The contemporary framework on social media analytics as an emerging tool for behavior informatics, HR analytics and business process

Organizations can use social media analytics as an effective assessment tool from behavioral perspectives, HR as well as business process to collaboratively build competency framework. The present piece of work is an attempt to put forth social media as a contemporary model in the light of the existing literature. Providing literature reviews, this paper also highlights current practices of social media analytics as to how organizations are accessing vast amount of live data from social media in order to understand work-related behavioral aspects of the employees and their employability for both HR process and the business. The analyzed data on customers is also being taken into account to highlight patterns and customers’ sentiments related to the marketing efforts. Furthermore, on the basis of the above presented discussion this paper suggests the road map to how organizations can foster the social media practices. Finally, this paper raises some significant plausible research questions to be empirically researched in order to methodically validate or discard the presented framework on this rapidly emerging phenomenon

A study on drug prescribing pattern in psychiatry out-patient department from a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: The burden of illness resulting from psychiatric and behavioral disorders is enormous; although, it remains grossly under represented by conventional public health statistics, which focus on mortality rather than the morbidity or dysfunction. Therefore, the study was carried out to find out morbidity pattern of psychiatric diseases and prescribing trends of psychotropic drugs.Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted in psychiatry out-patient department of a tertiary care hospital for 3 months. Diagnosis was made according to ICD-10 criteria. Prescription pattern was analyzed using World Health Organization (WHO) drug indicators.Results: Of 520 patients analyzed, 52.31% were males and 47.69% were females, 72.31% were <45 years. Depression 42.88%, schizophrenia 23.08%, bipolar mood disorders 17.88%, and anxiety 9.04% accounted for 92.88% of cases. Among the total of 1092 psychotropic drugs prescribed, 1056 (96.7%) were oral formulations. Average number of psychotropic drugs per prescription was 2.1 ± 0.8. 20.58% of the prescriptions contained fixed dose combinations. About 28.75% drugs were prescribed by generic name. Utilization from the WHO and National essential medical list were 28.57% and 38.64%, respectively. The prescribing frequency of anxiolytics, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-cholinergics, and anti-mania drugs was 30.04% (328/1092), 25.46% (278/1092), 25.37% (277/1092), 11.54% (126/1092), and 7.6% (83/1092), respectively. Clonazepam, olanzapine, escitalopram, carbamazepine and trihexyphenidyl were the most commonly prescribed benzodiazepines (BZD), antipsychotic, antidepressants, mood stabilizer and anti-cholinergics, respectively.Conclusion: Utilization pattern of the psychotropic drugs were in accordance to the recommendations of various treatment guidelines. BZD were the most commonly prescribed psychotropic drugs

Pharmacoepidemiological survey of schizophrenia in Central India

Background:Schizophrenia is a chronic and debilitating psychiatric illness affecting around 0.3-0.7% of people at some point in their life. The rate of schizophrenia and related disorders is affected by some environmental factors and social variables. Therefore, pharmacoepidemiological survey of patients suffering from schizophrenia was carried out to analyze the sociodemographic profile and drug prescribing pattern.Methods:A prospective observational study was conducted in psychiatry OPD of a tertiary care hospital for nine months. Diagnosis of schizophrenia was made according to DSM IV-TR criteria. Prescriptions were analyzed for socio demographic details, distribution of subsets of disease and psychotropic drugs prescribed.Results:Amongst 196 cases analyzed, 55.61% were males, 69.9% were below 40 years, 52.04% unmarried, 61.22% belonged to low income group, 82.14% unemployed and 58.16% came from urban locality. Paranoid schizophrenia (79.59%) was the most common diagnosis and a total of 402 psychotropic drugs were prescribed. Average number of psychotropic drugs per prescription was 2.05. Atypical antipsychotics (80.09%) were prescribed more commonly than typical antipsychotics; olanzapine (42.48%) was the commonest antipsychotic drug followed by risperidone (21.68%), haloperidol (19.91%), quetiapine (7.96%), aripiprazole (4.42%) and clozapine (3.54%). As an adjunctive treatment escitalopram, clonazepam and carbamazepine were the commonly prescribed antidepressant, anxiolytic and antimanic agent respectively.Conclusion:Low socioeconomic status, unemployment, urban locality and living alone are the sociodemographic factors associated with schizophrenia. The treatment pattern observed correlates with the changing trends in the treatment of schizophrenia world over.

Foetus Papyraceous

Fetus papyraceous or compress is the compressed, mummified, parchment-like remains of a dead twin which is retained in-utero after intrauterine death in the second trimester. It is an uncommon finding. The incidence of fetus papyraceous is reported as 1 in 17,000 to 1 in 20,000 pregnancies. Incidence of fetus papyraceous in twin pregnancy is 1 in 184 to 1 in 200 pregnancies. A case of fetus papyraceous which was discovered following expulsion of a Twin at 17 weeks and 1 day of gestation with low lying placenta in a monochorionic monoamniotic twin pregnancy is reported here

Targeting the vasopressin type-2 receptor for renal cell carcinoma therapy.

Arginine vasopressin (AVP) and its type-2 receptor (V2R) play an essential role in the regulation of salt and water homeostasis by the kidneys. V2R activation also stimulates proliferation of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) cell lines in vitro. The current studies investigated V2R expression and activity in human RCC tumors, and its role in RCC tumor growth. Examination of the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) database, and analysis of human RCC tumor tissue microarrays, cDNA arrays and tumor biopsy samples demonstrated V2R expression and activity in clear cell RCC (ccRCC). In vitro, V2R antagonists OPC31260 and Tolvaptan, or V2R gene silencing reduced wound closure and cell viability of 786-O and Caki-1 human ccRCC cell lines. Similarly in mouse xenograft models, Tolvaptan and OPC31260 decreased RCC tumor growth by reducing cell proliferation and angiogenesis, while increasing apoptosis. In contrast, the V2R agonist dDAVP significantly increased tumor growth. High intracellular cAMP levels and ERK1/2 activation were observed in human ccRCC tumors. In mouse tumors and Caki-1 cells, V2R agonists reduced cAMP and ERK1/2 activation, while dDAVP treatment had the reverse effect. V2R gene silencing in Caki-1 cells also reduced cAMP and ERK1/2 activation. These results provide novel evidence for a pathogenic role of V2R signaling in ccRCC, and suggest that inhibitors of the AVP-V2R pathway, including the FDA-approved drug Tolvaptan, could be utilized as novel ccRCC therapeutics

Clinical Profile of Children with Primary Headache at a Tertiary Care Center in North India: A Retrospective Study

Purpose The present study investigated the clinical profile of children with primary headache at a tertiary care center in North India. Methods A retrospective observational study was conducted between January 2021 and October 2022. In total, 100 children 5 to 18 years of age who attended the pediatric outpatient department or the emergency department with primary headache were included. Children with secondary causes of headache were excluded. Results This study included 100 children (40 boys, 60 girls), and the female-to-male ratio was 1.5:1. The patients ranged in age from 5 to 18 years (mean±standard deviation, 10.1±2.8). Migraine headaches were most commonly reported (60%) followed by tension-type headache (28%) and others (12%). The throbbing type of pain was most common (43%), followed by the tightening type in 32%. The pain location was bilateral frontal in 47% of patients, followed by bitemporal in 20% and occipital in 17%. Most of the children (87%) had a headache duration of 2 to 4 hours. The common precipitating factors were skipped meals (25%), bright light (18%), lack of sleep (16%), and schoolwork (15%). A family history was present in around 62%. Around 70% of children required prophylactic medications (flunarizine and propranolol). Long screen time (2 to 4 hours/day) and a family history of headache were significantly associated with primary headache (P<0.05). Conclusion The present study highlights that migraine is most common cause of primary headache in children, and every effort should be made for the early detection and management of headaches among children

Optical properties of perovskite alkaline earth titanates : a formulation

In this communication we suggest a formulation of the optical conductivity as a convolution of an energy resolved joint density of states and an energy-frequency labelled transition rate. Our final aim is to develop a scheme based on the augmented space recursion for random systems. In order to gain confidence in our formulation, we apply the formulation to three alkaline earth titanates CaTiO_3, SrTiO_3 and BaTiO_3 and compare our results with available data on optical properties of these systems.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, Submitted to Journal of Physics: Condensed Matte

Genome Plasticity in Cultured Leishmania donovani: Comparison of Early and Late Passages

Leishmania donovani possesses a complex heteroxenic life cycle where infective metacyclic promastigotes are pre-adapted to infect their host and cope up with intracellular stress. Exploiting the similarities between cultured and sandfly derived promastigotes, we used early and late passage cultured promastigotes to show specific changes at genome level which compromise pathogen fitness reflected in gene expression and infection studies. The pathogen loses virulence mostly via transcriptional and translational regulations and long-time cultivation makes them struggle to convert to virulent metacyclics. At the genomic level very subtle plasticity was observed between the early and the late passages mostly in defense-related, nutrient acquisition and signal transduction genes. Chromosome Copy number variation is seen in the early and late passages involving several genes that may be playing a role in pathogenicity. Our study highlights the importance of ABC transporters and calpain like cysteine proteases in parasite virulence in cultured promastigotes. Interestingly, these proteins are emerging as important patho-adaptive factors in clinical isolates of Leishmania. We found that the currently available genome of Leishmania in the NCBI database are from late passages. Our early passage genome can act as a reference for future studies on virulent isolates of Leishmania. The annotated leads from this study can be used for virulence surveillance and therapeutic studies in the Indian subcontinent

Exercise Training Reduces the Inflammatory Response and Promotes Intestinal Mucosa-Associated Immunity in Lynch Syndrome

PURPOSE: Lynch syndrome (LS) is a hereditary condition with a high lifetime risk of colorectal and endometrial cancers. Exercise is a non-pharmacologic intervention to reduce cancer risk, though its impact on patients with LS has not been prospectively studied. Here, we evaluated the impact of a 12-month aerobic exercise cycling intervention in the biology of the immune system in LS carriers. PATIENTS AND METHODS: To address this, we enrolled 21 patients with LS onto a non-randomized, sequential intervention assignation, clinical trial to assess the effect of a 12-month exercise program that included cycling classes 3 times weekly for 45 minutes versus usual care with a one-time exercise counseling session as control. We analyzed the effects of exercise on cardiorespiratory fitness, circulating, and colorectal-tissue biomarkers using metabolomics, gene expression by bulk mRNA sequencing, and spatial transcriptomics by NanoString GeoMx. RESULTS: We observed a significant increase in oxygen consumption (VO2peak) as a primary outcome of the exercise and a decrease in inflammatory markers (prostaglandin E) in colon and blood as the secondary outcomes in the exercise versus usual care group. Gene expression profiling and spatial transcriptomics on available colon biopsies revealed an increase in the colonic mucosa levels of natural killer and CD8+ T cells in the exercise group that were further confirmed by IHC studies. CONCLUSIONS: Together these data have important implications for cancer interception in LS, and document for the first-time biological effects of exercise in the immune system of a target organ in patients at-risk for cancer

Mapping child growth failure across low- and middle-income countries

Child growth failure (CGF), manifested as stunting, wasting, and underweight, is associated with high 5 mortality and increased risks of cognitive, physical, and metabolic impairments. Children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face the highest levels of CGF globally. Here we illustrate national and subnational variation of under-5 CGF indicators across LMICs, providing 2000–2017 annual estimates mapped at a high spatial resolution and aggregated to policy-relevant administrative units and national levels. Despite remarkable declines over the study period, many LMICs remain far from the World Health 10 Organization’s ambitious Global Nutrition Targets to reduce stunting by 40% and wasting to less than 5% by 2025. Large disparities in prevalence and rates of progress exist across regions, countries, and within countries; our maps identify areas where high prevalence persists even within nations otherwise succeeding in reducing overall CGF prevalence. By highlighting where subnational disparities exist and the highest-need populations reside, these geospatial estimates can support policy-makers in planning locally 15 tailored interventions and efficient directing of resources to accelerate progress in reducing CGF and its health implications