Child mortality in South Asia: preventable diseases and scaling up immunisation efforts

To accelerate robust growth and aspire to global power status, South Asian countries must improve their child health indicators. Drawing on her professional advocacy and communications experience in South Asia, Krupa Shah discusses the availability of preventative treatments for the most common infectious diseases and the barriers to achieving comprehensive immunisation programmes across South Asia

Do testosterone injections increase libido for elderly hypogonadal patients?

Yes, testosterone therapy is effective in improving libido for elderly hypogonadal males (strength of recommendation [SOR]: B, based on small randomized controlled trials [RCTs]). Testosterone combined with estrogen can also improve libido for postmenopausal women, but it's not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for this purpose (SOR: B, based on small R CTs)

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF CYTISINE IN THERMOPSIS ALTERNIFLORAE USING HIGH-PERFORMANCE THIN-LAYER CHROMATOGRAPHY

Objective: An optimized high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) method has been established for the quantification of cytisine in Thermopsis alterniflorae Regel and Schmalh. Methods: Alcoholic extract of the aerial parts were prepared using Soxhlet extraction method. Separation was achieved on silica gel 60 F254 HPTLC plates using toluene-ethyl acetate-diethyl amine (7:2:1, v/v) as the mobile phase. The quantitation of cytisine was carried out using densitometric scanning at 545 nm after derivatization using Dragendorff’s reagent. Results: The linear regression analysis data for the calibration plot showed a good linear relationship (r2 = 0.9849) in the concentration range 10 to 15 µg/spot. The method was validated for precision, repeatability, accuracy, specificity, limit of detection and limit of quantification. The average recovery was 99.0899% indicating good accuracy. The percentage yield of cytisine obtained was 0.5075+0.0135 % w/w. Conclusion: The proposed HPTLC method was found to be simple, sensitive, accurate, reproducible, and robust

Should we identify and treat hyperlipidemia in the advanced elderly?

No randomized controlled trials exist that identify and treat hyperlipidemia for advanced elderly patients (age >80 years). Expert and consensus guidelines state that hyperlipidemia found in any patient with coronary artery disease (CAD), or at risk of CAD, should be treated irrespective of age; however, evidence is limited to support lowering lipids for advanced elderly patients with and without known CAD (strength of recommendation: C, based on expert and consensus guidelines)

An unusual case of labial fusion in a post pubertal girl

Labial fusion is defined as either partial or complete adherence of the labia minora. It is also known as vulvar fusion, labial adhesion, labial agglutination or synechia of the vulva. This condition is common in pre-pubertal girls when estrogen levels are low and commonly resolves spontaneously post-puberty. This condition is usually asymptomatic and can be treated with topical application of estrogen or betamethasone cream or by manual or surgical separation of adhesions. We present a case of labial fusion in post pubertal girl which was managed surgically

Weight loss, exercise, or both and physical function in obese older adults

BACKGROUND: Obesity exacerbates the age-related decline in physical function and causes frailty in older adults; however, the appropriate treatment for obese older adults is controversial. METHODS: In this 1-year, randomized, controlled trial, we evaluated the independent and combined effects of weight loss and exercise in 107 adults who were 65 years of age or older and obese. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group, a weightmanagement (diet) group, an exercise group, or a weight-management-plus-exercise (diet–exercise) group. The primary outcome was the change in score on the modified Physical Performance Test. Secondary outcomes included other measures of frailty, body composition, bone mineral density, specific physical functions, and quality of life. RESULTS: A total of 93 participants (87%) completed the study. In the intention-to-treat analysis, the score on the Physical Performance Test, in which higher scores indicate better physical status, increased more in the diet–exercise group than in the diet group or the exercise group (increases from baseline of 21% vs. 12% and 15%, respectively); the scores in all three of those groups increased more than the scores in the control group (in which the score increased by 1%) (P<0.001 for the between-group differences). Moreover, the peak oxygen consumption improved more in the diet–exercise group than in the diet group or the exercise group (increases of 17% vs. 10% and 8%, respectively; P<0.001); the score on the Functional Status Questionnaire, in which higher scores indicate better physical function, increased more in the diet–exercise group than in the diet group (increase of 10% vs. 4%, P<0.001). Body weight decreased by 10% in the diet group and by 9% in the diet–exercise group, but did not decrease in the exercise group or the control group (P<0.001). Lean body mass and bone mineral density at the hip decreased less in the diet–exercise group than in the diet group (reductions of 3% and 1%, respectively, in the diet–exercise group vs. reductions of 5% and 3%, respectively, in the diet group; P<0.05 for both comparisons). Strength, balance, and gait improved consistently in the diet–exercise group (P<0.05 for all comparisons). Adverse events included a small number of exercise-associated musculoskeletal injuries. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that a combination of weight loss and exercise provides greater improvement in physical function than either intervention alone

An analysis and evaluation of the WeFold collaborative for protein structure prediction and its pipelines in CASP11 and CASP12

Every two years groups worldwide participate in the Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) experiment to blindly test the strengths and weaknesses of their computational methods. CASP has significantly advanced the field but many hurdles still remain, which may require new ideas and collaborations. In 2012 a web-based effort called WeFold, was initiated to promote collaboration within the CASP community and attract researchers from other fields to contribute new ideas to CASP. Members of the WeFold coopetition (cooperation and competition) participated in CASP as individual teams, but also shared components of their methods to create hybrid pipelines and actively contributed to this effort. We assert that the scale and diversity of integrative prediction pipelines could not have been achieved by any individual lab or even by any collaboration among a few partners. The models contributed by the participating groups and generated by the pipelines are publicly available at the WeFold website providing a wealth of data that remains to be tapped. Here, we analyze the results of the 2014 and 2016 pipelines showing improvements according to the CASP assessment as well as areas that require further adjustments and research

Search for strongly interacting massive particles generating trackless jets in proton-proton collisions at s = 13 TeV

A search for dark matter in the form of strongly interacting massive particles (SIMPs) using the CMS detector at the LHC is presented. The SIMPs would be produced in pairs that manifest themselves as pairs of jets without tracks. The energy fraction of jets carried by charged particles is used as a key discriminator to suppress efficiently the large multijet background, and the remaining background is estimated directly from data. The search is performed using proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 16.1 fb - 1 , collected with the CMS detector in 2016. No significant excess of events is observed above the expected background. For the simplified dark matter model under consideration, SIMPs with masses up to 100 GeV are excluded and further sensitivity is explored towards higher masses

Measurement of prompt D0^{0} and D‾\overline{D}0^{0} meson azimuthal anisotropy and search for strong electric fields in PbPb collisions at root SNN\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

The strong Coulomb field created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is expected to produce a rapiditydependent difference (Av2) in the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution (elliptic flow, v2) between D0 (uc) and D0 (uc) mesons. Motivated by the search for evidence of this field, the CMS detector at the LHC is used to perform the first measurement of Av2. The rapidity-averaged value is found to be (Av2) = 0.001 ? 0.001 (stat)? 0.003 (syst) in PbPb collisions at ?sNN = 5.02 TeV. In addition, the influence of the collision geometry is explored by measuring the D0 and D0mesons v2 and triangular flow coefficient (v3) as functions of rapidity, transverse momentum (pT), and event centrality (a measure of the overlap of the two Pb nuclei). A clear centrality dependence of prompt D0 meson v2 values is observed, while the v3 is largely independent of centrality. These trends are consistent with expectations of flow driven by the initial-state geometry. ? 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY licens