Nevin Manimala

SAGE Open Med. 2022 Jul 16;10:20503121221111709. doi: 10.1177/20503121221111709. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to assess malaria seroprevalence among acute febrile illness cases who come for health care seeking in the high malaria-endemic setting of North West Ethiopia.

METHODS: Institutional-based descriptive serosurvey of malaria infections was employed among 18,386 febrile patients from September 2020 to August 2021. Data were entered using Epi Data version 4.2 and exported to STATA (SE) R-14 version statistical software for further analysis. Bi-variable and multivariable regression analyses were conducted to identify malaria infection. Finally, variables with P-value less than 0.05 were considered significant predictors for malaria infection.

RESULTS: The mean (±standard deviation) age of participants was 48.6 (±18.4) years. The overall seroprevalence of malaria infection was estimated as 27.8% (95% confidence interval = 27.2; 28.6, standard error = 0.003). Malaria infection was significantly associated with participants being female (adjusted odds ratio = 2.9; 95% confidence interval = 1.8; 3.7, P = 0.01), age 5-29 years (adjusted odds ratio = 2.2; 95% confidence interval = 1.7; 2.8, P = 0.02), rural (adjusted odds ratio = 3.9; 95% confidence interval = 1.9; 4.4, P = 0.001), and Hgb ⩽11 mg/dL (adjusted odds ratio = 3.4; 95% confidence interval = 1.9; 5.86, P = 0.01).

CONCLUSION: Nearly every three to ten acute febrile cases were positive for confirmed malaria infection. The risk of malaria infection was significantly associated with respondents being female, aged 5-29 years, rural, and levels of hemoglobin were significantly associated with malaria infection.

PMID:35860811 | PMC:PMC9290101 | DOI:10.1177/20503121221111709

Biomed Res Int. 2022 Jul 11;2022:6779165. doi: 10.1155/2022/6779165. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: In healthcare, the need to pay more attention to the achievement of two objectives within the society arises: health promotion and prevention in terms of nutrition, good education, sport, and health education. Scientific evidence shows that adequate health standards must be learned since childhood through the help of parents and appropriate school projects. Parental intervention must be appropriate to support the responsibility of their children’s health. In oral health, it has been established for many years that there is a correlation between parental behaviors and lifestyles and children’s attitude. The aim of this study is to verify the close relation between behaviors, habits, lifestyles, and the knowledge of parents about their oral health and, consequently, their focus and care for their own children’s oral health. Furthermore, the awareness of parents about the importance and use of fluorine was to be determined.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study lasted 15 months and was conducted from April 2018 to July 2019: an anonymous 29-question questionnaire was administered to all parents who accompanied their children (aged between 3 and 12 years) going under treatment in the Pediatric Dentistry Unit of the University Hospital Policlinico Umberto I, Rome. Anamnestic data, sociodemographic context (e.g., educational level and occupation), oral health habits, and prevention of parents and children and fluoride knowledge were investigated. The study received ethical approval. 204 questionnaires were collected. The data gathered were recorded with a specifically designed computer program and collected and analyzed using a Microsoft Excel 10 database. Data were evaluated using standard statistical analysis software; descriptive statistics including mean ± SD values and percentage were calculated for each variable. The relationship between the age of parents, between mother or father and the parents’ degree of education levels, and the knowledge for their own children’s oral health was explored using the chi-square test of homogeneity and Fisher’s exact test (P value of < 0.05 considered as statistically significant).

RESULTS: From the acquired data, it is possible to deduce that the major respondents were mothers aged from 36 to 45, while only a small part were fathers aged above 45 years. Questions related to parents’ oral hygiene habits were included in the questionnaire, and from the sample taken into consideration, it emerges that 64.7% of the respondents (67.1% mothers and 57.7% fathers) periodically attend a dental office for a checkup, 20.9% tend to postpone the treatment, and 15.2% go there just for emergency. Some of the questions showed that 80% of the interviewed subjects use fluoride toothpaste for their child’s oral hygiene.

CONCLUSION: Prevention in childhood, in addition to being synonymous with monitoring the oral health of the child, means first of all to pay attention to parents who are the main behavioral reference. It emerged that there is no adequate knowledge about fluorine, especially when the subjects have a low educational level. A role of fundamental importance for the diffusion of adequate concepts in the field of oral hygiene is covered, according to the data received from the study carried out, by the dentist and dental hygienist.

PMID:35860800 | PMC:PMC9293534 | DOI:10.1155/2022/6779165

Diabetologia. 2022 Jul 21. doi: 10.1007/s00125-022-05761-y. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

AIM/HYPOTHESIS: We aimed to investigate the association between polysocial risk score (PsRS), an estimator of individual-level exposure to cumulative social risks, and incident type 2 diabetes in the UK Biobank study.

METHODS: This study includes 319,832 participants who were free of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer at baseline in the UK Biobank study. The PsRS was calculated by counting the 12 social determinants of health from three social risk domains (namely socioeconomic status, psychosocial factors, and neighbourhood and living environment) that had a statistically significant association with incident type 2 diabetes after Bonferroni correction. A healthy lifestyle score was calculated using information on smoking status, alcohol intake, physical activity, diet quality and sleep quality. A genetic risk score was calculated using 403 SNPs that showed significant genome-wide associations with type 2 diabetes in people of European descent. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyse the association between the PsRS and incident type 2 diabetes.

RESULTS: During a median follow-up period of 8.7 years, 4427 participants were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. After adjustment for major confounders, an intermediate PsRS (4-6) and high PsRS (≥7) was associated with higher risks of developing type 2 diabetes with the HRs being 1.38 (95% CI 1.26, 1.52) and 2.02 (95% CI 1.83, 2.22), respectively, compared with those with a low PsRS (≤3). In addition, an intermediate to high PsRS accounted for approximately 34% (95% CI 29, 39) of new-onset type 2 diabetes cases. A healthy lifestyle slightly, but significantly, mitigated PsRS-related risks of type 2 diabetes (p_interaction=0.030). In addition, the additive interactions between PsRS and genetic predisposition led to 15% (95% CI 13, 17; p<0.001) of new-onset type 2 diabetes cases (p_interaction<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: A higher PsRS was related to increased risks of type 2 diabetes. Adherence to a healthy lifestyle may attenuate elevated diabetes risks due to social vulnerability. Genetic susceptibility and disadvantaged social status may act synergistically, resulting in additional risks for type 2 diabetes.

PMID:35859134 | DOI:10.1007/s00125-022-05761-y

Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 20;12(1):12396. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16498-4.

ABSTRACT

Fusion-Fission Optimization (FuFiO) is proposed as a new metaheuristic algorithm that simulates the tendency of nuclei to increase their binding energy and achieve higher levels of stability. In this algorithm, nuclei are divided into two groups, namely stable and unstable. Each nucleus can interact with other nuclei using three different types of nuclear reactions, including fusion, fission, and β-decay. These reactions establish the stabilization process of unstable nuclei through which they gradually turn into stable nuclei. A set of 120 mathematical benchmark test functions are selected to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results of the FuFiO algorithm and its related non-parametric statistical tests are compared with those of other metaheuristic algorithms to make a valid judgment. Furthermore, as some highly-complicated problems, the test functions of two recent Competitions on Evolutionary Computation, namely CEC-2017 and CEC-2019, are solved and analyzed. The obtained results show that the FuFiO algorithm is superior to the other metaheuristic algorithms in most of the examined cases.

PMID:35859104 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-16498-4

Bull Math Biol. 2022 Jul 20;84(9):91. doi: 10.1007/s11538-022-01030-6.

ABSTRACT

The dynamic nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has demanded a public health response that is constantly evolving due to the novelty of the virus. Many jurisdictions in the USA, Canada, and across the world have adopted social distancing and recommended the use of face masks. Considering these measures, it is prudent to understand the contributions of subpopulations-such as “silent spreaders”-to disease transmission dynamics in order to inform public health strategies in a jurisdiction-dependent manner. Additionally, we and others have shown that demographic and environmental stochasticity in transmission rates can play an important role in shaping disease dynamics. Here, we create a model for the COVID-19 pandemic by including two classes of individuals: silent spreaders, who either never experience a symptomatic phase or remain undetected throughout their disease course; and symptomatic spreaders, who experience symptoms and are detected. We fit the model to real-time COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths to derive the transmission rates, death rates, and other relevant parameters for multiple phases of outbreaks in British Columbia (BC), Canada. We determine the extent to which SilS contributed to BC’s early wave of disease transmission as well as the impact of public health interventions on reducing transmission from both SilS and SymS. To do this, we validate our model against an existing COVID-19 parameterized framework and then fit our model to clinical data to estimate key parameter values for different stages of BC’s disease dynamics. We then use these parameters to construct a hybrid stochastic model that leverages the strengths of both a time-nonhomogeneous discrete process and a stochastic differential equation model. By combining these previously established approaches, we explore the impact of demographic and environmental variability on disease dynamics by simulating various scenarios in which a COVID-19 outbreak is initiated. Our results demonstrate that variability in disease transmission rate impacts the probability and severity of COVID-19 outbreaks differently in high- versus low-transmission scenarios.

PMID:35859080 | DOI:10.1007/s11538-022-01030-6

NPJ Breast Cancer. 2022 Jul 20;8(1):87. doi: 10.1038/s41523-022-00452-8.

ABSTRACT

The prognostic performance of PREDICT in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer (EBC) treated in the modern era with effective chemotherapy and anti-HER2 targeted therapies is unclear. Therefore, we investigated its prognostic performance using data extracted from ALTTO, a phase III trial evaluating adjuvant lapatinib ± trastuzumab vs. trastuzumab alone in patients with HER2-positive EBC. Our analysis included 2794 patients. After a median follow-up of 6.0 years (IQR, 5.8-6.7), 182 deaths were observed. Overall, PREDICT underestimated 5-year OS by 6.7% (95% CI, 5.8-7.6): observed 5-year OS was 94.7% vs. predicted 88.0%. The underestimation was consistent across all subgroups, including those according to the type of anti HER2-therapy. The highest absolute differences were observed for patients with hormone receptor negative-disease, nodal involvement, and large tumor size (13.0%, 15.8%, and 15.3%, respectively). AUC under the ROC curve was 73.7% (95% CI 69.7-77.8) in the overall population, ranging between 61.7% and 77.7% across the analyzed subgroups. In conclusion, our analysis showed that PREDICT highly underestimated OS in HER2-positive EBC. Hence, it should be used with caution to give prognostic estimation to HER2-positive EBC patients treated in the modern era with effective chemotherapy and anti-HER2 targeted therapies.

PMID:35859079 | DOI:10.1038/s41523-022-00452-8

Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 20;12(1):12430. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16689-z.

ABSTRACT

This paper considers a linear regression model with stochastic restrictions,we propose a new mixed Kibria-Lukman estimator by combining the mixed estimator and the Kibria-Lukman estimator.This new estimator is a general estimation, including OLS estimator, mixed estimator and Kibria-Lukman estimator as special cases. In addition, we discuss the advantages of the new estimator based on MSEM criterion, and illustrate the theoretical results through examples and simulation analysis.

PMID:35859042 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-16689-z

Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 20;12(1):12422. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16798-9.

ABSTRACT

To compare the quality of CT images of the lung reconstructed using deep learning-based reconstruction (True Fidelity Image: TFI ™; GE Healthcare) to filtered back projection (FBP), and to determine the minimum tube current-time product in TFI without compromising image quality. Four cadaveric human lungs were scanned on CT at 120 kVp and different tube current-time products (10, 25, 50, 75, 100, and 175 mAs) and reconstructed with TFI and FBP. Two image evaluations were performed by three independent radiologists. In the first experiment, using the same tube current-time product, a side-by-side TFI and FBP comparison was performed. Images were evaluated with regard to noise, streak artifacts, and overall image quality. Overall image quality was evaluated in view of whole image quality. In the second experiment, CT images reconstructed using TFI and FBP with five different tube current-time products were displayed in random order, which were evaluated with reference to the 175 mAs-FBP image. Images were scored with regard to normal structure, abnormal findings, noise, streak artifacts, and overall image quality. Median scores from three radiologists were statistically analyzed. Quantitative evaluation of noise was performed by setting regions of interest (ROIs) in air. In first experiment, overall image quality was improved, and noise was decreased in images of TFI compared to that of FBP for all tube current-time products. In second experiment, scores of all evaluation items except for small vessels in images of 25 mAs-TFI were almost the same as that of 175 mAs-FBP (all p > 0.31). Using TFI instead of FBP, at least 85% radiation dose reduction could be possible without any degradation in the image quality.

PMID:35859015 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-16798-9

Eur J Hum Genet. 2022 Jul 20. doi: 10.1038/s41431-022-01149-z. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Children with neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1) may have a high burden of somatic disease and cognitive impairments, which can lead to poor academic performance. We evaluated school grades from exams ending mandatory schooling (usually around age 15 or 16 years) of children with NF1 in a population-based registry study using a within-school matched design. The study included 285 children with NF1 and 12,000 NF1-free peers who graduated from the same school and year during 2002-2015. We estimated overall and gender-specific grades by subject and compared the grades of children with NF1 with those of NF1-free peers in linear regression models. We also examined the effect of social and socioeconomic factors (immigration status and parental education, income and civil status) on grades and age at finalizing ninth grade. School grades varied considerably by socioeconomic stratum for all children; however, children with NF1 had lower grades by an average of 11-12% points in all subjects. In the adjusted models, children with NF1 had significantly lower grades than their NF1-free peers, with largest negative differences in grades observed for girls with NF1. Finally, children with NF1 were 0.2 (CI 0.1-0.2) years older than their peers on graduating from ninth grade, but only maternal educational modified the age at graduating. In conclusion, students with NF1 perform more poorly than their peers in all major school subjects. Gender had a strong effect on the association between NF1 and school grades; however, socioeconomic factors had a similar effect on grades for children with NF1 and their peers.

PMID:35859011 | DOI:10.1038/s41431-022-01149-z

Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 20;12(1):12436. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16632-2.

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to assess the potential impact of implementing an electronic alert system (EAS) for systemic inflammatory syndrome (SIRS) and sepsis in pediatric patients mortality. This retrospective study had a pre and post design. We enrolled patients aged ≤ 14 years who were diagnosed with sepsis/severe sepsis upon admission to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of our tertiary hospital from January 2014 to December 2018. We implemented an EAS for the patients with SIRS/sepsis. The patients who met the inclusion criteria pre-EAS implementation comprised the control group, and the group post-EAS implementation was the experimental group. Mortality was the primary outcome, while length of stay (LOS) and mechanical ventilation in the first hour were the secondary outcomes. Of the 308 enrolled patients, 147 were in the pre-EAS group and 161 in the post-EAS group. In terms of mortality, 44 patients in the pre-EAS group and 28 in the post-EAS group died (p 0.011). The average LOS in the PICU was 7.9 days for the pre-EAS group and 6.8 days for the post-EAS group (p 0.442). Considering the EAS initiation time as the “zero time”, early recognition of SIRS and sepsis via the EAS led to faster treatment interventions in post-EAS group, which included fluid boluses with median (25th, 75th percentile) time of 107 (37, 218) min vs. 30 (11,112) min, p < 0.001) and time to initiate antimicrobial therapy median (25th, 75th percentile) of 170.5 (66,320) min vs. 131 (53,279) min, p 0.042). The difference in mechanical ventilation in the first hour of admission was not significant between the groups (25.17% vs. 24.22%, p 0.895). The implementation of the EAS resulted in a statistically significant reduction in the mortality rate among the patients admitted to the PICU in our study. An EAS can play an important role in saving lives and subsequent reduction in healthcare costs. Further enhancement of systematic screening is therefore highly recommended to improve the prognosis of pediatric SIRS and sepsis. The implementation of the EAS, warrants further validation in multicenter or national studies.

PMID:35859000 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-16632-2