A case of Cushing Syndrome due to accidental intake of dexamethasone: a call for enforcement of regulatory laws

Cushing syndrome could be a complication of long-term steroid use, resulting in a wide range of clinical presentations. Whereas some patients take medically prescribed doses of conventional medicines, including steroids for various ailments, others inadvertently consume unspecified doses by adulterating traditional medicines with these orthodox medications to increase their therapeutic appeal. Furthermore, some individuals with access to conventional medications may sell them in unlabelled packages as traditional medicines (TMs) to unsuspecting customers. This may lead to undesirable side effects and safety concerns. The case report highlights the problem of poorly regulated access to medications and makes suggestions to protect patrons' health of traditional medicines

Midgut malrotation with volvulus discovered at an emergency caesarean section for placental abruption

Adult midgut malrotation with volvulus (AMMV) is an uncommon presentation which may be found incidentally during abdominal radiologic investigations or at laparotomy. We report a case of AMMV and small bowel gangrene in a 35-year-old Gravida four, Para three at 39 weeks, 4 days gestation who presented with a short history of worsening abdominal pain, repeated vomiting and abdominal wall guarding. Emergency caesarean section performed on account of a suspected placental abruption incidentally revealed a long segment of non-viable small intestine. Subsequent midline laparotomy disclosed a midgut malrotation with volvulus and bowel gangrene. This resulted in a 4.6m resection of non-viable small bowel with Ladd’s procedure. The patient developed moderate symptoms of short bowel syndrome in the post-operative period which was successfully managed non-operatively. This case report represents a rare diagnosis, in the West-African sub-region, of an adult midgut malrotation with volvulus mimicking a third trimester obstetric emergency

Prospects for Sustainable Housing in Northern Ghana with the use of Local Walling Materials

In 2006 the World Bank described Ghana as a third World country having only 1 out of 3 persons sheltered. Suggestions were made that locally available materials instead of imported materials be used in building so as to cut down on costs and subsequently increase supply of housing units. In response, this study, focusing on Northern Ghana, conducted a cross-sectional survey of seventy respondents with a structured questionnaire to identify the major locally available walling material in use as well as find benefits and challenges associated with it. Unburnt earth bricks were identified as the major locally available walling material in use in Northern Ghana. Benefits found to be promoting its use were the thermal comforts it provided, the manner housing became cheaper, the cultural heritage that it promoted and the fact that only simple tools and methods were employed in its use as a building component. Challenges associated with the unburnt earth brick wall were, lack of recognition by Statutory Authorities, lack of strength and durability, challenges in satisfying new needs in building forms and functions, invasion by termites and rodents as well as its weakness in withstanding vagaries of the weather. Recommendations were made to overcome challenges associated with the use of the material with the aim of enhancing prospects of adopting it for sustainable housing. The study concluded that the Locally available walling material in the form of unburnt earth brick had a huge potential for sustainable housing in Northern Ghana if only government would, through competitive tenders among building technologists utilise existing research findings to get the material stabilised to the required strengths and characteristics so as to pave the way for its recognition by statutory authorities and subsequent packaging for commercial use in the building industry. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge in the areas of Environment, Architecture, Construction Management and Building Materials in a middle income country setting. Keywords: Local, Walling materials, Housing, Northern Ghana, Sustainability, Middle income countr

Histological and Toxicity Studies on Extracts of Stachytarpheta Jamaicensis on Liver, Kidney, Lungs and Heart of an Animal Models (Albino Rats)

The objective of this study was to investigate the histological and toxicity studies on extracts of Stachytarpheta Jamaicensis on liver, kidney, lungs and heart of an animal models (Albino Rats) using appropriate standard methods. The results of the acute toxicity study showed that the LD50 values for all extracts were higher than 5000 mg/kg, as there were no signs of illness or death. The sub-acute toxicity investigations demonstrated that there were no adverse effects observed in the haematological, biochemical, and histological parameters of the blood and vital organs, respectively. Nevertheless, a notable disparity (p > 0.05) was detected in the relative weights of organs and body weights when comparing the high dose of 2000 mg/kg to the control group. This study thus provides novel evidence that the oral administration of aqueous and ethanol extracts derived from the leaf and root of Stachytarpheta jamaicensis at low to medium doses over a period of 21 days does not induce any harmful effects

Does Automation Improve Stock Market Efficiency? Evidence from Ghana

As a burgeoning capital market in an emerging economy, automation of the stock market is regarded as a major step towards integrating the financial market as a conduit for economic growth. The automation of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) in 2008 is expected among other things to improve the efficiency of the market. This paper therefore investigates the impact of the automation on the efficiency of the GSE within the framework of the weak-form Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) using daily market returns from the Ghana Stock Exchange All-Share index from 2006 to 2011. The Unit Root Random Walk and the GARCH models were used to analyze the efficiency of the GSE in the pre and post automation sample periods. Results show that the GSE was weakly inefficient in both pre and post automation periods, suggesting that the automation of the GSE have not yielded the needed impact towards improving the efficiency of the exchange

Rate of red blood cell destruction varies in different strains of mice infected with Plasmodium berghei-ANKA after chronic exposure

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Severe malaria anaemia in the semi-immune individuals in the holo-endemic area has been observed to occur at low parasite density with individual variation in the responses. Thus the following has been thought to be involved: auto-immune-mediated mechanisms of uninfected red blood cell destruction, and host genetic factors to explain the differences in individual responses under the same malaria transmission. In this study, the extent of red blood cell (RBC) destruction in different strains of semi-immune mice model at relatively low parasitaemia was studied.</p> <p>Methodology</p> <p>To generate semi-immunity, four strains of mice were taken through several cycles of infection and treatment. By means of immunofluorescent assay and ELISA, sera were screened for anti-erythrocyte auto-antibodies, and their relationship with haematological parameters and parasitaemia in the strains of semi-immune mice was investigated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Upon challenge with <it>Plasmodium berghei </it>ANKA after generating semi-immune status, different mean percentage haemoglobin (Hb) drop was observed in the mice strains (Balb/c = 47.1%; NZW = 30.05%; C57BL/6 = 28.44%; CBA = 25.1%), which occurred on different days for each strain (for Balb/c, mean period = 13.6 days; for C57BL/6, NZW, and CBA mean period = 10.6, 10.8, 10.9 days respectively). Binding of antibody to white ghost RBCs was observed in sera of the four strains of semi-immune mice by immunofluorescence. Mean percentage Hb drop per parasitaemia was highest in Balb/c (73.6), followed by C57BL/6 (8.6), CBA (6.9) and NZW (4.0), p = 0.0005. Consequently, auto-antibodies level to ghost RBC were correlated with degree of anaemia and were highest in Balb/c, when compared with the other strains, p < 0.001.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results presented in this study seem to indicate that anti-RBC auto-antibodies may be involved in the destruction of uninfected RBC in semi-immune mice at relatively low parasite burden. Host genetic factors may also influence the outcome of auto-immune mediated destruction of RBC due to the variation in Hb loss per % parasitaemia and differences in antibody titer for each semi-immune mice strain. However, further studies at the molecular level ought to be carried out to confirm this.</p

A comparative review of dynamic neural networks and hidden Markov model methods for mobile on-device speech recognition

The adoption of high-accuracy speech recognition algorithms without an effective evaluation of their impact on the target computational resource is impractical for mobile and embedded systems. In this paper, techniques are adopted to minimise the required computational resource for an effective mobile-based speech recognition system. A Dynamic Multi-Layer Perceptron speech recognition technique, capable of running in real time on a state-of-the-art mobile device, has been introduced. Even though a conventional hidden Markov model when applied to the same dataset slightly outperformed our approach, its processing time is much higher. The Dynamic Multi-layer Perceptron presented here has an accuracy level of 96.94% and runs significantly faster than similar techniques