Can peripheral blood smear examination be totally replaced by automated hematology analyser - with special reference to anemia?

Background: The aims and objectives of present study was to correlate typing of anemia based on RBC indices obtained from an automated analyzer with peripheral blood smear (PBS) examination and also to find out whether the number of PBS examination can be reduced with the help of automated hematology analyzer.Methods: A total of 2500 blood samples showing anemia as per WHO reference range were collected in central pathology lab of SVBP Hospital attached to L.L.R.M. Medical College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India over a period of one year. Samples were reported by auto-analyzer and PBS examination simultaneously.Results: Out of total 2500 cases, there were 1623 females (64.9%) and 877 males (35.1%) with male: female ratio 0.54:1. By auto-analyzer and PBS examination, MCHC anemia (49.8%) was the commonest anemia followed by NCNC anemia (36.5%) and Macrocytic anemia (4.2%). Discordant typing of anemia between two methods was found in 284 (11.4%) cases only. These cases were diagnosed as normocytic normochromic (NCNC) anemia with raised RDW by autoanalyzer while as Dimorphic Anemia (DA) on PBS examination. Also morphological changes such as RBC inclusions, spherocytes, RBC fragments, schistocytes, nucleated RBCs were seen only on PBS examination.Conclusions: The Study concluded that even today PBS examination is very important and cannot be totally replaced by automated analyzer and both methods are complementary to each other

COMPARISON OF COMBINED ORAL CONTRACEPTIVES AND CYPEROTERONE ACETATE-ETHINYL ESTRADIOL COMBINATION ON CLINICAL AND HAEMATOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME (PCOS)

Introduction: Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is an endocrine disorder with multiple etiology and affecting women in reproductive age group. It has become a major problem in modern era and requires a multimodality of treatment. Material and Methods: The study was conducted on 100 PCOS patients attending PGIMS, Rohtak outpatient department to compare the efficacy of combined oral contraceptives (COCs) and cyperoterone acetate-ethinyl estradiol (CPA-EE) combination on clinical and hematological parameters. This was a prospective interventional study conducted for one and half year. Patients were followed at one, three and six months of treatment and comparison was made from baseline to six months of treatment. Results: Both the drugs showed improvement in acne and hirsutism while no effect was seen on acanthosis nigricans, and anthropological parameters (basal metabolic rate, waist circumference, and waist hip ratio). Serum testosterone levels and sonographical parameters (ovarian volume, necklace appearance) also improved. On the contrary both the drugs deteriorated blood sugar levels and lipid profile of the patients on successive follow ups. However on comparison COCs deteriorated blood sugar levels more as compared to CPA-EE and CPA-EE deteriorated lipid profile (triglyceride and cholesterol levels) more than COCs. CPA-EE also improved the serum testosterone levels more when compared to COCs. Conclusion: Any of the drugs can be used in the treatment of PCOS patients but with caution in diabetic and hyperlipidemic patients

FactDrill: A Data Repository of Fact-Checked Social Media Content to Study Fake News Incidents in India

The production and circulation of fake content in India is a rising problem. There is a dire need to investigate the false claims made in public. This paper presents a dataset containing 22,435 fact-checked social media content to study fake news incidents in India. The dataset comprises news stories from 2013 to 2020, covering 13 different languages spoken in the country. We present a detailed description of the 14 different attributes present in the dataset. We also present the detailed characterisation of three M’s (multi-lingual, multi-media, multi-domain) in the FactDrill dataset. Lastly, we present some potential use cases of the dataset. We expect that the dataset will be a valuable resource to understand the dynamics of fake content in a multi-lingual setting in India

SpotFake+: A Multimodal Framework for Fake News Detection via Transfer Learning (Student Abstract)

In recent years, there has been a substantial rise in the consumption of news via online platforms. The ease of publication and lack of editorial rigour in some of these platforms have further led to the proliferation of fake news. In this paper, we study the problem of detecting fake news on the FakeNewsNet repository, a collection of full length articles along with associated images. We present SpotFake+, a multimodal approach that leverages transfer learning to capture semantic and contextual information from the news articles and its associated images and achieves the better accuracy for fake news detection. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that performs a multimodal approach for fake news detection on a dataset that consists of full length articles. It outperforms the performance shown by both single modality and multiple-modality models. We also release the pretrained model for the benefit of the community

Can peripheral blood smear examination be totally replaced by automated hematology analyser - with special reference to anemia?

Background: The aims and objectives of present study was to correlate typing of anemia based on RBC indices obtained from an automated analyzer with peripheral blood smear (PBS) examination and also to find out whether the number of PBS examination can be reduced with the help of automated hematology analyzer.Methods: A total of 2500 blood samples showing anemia as per WHO reference range were collected in central pathology lab of SVBP Hospital attached to L.L.R.M. Medical College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India over a period of one year. Samples were reported by auto-analyzer and PBS examination simultaneously.Results: Out of total 2500 cases, there were 1623 females (64.9%) and 877 males (35.1%) with male: female ratio 0.54:1. By auto-analyzer and PBS examination, MCHC anemia (49.8%) was the commonest anemia followed by NCNC anemia (36.5%) and Macrocytic anemia (4.2%). Discordant typing of anemia between two methods was found in 284 (11.4%) cases only. These cases were diagnosed as normocytic normochromic (NCNC) anemia with raised RDW by autoanalyzer while as Dimorphic Anemia (DA) on PBS examination. Also morphological changes such as RBC inclusions, spherocytes, RBC fragments, schistocytes, nucleated RBCs were seen only on PBS examination.Conclusions: The Study concluded that even today PBS examination is very important and cannot be totally replaced by automated analyzer and both methods are complementary to each other