Pediatric liver transplantation from neonatal donors

Sixteen recipients of neonatal liver grafts were compared with 114 contemporaneous pediatric recipients of grafts from older donors. Graft and patient survival were worse in the neonatal group although the differences were not statistically significant. Patients with neonatal livers who had no technical complications required a longer time postoperatively to correct jaundice and a prolonged prothrombin time. These functional differences were limited to the 1st postoperative month and the end result was the same as with liver transplantation from older donors. © 1992 Springer-Verlag

A CRITICAL AYURVEDIC LITERARY REVIEW OF THE PLANT PANASA (ARTOCARPUS HETEROPHYLLUS LAM.)

Panasa (Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam), the well known jackfruit tree is widely distributed all over the world. It is a treasure trove of various ethnomedical uses which are yet to be proven scientifically. Its fruit is very delicious and its leaves, root, latex, seed and wood are reported to have many medicinal properties. Though the plant is renowned for its nutritive values, the useful parts of the plant with rich medicinal values are less utilized for medicinal purposes. The plant is well described in Ayurvedic classics where prime importance has been given to its fruit whereas least references are available concerned to its other useful parts especially the leaf. This forms the literature gap concerned with this drug that hinders its further clinical researches. A compiled review of the classical literature of Panasa is not yet available as a ready reference. Hence it is a herculean task for the researcher to compile the literature which is scattered in various classical books of different era. In this work focus has been made to compile the literature of the plant Panasa (Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam) from the Ayurvedic classics. As this work provides the literature of this plant under a single roof it will be helpful for the scholars in future research works

Prenatal DDT Exposure in Relation to Anthropometric and Pubertal Measures in Adolescent Males

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), a pesticide once used widely in agriculture and now limited to public health use, remains a controversial chemical because of a combination of benefits and risks. DDT or its breakdown products are ubiquitous in the environment and in humans. Compounds in the DDT family have endocrine actions and have been associated with reproductive toxicity. A previous study reported associations between prenatal exposure to p,p′-DDE [1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)-ethylene] and increased height and weight in adolescent boys. We examined a group with higher exposures to see whether similar associations would occur. Our study group was 304 males born in Philadelphia in the early 1960s who had participated in a previous study. Anthropometric and pubertal measures from one to six visits during their adolescent years were available, as were stored maternal serum samples from pregnancy. We measured p,p′-DDE, p,p′-DDT [1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)-ethane], and o,p′-DDT [1,1,1-trichloro-2-(o-chlorophenyl)-2-(p-chlorophenyl)-ethane] in the maternal serum. Outcomes examined in the boys were height, ratio of sitting height to height, body mass index, triceps skinfold thickness, ratio of subscapular to the sum of triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses, skeletal age, serum testosterone, and serum dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate. No associations between prenatal exposure to any of the DDT compounds and any outcome measure were seen

Algorithms for converting estimates of child malnutrition based on the NCHS reference into estimates based on the WHO Child Growth Standards

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The child growth standards released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006 have several technical advantages over the previous 1977 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)/WHO reference and are recommended for international comparisons and secular trend analysis of child malnutrition. To obtain comparable data over time, earlier surveys should be reanalyzed using the WHO standards; however, reanalysis is impossible for older surveys since the raw data are not available. This paper provides algorithms for converting estimates of child malnutrition based on the NCHS reference into estimates based on the WHO standards.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Sixty-eight surveys from the WHO Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition were analyzed using the WHO standards to derive estimates of underweight, stunting, wasting and overweight. The prevalences based on the NCHS reference were taken directly from the database. National/regional estimates with a minimum sample size of 400 children were used to develop the algorithms. For each indicator, a simple linear regression model was fitted, using the logit of WHO and NCHS estimates as, respectively, dependent and independent variables. The resulting algorithms were validated using a different set of surveys, on the basis of which the point estimate and 95% confidence interval (CI) of the predicted WHO prevalence were compared to the observed prevalence.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In total, 271 data points were used to develop the algorithms. The correlation coefficients (R²) were all greater than 0.90, indicating that most of the variability of the dependent variable is explained by the fitted model. The average difference between the predicted WHO estimate and the observed value was <0.5% for stunting, wasting and overweight. For underweight, the mean difference was 0.8%. The proportion of the 95% CI of the predicted estimate containing the observed prevalence was above 90% for all four indicators. The algorithms performed equally well for surveys without the entire age coverage 0 to 60 months.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>To obtain comparable data concerning child malnutrition, individual survey data should be analyzed using the WHO standards. When the raw data are not available, the algorithms presented here provide a highly accurate tool for converting existing NCHS estimates into WHO estimates.</p

Use of the new World Health Organization child growth standards to describe longitudinal growth of breastfed rural Bangladeshi infants and young children.

BACKGROUND: Although the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reference has been widely used, in 2006 the World Health Organization (WHO) released new standards for assessing growth of infants and children worldwide. OBJECTIVE: To assess and compare the growth of breastfed rural Bangladeshi infants and young children based on the new WHO child growth standards and the NCHS reference. METHODS: We followed 1343 children in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Intervention in Matlab (MINIMat) study from birth to 24 months of age. Weights and lengths of the children were measured monthly during infancy and quarterly in the second year of life. Anthropometric indices were calculated using both WHO standards and the NCHS reference. The growth pattern and estimates of undernutrition based on the WHO standards and the NCHS reference were compared. RESULTS: The mean birthweight was 2697 +/- 401 g, with 30% weighing <2500 g. The growth pattern of the MINIMat children more closely tracked the WHO standards than it did the NCHS reference. The rates of stunting based on the WHO standards were higher than the rates based on the NCHS reference throughout the first 24 months. The rates of underweight and wasting based on the WHO standards were significantly different from those based on the NCHS reference. CONCLUSIONS: This comparison confirms that use of the NCHS reference misidentifies undernutrition and the timing of growth faltering in infants and young children, which was a key rationale for constructing the new WHO standards. The new WHO child growth standards provide a benchmark for assessing the growth of breastfed infants and children

A new framework for sign language alphabet hand posture recognition using geometrical features through artificial neural network (part 1)

Hand pose tracking is essential in sign languages. An automatic recognition of performed hand signs facilitates a number of applications, especially for people with speech impairment to communication with normal people. This framework which is called ASLNN proposes a new hand posture recognition technique for the American sign language alphabet based on the neural network which works on the geometrical feature extraction of hands. A user’s hand is captured by a three-dimensional depth-based sensor camera; consequently, the hand is segmented according to the depth analysis features. The proposed system is called depth-based geometrical sign language recognition as named DGSLR. The DGSLR adopted in easier hand segmentation approach, which is further used in segmentation applications. The proposed geometrical feature extraction framework improves the accuracy of recognition due to unchangeable features against hand orientation compared to discrete cosine transform and moment invariant. The findings of the iterations demonstrate the combination of the extracted features resulted to improved accuracy rates. Then, an artificial neural network is used to drive desired outcomes. ASLNN is proficient to hand posture recognition and provides accuracy up to 96.78% which will be discussed on the additional paper of this authors in this journal