Critical evaluation of the claims made by pharmaceutical companies in drug promotional material in Pakistan

Background: In Pakistan, there is no mechanism to monitor the drug promotional campaign by pharmaceutical industry despite the fact that there is enough evidence that irrational pharmacotherapy is increasingly encountered even in the developed countries due to unethical practices of pharmaceutical promotion. Objectives. To audit the drug promotional claims made by the pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan.Methods: Drug promotional pamphlets and brochures containing claims for the drugs, which were circulated by the pharmaceuticalrepresentatives were collected from 122 general practitioners (GPs) from Karachi and Larkana cities of the Sindh Province. The claims were critically analyzed and audited with the help of currently available evidence in the medical literature.Results: 345 distinct advertisements covering 182 drugs from different manufacturers were critically analyzed for information content. Sixty two out of 345 (18%) of the reviewed advertisements were adjudged to be misleading / unjustifiable, which were again classified as, exaggerated (32%), ambiguous (21%), false (26%), and controversial (21%). The primary source of information (approximately 78%) about the newly launched drugs for the GPs was found to be the pharmaceutical representatives followed by hospital doctors (5%) and colleagues (5%). Furthermore, 110 (90%) GPs were of the view that the drug promotion has definitely an influence on their prescribing pattern.Conclusions: Since GPs in Pakistan rate pharmaceutical companies as their primary source of information regarding drugs, it can be anticipated that inappropriate advertisement claims would lead to irrational prescribing if physicians had no any other information to follow

Geometric properties of streamlines in turbulent wall-flows

© 2019 Rina PervenStreamline geometry has been studied in case of turbulent wall flows. Complex but coherent motions form and rapidly evolve within wall-bounded turbulent flows. Research over the past two decades broadly indicates that the momentum transported across the flow derives from the dynamics underlying these coherent motions. This spatial organization, and its inherent connection to the dynamics, motivates the present research. The local streamline geometry pertaining to curvature $(\kappa)$ and torsion $(\tau)$ has apparent connection to the dynamics of the flow. The present results indicate that these geometrical properties change significantly with wall-normal position. One part of this research is thus to clarify the observed changes in the streamline geometry with the known structure and scaling behaviours of the mean momentum equation. Towards this aim, the curvature and torsion of the streamlines at each point in the volume of existing boundary layers and channel DNS has been computed. The computation of $\kappa$ and $\tau$ arise from the local construction of the Frenet-Serret coordinate frame. The present methods for estimating $\kappa$ includes components of curvature in the streamwise, wall-normal and spanwise direction. The analysis shows that even though the mean wall-normal velocity is zero (e.g., for channel flow), the wall-normal curvature component shows a notable positive peak close to the wall. This arises from the strong wallward flow followed by a weak movement of the streamlines away from the wall. The correlation coefficient and the conditional average of the wall-normal velocity corresponding to the wall-normal curvature exhibit an anti-correlation between them. The probability density function of the curvatures have been calculated at some wall-normal locations of interest and compared with a scaling of the exponent of $-4$ for both total and fluctuating field. This scaling of curvature values describes the geometric features of the length scales that are smaller than the Kolmogorov scale. The onset of this scaling with wall distance has a potential connection to the three-dimensionalization of the vorticity field and the stagnation points structure in the inertial domain. In this region, the mean radius of curvature scales like Taylor microscale. The probability density functions of the wall-normal curvature show that high curvature regions similar to those in isotropic flow begin to appear outside the viscous wall layer. The standard deviation for torsion exhibits a decreasing effect with distance from the wall. The torsion to curvature ratio reveals the intensity of out of plane motion of the streamlines relative to their in-plane bending. The joint pdf of curvature with velocity magnitude supports the notion that large curvature values correspond to the region near a stagnation point. Furthermore, the joint pdf results between curvature components reveal the orientation of the streamlines at different wall-normal locations. Overall the curvature and torsion statistics examined thus far point to intriguing correlations with the four layer structure associated with known structure of the vorticity field in turbulent wall-flows

Validation and psychometric properties of the Bangla version of positive mental health scale (PMH-scale)

Positive mental health is crucial to individuals’ total well-being and especially to their emotional, psychological, and social functioning. To assess the positive aspects of mental health, the Positive Mental Health Scale (PMH-scale) is being used as one of the most significant and practical short unidimensional psychological tools. However, the PMH-scale has not yet been validated for the Bangladeshi population nor has it been translated into Bangla. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Bangla version of PMH-scale and validate it with the Brief Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ) and Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS). The sample of the study consisted of 3145 university students (61.8% men) aged from 17 to 27 (M = 22.07, SD = 1.74) and 298 general population (53.4% men) aged from 30 to 65 (M = 41.05, SD = 7.88) of Bangladesh. The factor structure of the PMH-scale as well as measurement invariance for sex and age (age ≤30 years; age >30 years) were tested, using the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The CFA revealed that the originally proposed unidimensional model of PMH-scale had a good fit in the current sample which confirms factorial validity of the Bangla version of PMH-scale. The value of Cronbach’s alpha (for both groups combined α = 0.85; for the student sample α = .85; and for the general sample α = .73) ensured the high internal consistency of the items. Concurrent validity of the PMH-scale was confirmed through the expected correlation with aggression (BAQ) and mood (BRUMS). The PMH-scale was also partially invariant over groups (student, general, men and women) indicating that the PMH-scale is equally applicable to student, general, men and women population. Therefore, this study tells us that the Bangla version of PMH-scale is a quick and easy-to-administer tool for assessing positive mental health in different groups of people in Bangladeshi culture. This work will also be useful for mental health studies in Bangladesh