Profiling word retrieval abilities in persons with aphasia - A preliminary study:

Various methods are used to elicit the naming responses. The current study aimed to assess different naming abilities in persons with aphasia. Naming abilities were assessed using varied types of naming tasks for PWA. PWA was subjected to eight types of naming tasks [Confrontation Naming (CN), Phonemic Fluency (PF), Semantic Fluency (SF), Serial Naming (SN), Ordinate Naming (ON), Automated Naming (AN), Responsive Naming (RN) and Sentence Completion (SC)] and compared with age, education matched neurotypical individuals (n=15). The assessment was carried out in the Kannada Language. The raw scores obtained for each task were tabulated and subjected to statistical analysis. On eight naming tasks, neurotypical individuals performed better than persons with post-stroke aphasia. Mann Whitney U test revealed a significant difference in the phonemic fluency task in both groups of participants with a value less than 0.05. Friedman analysis with adjusted Bonferroni showed a significant difference in pairwise comparison for eight naming tasks. Among which pairs with phonemic fluency task had a significant difference in both the groups (p< 0.05). The correlation between language impairment in PWA and types of naming was studied using WAB AQ scores with accuracy scores on different types of naming tasks. A significant correlation was seen between WAB AQ and the Phonemic fluency task. The nature of the task and the factors affecting the naming of each task influence the performance of the individuals. PWA has a difference in brain mechanism for naming compared to NTI. Phonemic fluency is recommended for regular naming assessments as it is simple, easy, and quick to administer. Also, it taps both the cognitive and linguistic abilities of an individual. Language impairment and different types of naming are well related in the current study. The need to assess all types of naming to understand the word production deficit is justified

Mild Cognitive Impairment: An Overview

Heterogeneity of symptoms within and among mild cognitive impairment (MCI) individuals often makes it challenging to document cases clinically. Number of diagnostic criteria have been proposed in recent decades. MOCA and MMSE are two tests useful for the assessment of MCI, besides the neuroimaging studies with MRI and PET scan, have provided promising results in the early diagnosis of MCI. Lifestyle changes and cognitive training have been found to be more effective in the treatment of individuals with MCI

Maternal outcomes of rheumatic heart disease in pregnancy

Background: Preexisting cardiac disease is seen in 1-3% of pregnancies. In developing countries, sequelae of rheumatic fever often constitute the majority of women with heart disease; whereas in developed countries, it is the congenital heart diseases. The aim of this study was to examine the changing trends and mode of care of women with Rheumatic heart disease in pregnancy over a period of five years in a tertiary care centre.Methods: Patient records over five years were retrieved and maternal and perinatal outcomes were documented. The present study reports the outcomes of 72 women with rheumatic heart disease.Results: The prevalence of heart disease in pregnancy in our study was 1.72%. The prevalence was higher among the rural population, and in lower socio economic strata. 30% of patients were diagnosed during pregnancy. The risk of complications co - related with their functional status at the onset of pregnancy. The mode of termination of pregnancy and indications for LSCS did not vary. However, the risk of complications was greatest during labour and post-partum period. The mean birth weight was 2.7 kg, however, 30% of term neonates were of low birth weight (<2.5 kg).Conclusions: Rheumatic heart disease continues to be a major cause of cardiac disease complicating pregnancy. However, early diagnosis, appropriate management prior to pregnancy, and good functional status at the time of entering pregnancy allowed for a good maternal and neonatal outcome

A Novel Backdoor Detection Approach Using Entropy-Based Measures

Amidst the recent technological breakthroughs and increased integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies across various domains, it is imperative to consider the myriad security threats posed by AI. One of the significant attack vectors on AI models is the backdoor attack, which involves maliciously manipulating the model’s behaviour by inserting hidden patterns or triggers into training datasets. In this paper our primary focus is on the defenses for the backdoor attacks mounted via poisoned training datasets. While many backdoor defense mechanisms have been proposed in the context of text, image, and audio domains, a majority of these defense mechanisms focus on training a specific model to detect backdoor triggers. Our current work proposes a novel model agnostic backdoor detection approach that utilizes complexity/entropy-based measures. In this study, we demonstrate the limitations of currently existing entropy measures – Sample Entropy and Approximate Entropy in detecting backdoor triggers in poisoned datasets. Consequently, we propose a novel modification of the Manhattan metric in the Entropy calculation and incorporate it in the complexity measures. This modified approach is shown to successfully detect backdoor triggers in datasets from not only the Natural Language Processing (NLP) domain, but also from the Financial and Geological domains. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was further substantiated with the high F1 scores in the range of 0.92 to 1.00 across the datasets, and with zero false negatives for the real-world datasets from the Financial and the Geological domains

Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA)

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a rare neurological condition that affects an individual’s ability to communicate. PPA is a syndrome characterized by a ‘progressive worsening of language with preservation of the activities of daily living and evidence of relatively normal non-verbal abilities on neuropsychological testing’. It commonly appears initially as a disorder of speaking (an articulatory problem) progressing to nearly total inability to speak in its most severe stage, while comprehension remains relatively preserved. This chapter provides an overview of the characteristic features of PPA, its classification, assessment, and rehabilitation options

Antipsychotics in schizophrenia: a retrospective study of drug utilization pattern in outpatient department of psychiatry at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Psychiatric disorders are one of the major causes of morbidity and the burden of illness is enormous and remains grossly under represented. Psychotropic drugs have had a remarkable impact in psychiatric practice. Currently a large number of atypical antipsychotics available in the market are endorsed as better options for treating schizophrenia than the typical antipsychotics. The main objective of the study was to find the commonly prescribed antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients in a tertiary care center.Methods: After Institutional Ethics Committee approval, a retrospective cross-sectional drug utilization study of 400 prescriptions was under taken from 1st July 2015 to 30th July 2016 in the outpatient department of psychiatry of a tertiary care hospital. The prescribing pattern of antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients (N=107) was measured.Results: Out of 400 cases in the outpatient department, schizophrenia cases were predominant (N=107 i.e. 27%) out of which 42.1% were females and 57.9% were males. This was followed by mood disorders and neurotic & somatoform disorders. The most common antipsychotic used was olanzapine followed by risperidone. Least commonly used antipsychotic was haloperidol. Most of the patients who received risperidone also received an anticholinergic trihexyphenidyl (91.8%).Conclusions: Olanzapine and risperidone are the most commonly used antipsychotics. Anticholinergics should be used only in selected patients on antipsychotics as tolerance develops to extrapyramidal side effects. Anticholinergics are unnecessary after 3-6 months in all except 10% of patients. Moreover, it has its own side effects and adversely interacts with antipsychotics

Identifying SARS-CoV-2 antiviral compounds by screening for small molecule inhibitors of Nsp5 main protease

The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), spread around the world with unprecedented health and socio-economic effects for the global population. While different vaccines are now being made available, very few antiviral drugs have been approved. The main viral protease (nsp5) of SARS-CoV-2 provides an excellent target for antivirals, due to its essential and conserved function in the viral replication cycle. We have expressed, purified and developed assays for nsp5 protease activity. We screened the nsp5 protease against a custom chemical library of over 5000 characterised pharmaceuticals. We identified calpain inhibitor I and three different peptidyl fluoromethylketones (FMK) as inhibitors of nsp5 activity in vitro, with IC(50) values in the low micromolar range. By altering the sequence of our peptidomimetic FMK inhibitors to better mimic the substrate sequence of nsp5, we generated an inhibitor with a subnanomolar IC(50). Calpain inhibitor I inhibited viral infection in monkey-derived Vero E6 cells, with an EC(50) in the low micromolar range. The most potent and commercially available peptidyl-FMK compound inhibited viral growth in Vero E6 cells to some extent, while our custom peptidyl FMK inhibitor offered a marked antiviral improvement

Antipsychotics in schizophrenia: a retrospective study of drug utilization pattern in outpatient department of psychiatry at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Psychiatric disorders are one of the major causes of morbidity and the burden of illness is enormous and remains grossly under represented. Psychotropic drugs have had a remarkable impact in psychiatric practice. Currently a large number of atypical antipsychotics available in the market are endorsed as better options for treating schizophrenia than the typical antipsychotics. The main objective of the study was to find the commonly prescribed antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients in a tertiary care center.Methods: After Institutional Ethics Committee approval, a retrospective cross-sectional drug utilization study of 400 prescriptions was under taken from 1st July 2015 to 30th July 2016 in the outpatient department of psychiatry of a tertiary care hospital. The prescribing pattern of antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients (N=107) was measured.Results: Out of 400 cases in the outpatient department, schizophrenia cases were predominant (N=107 i.e. 27%) out of which 42.1% were females and 57.9% were males. This was followed by mood disorders and neurotic &amp; somatoform disorders. The most common antipsychotic used was olanzapine followed by risperidone. Least commonly used antipsychotic was haloperidol. Most of the patients who received risperidone also received an anticholinergic trihexyphenidyl (91.8%).Conclusions: Olanzapine and risperidone are the most commonly used antipsychotics. Anticholinergics should be used only in selected patients on antipsychotics as tolerance develops to extrapyramidal side effects. Anticholinergics are unnecessary after 3-6 months in all except 10% of patients. Moreover, it has its own side effects and adversely interacts with antipsychotics