ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHIC PREDICTORS OF MORTALITY IN ACUTE STROKE

Objectives; The study is aimed at establishing the prognostic importance of various ECG changes as predictors of in-hospital mortality from acute stroke. Study Design; Cross-Sectional. Patients and methods; Two hundred patients of acute stroke who presented within 48-hours of the onset of neurological symptoms, were enrolled in the study, irrespective of the comorbid conditions like hypertension, diabetes mellitus, valvular heart disease, coronary artery disease and cardiomyopathy. A non-contrast computerized tomographic scan (CT Scan) of the brain and a 12-lead ECG were recorded at the time of admission to define the stroke type and to determine the ECG variables. A follow-up of the patients was recorded during their stay in the Medical Department for calculating in hospital mortality. The ECG variables categorized as, disturbances of heart rate and rhythm, ischemic changes and heart rate corrected QT interval (QTc interval), were correlated with the death during the hospital stay, by analyzing the data using SPSS-20 version for statistical analysis. Results; Majority of the patients had ischemic stroke, while mortality was higher with hemorrhagic stroke. ECG changes due to variations in heart rate and rhythm were frequent but less helpful than ischemic changes and QTc alterations, in predicting in hospital deaths due to stroke.  Conclusion; In hospital mortality in sufferers of stroke is mostly of cardiac origin. Electrocardiographic changes resulting from QTc prolongation, ischemic changes, and rhythm disturbances are most helpful in this regard. Keywords; ECG, CT-Scan, QTc interva

Characterizing Key Stakeholders in an Online Black-Hat Marketplace

Over the past few years, many black-hat marketplaces have emerged that facilitate access to reputation manipulation services such as fake Facebook likes, fraudulent search engine optimization (SEO), or bogus Amazon reviews. In order to deploy effective technical and legal countermeasures, it is important to understand how these black-hat marketplaces operate, shedding light on the services they offer, who is selling, who is buying, what are they buying, who is more successful, why are they successful, etc. Toward this goal, in this paper, we present a detailed micro-economic analysis of a popular online black-hat marketplace, namely, SEOClerks.com. As the site provides non-anonymized transaction information, we set to analyze selling and buying behavior of individual users, propose a strategy to identify key users, and study their tactics as compared to other (non-key) users. We find that key users: (1) are mostly located in Asian countries, (2) are focused more on selling black-hat SEO services, (3) tend to list more lower priced services, and (4) sometimes buy services from other sellers and then sell at higher prices. Finally, we discuss the implications of our analysis with respect to devising effective economic and legal intervention strategies against marketplace operators and key users.Comment: 12th IEEE/APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime 2017

Is Accounting Information Produced by the Firms any Value Relevant?

This research is motivated by dearth of research on the impact of accounting information produced by Pakistani companies on their share prices and is aimed at highlighting the useful ness of accounting information in investment decision making by investors. Top five companies from each of the sectors, excluding the financial services sectors listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange are studied for the years 2006 to 2016. Panel data settings are used to study the impact of accounting information i.e., Earnings on Returns. Three control variables namely, size, profitability and industry type are added in Extended returns model to capture the impact of accounting information on returns. The results show that accounting information i.e., Earnings and Changes in Earnings and profitability are value relevant but the size and industry type have no impact on value relevance

Clinical and histological spectrum of hepatitis C disease associated with persistently normal alanine aminotransferase levels

Background: Around 20% of patients with chronic hepatitis C infection (HCV) have persistently normal alanine aminotransferase (PNALT) levels. These patients are considered to have mild degree of histological hepatic damage. This study was conducted to compare the histological degree of necro-inflammation and stage of fibrosis among HCV patients with PNALT and patients with persistently or intermittently elevated serum ALT (PIEALT) levels..Methods: This study includes 154 untreated patients with serological and histological diagnosis of chronic HCV infection. A total of 70 patients with PNALT (group A) and 84 patients with PIEALT (group B) were identified and treated with 6 months interferon therapy. Histological grade of necro-inflammatory activity and the stage of fibrosis was evaluated by Ishak scoring system. HCV-RNA quantification was done by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Further univariate and multivariate analysis was done to evaluate correlation between patients characteristics and significant hepatic fibrosis..Results: Out of one hundred and fifty four patients, mean ALT was 30.59 ± 5.59 U/L in group A as compare to 68.65 ± 23.17 U/L in group B (p = 0.001). Patients with PNALT were younger (p = 0.005) with milder grade of necrosis (p = 0.037), lower serum HCV viral load (p = 0.044) and significant achievement of sustained virological response (p = 0.012) as compare to patients with abnormal ALT. Different variable were also analysed by univariate and mutivaraite analysis among patients with significant and insignificant fibrosis. High serum HCV-RNA level was found to be the independent variable predictive of advanced fibrosis among HCV infected patients (OR = 0.89; 95% CI = 1.65-1.94; p < 0.001) with r2 = 80%.Conclusions: Our study suggests that normal serum ALT does not mean healthy liver. So, histological evaluation is still an essential tool to assess liver damage precisely

The antihyperglycaemic and antiobesity effects of selected compounds from garcinia malaccensis on 3t3-l1 adipocytes

The increase incidence in diabetes-and obesity-related diseases in developed and developing countries has driven serious efforts towards the discovery of adipogenic differentiation-inhibitory compounds in natural products. Mangostins and triterpenoids from Garcinia have been reported to contain a wide range of bioactivities. However, its antidiabetic and antiobesity activity has not been previously addressed. With regard to the fact, this research is designed to study the antihperglycaemic and antiobesity effects of selected phytochemicals isolated from Garcinia malaccensis namely beta-mangostin and cycloartane triterpenoid. The compounds were tested for their antihyperglycaemic and antiobesity effects in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. In this study, we first elucidated the effects the compounds on the lipid accumulation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes by using Oil Red O staining. The ability of the cell to uptake glucose was measured by liquid scintillation counter. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors gamma (PPARy), glucose transporter four (GLUT4) and leptin genes expression was determined by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The results showed that β-mangostin reduced the triglyceride accumulation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes with highest lipid inhibition activity was observed at 50 μM concentration (p<0.05) when compared to MDI (0.5 mM 3-isobutyl-1-methyl-xanthine (IBMX), 0.25 mM dexamethasone, 1 μg/mL insulin) treated cells. On the other hand, treatment with cycloartane triterpenoid significantly induced lipid accumulation. Analyses of 2-deoxy-D-[3H] glucose uptake activities showed that all the compounds including the MDI, metformin and sodium orthovanadate (positive control) significantly (p<0.05) improved the glucose uptake when compared to the basal cell. In addition, evaluation by using the adipolysis kit (Cayman Chemicals) showed that β-mangostin increases the amount of free fatty acid (FFA) release. Further evaluation by the gene expression analysis showed that β-mangostin may reduce lipid accumulation by inhibition of the expression of PPARγ genes. In addition, induction of glucose uptake and free fatty acid release by β-mangostin was accompanied by increasing of mRNA expression of GLUT4 and leptin. Interestingly, mature 3T3-L1 cells treated with cycloartane triterpenoid was shown to enhance PPARγ and GLUT4 gene expression and decreased leptin expression. As a conclusion, these line of evidences indicated that β-mangostin and cycloartane triterpenoid derived from Garcinia malaccensis may become an interesting candidate for the prevention of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity

Mangostins stimulate glucose uptake and inhibit adipocyte differentiation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes

Garcinia mangostana (Guttiferae) has interesting biological activities with potential medicinal application. α-mangostin and β-mangostin are the most abundant xanthones isolated from the species. The paper reported the inhibitory effect of the compounds on triglyceride formation, glucose uptake stimulation and gene expression effects on 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Evaluation of the effect of the compounds on triglyceride accumulation was examined by Oil red O staining. The result showed that all compounds inhibited lipid accumulation on 3T3-L1 adipocytes at concentration of 50 μM (P < 0.05) compared to MDI treated cells in a dose-dependent manner. Effect of the cells on uptake of 2-deoxy-D-[3H]glucose was significantly improved by increasing the concentration of the compounds. Analysis of gene expressions by quantitative real-time PCR demonstrated that the compounds inhibited the expression of early adipogenic transcription factor (PPARγ). In addition, the compounds enhanced the expression and plasma membrane translocation of GLUT4 in mature adipocytes. Analysis by using the adipolysis kit showed that α-mangostin particularly increases the free fatty acid release by stimulating the lipolysis pathway. Therefore, these results suggested that α-mangostin and β-mangostin have been found to have a beneficial action in diabetic complications (antiobesity effect) via stimulation of GLUT4 expression and inhibition of PPARγ expression

Freely dissolved Organochlorine Pesticides (OCPs) and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) along the Indus River Pakistan: Spatial pattern and Risk assessment

Freely dissolved OCPs and PCBs were measured by using polyethylene passive samplers at 15 sites during 2014 throughout the stretch of the Indus River to investigate the spatial pattern and risk assess. Levels (pg/L) of dissolved ∑OCPs and ∑PCBs ranged from 34 to 1600 and from 3 to 230. Among the detected OCPs, dissolved DDTs (p,p′-DDE, followed by p,p′-DDT) predominated with levels of 0.48 to 220 pg/L. The order of occurrence for other studied OCPs was as follows: HCB, endosulfans, chlordanes, and HCHs. Spatially, dissolved (pg/L) ∑OCPs varied (p \u3c 0.05) as the following: surface water of the alluvial riverine zone (ARZ) showed the highest levels (114) followed by the frozen mountain zone (FMZ) (52.9), low-lying zone (LLZ) (28.73), and wet mountain zone (WMZ) (14.43), respectively. However, our zone-wise PCB data did not exhibit significant differences (p \u3e 0.05). Principal component analysis/multilinear regression results showed pesticide usage in the crop/orchard fields and health sector, electric and electronic materials, and widespread industrial activities as the main source of OCPs and PCBs along the Indus River. Our results showed that OCPs and PCBs contaminated water intake, playing an important role towards the considerable cancer/non-cancer risk (HI and CR values) along the Indus River Flood-Plain

In vitro activities of Malaysian antidiabetic plant extracts on adipocytes cell

Diabetes mellitus is widely known as a metabolic disorder and it is becoming a major public health concern in most developing countries. The majority of type 2 patients are sufficiently insulin-resistant, which is defined as defective insulin signaling and a decreased insulin efficiency to induce glucose transport from the blood into key target cells such as muscle and fat cells (adipocyte) (Khan et aI., 2003). For these patients, more insulin is not necessarily the ideal treatment strategy. A multitude of herbs, spices, and other plant materials have been described for the treatment of diabetes mellitus around the world. To date, the demand for natural products is high and thus, this has increased attention to alternative medicine