A Study of Psychoactive Medicines and Risk of Falls Among Indonesian Elderly Patients

One of the causes of injury to the elderly is due to falls. Falling can be prevented by identifying and controlling risk factors. One risk factor that can be controlled is the use of fall risk medicines including psychoactive. This study aims to identify the association between the use of psychoactive medicine and its characteristic with the risk of falls among the elderly in Indonesia.  The study utilized a case-control study design for a total number of 414 elderly patients, during October until December 2018. Cases were elderly aged 60 years or above with a high risk of falling assessed using the Morse Fall Scale (MFS≥45). Each case was matched with up to two randomly selected controls of the same age who are classified as low to moderate risk of falling (MFS<45). The use of psychoactive medicines was screened from a history of drug use for the past six months. Psychoactive medicine-fall risk associations were estimated via logistic regression. There were 138 cases and 276 controls. The median age of subjects was 66 years old and 54.83% was a woman. Elderly with a high risk of falling had higher psychoactive medicines use when compare with controls (31.16 % vs 21.38 %, p< 0.05). After adjusting for potential confounders, the use of psychoactive medicines was significantly associated with higher fall risk in elderly patients (OR 1.79 95% CI 1.10-2.90). Only the duration of psychoactive medication use over 90 days was significantly associated with a high risk of falling (AOR 3.65 95% CI 1.46-9.14). In elderly patients, the continued use of psychoactive medicines increased the risk of fall. Prescribers need to weigh risk and benefit from the use of psychoactive medicines in the elderly to prevent future fall

Roles of microRNAs in Regulating Apoptosis in the Pathogenesis of Endometriosis

Endometriosis is a gynecologic disorder characterized by the presence of endometrial tissues outside the uterine cavity affecting reproductive-aged women. Previous studies have shown that microRNAs and their target mRNAs are expressed differently in endometriosis, suggesting that this molecule may play a role in the development and persistence of endometriotic lesions. microRNA (miRNA), a small non-coding RNA fragment, regulates cellular functions such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis by the post-transcriptional modulation of gene expression. In this review, we focused on the dysregulated miRNAs in women with endometriosis and their roles in the regulation of apoptosis. The dysregulated miRNAs and their target genes in this pathophysiology were highlighted. Circulating miRNAs as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of endometriosis have also been identified. As shown by various studies, miRNAs were reported to be a potent regulator of gene expression in endometriosis; thus, identifying the dysregulated miRNAs and their target genes could help discover new therapeutic targets for treating this disease. The goal of this review is to draw attention to the functions that miRNAs play in the pathophysiology of endometriosis, particularly those that govern cell death

Knowledge and attitudes towards child vaccination among public in Cyberjaya, Selangor and their level of vaccine hesitancy

Vaccination is regarded as one of the greatest public health achievements and one of the most cost-effective interventions to prevent childhood major illnesses and mortality. However, despite being recognized as one of the most successful public health measures, vaccination is perceived as unsafe and unnecessary by a growing number of individuals that lead to vaccine hesitancy. This study aimed to determine public level of knowledge, attitudes and hesitancy towards child vaccination in Cyberjaya, Selangor. This study also aimed to measure the association between level of knowledge and attitudes with different respondents’ demographic data. Another aim of this study is to measure correlation between knowledge and attitudes with hesitancy towards child vaccination. A guided self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge, attitudes and hesitancy of the respondents. This cross-sectional study involved 300 respondents identified from the public. Majority of the respondents were females (65.0%), age between 18-29 years (74.7%), Malay (82.3%), Muslim (84.0%), with tertiary education level (78.7%), students (50.0%) and unmarried (70.7%). This study found that the respondents had an overall poor knowledge towards child vaccination (mean knowledge score = 51.3 ± 20.1)

Public Awareness and Practices Towards Self-Medication with Antibiotics Among Malaysian Population: Questionnaire Development and Pilot Testing

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