Prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension among adults of Raipur city, Chhattisgarh, India: a cross sectional study

Background: Hypertension is prevalent all over the world. Usually it is readily detectable, easily treatable condition and if left untreated may leads to serious complications. In considerable proportion of cases the disease tends to be asymptomatic for prolonged time, hence also labelled as ‘Silent killer’. High blood pressure (BP) is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and better control can lead to prevention of 300,000 of the 1.5 million annual deaths from cardiovascular diseases in India. The objective of the study was to find the prevalence, awareness, treatment and control status of hypertension among adults of Raipur city.Methods: A community based cross sectional study was carried out in 768 subjects of age 25-59 years residing in Raipur city, Chhattisgarh, India. A predesigned, pretested questionnaire was used for data collection. To classify blood pressure JNC VII criteria was used.Results: The prevalence of hypertension was 29.0 %. Out of 223 hypertensive (223/768), 59.2% were aware about their hypertensive status, in them 76.9% were on treatment and 49.5% were under control.Conclusions: There was striking lack of awareness of the condition and a suboptimal rate of control among those treated. These finding emphasize public health importance of hypertension in Raipur city and there is urgent need to address this through targeted intervention

Dietary Incorporation of Ractopamine Hydrochloride Improves Body Composition and Metabolic Enzyme Activity in Calbasu, Labeo calbasu Fingerlings, despite High- and Low-Protein-Supplemented Diet

A 60-day feeding trial was conducted to examine the effect and interaction of dietary ractopamine hydrochloride (Rac) supplementation in diets with varied levels of protein and lipid for L. calbasu fingerlings. To attain this, the fish body compositions, digestive and metabolic enzyme activity were assessed. In total, nine diets were fed in triplicates to four hundred and five healthy Calbasu, Labeo calbasu fingerlings, based on ractopamine supplementation, viz., control (0 mg/kg), T1 (10 mg/kg), and T2 (20 mg/kg). The diets were further assigned in different levels of protein and lipid, viz., 35% protein and 6% lipid, 30% protein and 9% lipid, and 25% protein and 12% lipid. At the end of the trial, it has been observed that the inclusion of ractopamine hydrochloride at 20 mg/kg(-1) of basal diet significantly (p 0.05) digestive enzyme activity, viz., amylase, lipase, and protease activity in the fed fish. Conclusively, it implies that adding ractopamine hydrochloride at 20 mg/kg of basal diet (high and low protein content) enhances the whole-body protein content and improves the metabolic enzyme activity in L. calbasu fingerlings. Hence, ractopamine hydrochloride has a beneficial effect in L. calbasu fingerlings and would be a desirable feed supplement for this new species culture system

Prevalence of hypertension and its association with anthropometric parameters in adult population of Raipur city, Chhattisgarh, India

Background: Obesity is now an important emerging public health problem in India. It is one of the major risk factor for hypertension. Overweight persons have two to six fold increase in the risk of developing hypertension. This study was carried out with objective to find out prevalence of Hypertension and assess its association with four obesity-related indices- body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR).Methods: A cross-sectional community-based study was done among 640 study subjects of age group 25-59 years during July 2015 to June 2016. Multi stage random sampling method was used. Data collection was done using WHO STEPS instrument V 3.1. Privacy and confidentiality of data was maintained. Data was entered in the Microsoft excel, collected data was checked for its completeness and correctness before data analysis with the help of PSPP software.Results: Prevalence of hypertension among study subjects was found to be 22.19% (142 out of 640).With respect to body mass index, waist circumference, waist hip ratio and waist height ratio, 4.38%, 64.35%, 85.33%, 76.2% were found to be obese respectively. Hypertension was strongly associated with BMI (p<0.001), waist circumference (p<0.001), waist hip ratio (p<0.05), waist height ratio (p<0.05). Out of the four anthropometric variables waist hip ratio (WHR) was most strongly associated with hypertension (β=420.236, p=0.007).Conclusions: The study shows a rising burden of hypertension among study population. As WHR is the best indicator for measuring obesity, so measurement of WHR should be made compulsory in healthy life style clinics along with other parameters

Biometrics for Child Vaccination and Welfare: Persistence of Fingerprint Recognition for Infants and Toddlers

With a number of emerging applications requiring biometric recognition of children (e.g., tracking child vaccination schedules, identifying missing children and preventing newborn baby swaps in hospitals), investigating the temporal stability of biometric recognition accuracy for children is important. The persistence of recognition accuracy of three of the most commonly used biometric traits (fingerprints, face and iris) has been investigated for adults. However, persistence of biometric recognition accuracy has not been studied systematically for children in the age group of 0-4 years. Given that very young children are often uncooperative and do not comprehend or follow instructions, in our opinion, among all biometric modalities, fingerprints are the most viable for recognizing children. This is primarily because it is easier to capture fingerprints of young children compared to other biometric traits, e.g., iris, where a child needs to stare directly towards the camera to initiate iris capture. In this report, we detail our initiative to investigate the persistence of fingerprint recognition for children in the age group of 0-4 years. Based on preliminary results obtained for the data collected in the first phase of our study, use of fingerprints for recognition of 0-4 year-old children appears promising.Comment: Michigan State University Technical Repor

Effects of Time of Day and Sleep Deprivation on Motorcycle-Driving Performance

The aim of this study was to investigate whether motorcycle handling capabilities – measured by means of the efficiency of emergency manoeuvres – were dependent on prior sleep deprivation and time of day. Twelve male participants voluntarily took part in four test sessions, starting at 6 a.m., 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m., following a night either with or without sleep. Each test session comprised temperature and sleepiness measurements, before three different types of motorcycling tests were initiated: (1) stability in straight ahead riding at low speed (in “slow motion” mode and in “brakes and clutch” mode), (2) emergency braking and (3) crash avoidance tasks performed at 20 kph and 40 kph. The results indicate that motorcycle control at low speed depends on time of day, with an improvement in performance throughout the day. Emergency braking performance is affected at both speeds by time of day, with poorer performance (longer total stopping distance, reaction time and braking distance) in the morning, and also by sleep deprivation, from measurements obtained at 40 kph (incorrect initial speed). Except for a tendency observed after the sleepless night to deviate from the initial speed, it seems that crash avoidance capabilities are quite unaffected by the two disturbance factors. Consequently, some motorcycle handling capabilities (stability at low speed and emergency braking) change in the same way as the diurnal fluctuation observed in body temperature and sleepiness, whereas for others (crash avoidance) the participants were able to maintain their initial performance level despite the high levels of sleepiness recorded after a sleepless night. Motorcycle riders have to be aware that their handling capabilities are limited in the early morning and/or after sleep deprivation. Both these situations can increase the risk of falls and of being involved in a road accident

Importance of patient bed pathways and length of stay differences in predicting COVID-19 hospital bed occupancy in England.

Background: Predicting bed occupancy for hospitalised patients with COVID-19 requires understanding of length of stay (LoS) in particular bed types. LoS can vary depending on the patient’s “bed pathway” - the sequence of transfers of individual patients between bed types during a hospital stay. In this study, we characterise these pathways, and their impact on predicted hospital bed occupancy. Methods: We obtained data from University College Hospital (UCH) and the ISARIC4C COVID-19 Clinical Information Network (CO-CIN) on hospitalised patients with COVID-19 who required care in general ward or critical care (CC) beds to determine possible bed pathways and LoS. We developed a discrete-time model to examine the implications of using either bed pathways or only average LoS by bed type to forecast bed occupancy. We compared model-predicted bed occupancy to publicly available bed occupancy data on COVID-19 in England between March and August 2020. Results: In both the UCH and CO-CIN datasets, 82% of hospitalised patients with COVID-19 only received care in general ward beds. We identified four other bed pathways, present in both datasets: “Ward, CC, Ward”, “Ward, CC”, “CC” and “CC, Ward”. Mean LoS varied by bed type, pathway, and dataset, between 1.78 and 13.53 days. For UCH, we found that using bed pathways improved the accuracy of bed occupancy predictions, while only using an average LoS for each bed type underestimated true bed occupancy. However, using the CO-CIN LoS dataset we were not able to replicate past data on bed occupancy in England, suggesting regional LoS heterogeneities. Conclusions: We identified five bed pathways, with substantial variation in LoS by bed type, pathway, and geography. This might be caused by local differences in patient characteristics, clinical care strategies, or resource availability, and suggests that national LoS averages may not be appropriate for local forecasts of bed occupancy for COVID-19. Trial registration: The ISARIC WHO CCP-UK study ISRCTN66726260 was retrospectively registered on 21/04/2020 and designated an Urgent Public Health Research Study by NIHR.</p