Chemical composition and pasting properties of tapioca grits from different cassava varieties and roasting methods

Open Access JournalThis study investigated the chemical composition and pasting properties of tapioca grits from different cassava varieties and roasting methods. Tapioca grits (partially gelatinized irregular flakes from roasted cassava starch), were produced from three different cassava varieties (Odongbo, TMS 30572 and Oko-iyawo) and two roasting methods (traditional and rotary dryer). The chemical composition and pasting properties of the tapioca grits were evaluated. The results showed that the effect of cassava variety and roasting methods on chemical composition of tapioca grits was significantly different (P<0.05). The principal component analysis (PCA) of variation in the chemical properties of the tapioca grits indicated that moisture, sugar and starch accounted for 83% of the variation in the chemical properties of tapioca grits. This study showed that peak and hot paste viscosities are the key pasting parameters in characterizing tapioca grits from the cassava varieties and roasting methods studied and that variation in peak viscosity of the tapioca grits might be due more too varietal influence than the roasting method

Frequency of Parathyroid Hormone Assessment in the Evaluation of Hypercalcemia. A Comparison Between Patients With and Without a History of Malignancy in a 20-year Dataset of 20,954 Patients

Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether a prior diagnosis of malignancy affected the assessment of parathyroid hormone (PTH) in hypercalcemic patients and whether the rate of this assessment changed over time. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was designed that included adult patients with hypercalcemia with and without a history of malignancy between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2019 in the Marshfield Clinic Health System (MCHS). The overall and annual rates of PTH assessment in each group was determined. In patients with a PTH assessment, duration of time and number of elevated serum calcium levels between the first documentation of hypercalcemia and the assessment of PTH were recorded, as was the degree of hypercalcemia. Results: Approximately a quarter (23%) of the patients in each group had a PTH assessment. The rate of PTH assessment initially increased over time but later declined significantly. Although a more severe degree of hypercalcemia predicted a greater probability of PTH assessment, the rate of assessment declined with all degrees of hypercalcemia in the last 5 years. While most patients who had a PTH assessed did so within a few months of the first documentation of hypercalcemia, less than half (40%) had a delay of more than 2 years before a PTH level was drawn. Conclusion: This lack of appropriate and timely assessment may have significant health consequences in both groups of patients. Better education of providers about the appropriate and timely assessment of PTH in the evaluation of hypercalcemia is urgently needed.Scopu

A review of breast cancer pathology reports in Nigeria

Background: Diagnosis and treatment of cancer rely heavily on imaging, histopathology and molecular information. Incomplete or missing tumour information can hinder the delivery of high-quality care in oncology practice, especially in resource-limited countries. To evaluate the completeness of histopathology reporting in a real-world setting and identify areas for future cancer care delivery research efforts, we retrospectively analysed reports from patients diagnosed with breast cancer who received care at a high-volume oncology department at a hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. Methods: Demographic, institutional and histopathology characteristics were retrospectively obtained from 1,001 patient records from 2007 to 2016. Completeness was defined as reporting five tumour features (tumour histology, tumour grade, laterality, oestrogen receptor (ER) or progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)) for biopsy specimens and seven tumour features (tumour size, tumour histology, tumour grade, laterality, ER/PR, HER2 and lymph node involvement) for surgical specimens. Results: The mean age of patients was 48.6 -11.7 years with a predominantly female population (99.3%). A majority of pathologic reports were produced after 2011, and two-thirds of the reports originated from centres or labs within Lagos, Nigeria (67.7%). Most reports documented primary site (98.0%) and specimen type (85.0%) while other characteristics were less often recorded. This led to substantial variation in reporting between biopsy (13.4%) and surgical (6.1%) specimens for an overall low pathology report completeness <10%. Conclusion: The majority of patient records analysed lacked complete documentation of breast cancer histopathological characteristics commonly used in oncology practice. Our study highlights a need to identify and address the contributing factors for incomplete histopathological reporting in Nigeria and will guide future clinical programmatic developments. Copyright:Scopu

Accuracy Improvement for Diabetes Disease Classification: A Case on a Public Medical Dataset

As a chronic disease, diabetes mellitus has emerged as a worldwide epidemic. Providing diagnostic aid for diabetes disease by using a set of data that contains only medical information obtained without advanced medical equipment, can help numbers of people who want to discover the disease or the risk of disease at an early stage. This can possibly make a huge positive impact on a lot of peoples lives. The aim of this study is to classify diabetes disease by developing an intelligence system using machine learning techniques. Our method is developed through clustering, noise removal and classification approaches. Accordingly, we use SOM, PCA and NN for clustering, noise removal and classification tasks, respectively. Experimental results on Pima Indian Diabetes dataset show that proposed method remarkably improves the accuracy of prediction in relation to methods developed in the previous studies. The hybrid intelligent system can assist medical practitioners in the healthcare practice as a decision support system