A pharmacoepidemiology study of local fungal infections in skin and venereal diseases outpatient department of a rural tertiary care hospital

Background: Fungal infections of the skin were the 4th most common skin disease in 2010 affecting 984 million people. An estimated 20-25% of the world’s population has some form of fungal infection. Dermatophytes are fungi that cause superficial infections of the skin, commonly referred to as tinea infections.Methods: This was a prospective and an observational study conducted from February 2018 to January 2019 in Dermatology Department. Prescriptions included all newly diagnosed patients with cutaneous fungal infection of both sex who attended dermatology OPD. Factors considered were sociodemographic parameters, the disease encountered and number of patients in each group and number of patients who received antifungal therapy (oral and topical) etc.Results: 1000 prescriptions were analysed of patients between 18 to 65 years of age with cutaneous fungal infections. There were a greater number of males (57.4%) than females (42.6%). The average number of antifungal drugs prescribed per prescription was 2.33. Majority of the patients were prescribed itraconazole (82.30%) followed by terbinafine (9.70%) and fluconazole (8.0%).Conclusions: The most common oral antifungal drug used was itraconazole. Ketoconazole and Terbinafine were the most commonly used topical agents respectively

Decay of URLs Citation: A Case Study of Current Science

The present study is conducted to analyze the accessibility, deterioration and half-life of URLs of web documents cited in Current Science Journal published during 2015 -2016. A total of 1724 URLs cited in the 1564 articles were examined. It was found that 56.67 percent of URLs were accessible at the time of testing and the remaining 43.33 per-cent of URLs were not accessible. Out of all HTTP error messages, HTTP 404 – ‘file not found’ was the irresistible error message encountered and represented 59.03 percent of all HTTP error messages. Average half-life of URLs of missing URLs was estimated to be 1.76 years. Even though there are various retrieval tools being used to recover vanished URLs, still there is a need to improve such tools

Study the role of hepcidin in diagnosis of iron deficiency anemia in young females of northern India

Background: Iron deficiency is one of the most common nutritional disorder. Maintenance of body iron status is an integral part of healthcare in young female of reproductive age group. Thereby early detection could lead to early intervention and reduce its comorbidity.  Indeed, an ideal screening test should be capable of identifying iron deficiency long before developing anemia. Henceforth, the present study was aimed to determine utility of serum hepcidin in iron deficiency and to access the baseline value of hepcidin in young female.Methods: This sectional study was conducted in the Department of biochemistry SGT Medical College Hospital and Research Institute, Budhera, Gurugram. It included non-pregnant female students of age 18-25 years with normal RBC indices and hemoglobin >12 gm%. Estimation of serum hepcidin-25 was by ELISA.Results: The reference range of hepcidin established in this study was 12.14-139.89 ng/ml for females with the mean being 42.4±29.13 ng/ml. It showed higher discriminating power in evaluating iron status in young healthy women (AUC 0.984) with best combination of diagnostic sensitivity (95.7%) and specificity (93.2%) at a cut off of >15.7 ng/ml. Serum hepcidin identified 17% of young healthy females with normal hemoglobin to have functional or storage iron deficiency.Conclusions: The prevention of iron deficiency anemia remains insufficient worldwide especially among underprivileged women and children Therefore, estimation of serum hepcidin may be considered as a valuable tool in assessing iron status in young healthy female population who are the prime target group for iron supplements to reduce comorbidity associated with iron deficiency and anemia

How Good Is Local Search for Capacitated Facility Location Problem: An Experimental Study

Facility location problems have been widely studied since 1960’s. These problems are known to be strongly NP-hard. In capacitated variant of the problem, a capacity constraint is associated with each facility. Capacitated facility location problem (CFLP) instances can be solved exactly using existing MILP solvers but only for small instance sizes. As the size of the problem instance increases beyond few hundred facilities and few hundred clients, it becomes prohibitive to solve these instances exactly. For large problem instances, therefore, other solution methods are used. One approach is to use heuristic methods. These methods usually give good solutions in reasonable time but they do not provide any guarantee about the quality of the solution. Somewhere between these two extremes exist another class of algorithms called approximation algorithms. They also provide only suboptimal solutions to the problem, like heuristic algorithms, in polynomial time. How ever they guarantee worst case upper bounds on the cost of the solution. So, a solution obtained using an approximation algorithm is guaranteed to have its cost between the optimal cost and the upper bound. We present experimental studies done with a local search based approximation algorithm for CFLP given by Bansal et al. [1] to show that this algorithm performs well in practice

Drug prescribing pattern of antifungal drugs for local fungal infections in a tertiary care hospital: MAMC, Agroha

Background: Drug utilization research or studies are the powerful exploratory tools to ascertain the role of drugs in the society which refers to the marketing, distribution, prescription and use of drugs with special emphasis on the medical, social and economic consequences. Periodic prescription audit in form of drug utilization study is a way to improve the quality of prescription and promote rational prescribing.Methods: This was a prospective and an observational study. Prescriptions included all newly diagnosed patients with cutaneous fungal infection of both sexes who attended dermatology OPD. Factors considered were sociodemographic parameters and WHO prescribing indicators.Results: 1000 prescriptions were analysed of patients between 18 to 65 years of age with cutaneous fungal infections. The average number of drugs per encounter was 3.68. The percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name was 50.33% and the percentage of drugs prescribed from NLEM was 20.93%.Conclusions: This study indicates that prescribing practices of drugs in tertiary care hospital can be improved by promoting generic name drug prescribing, prescribing drugs from NLEM and by reducing polypharmacy

Comparison of efficacy and safety of ketoprofen patch versus diclofenac patch as post-operative analgesic in hysterectomy patients

Background: The objective of the study was to compare the efficacy and safety of ketoprofen patch versus diclofenac patch as post-operative analgesic in hysterectomy patients.Methods: The study was a prospective, single blind, randomized, comparative interventional clinical study conducted in a tertiary care hospital. Sixty female patients were randomly allocated to receive either ketoprofen or diclofenac patch 1 hour prior to the hysterectomy. Pain was assessed postoperatively after an interval of every four hours for 24 hours using visual analogue scale (VAS) and verbal rating scale (VRS).Results: In ketoprofen group, mean VAS was (2.92±0.11) significantly low as compared to diclofenac group (3.25±0.14). The mean VRS score in group ketoprofen (1.62±0.22) was low as compared to group diclofenac (1.83±0.16). Safety analysis revealed no apparent serious adverse events. Inj. Paracetamol 1 gm i.v was given as rescue analgesic to the patients in whom VRS >2 and VAS >5 was noted. Data were analysed using unpaired student’s t-test.Conclusions: Transdermal patches are very convenient to use and causes less discomfort as compared to traditional routes of drug delivery. Ketoprofen patch was found better in providing analgesia after hysterectomy as compared to diclofenac patch with lesser side effects.

Design of Reliable Analog DMTL Phase Shifter with Improved Performance for Ku Band Applications

An analog phase shifter based on distributed MEMS transmission line (DMTL) is designed for Ku band applications. Traditional RF MEMS phase shifter comprising 6 switches has limited phase shift of 37.75° due to instability region. A new concept of stopper is incorporated to achieve high phase shift. In the present paper, optimisation of the analog phase shifter is done to increase its phase shift upto 88.63°. Phase shift is a strong function of capacitance ratio which is increased from 1.75 to 2.95. The maximum operating voltage and mechanical resonant frequency for the phase shifter are 16 V and 8.3 KHz, respectively. The switching time is calculated to 56 μs. The simulated insertion loss of the phase shifter is -1.75 dB with return loss of -20.49 dB at 17 GHz. The simulated results are verified with analytical modelling which are in close match

A comparative study of levobupivacaine alone and in combination with dexamethasone in caudal block for pediatric patient undergoing infraumbilical surgeries

Background: The caudal epidural block is one of the most commonly used regional techniques for post-operative pain management in pediatric age group patients undergoing infraumbilical surgeries. Adjuvants use increases the duration of analgesia and decrease local anesthetic dose requirement so decreasing the risk of toxicity. Aims and Objectives: The aim of present study was to evaluate and compare the efficacy of caudal block with 0.25% levobupivacaine 1 mL/kg and 0.25% levobupivacaine 1 mL/kg+dexamethasone 0.1 mg/kg for post-operative pain relief in pediatric patients undergoing infraumbilical surgeries. The secondary objective of the study was to compare hemodynamic parameters and side effects if any. Materials and Methods: A prospective, randomized, comparative, and double-blind study design was conducted in 60 patients in JAH super specialty group of hospitals. All patients belonging to physical status of American Society of Anesthesiologists Grade I and II, aged 1–6 years, were randomly allocated into two groups: Group 1 (n=30) received levobupivacaine 0.25% 1 mL/kg in 0.5 mL saline and Group 2 (n=30) received levobupivacaine 0.25% 1 ml/kg with dexamethasone 0.1 mg/kg for caudal block in pediatric patients undergoing infraumbilical surgeries. Primary outcome was duration of analgesia using face, legs, activity, cry, and consolability scale at interval of 0, 15, 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 min postoperatively. The secondary outcome of study included hemodynamic parameters and adverse events during the post-operative period. Results: The mean duration of analgesia in Group 1 (L) was 430.77±16.71 min and in Group 2 (L+D) was 805.00±36.71 min with statistically significant result. Conclusion: On adding dexamethasone to levobupivacaine in caudal block significantly prolongs duration of analgesia in post-operative period. It also provides more hemodynamic stability during intraoperative and post-operative period and associated with minimal side effects

Journal of Academic Librarianship: A Bibliometric Analysis

This bibliometric study is focused on the findings of ‘Journal of Academic Librarianship’ (JAL) during the period 2007-2016. Web of Science Citation database is used and 656 articles retrieved are analyzed on diverse parameters i.e. chronological distribution of articles, length of articles, authorship and citation pattern etc. More than half of the articles are published under joint authorship and average degree of collaboration is 0.56. A very large majority of articles (89.85 percent) is published by USA and top 14 countries published 94.36 percent articles in JAL from 2007-16. The most prolific authors are K. Coyle and G. Little with 9 articles each and highest contributed institutions are California State University System and University of Illinois System with 21 and 16 articles respectively. The average citation per paper is 4.35 and 8 papers received 31 and above citation