A Study on Causes of Condemnation of Carcass and Organs at Shah Alam Abattoir

A two-week study of the causes of condemnation at Shah Alam abattoir was conducted. In the bovine species, liver and lungs w.ere the main organs condemned due to fluke infestation. and emphysema respectively. Ninety-five percent of pig lungs were condemned because of back bleeding, while in sheep caseous lymphadenitis was the major cause of organ condemnedtion affectingg mainly the lungs and lymph nodes. No total carcass condemnation was observed in any species during the study perio

Two Versus Three Narrow-Diameter Implants with Locator Attachments Supporting Mandibular Overdentures: A Two-Year Prospective Study

Purpose. To compare treatment outcome (survival rate, condition of hard and soft peri-implant tissues) and prosthodontic maintenance requirements of two versus three narrow-diameter bone level implants with Locator attachments supporting mandibular overdentures. Materials and Methods. Twenty completely edentulous patients with atrophic mandibles were treated. Ten patients (Group A) were treated with overdentures supported by two narrow (3.3-mm diameter) implants (Straumann AG, Basel, Switzerland) and ten patients (Group B) were treated with overdentures supported by three narrow implants. Locator (Zest Anchors, USA) attachments were used for prosthetic anchorage. Standardized clinical and radiographic parameters (survival rate, plaque index, calculus index, gingival index, bleeding index, probing depth and marginal bone loss) were evaluated at the time of the completion of the prosthetic treatment (baseline) and after 6, 12 and 24 months of functional loading. Prosthodontic maintenance requirements were also scored. Results. Only one implant was lost (Group B) during the healing period. There were no significant differences with regards to any of the studied clinical and radiographic parameters between the two groups (P > 0.05). Few prosthetic complications were recorded. Conclusions. No need to insert more than two narrow-diameter bone level implants with Locator attachments in cases of atrophic mandible to support an overdenture, however, long-term prospective studies are required to support this notion

A Prospective Study of Early Loaded Single Implant-Retained Mandibular Overdentures: Preliminary One-Year Results

Purpose. To investigate the predictability of simplifying mandibular overdenture treatment using one-stage surgery and early prosthetic loading of a single implant. Materials and Methods. Twenty edentulous patients with problematic existing mandibular dentures were treated. A single implant with a chemically modified surface (SLActive, Straumann AG, Basel, Switzerland) was placed into the mandibular midline. The patients were recalled at 3, 6 and 12 months. Clinical assessments and marginal bone loss using standardized radiographs were recorded. All complications, failures and maintenance were noted. Visual analog-scale questionnaires were used to record patient satisfaction in five categories. ANOVA was used to determine differences between means of marginal bone loss and different categories of patient staisfaction (=0.05). Results. The 20 early loaded implants were all surviving at the 12-month recall. All implants showed less than 1 mm of marginal bone loss by the end of the 1-year with a significant increase during the follow-up period. Few prosthetic problems were reported. Patient satisfaction was high with a significant increase in all comfort and functional parameters. Conclusions. These preliminary 1-year results indicate that early loading of a single chemically modified surface implant used to retain a mucosa-borne mandibular overdenture is a safe, reliable, and cost-effective treatment

Ultrastructural pathology of the upper respiratory tract of rabbits experimentally infected with Pasteurella multocida A:3

Twenty-four 8 to 9 week-old Pasteurella multocida-free rabbits were divided into three equal groups, the first group was pretreated with hydrocortisone and inoculated intranasally with pasteurella multocida serotype A:3. The second group was inoculated intranasally with P. multocida without hydrocortisone treatment. The third group was inoculated with phosphate buffered saline only and used as a control group. Pasteurella multocida was isolated from the nasal cavity of all infected rabbits in group 1 and 2 and from the trachea of seven rabbits in group 1 and five rabbits in group 2. This study was conducted to observe the ultrastructural changes of the upper respiratory tract of hydrocortisone treated and non-treated rabbits infected with P. multocida serotype A:3. The ultrastructural changes detected in infected rabbits were ciliary destruction and deciliation of the ciliated epithelial cells, cellular swelling, goblet cell hyperplasia and endothelial cell damage. Pasteurella multocida was observed attached to the degenerated cilia,microvilli and mucus. Pasteurella multocida infection was associated with inflammatory responses, which may have caused tissue damage. It is possible that hydrocortisone modulates the severity of infection as an immune suppressor and an inhibitor of goblet cell secretion

Use of an adapted participatory learning and action cycle to increase knowledge and uptake of child vaccination in internally displaced persons camps (IVACS): A cluster-randomised controlled trial

Background: Vaccination is a key public health intervention that can reduce excess mortality in humanitarian contexts. Vaccine hesitancy is thought to be a significant problem requiring demand side interventions. Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) approaches have proven effective in reducing perinatal mortality in low income settings and we aimed to apply an adapted approach in Somalia. Methods: A randomised cluster trial was implemented in camps for internally displaced people near Mogadishu, from June to October 2021. An adapted PLA approach (hPLA) was used in partnership with indigenous ‘Abaay-Abaay’ women's social groups. Trained facilitators ran 6 meeting cycles that addressed topics of child health and vaccination, analysed challenges, and planned and implemented potential solutions. Solutions included a stakeholder exchange meeting involving Abaay-Abaay group members and services providers from humanitarian organisations. Data was collected at baseline and after completion of the 3 month intervention cycle. Results: Overall, 64.6% of mothers were group members at baseline and this increased in both arms during the intervention (p = 0.016). Maternal preference for getting young children vaccinated was >95% at baseline and did not change. The hPLA intervention improved the adjusted maternal/caregiver knowledge score by 7.9 points (maximum possible score 21) compared to the control (95% CI 6.93, 8.85; p < 0.0001). Coverage of both measles vaccination (MCV1) (aOR 2.43 95% CI 1.96, 3.01; p < 0.001) and completion of the pentavalent vaccination series (aOR 2.45 95% CI 1.27, 4.74; p = 0.008) also improved. However, adherence to timely vaccination did not (aOR 1.12 95% CI 0.39, 3.26; p = 0.828). Possession of a home-based, child health record card increased in the intervention arm from 18 to 35% (aOR 2.86 95% CI 1.35, 6.06; p = 0.006). Conclusion: A hPLA approach, run in partnership with indigenous social groups, can achieve important changes in public health knowledge and practice in a humanitarian context. Further work to scale up the approach and address other vaccines and population groups is warranted

Effects of biomaterials keratin-gelatin and basic fibroblast growth factor-gelatin composite film on wound healing in dogs

Eighteen clinically healthy dogs weighing 10-15 kg body weight were used in this study over a 20-day period. They were allocated randomly into 3 groups of 6 animals each. After the creation of 5 cm x 5cm open wound, Group I was control treated with Gentamycin ointment. Groups II and ill were treated with keratin-gelatin and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF)-gelatin composite film respectively. On application, the keratin-gelatin and bFGF-gelatin composite film were well accepted by the animals without any adverse reaction. On clinical examination, Group II showed bright beefy red color granulation tissue with angiogenesis when compared to Groups I and ill. On bacteriological examination, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas, Escherichia coli, Proteus and Klebsiella species were isolated from all the groups. Mean percentage of epithelialisation, wound contraction and total healing were significantly better in Group II (P<0.05). Keratin is a biocompatible protein which does not interfere with the body's normal immunologic response and therefore it can be used in extensive wounds and also in non healing chronic wounds which need a trigger to stimulate the normal healing process. In extensive wounds when there is lack of autologous tissue, biomaterials like keratin-gelatin may be beneficial and can be used

In situ nanocompression of carbon black to understand the tribology of contaminated diesel engine oils

The study has evaluated the role of soot, surrogated by carbon black (CB) experimentally, in affecting the performance of engine oils. It is very well known that the existence of soot in oil produces abrasive wear on contact surfaces. Other mechanisms influence the oil performance such as additives adsorption on soot and oil degradation due to the interactions with soot. Recent research has suggested the existence of another wear mechanism related to soot particles, which remains poorly understood. This study investigates the effect of soot interactions in engine oil on its mechanical properties. Carbon black particles (CBPs) were used in the experiments to simulate real soot in the engine. The microstructure and crystal structure of CBPs compared to real soot were investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). In situ compression of the single particle was conducted in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to evaluate the mechanical properties of fresh and aged CBPs with different sizes. The results show that aged CBPs are significantly harder than fresh CBPs, indicating that ageing in oil modifies the turbostratic crystal structure of CBPs and alters its mechanical properties, potentially affecting tribological performance

Adaptive Localization of Focus Point Regions via Random Patch Probabilistic Density from Whole-Slide, Ki-67-Stained Brain Tumor Tissue

Analysis of whole-slide tissue for digital pathology images has been clinically approved to provide a second opinion to pathologists. Localization of focus points from Ki-67-stained histopathology whole-slide tissue microscopic images is considered the first step in the process of proliferation rate estimation. Pathologists use eye pooling or eagle-view techniques to localize the highly stained cell-concentrated regions from the whole slide under microscope, which is called focus-point regions. This procedure leads to a high variety of interpersonal observations and time consuming, tedious work and causes inaccurate findings. The localization of focus-point regions can be addressed as a clustering problem. This paper aims to automate the localization of focus-point regions from whole-slide images using the random patch probabilistic density method. Unlike other clustering methods, random patch probabilistic density method can adaptively localize focus-point regions without predetermining the number of clusters. The proposed method was compared with the k-means and fuzzy c-means clustering methods. Our proposed method achieves a good performance, when the results were evaluated by three expert pathologists. The proposed method achieves an average false-positive rate of 0.84% for the focus-point region localization error. Moreover, regarding RPPD used to localize tissue from whole-slide images, 228 whole-slide images have been tested; 97.3% localization accuracy was achieved