Expedited COVID-19 vaccine trials: a rat-race with challenges and ethical issues

The intense global efforts are directed towards development of vaccines to halt the COVID-19 virus pandemic. There are 160 candidate vaccines under clinical trials across the world using different molecular targets and techniques. This race for the vaccine has several challenges and ethical issues like compressed timelines, generation and proper management of resources and finances, risks to the participating volunteers due to curtailed research trial processes, geopolitical contentions, misinformation through social media and parallel race with drugs. We feel that the fundamental principles of ethics: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice should not be violated in this hastened vaccine development process. We recommend constitute a Consortium on a global platform to formulate, provide and monitor a comprehensive ethical umbrella to the process of vaccine development

Feasibility, effectiveness, and students' attitude toward using WhatsApp in histology teaching and learning

OBJECTIVE: The present study assessed the feasibility, effectiveness, and students' attitude toward histology teaching using WhatsApp. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted 6 months of histology teaching session on a “Histology learning WhatsApp group” consisting of 250 1st-year medical graduate students at Dr. S.N. Medical College, Jodhpur. A teacher posted a digital image of histology slides created using a mobile camera; a slide diagram sketched using hematoxylin and eosin pencil, identification points, and detail description of slide followed by discussion of queries. The feasibility was measured by adequate enrollment of students in the WhatsApp group, drop-out rate during the teaching period, acceptability of the by students based on their feedback, and perception of the teacher. To study the effectiveness, we conducted an online test pre- and posttests after every 2 months. The Student's attitude WhatsApp learning was assessed using the prevalidated feedback questionnaire. RESULTS: All the 1st-year medical graduate students admitted in the year 2016 enrolled and most of them were actively participated in the discussion conducted on WhatsApp group with zero dropout rate. Students' feedback indicated that students enjoyed learning using WhatsApp with better participation than traditional teaching method. Students liked anytime, anywhere learning using WhatsApp and it helped them to clear doubts. The statistical difference between average pre- and posttest scores (6.54 ± 2.33 and 16.37 ± 3.32, respectively) were statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that histology teaching using WhatsApp learning group is feasible, effective, and student-friendly method. It should be used more frequently to complement traditional teaching

Peer-assisted teaching method to foster learning physiological basis of electrocardiography among 1st year medical graduate students: An interventional study

INTRODUCTION: In peer-assisted teaching (PAT) method, students are encouraged to prepare, organize, and construct their learning program under the guidance of a teacher. The objective of the present study is to assess the benefits and outcome of PAT on students' understanding and knowledge of one of the important and difficult topics, “physiological basis of electrocardiography (ECG).” METHODS: A nonrandomized, interventional study was carried out in the department of physiology. Five peer tutors were selected and trained in the basics of ECG by a senior faculty of physiology for 12–14 h sessions over the 6-week period. These peer tutors then conducted a day-long workshop on five different subtopics of ECG, which was attended by 184 1st year medical students. Evaluation of the workshop was done through pre/posttest 20-item questionnaire score analysis and feedback questionnaire using a 5-point Likert scale items. RESULTS: The average pre- and posttest scores were 6.6 ± 2.73 and 13.3 ± 4.73, respectively. The average posttest scores were higher and statistically significant compared to pretest (R2 = 0.4275; P 70% improvement from the pretest score, and 44.78% had more than 50% improvement in their posttest scores. CONCLUSION: We received a predominantly positive feedback for the usefulness of peer teaching as a learning method. Thus, PAT was found to be a feasible and effective way of teaching the difficult concepts in physiology

Body plethysmography in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients: A cross-sectional study

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the fourth most common cause of death in the world, for which smoking is a common cause. It is preferable to diagnose COPD at an earlier stage and to assess its progression so that mortality and morbidity of the disease could be reduced. Hence, we conducted this study to assess parameters of body plethysmography in Indian population where the data are lacking and to assess whether the use of body plethysmography can detect COPD earlier. Subjects and Methods: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee at B. J Government Medical College, Pune. In this comparative randomized cross-sectional study, healthy control subjects (CN), smokers without COPD diagnosis (SM) who were smoking for more than 5 pack-years and smokers with COPD who were further classified depending upon GOLD criteria as mild COPD (C1), moderate COPD (C2), and severe COPD (C3) (n = 30 each group) were considered. All the participants were males who gave written informed consent. Subject underwent routine spirometry (FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC, PEFR, and FEF25-75%) along with body plethysmography where sGaweff, sGawtot, residual volume (RV), total lung capacity (TLC), and inspiratory capacity (IC) were recorded. Statistical Analysis: The differences in lung function were compared between healthy controls and smokers and also between the three groups of COPD severity (GOLD guidelines) employing univariate analysis of variance and Bonferroni's post hoc test. Results: Spirometry could not differentiate between smokers without COPD and healthy controls. However, three parameters on body plethysmography (IC, sGawtot, and sGaweff) were sensitive enough to detect differences between smokers without COPD and healthy controls. Conclusion: Using body plethysmography, the vexed question troubling the clinician, which of the smokers progress to COPD and who do not before they develop irreversible changes can perhaps be answered if further large-scale multicenter studies and long-term follow-up studies confirm the findings in this study