-infection is infection likely to occurred second time. Recently due to increase in the pandemic of SARS COV-2 there were increased in cases of re-infection but the clinically severity spectrum of re-infection is unknown. This study is design to determine clinical severity of re-infected COV-19 patients. Material and methodology: This comparative cross-sectional study was conducted in pathology department of Rehman Medical Institute Peshawar Pakistan and Leady Reading Hospital Peshawar within duration of 6 months (February-July 2021). Inclusion criteria: Patients who were re-infected by SARS COV-2 and having duration between primary infection and re-infection are > 30 days were included. Exclusion criteria: Unwilling patient to give data and patients having duration between primary infection and re-infection is<30 days were excluded from the study. Sample size: Total 32 samples were collected by designing proper Questionnaire according to the criteria of (World Health Organization). The collected data will be analyzed through SPSS version 22. The frequencies, mean, standard deviation of data was performed by descriptive statistics in SPSS. Result: Out of 32 primary SARS COV-2 infected individuals, 20 have mild infection while in same 32 re-infected SARS COV-2 individuals 19 individuals have severe symptoms in its secondary infection with mean age (32years) of individuals. Conclusion: In current study by comparing primary symptoms of SARS COV-2 infected individuals with symptoms of Re-infected individuals, symptoms are mild and severe respectively. Hence, re-infection cause by SARS COV-2 is more severe than primary infectio

Principle and Development of Phage-Based Biosensors

Detection and identification of pathogenic bacteria is important in the field of public health, medicine, food safety, environmental monitoring and security. Worldwide, the common cause of mortality and morbidity is bacterial infection often due to misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis. Existing bacterial detection methods rely on conventional culture or microscopic techniques and molecular methods that often time consuming, laborious and expensive, or need trained users. In recent years, biosensor remained an interesting topic for bacterial detection and many biosensors involving different bio-probes have been reported. Compared to antibodies, nucleic acids and enzymes etc., based biosensors, bacteriophages can be cheaply produced and are relatively much stable to elevated temperature, extreme pH, and diverse ionic strength. Therefore, there is an urgent need for phage-based biosensor for bacterial pathogen detection. Furthermore, bearing high affinity and specificity, bacteriophages are perfect bio-recognition probes in biosensor development for bacterial detection. In this regard, active and oriented phages immobilization is the key step toward phage-based biosensor development. This chapter compares different bacterial detection techniques, and introduces the basic of biosensor and different bio-probes involved in biosensor development. Further we highlight the involvement and importance of phages in biosensor and finally we briefed different phage immobilization approaches used in development of phage-based biosensors

IMPACT OF MICROFINANCE ON POVERTY: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL PAKISTAN

This study aims at finding out the socio-economic impact of micro finance services, offered by MFIs, in one of the poorest districts of Pakistan. A sample of 344 respondents has been selected for this purpose. The study takes children's nutrition and education expenditures, savings of clients and investment of loan as explained variables. Our findings show that microfinance services have myriad influences on subsistence of the poor. Though respondents have concerns over the performance of MFIs, the overall impact goes in concord with results of previous studies. This study validates the relationship between microfinance and poverty alleviation

Applications of Phage-Based Biosensors in the Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases, Food Safety, and Environmental Monitoring

Environmental pollution and food safety are becoming serious concerns to human health in developing countries. To combat such issues, researchers have developed different approaches for on-spot detection and screening of infectious disease, caused by pathogens and toxins in food and water samples. One such approach is the development of phage- and phage-component-based sensors that are highly specific, sensitive, rapid, efficient, cheap, and portable analyte screening platforms. Such sensors overcome the limitations of conventional screening approaches. This chapter highlights different food and environmental contaminations and represents the potential of phage-based biosensor for bacterial detection. It summarizes different applications of phage-based sensors in the fields of food safety and environmental monitoring and highlights current challenges and perspective. In general, this chapter brings together the technologies related to phage-based sensors and food and environmental safety, by compiling the efforts of engineers and scientists from multidisciplinary areas

IMPACT OF MICROFINANCE ON POVERTY: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL PAKISTAN

This study aims at finding out the socio-economic impact of micro finance services, offered by MFIs, in one of the poorest districts of Pakistan. A sample of 344 respondents has been selected for this purpose. The study takes children's nutrition and education expenditures, savings of clients and investment of loan as explained variables. Our findings show that microfinance services have myriad influences on subsistence of the poor. Though respondents have concerns over the performance of MFIs, the overall impact goes in concord with results of previous studies. This study validates the relationship between microfinance and poverty alleviation

Overview on the Role of Advance Genomics in Conservation Biology of Endangered Species

In the recent era, due to tremendous advancement in industrialization, pollution and other anthropogenic activities have created a serious scenario for biota survival. It has been reported that present biota is entering a &quot;sixth&quot; mass extinction, because of chronic exposure to anthropogenic activities. Various ex situ and in situ measures have been adopted for conservation of threatened and endangered plants and animal species; however, these have been limited due to various discrepancies associated with them. Current advancement in molecular technologies, especially, genomics, is playing a very crucial role in biodiversity conservation. Advance genomics helps in identifying the segments of genome responsible for adaptation. It can also improve our understanding about microevolution through a better understanding of selection, mutation, assertive matting, and recombination. Advance genomics helps in identifying genes that are essential for fitness and ultimately for developing modern and fast monitoring tools for endangered biodiversity. This review article focuses on the applications of advanced genomics mainly demographic, adaptive genetic variations, inbreeding, hybridization and introgression, and disease susceptibilities, in the conservation of threatened biota. In short, it provides the fundamentals for novice readers and advancement in genomics for the experts working for the conservation of endangered plant and animal species.</p