64 research outputs found
Comparative study on efficacy and safety of morning dose versus evening dose of levothyroxine in treatment of hypothyroidism: an outpatient department based prospective interventional study
Background: One of the common endocrine disorders in India as well as in the world is hypothyroidism. The treatment of choice is giving levothyroxine supplement orally to the patient in an empty stomach mostly in the morning. Often many patients feel uncomfortable or inconvenient to take levothyroxine in the early morning. In those patients changing the administration time of levothyroxine may get necessary to increase the patient compliance.Methods: Drug naïve patients with primary hypothyroidism, randomly selected and assigned into two groups. Patients in group 1 received levothyroxine in the morning minimum one hour before breakfast and in group 2 levothyroxine was given at least two hours after dinner. Thyroid profile of the subjects was assessed at the baseline and reassessed after 8 and 24 weeks and compared with the baseline values.Results: After 24 weeks we found significant differences in the thyroid profile of the subjects between two groups. Serum thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) was found to be 8.70 ± 3.3 in the morning group and 7.0 ± 2.3 in the evening group. TSH levels in the subjects taking the evening dose got closer to the therapeutic target range earlier than the ones taking the drug in the morning.Conclusions: Levothyroxine intake at bedtime can be a good alternative to levothyroxine intake in the morning for the patients taking concomitant medications
Nutrient Profiling and Identification of Genetic Marker for \u3cem\u3eAzolla\u3c/em\u3e sp.
Azolla (mosquito fern, duckweed fern, fairy moss and water fern) is a genus of seven species of aquatic ferns. They float on the surface of water by means of scale-like leaves, with their roots hanging in the water. Azolla is able to fix unlinked nitrogen (N2) directly from the atmosphere because of its endosymbiotic blue alga Anabaena azollae (Van Hove, 1989), and is thus a very promising supply of nitrogen to aquatic ecosystems. In recent years, apart of traditional cultivation of Azolla as a bio-fertilizer for wetland paddy, also find increasing use for sustainable production of livestock feed. Since the demand for milk and meat in India is creating new potential in the profitability of animal husbandry as an occupation. Yet, at the same time, there is a substantial decline in fodder availability. The area under forest and grasslands is decreasing as is the amount of various crop residues available for feed, largely due to the introduction of high yielding dwarf varieties. The shortage of fodder is therefore compensated with commercial feed, resulting in increased costs in meat and milk production. Moreover, as commercial feed is mixed with urea and other artificial milk boosters, it has a negative effect on the quality of milk and the health of the livestock. The search for alternatives to concentrates led us to a wonderful plant azolla, which holds the promise of providing a sustainable feed for livestock
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Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021
BACKGROUND Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. METHODS The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model-a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates-with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality-which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. FINDINGS The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2-100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1-290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1-211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4-48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3-37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7-9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. INTERPRETATION Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. FUNDING Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The χγ2F − summable sequences of strongly fuzzy numbers
We introduce the classes of χ 2F λ (A, p) − summable sequences of strongly fuzzy numbers and give some relations between these classes. We also give a natural relationship between χ 2F λ − summable sequences of strongly fuzzy numbers and strongly χ 2F λ (A) − statistical convergence of sequences of fuzzy numbers.Publisher's Versio
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