Adequacy of phosphodiesterase inhibitor in prevention and treatment of LPS induced organ failure in BALB/c mice

Background: Even though with immense improvement and extensive understanding of pathophysiology of sepsis induced organ failure and affected population, it continues to put hundreds of people worldwide to eternal sleep due to lack of targeted therapy. Newer treatment modalities is the dire need of time. The present study was aimed to ascertain the adequacy of phosphodiesterases inhibitor - pentoxifylline (75mg/kg i.p) in endotoxin/LPS induced hepatotoxicity in BALB/c mice.Methods: The number of animals in each group was six. Endotoxin/lipopolysaccharides induced hepatotoxicity was reproduced in mice by giving lipopolysaccharide of serotype E. coli intraperitoneally. To ascertain the Preventive role, pentoxifylline was administered forehand LPS injection whereas therapeutic potential adjuged via post LPS delivering. The extent of liver damage was evaluated through serum alanine aminotransferases (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) estimation along with histopathological examination of liver tissue.Results: Results set forth that serum ALT, AST levels and histological alteration abated considerably (p ≤0.05) both in animals subjected to pentoxifylline pre and post-treatment.Conclusions: Pentoxifylline set up promising results in endotoxin induced hepatotoxicity and can be used therapeutic adjuncts to conventional treatment strategies in sepsis induced liver failure

Prevalence of behavioural and psychological problems in working children

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence and screen the nature and types of behavioural and psychological problems among working children in Karachi. METHODS: A cross sectional study was conducted in three urban squatter settlements of Karachi from May to June 2006, targeting working children aged 11-16 years. Behavioural Problems of these children were estimated by using the self reported Urdu version of the Strengths and Difficulty Questionnaire. The results were cross-tabulated using SPSS 13.0 with the identified risk-factors. RESULTS: Out of a total of 225 respondents, 94.2% (n = 212) males and 5.8% (n = 13) females, the prevalence of Behavioural Problems among working children was found to be 9.8%. Peer problems were most prevalent (16.9%) seconded by Conduct problems (16.7%). Adverse family environment and work environment were closely associated with Behavioural Problems in these children. CONCLUSION: Our study reinforces the need for measures to improve the environment of the children and prevent the psychological and behavioural problems associated with working children. Gradual, long-term policies are required to decrease the need for working children, though sudden abolishment would cause more detrimental effects

Accelerated Dynamic MRI Using Kernel-Based Low Rank Constraint

We present a novel reconstruction method for dynamic MR images from highly under-sampled k-space measurements. The reconstruction problem is posed as spectrally regularized matrix recovery problem, where kernel-based low rank constraint is employed to effectively utilize the non-linear correlations between the images in the dynamic sequence. Unlike other kernel-based methods, we use a single-step regularized reconstruction approach to simultaneously learn the kernel basis functions and the weights. The objective function is optimized using variable splitting and alternating direction method of multipliers. The framework can seamlessly handle additional sparsity constraints such as spatio-temporal total variation. The algorithm performance is evaluated on a numerical phantom and in vivo data sets and it shows significant improvement over the comparison methods

ARCA-IoT: An Attack-Resilient Cloud-Assisted IoT System

Putting trust in the world of the Internet of Things, where served and serving entities are often unknown, is very hard especially when personal and business information is often being exchanged for providing and consuming services. Moreover, the issues of interoperability and scalability of billions of heterogeneous things in IoT systems require more attention. A usercentric model of complex interconnected things must be designed in a way that not only makes things trustworthy for common people but it also provides the solution for interoperability and scalability. ARCA-IoT is such a system which not only identifies the attributes (including quality of service) essential for trust but also presents a user-centric model that is robust enough to tackle the attacks made by dishonest entities to manipulate the trustworthiness. For scalability and interoperability, a cloud-assisted environment is introduced in ARCA-IoT. An intuitive Naive Bayes approach is used to train ARCA-IoT in a way that it calculates the probabilities of the trustworthiness of the entities and then identifies various types of attacks with the support of three proposed algorithms. The approach is validated with a specifically designed simulated environment. Based on our simulation results, ARCA-IoT demonstrates the effectiveness in term of performance metrics such as accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and precision. Besides this, the system outperforms the existing related approaches in terms of a qualitative analysis based on different parametric metrics such as interoperability, scalability, context-awareness, and a humanlike decision

Auto-MeDiSine: An Auto-Turnable Medical Decision Support Engine Using an Automated Class Outlier Detection MEthod and Auto AMLP

With advanced data analysis techniques, efforts for more accurate decision support systems for disease prediction are on the rise. According to the World Health Organization, diabetes-related illnesses and mortalities are on the rise. Hence, early diagnosis is particularly important. In this paper, we present a framework, Auto-MeDiSine, that comprises an automated version of enhanced class outlier detection using a distance-based algorithm (AutoECODB), combined with an ensemble of automatic multilayer perceptron (AutoMLP). AutoECODB is built upon ECODB by automating the tuning of parameters to optimize outlier detection process. AutoECODB cleanses the dataset by removing outliers. Preprocessed dataset is then used to train a prediction model using an ensemble of AutoMLPs. A set of experiments is performed on publicly available Pima Indian Diabetes Dataset as follows: (1) Auto-MeDiSine is compared with other state-of-the-art methods reported in the literature where Auto-MeDiSine realized an accuracy of 88.7%; (2) AutoMLP is compared with other learners including individual (focusing on neural network-based learners) and ensemble learners; and (3) AutoECODB is compared with other preprocessing methods. Furthermore, in order to validate the generality of the framework, Auto-MeDiSine is tested on another publicly available BioStat Diabetes Dataset where it outperforms the existing reported results, reaching an accuracy of 97.1%

PHYLOGENETIC AND DRUG- AND VACCINE-RESISTANCE PROFILES OF HEPATITIS B VIRUS AMONG CHILDREN WITH HIV CO-INFECTION IN PAKISTAN

Introduction: HIV-1 and hepatitis B virus (HBV) share common routes of transmission and therefore co-infection is common. In 2019, an HIV-1 outbreak that resulted in >1000 children being infected, predominantly through nosocomial transmission, occurred in Sindh, Pakistan. We conducted a phylogenetic and drug resistance analysis of the HBV Reverse Transcriptase (RT) gene in children with HIV-1 and HBV co-infection. Methodology: Blood samples were collected from 321 children with HIV who were recruited as part of a study to investigate the HIV-1 outbreak. All samples were tested for HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) using an ELISA assay, and positive samples were used to amplify and sequence the HBV RT gene. The phylogenetic relationship between sequences was analyzed, and drug- and vaccine- resistance mutations in the RT gene were explored. Results: Of 321 samples, 23% (n = 75) were positive for HBsAg on ELISA. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequences revealed that 63.5% of HBV sequences were sub-genotype D1, while the rest were sub-genotype D2. Cluster analysis revealed grouping of sub-genotype D1 sequences exclusively with Pakistani sequences, while clustering of sub-genotypes D2 predominantly with global sequences. The 236Y mutation associated with resistance to tenofovir was observed in 2.8% of HBV sequences. Additionally, seven vaccine escape mutations were observed, the most common being 128 V. Conclusion: Our study suggests ongoing transmission of HBV D1 and D2 sub-genotypes in the HIV-1 co-infected population, likely nosocomially, given common routes of HVB and HIV-1 transmission. The prevalence of major HBV drug- and vaccine-resistant mutations remains low. Surveillance for further transmissions and the possible emergence of major drug- or vaccine-resistant variants is required

The 3rd DBCLS BioHackathon: improving life science data integration with Semantic Web technologies.

BACKGROUND: BioHackathon 2010 was the third in a series of meetings hosted by the Database Center for Life Sciences (DBCLS) in Tokyo, Japan. The overall goal of the BioHackathon series is to improve the quality and accessibility of life science research data on the Web by bringing together representatives from public databases, analytical tool providers, and cyber-infrastructure researchers to jointly tackle important challenges in the area of in silico biological research. RESULTS: The theme of BioHackathon 2010 was the 'Semantic Web', and all attendees gathered with the shared goal of producing Semantic Web data from their respective resources, and/or consuming or interacting those data using their tools and interfaces. We discussed on topics including guidelines for designing semantic data and interoperability of resources. We consequently developed tools and clients for analysis and visualization. CONCLUSION: We provide a meeting report from BioHackathon 2010, in which we describe the discussions, decisions, and breakthroughs made as we moved towards compliance with Semantic Web technologies - from source provider, through middleware, to the end-consumer.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Laparoscopy in management of appendicitis in high-, middle-, and low-income countries: a multicenter, prospective, cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency worldwide. Differences between high- and low-income settings in the availability of laparoscopic appendectomy, alternative management choices, and outcomes are poorly described. The aim was to identify variation in surgical management and outcomes of appendicitis within low-, middle-, and high-Human Development Index (HDI) countries worldwide. METHODS: This is a multicenter, international prospective cohort study. Consecutive sampling of patients undergoing emergency appendectomy over 6 months was conducted. Follow-up lasted 30 days. RESULTS: 4546 patients from 52 countries underwent appendectomy (2499 high-, 1540 middle-, and 507 low-HDI groups). Surgical site infection (SSI) rates were higher in low-HDI (OR 2.57, 95% CI 1.33-4.99, p = 0.005) but not middle-HDI countries (OR 1.38, 95% CI 0.76-2.52, p = 0.291), compared with high-HDI countries after adjustment. A laparoscopic approach was common in high-HDI countries (1693/2499, 67.7%), but infrequent in low-HDI (41/507, 8.1%) and middle-HDI (132/1540, 8.6%) groups. After accounting for case-mix, laparoscopy was still associated with fewer overall complications (OR 0.55, 95% CI 0.42-0.71, p < 0.001) and SSIs (OR 0.22, 95% CI 0.14-0.33, p < 0.001). In propensity-score matched groups within low-/middle-HDI countries, laparoscopy was still associated with fewer overall complications (OR 0.23 95% CI 0.11-0.44) and SSI (OR 0.21 95% CI 0.09-0.45). CONCLUSION: A laparoscopic approach is associated with better outcomes and availability appears to differ by country HDI. Despite the profound clinical, operational, and financial barriers to its widespread introduction, laparoscopy could significantly improve outcomes for patients in low-resource environments. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02179112