Some peace of mind: assessing a pilot intervention to promote mental health among widows of injecting drug users in north-east India

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>HIV prevalence in north-east India is high and injecting drug use (IDU) is common. Due to HIV-related deaths there are increasing numbers of IDU widows, many of whom are HIV infected, and experiencing poor health, social isolation, discrimination and poverty, all factors likely to be compromising their mental health. There is increasing recognition of the links between HIV and mental health.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The aim of this study was to pilot a peer-facilitated, participatory action group (PAG) process and assess the impact of the intervention on the mental health of participants. The intervention consisted of 10 PAG meetings involving 74 IDU widows. Changes in quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF), mental health (GHQ12) and somatic symptoms were assessed. The value of the intervention from the perspective of the participants was captured using a qualitative evaluation method (Most Significant Change).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Participants' quality of life, mental health and experience of somatic symptoms improved significantly over the course of the intervention, and the women told stories reflecting a range of 'significant changes'.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This pilot intervention study demonstrated that a participatory approach to mental health promotion can have a positive impact on the lives of vulnerable women, and the potential to contribute to HIV prevention. Further investigation is warranted.</p

Management of Mandibular Fractures with Conventional Miniplates -A Review

ABSTRACT The management of trauma has evolved greatly over the past many years. Various bone plating have been introduced for stable fixation of mandibular fractures. The present concept of treating mandibular fractures is with non-compression mini plates which relieves the patient from a hazardous intermaxillary fixation with wires and gives better stability and osteosynthesis. When placed along the Champy&apos;s line of Osteosynthesis Miniplates gave maximum stability and Osteosynthesis. This article presents an overview of management of mandibular fractures with mini plates

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Invasive Aspergillus terreus morphological transitions and immunoadaptations mediating antifungal resistance

Louis Bengyella,1&ndash;3 Elsie Laban Yekwa,4 Muhammad Nasir Subhani,5 Ernest Tambo,6,7 Kiran Nawaz,5 Bakoena Ashton Hetsa,2 Sehrish Iftikhar,5 Sayanika Devi Waikhom,1 Pranab Roy8 1Department of Biomedical Science, The School of Basic and Biomedical Sciences, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, Ghana; 2Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences, Vaal University of Technology, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa; 3Department of Biotechnology, University of Burdwan, Bardhaman, India; 4Division of Medical Virology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa; 5Department of Plant Pathology, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan; 6Department of Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universit&eacute; des Montagnes, Bangangt&eacute;, 7Department of Communications, Africa Disease Intelligence and Surveillance, Communication and Response Institute, Yaound&eacute;, Cameroon; 8Department of Biotechnology, Haldia Institute of Technology, Haldia, India Background and aims: Aspergillus terreus Thom is a pathogen of public health and agricultural importance for its seamless abilities to expand its ecological niche. The aim of this study was holistically to investigate A. terreus morphological and immunoadaptations and their implication in antifungal resistance and proliferation during infection.Materials and methods: In-depth unstructured mining of relevant peer-reviewed literature was performed for A. terreus morphological, immune, resistance, and genetic diversity based on the sequenced calmodulin-like gene.Results: Accessory conidia and phialidic conidia produced by A. terreus confer discrete antifungal resistance that ensures survivability during therapies. Interestingly, by producing unique metabolites such as Asp&ndash;melanin and terretonin, A. terreus is capable of hijacking macrophages and scavenging iron, respectively. As such, A. terreus has established a rare mechanism to mitigate phagocytosis and swing the interaction dynamics in favor of its proliferation and survival in hosts.Conclusion: It is further unraveled that besides A. terreus genetic diversity, morphological, biochemical, and immunologic adaptations associated with conidia germination and discharge of chemical signals during infection enable masking of the host defense as an integral part of its strategy to survive and rapidly colonize hosts. Keywords: HSP70, terrein, terretonin, Asp&ndash;melanin, virulence, stomata atropis

Integrating Environmental Temperature Conditions into the SIR Model for Vector-Borne Diseases

International audienceNowadays, Complex networks are used to model and analyze various problems of real-life e.g. information diffusion in social networks, epidemic spreading in human population etc. Various epidemic spreading models are proposed for analyzing and understanding the spreading of infectious diseases in human contact networks. In classical epidemiological models, a susceptible person becomes infected after getting in contact with an infected person among the human population only. However, in vector-borne diseases, a human can be infected also by a living organism called a vector. The vector population that also help in spreading diseases is very sensitive to environmental factors such as temperature and humidity. Therefore, new researches are required to derive more realistic models to relate the dynamics of epidemics in the human population with environmental conditions. In order to integrate the impact of the temperature in the spreading of infection, we propose and investigate a modified SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) model tailored to vector-borne diseases. Simulations of the proposed model inspired by real data-sets of infectious diseases are performed using an homogeneous human contact network. Results show that the proposed model corroborates the real-world data behavior, and it demonstrates its effectiveness to account for the temperature influence on the epidemic dynamics