Trustworthiness of Research Results: Significant or Not?

Evidence informed practice relies integration of trusted research into decisions about care in collaboration with the patient’s wishes, available resources, and professional knowledge. In order to determine whether the research can be trusted, the professional requires an understanding of the quality of the research and potential for errors.  All health professionals receive a basic research course in their undergraduate training, but it is sometimes difficult to apply this knowledge daily. The focus of this article is to review core concepts central to error and design, and to apply these to determine trustworthiness using a decision tree.  It is hoped that this method will be helpful in examining future study findings and support decision making in your practice

Development of cucurbocitrin based nutraceutical formulation: A potential adjuvant herbal therapy in the management of hypertension

Nearly half of the hypertensive patients fail to manage their blood pressure despite pharmacological interventions, which reflects the dire need for adjuvant anti-hypertensive therapies. Nutraceutical formulations are attractive in this regard owing to their efficacy, ease of availability, and moderate pricing. The current investigation involves the formulation of cucurbocitrin nutraceutical tablets by direct compression method and evaluated for its anti-hypertensive effect in the management of hypertension. Cucurbocitrin is a natural compound prepared from Citrullus lanatus seeds belonging to the family Cucurbitaceae. The powder blend was examined for pre-compression studies such as angle of repose, bulk density, tapped density, Carr’s index, Hausner's ratio, etc. Based on acute-oral toxicity results, two tablet formulations were prepared using a different dose of cucurbocitrin and evaluated for post-compression parameters such as friability, hardness, weight variation, disintegration time, and in vitro drug release studies. In vivo studies were also performed for both formulations using a 10% Glucose solution-induced hypertension model in albino rats to observe its anti-hypertensive activity. The study indicated that nutraceutical formulation was found to be effective in reducing hypertension in an animal model

A Grounded Theory of South Asian Older Men Who Have Hypertension

Hypertension is a widespread but rarely symptomatic chronic condition characterized by raised blood pressure over a lengthy period of time that causes serious vascular damage. South Asians are nearly three times more susceptible to hypertension than European Whites. As compared to South Asian women, men are more prone to hypertension risk factors such as alcohol and tobacco consumption, remain less compliant with antihypertensive medications, and experience more cardiovascular events and mortality. Age is also a known risk factor of hypertension. How South Asian older men managed their hypertension was a knowledge gap. The current grounded theory revealed the four-stage processes of Savvy the Self for hypertension management in South Asian men aged 55 years and older in a Canadian context: (1) self-care, (2) self-protection, (3) making sense, and (4) equipping self. Findings exposed the links between South Asian men’s masculine identity, cultural beliefs, and disequilibrium in their self-care and developmental needs that emerged with a diagnosis of hypertension. The disequilibrium eventually evoked awakening for South Asian men that mobilized the processes of Savvy the Self leading to their hypertension management. This grounded theory provided insights into South Asian culture and revealed new nursing knowledge to assess, plan, and deliver nursing care for older South Asian men with hypertension. Findings may be useful for health education and services, cultural and faith-based community organizational services, and future research related to professionals’ cultural competency for serving a diverse group of people

Selecting a Grounded Theory Approach for Nursing Research

Grounded theory is a commonly used research methodology. There are three primary approaches to grounded theory in nursing research: those espoused by Glaser, Strauss and Corbin, and Charmaz. All three approaches use similar procedures, yet there are important differences among them, which implies that researchers need to make careful choices when using grounded theory. Researchers new to grounded theory need to find the most appropriate approach that fits their research field, topic, and researcher position. In this article, we compare the three grounded theory approaches. Choices of a grounded theory approach will depend on the researcher’s understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of all three approaches. Practical aspects of grounded theory approaches should match the information processing styles and analytical abilities of the researcher and the intended use of the theory. We illustrate key aspects of decision making about which method to select by drawing upon the first author’s experiences in his doctoral research

Battle Against Coronavirus: Repurposing Old Friends (Food Borne Polyphenols) for New Enemy (COVID-19)

In the era of extreme scientific development where the scientific community have reached beyond moon, the entire world today is facing an immense problem due to deadly effect of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease), originated in Wuhan. Coronavirus is having dexterity to target immune compromised people very easily and swiftly get transmitted to healthy individuals from infected ones. Coronavirus infections are spreading very rapidly, and almost all the countries around the world are having corona positive people and asymptomatic carriers. This pandemic has created havoc both to human health and economy in lack of an effective treatment against this disease. Due to time limitations and urgency to find cure for COVID 19 we have undertaken the help of structure assisted drug design approach which mainly involves virtual screening program which identifies the structural leads which can target COVID-19 main protease (Mpro). This protease is the key enzyme of coronavirus which plays crucial role in virus replication and transcription, which can be targeted to retard the growth of virus inside the host. In the present work, the Phenol explorer database (version 3.6) containing 751 different food borne polyphenols were screened against the (Mpro) to identify suitable structural leads with potential to inhibit this protease though High throughput modelling and molecular docking approach. We identified six potential polyphenols belonging to Sanguiin, Theaflavin gallate, Theaflavin digallate, Kaempferol, Punicalagin and Protocatechuic acid chemical classes. All the six polyphenols have much higher docking scores ≥ -9.8 kcal/mol as compared to peptidomimetic inhibitor (N3) of COVID 19 virus Mpro. Pharmacokinetic and Drug likeness predictions of these polyphenols were done using SwissADME web tool where Protocatechuic acid shown fairly good results (1 Lipinski violation). The studies suggest the dietary intake of “black tea” can improve the resistance to fight against COVID 19 virus in early stages of human infection. Importantly though, the enriched subset of six compounds identified from the larger library has to be validated experimentally. </p

Combination of data mining and artificial intelligence algorithms for efficient web page recommendation

Due to the obvious unstable increase in information, the web is saturated with data, which makes the data search a complicated task. Existing web-based recommendation systems include shortcomings such as a lack of capability as well as scalability when dealing with online data, and blockages created by traffic while utilising the website during peak hours. Web recommendation systems help consumers find the right content and make the information search process easier. Web usage mining is regarded as the primary source for web recommendation, and it is used in conjunction with association rule mining and the C4.5 algorithm to recommend online pages to the user. The Google search engine has been widely enhanced the likelihood on the system's suggested structure. A web log is created when a user enters a search query into a search engine. This query would be compared to the web logs by the proposed system. The associate rule mining technique helps in matching the user's search query to the online log. The C4.5 algorithm is linked to a priority based on reviews, which obviously ranks the search based on priority for greater validation result.&nbsp