Nevin Manimala

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 29;17(6):e0270680. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270680. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Asthma is one of the most common chronic illnesses among children and adolescents. It can severely affect their quality of life (QoL). Our study assessed the QoL and analyzed potential risk factors for poor QoL among asthmatic children and adolescents.

METHODS: This was a cross-sectional comparative study. Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (PAQLQ) was used to measure the QoL and Asthma Control Test (ACT) was used to evaluate asthma control. The Chi-square test and independent t-test were used to compare variables. We used Multivariate logistic regression to identify the association between determinants and outcomes. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05.

RESULTS: We recruited 132 participants. We found that 47 patients (35.6%) had controlled Asthma and 85 patients (64.3%) had uncontrolled Asthma. When compared to uncontrolled asthma individuals, participants with controlled asthma had improved QoL and scored significantly higher in the symptom domain (P = 0.002), activity domain (P = 0.004), emotional domain (P = 0.002), and overall PAQoL scores (P = 0.002). Hospital admission affects significantly all domains of PAQOL (P<0.05). Poor QoL was significantly associated with hospitalization for asthma (OR = 3.4; CI: 2.77-3.94, P = 0.01), disease severity (OR = 3.0; CI: 2.41-3.61, P = 0.01), uncontrolled asthma (OR = 2.88; CI: 2.21-3.41, P = 0.019), and male gender (OR = 2.55; CI: 1.88-2.91, P = 0.02).

CONCLUSIONS: The results of the present study showed that in children and adolescents, uncontrolled asthma, disease severity, and previously hospitalized patients were associated with poor QoL. These factors must be considered when planning a comprehensive care plan for a better quality of life.

PMID:35767577 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0270680

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 29;17(6):e0268766. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268766. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: There is uncertainty around the health impact and economic costs of the recent slowing of the historical decline in cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence and the future impact on dementia and disability.

METHODS: Previously validated IMPACT Better Ageing Markov model for England and Wales, integrating English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) data for 17,906 ELSA participants followed from 1998 to 2012, linked to NHS Hospital Episode Statistics. Counterfactual design comparing two scenarios: Scenario 1. CVD Plateau-age-specific CVD incidence remains at 2011 levels, thus continuing recent trends. Scenario 2. CVD Fall-age-specific CVD incidence goes on declining, following longer-term trends. The main outcome measures were age-related healthcare costs, social care costs, opportunity costs of informal care, and quality adjusted life years (valued at £60,000 per QALY).

FINDINGS: The total 10 year cumulative incremental net monetary cost associated with a persistent plateauing of CVD would be approximately £54 billion (95% uncertainty interval £14.3-£96.2 billion), made up of some £13 billion (£8.8-£16.7 billion) healthcare costs, £1.5 billion (-£0.9-£4.0 billion) social care costs, £8 billion (£3.4-£12.8 billion) informal care and £32 billion (£0.3-£67.6 billion) value of lost QALYs.

INTERPRETATION: After previous, dramatic falls, CVD incidence has recently plateaued. That slowdown could substantially increase health and social care costs over the next ten years. Healthcare costs are likely to increase more than social care costs in absolute terms, but social care costs will increase more in relative terms. Given the links between COVID-19 and cardiovascular health, effective cardiovascular prevention policies need to be revitalised urgently.

PMID:35767575 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0268766

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 29;17(6):e0267660. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267660. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Skilled birth attendants (SBAs) play a crucial role in reducing infant and maternal mortality. Although the ratio of skilled assistance at birth has increased in Bangladesh, factors associated with SBA use are unknown. The main goal of our study was to reveal the individual- and community-level factors associated with SBA use during childbirth in Bangladesh. We also showed the prevalence and trend of SBA use and related independent variables in Bangladesh over the past decade.

METHODS: This study utilized the Bangladesh Health and Demographic Survey (BDHS) 2017-2018, a cross-sectional study. We used binary logistic regression to examine the extent of variation in SBA use attributable to the individual- and community-level variables.

RESULTS: Overall, 53.35% of women received assistance from SBAs during childbirth. The average annual rate of increase (AARI) in the number of SBA-assisted births over the past 10 years was 8.88%. Respondents who gave birth at or above 19 years had 1.40 times (AOR = 1.40; 95% CI: 1.21-1.62) greater odds of having skilled delivery assistance than respondents aged 18 years old or less. Women and their husband’s education levels were significantly associated with using skilled assistance during delivery, with odds of 1.60 (AOR = 1.60; 95% CI: 1.45-2.01) and 1.41 (AOR = 1.41; 95% CI: 1.21-1.66), respectively compared to those with education up to primary level. Women from rich families and those receiving better antenatal care (ANC) visits were more likely to have professional delivery assistance. Community-level factors also showed significance towards having professional assistance while giving birth. Women from urban communities and those who utilized more than four ANC visits and had completed secondary or higher education showed a greater tendency to use an SBA during childbirth than their counterparts.

CONCLUSION: The use of SBAs during delivery was significantly associated with some individual- and community-level factors. To reduce maternal and child mortality, there is a need to focus on rural and uneducated people who are less likely to access these facilities. Special programs could increase awareness and help the poor community obtain the minimum facility in maternal care.

PMID:35767568 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0267660

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 29;17(6):e0269845. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269845. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

We propose a stochastic generative model to represent a directed graph constructed by citations among academic papers, where nodes and directed edges represent papers with discrete publication time and citations respectively. The proposed model assumes that a citation between two papers occurs with a probability based on the type of the citing paper, the importance of cited paper, and the difference between their publication times, like the existing models. We consider the out-degrees of citing paper as its type, because, for example, survey paper cites many papers. We approximate the importance of a cited paper by its in-degrees. In our model, we adopt three functions: a logistic function for illustrating the numbers of papers published in discrete time, an inverse Gaussian probability distribution function to express the aging effect based on the difference between publication times, and an exponential distribution (or a generalized Pareto distribution) for describing the out-degree distribution. We consider that our model is a more reasonable and appropriate stochastic model than other existing models and can perform complete simulations without using original data. In this paper, we first use the Web of Science database and see the features used in our model. By using the proposed model, we can generate simulated graphs and demonstrate that they are similar to the original data concerning the in- and out-degree distributions, and node triangle participation. In addition, we analyze two other citation networks derived from physics papers in the arXiv database and verify the effectiveness of the model.

PMID:35767539 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0269845

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 29;17(6):e0270103. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270103. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Thousands of youth are sexually trafficked each year worldwide. Increased public attention to the commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) of children has resulted in the rapid deployment of hybrid community public health and social service programs for these vulnerable youth. Research on the effectiveness of these advocacy programs is lacking, particularly whether they decrease psychosocial distress and increase readiness to leave CSE.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Cisgender girls under age 18 at the time of CSE, and who were identified as at-risk for sex trafficking revictimization, were included in an evaluation of an anti-trafficking advocacy program in the North Texas region of the United States. The program includes crisis response, case management, referral, and mentoring services in collaboration with multi-disciplinary team (MDT) responses to identified youth sex trafficking. Case management notes, needs assessments and individualized treatment plans were collected at intake and every 30 days until study conclusion. Standardized surveys, including the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), the Coping Self-Efficacy Scale, and the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment (URICA) were collected at intake and every 180 days until the study concluded. Analyses included descriptive statistics, paired t-tests, chi-square, multivariate linear and logistic regressions, Poisson regressions, and latent profile analysis.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study was approved by the Texas Christian University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Results of this study will be presented to the scientific community at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals and non-scholarly outlets such as public health and social service conferences.

PMID:35767522 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0270103

JMIR Med Educ. 2022 Jun 29;8(2):e35074. doi: 10.2196/35074.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: With the move to virtual interviewing, residency websites are an important recruitment resource, introducing applicants to programs across the country and allowing for comparison. Recruitment is highly competitive from a common potential pool between vascular surgery, thoracic surgery, and interventional radiology with the ratio of applicants to positions being highest in interventional radiology, followed by thoracic surgery and lastly vascular surgery, as reported by the National Resident Matching Program.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to evaluate the accessibility and availability of online content for those integrated residency programs.

METHODS: A list of accredited vascular surgery, thoracic surgery, and interventional radiology residencies was obtained from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) database. Program websites were evaluated by trained independent reviewers (n=2) for content items pertaining to program recruitment and education (scored absent or present). Statistical analysis was performed in R software.

RESULTS: Of ACGME-accredited programs, 56 of 61 (92%) vascular surgery, 27 of 27 (100%) thoracic surgery, and 74 of 85 (87%) interventional radiology programs had functional websites (P=.12). Vascular surgery websites contained a median of 26 (IQR 20-32) content items, thoracic surgery websites contained a median of 27 (IQR 21-32) content items, and interventional radiology websites contained a median of 23 (IQR 18-27) content items. Two content items considered highly influential to applicant program decisions are procedural experience and faculty mentorship, which were reported at 32% (18/56) and 11% (6/56) for vascular surgery, 19% (5/27) and 11% (3/27) for thoracic surgery, and 50% (37/74) and 15% (11/74) for interventional radiology (P=.008 and P=.75), respectively. Key deficits were work hours, debt management, and curriculum for interventional radiology; resident profiles, sample contracts, and research interests in vascular surgery; and operative experiences and the program director’s contact and message for thoracic surgery. Interventional radiology deficits were work hours, and thoracic surgery deficits were procedural experience. Both interventional radiology and thoracic surgery websites lacked information on evaluation criteria and faculty mentorship.

CONCLUSIONS: This study has uncovered key differences in the availability of online content for residencies recruiting from the same pool of applicants. Thoracic surgery has the most information, followed by vascular surgery, with interventional radiology reporting the least content. In the era of virtual interviewing from the same potential pool of applicants, programs should review and revise their web presence with the aim to increase the availability of online content to attract valuable candidates.

PMID:35767342 | DOI:10.2196/35074

JMIR Serious Games. 2022 Jun 29;10(2):e38952. doi: 10.2196/38952.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Various face-to-face training opportunities have been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instructor development workshops for advanced resuscitation (ie, advanced life support) training courses are no exception. Virtual reality (VR) is an attractive strategy for remote training. However, to our knowledge, there are no reports of resuscitation instructor training programs being held in a virtual space.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the learning effects of an instructor development workshop that was conducted in a virtual space.

METHODS: In this observational study, we created a virtual workshop space by using NEUTRANS (Synamon Inc)-a commercial VR collaboration service. The instructor development workshop for the advanced life support training course was held in a virtual space (ie, termed the VR course) as a certified workshop by the Japanese Association of Acute Medicine. We asked 13 instructor candidates (students) who participated in the VR course to provide a workshop report (VR group). Reports from a previously held face-to-face workshop (ie, the face-to-face course and group) were likewise prepared for comparison. A total of 5 certified instructor trainers viewed and scored the reports on a 5-point Likert scale.

RESULTS: All students completed the VR course without any problems and received certificates of completion. The scores for the VR group and the face-to-face group did not differ at the level of statistical significance (median 3.8, IQR 3.8-4.0 and median 4.2, IQR 3.9-4.2, respectively; P=.41).

CONCLUSIONS: We successfully conducted an instructor development workshop in a virtual space. The degree of learning in the virtual workshop was the same as that in the face-to-face workshop.

PMID:35767318 | DOI:10.2196/38952

J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022 Jun 29:1-7. doi: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00448. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The original Spectral Correlation Index (SCI_o ) is a measure of amplitude envelope distortion that has been used in several studies to predict behavioral results. Because the original SCI_o did not account for the differential contribution of particular frequency bands to speech intelligibility (i.e., band importance) or for audibility, a new “individual” version (the SCI_i ) is proposed and evaluated. Sentence intelligibility data are used to compare the predictive power and goodness-of-fit for statistical models using two versions of the SCI. The SCI_i provides significantly better fits to behavioral data than the SCI_o . This result demonstrates the importance of accounting for and including signal audibility in analyzing and modeling data collected from the population of individuals with hearing impairment. With this update, the SCI_i is a useful measure for predicting speech intelligibility based on amplitude envelope distortions.

PMID:35767317 | DOI:10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00448

Top Magn Reson Imaging. 2022 Jun 1;31(3):31-39. doi: 10.1097/RMR.0000000000000296. Epub 2022 Jun 28.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Automated whole brain segmentation from magnetic resonance images is of great interest for the development of clinically relevant volumetric markers for various neurological diseases. Although deep learning methods have demonstrated remarkable potential in this area, they may perform poorly in nonoptimal conditions, such as limited training data availability. Manual whole brain segmentation is an incredibly tedious process, so minimizing the data set size required for training segmentation algorithms may be of wide interest. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of the prototypical deep learning segmentation architecture (U-Net) with a previously published atlas-free traditional machine learning method, Classification using Derivative-based Features (C-DEF) for whole brain segmentation, in the setting of limited training data.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: C-DEF and U-Net models were evaluated after training on manually curated data from 5, 10, and 15 participants in 2 research cohorts: (1) people living with clinically diagnosed HIV infection and (2) relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, each acquired at separate institutions, and between 5 and 295 participants’ data using a large, publicly available, and annotated data set of glioblastoma and lower grade glioma (brain tumor segmentation). Statistics was performed on the Dice similarity coefficient using repeated-measures analysis of variance and Dunnett-Hsu pairwise comparison.

RESULTS: C-DEF produced better segmentation than U-Net in lesion (29.2%-38.9%) and cerebrospinal fluid (5.3%-11.9%) classes when trained with data from 15 or fewer participants. Unlike C-DEF, U-Net showed significant improvement when increasing the size of the training data (24%-30% higher than baseline). In the brain tumor segmentation data set, C-DEF produced equivalent or better segmentations than U-Net for enhancing tumor and peritumoral edema regions across all training data sizes explored. However, U-Net was more effective than C-DEF for segmentation of necrotic/non-enhancing tumor when trained on 10 or more participants, probably because of the inconsistent signal intensity of the tissue class.

CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that classical machine learning methods can produce more accurate brain segmentation than the far more complex deep learning methods when only small or moderate amounts of training data are available (n ≤ 15). The magnitude of this advantage varies by tissue and cohort, while U-Net may be preferable for deep gray matter and necrotic/non-enhancing tumor segmentation, particularly with larger training data sets (n ≥ 20). Given that segmentation models often need to be retrained for application to novel imaging protocols or pathology, the bottleneck associated with large-scale manual annotation could be avoided with classical machine learning algorithms, such as C-DEF.

PMID:35767314 | DOI:10.1097/RMR.0000000000000296

Pest Manag Sci. 2022 Jun 29. doi: 10.1002/ps.7061. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Developing pesticide controlled release formulation with foliage adhesion has become the focus of current research in the field of crop protection. In this study, an excellent adhesive nanocapsule loaded with emamectin benzoate (Eb@PDA) was prepared via emulsion interfacial polymerization based on the self-polymerization ability and adhesion properties of polydopamine (PDA).

RESULTS: Physicochemical properties of the Eb@PDA were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, particle size statistics, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. The Eb@PDA presented a regular spherical shape, with an average particle size of 148.6 nm. Compared with conventional formulations, it had higher pesticide-loading content (34%) and excellent adhesion onto corn leaf. In addition, Eb@PDA showed sustained-release characteristics, facilitating the release of Eb at low pH and high temperature. Eb@PDA could effectively protect Eb against photodegradation and had a longer effective period for controlling Spodoptera frugiperda and Spodoptera exigua. Furthermore, acute toxicity tests show that the 50% lethal concentration (LC₅₀ ) was 80.91 and 57.91 mg kg^-1 at 7 and 14 days, respectively, indicating a lower toxicity of the Eb@PDA to earthworms. The cells (L02) treated Eb@PDA showed a higher survival rate (94.1%) but a lower apoptosis rate (only 5.75%), demonstrating the lower cytotoxicity of the Eb@PDA.

CONCLUSION: The self-prepared Eb@PDA could be used as a formulation with the advantages of slow release, UV shielding, strong leaf adhesion, superior insecticidal properties, sustained effectiveness and biosafety. And it will facilitate the development of an efficient and safe pesticide delivery system. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID:35767285 | DOI:10.1002/ps.7061