Tag: nevin manimala

PLoS One. 2023 Apr 19;18(4):e0284712. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284712. eCollection 2023.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Increasing use of CT examinations has led to concerns of possible negative cognitive effects for children. The objective of this study is to examine if the ionizing radiation dose from a CT head scan at the age of 6-16 years affects academic performance and high school eligibility at the end of compulsory school.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 832 children, 535 boys and 297 girls, from a previous trial where CT head scan was randomized on patients presenting with mild traumatic brain injury, were followed. Age at inclusion was 6-16 years (mean of 12.1), age at follow up 15-18 years (mean of 16.0), and time between injury and follow up one week up to 10 years (mean of 3.9). Participants’ radiation exposure status was linked with the total grade score, grades in mathematics and the Swedish language, eligibility for high school at the end of compulsory school, previously measured GOSE-score, and their mothers’ education level. The Chi-Square Test, Student’s t-Test and factorial logistics were used to analyze data.

RESULTS: Although estimates of school grades and high school eligibility were generally higher for the unexposed, the results showed no statistically significant differences between the exposed and unexposed participants in any of the aforementioned variables.

CONCLUSIONS: Any effect on high school eligibility and school grades from a CT head scan at the age of 6-16 years is too small to be detected in a study of more than 800 patients, half of whom were randomly assigned to CT head scan exposure.

PMID:37075051 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0284712

PLoS One. 2023 Apr 19;18(4):e0283851. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283851. eCollection 2023.

ABSTRACT

The Boston Marathon is one of the most prestigious running races in the world. From its inception in 1897, popularity grew to a point in 1970 where qualifying times were implemented to cap the number of participants. Currently, women’s qualifying times in each age group are thirty minutes slower than the men’s qualifying times equating to a 16.7% adjustment for the 18-34 age group, decreasing with age to a 10.4% adjustment for the 80+ age group. This setup somewhat counter-intuitively implies that women become faster with age relative to men. We present a data-driven approach to determine qualifying standards that lead to an equal proportion of qualifiers in each age category and gender. We had to exclude the 75-79 and 80+ age groups from analysis due to limited data. When minimizing the difference in proportion of men and women qualifying, the women’s times for the 65-69 and 70-74 age groups are 4-5 minutes slower than the current qualifying standard, while they are 0 to 3 minutes faster for all other age groups.

PMID:37075050 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0283851

PLoS One. 2023 Apr 19;18(4):e0284382. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284382. eCollection 2023.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Childhood stunting is still a global public health challenge, including in Ethiopia. Over the past decade, in developing countries, stunting has been characterized by large rural and urban disparities. To design an effective intervention, it is necessary to understand the urban and rural disparities in stunting.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the urban-rural disparities in stunting among Ethiopian children aged 6-59 months.

METHODS: This study was done based on the data obtained from the 2019 mini-Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey, conducted by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia and ICF international. The result of descriptive statistics was reported using the mean with standard deviation, frequency, percentages, graphs, and tables. A multivariate decomposition analysis was used to decompose the urban-rural disparity in stunting into two components: one that is explained by residence differences in the level of the determinants (covariate effects), and the other component is explained by differences in the effect of the covariates on the outcome (coefficient effects). The results were robust to the different decomposition weighting schemes.

RESULT: The prevalence of stunting among Ethiopian children aged 6-59 months was 37.8% (95% CI: 36.8%, 39.6%). The difference in stunting prevalence between urban and rural residences was high (rural prevalence was 41.5%, while in urban areas it was 25.5%). Endowment and coefficient factors explained the urban-rural disparity in stunting with magnitudes of 35.26% and 64.74%, respectively. Maternal educational status, sex, and age of children were the determinants of the urban-rural disparity in stunting.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: There is a significant stunting disparity among urban and rural children in Ethiopia. A larger portion of the urban-rural stunting disparity was explained by coefficient effects (differences in behaviour). Maternal educational status, sex, and age of children were the determinants of the disparity. So, to narrow this disparity, emphasis should be given to both resource distribution and the appropriate utilization of available interventions, including improvement of maternal education and consideration of sex and age differences during child feeding practices.

PMID:37075042 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0284382

PLoS One. 2023 Apr 19;18(4):e0283251. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283251. eCollection 2023.

ABSTRACT

The utilization or secondary use of technogenic waste is a relevant problem for the current economy. To assess the environmental influence and economic potential, it is necessary to study the elemental content of technogenic objects and to reveal the tendencies of the spatial distribution of elements, components, and indices such as the pollution coefficient. In this study, we performed elemental analysis, and calculation of indicators: average gross content, hazard quotients, concentration coefficients of metals, and total pollution coefficients of ground samples taken from the ash-slag storage of the Aksu ferroalloy plant [Aksu, Pavlodar region, Kazakhstan]. Maps of the spatial distribution of concentrations of elements and total pollution coefficients were created. The territory of the studied ash-slag storage by the level of soil contamination should be considered as an environmental disaster zone. The given statistical data on the number of oncological and respiratory diseases indirectly indicated the negative influence of open storage of ash-slag waste. The studied ground was of chromium-manganese geochemical specialization. The calculated volume of the accumulated waste mass by the approximating method was 1 054 638.0 m3. The calculated approximate weight of the accumulated waste was 23 679 576.0864 tons, including 1 822 972.2 tons of chromium, 1 727 354.0 tons of manganese, and 953 813.3 tons of iron. The large amounts of valuable components retained in the waste mass led us to conclude that the studied technogenic object can be considered as a secondary field to produce various technological products. Moreover, valuable metals can be extracted as metal concentrates.

PMID:37074997 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0283251

PLoS One. 2023 Apr 19;18(4):e0283848. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283848. eCollection 2023.

ABSTRACT

Soundscape ecology provides a long-term, noninvasive approach to track animal behavior, habitat quality, and community structure over temporal and spatial scales. Using soniferous species as an indicator, biological soundscapes provide information about species and ecosystem health as well as their response and resiliency to potential stressors such as noise pollution. Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, USA provides important estuarine habitat for an abundance of marine life and is one of the busiest and fastest growing container ports in the southeast USA. Six passive acoustic recorders were deployed in the Charleston Harbor from December 2017 to June 2019 to determine biological patterns and human-associated influences on the soundscape. Anthropogenic noise was detected frequently across the estuary, especially along the shipping channel. Despite this anthropogenic noise, biological sound patterns were identified including snapping shrimp snaps (Alpheus spp. and Synalpheus spp.), fish calling and chorusing (Sciaenidae and Batrachoididae families), and bottlenose dolphin vocalizations. Biological response to anthropogenic activity varied among trophic levels, with decreased detection of fish calling when anthropogenic noise occurred and increased dolphin vocalizations in the presence of anthropogenic noise. Statistically, fine-scale, temporal patterns in biological sound were not clearly identified by sound pressure levels (SPLs), until files with anthropogenic noise presence were removed. These findings indicate that SPL patterns may be limited in their interpretation of biological activity for noisy regions and that the overall acoustic signature that we find in more pristine estuaries is lost in Charleston Harbor.

PMID:37074986 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0283848

J Natl Cancer Inst. 2023 Apr 19:djad069. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djad069. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Starting in 2018, national death certificates included a new racial classification system that accounts for multiple-race decedents and separates Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) individuals from Asian individuals. We estimated cancer death rates across updated racial/ethnic categories, sex, and age.

METHODS: Age-standardized U.S. cancer mortality rates and rate ratios from 2018-2020 among ≥20-year-olds were estimated with national death certificate data by race/ethnicity, sex, age, and cancer site.

RESULTS: In 2018, there were approximately 597,000 cancer deaths, 598,000 in 2019, and 601,000 in 2020. Among men, cancer death rates were highest in Black men (298.2/100,000; n = 105,632), followed by White (250.8; n = 736,319), American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) (249.2; n = 3,376), NHPI (205.6; n = 1,080), Latino (177.2; n = 66,167), and Asian (147.9; n = 26,591) men. Among women, Black women had the highest cancer death rates (206.5/100,000; n = 104,437), followed by NHPI (192.1; n = 1,141), AI/AN (189.9; n = 3,239), White (183.0; n = 646,865), Latina (128.4; n = 61,579), and Asian women (111.4; n = 26,396). The highest death rates by age group occurred among NHPI individuals aged 20-49 years, and Black individuals aged 50-69 and ≥70 years. Asian individuals had the lowest cancer death rates across age groups. Compared to Asian individuals, total cancer death rates were 39% higher in NHPI men and 73% higher in NHPI women.

CONCLUSIONS: There were striking racial/ethnic disparities in cancer death rates during 2018-2020. Separating NHPI and Asian individuals revealed large differences in cancer mortality between two groups that were previously combined in vital statistics data.

PMID:37074947 | DOI:10.1093/jnci/djad069

Bioinformatics. 2023 Apr 19:btad214. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btad214. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

SUMMARY: PyHMMER provides Python integration of the popular profile Hidden Markov Model software HMMER via Cython bindings. This allows annotation of protein sequences with profile HMMs and building new ones directly with Python. PyHMMER increases flexibility of use, allowing creating queries directly from Python code, launching searches and obtaining results without I/O, or accessing previously unavailable statistics like uncorrected p-values. A new parallelization model greatly improves performance when running multithreaded searches, while producing the exact same results as HMMER.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: PyHMMER supports all modern Python versions (Python 3.6+) and similar platforms as HMMER (x86 or PowerPC UNIX systems). Pre-compiled packages are released via PyPI (https://pypi.org/project/pyhmmer/) and Bioconda (https://anaconda.org/bioconda/pyhmmer). The PyHMMER source code is available under the terms of the open-source MIT licence and hosted on GitHub (https://github.com/althonos/pyhmmer); its documentation is available on ReadTheDocs (https://pyhmmer.readthedocs.io).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

PMID:37074928 | DOI:10.1093/bioinformatics/btad214

Ann Med. 2023 Dec;55(1):643-651. doi: 10.1080/07853890.2023.2178668.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: To investigate the prevalence and related influencing factors of subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) in a pre-diabetes (PreDM) population.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: A multi-stage stratified cluster random sampling method was used to select the adult Han population in Gansu Province for investigation. General data and related biochemical indices were recorded and SPSS software was used for statistical analyses.

RESULTS: This study selected 2876 patients, including 548 with SCH and 433 with PreDM. In the PreDM population, the levels of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), serum phosphorus, TPOAb and TgAb in the SCH group were higher than those in the euthyroid group (P < 0.05). The level of TPOAb in females of SCH group was higher than that in males (P < 0.05). The positive rates of TPOAb and TgAb in females were higher than those in males in the total population and SCH population. The prevalence of SCH in the PreDM group under 60 was significantly higher than that in the normal glucose tolerance (NGT) group (26.02% vs. 20.40%, χ² = 5.150, P < 0.05). We defined SCH as a TSH level of >4.20 mIU/L. Using this criterion, the prevalence of SCH in the total population of PreDM was higher than that in the NGT population (χ² = 8.611, P < 0.05), the prevalence of SCH in the PreDM population generally showed an upward trend. However, we performed a separate analysis considering the accepted impact of age on TSH redefining SCH as TSH >8.86 mIU/L (for individuals over age 65). However, allowing for the expected rise in TSH levels in individuals over age 65, the prevalence of SCH in the elderly over 65 years of age decreased significantly (NGT population from 27.48% to 9.16%, PreDM population from 34.18% to 6.33%, P < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis showed that the risk factors for SCH in the PreDM population were female gender, fasting plasma glucose and TSH (all P < 0.05). Risk factors for SCH in the impaired fasting glucose (IFG) population were female gender, OGTT 2 h, TSH and TPOAb (all P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION: The prevalence of SCH in the PreDM population not considering the known physiological increase in age related TSH was relatively high and was significant in female and the IFG population. However, the effect of age on these findings needs to attract more attention.

PMID:37074323 | DOI:10.1080/07853890.2023.2178668

J Wildl Dis. 2023 Apr 20. doi: 10.7589/JWD-D-21-00153. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a critical challenge of the 21st century for public and animal health. The role of host biodiversity and the environment in the evolution and transmission of resistant bacteria between populations and species, and specifically at the wildlife-livestock-human interface, needs to be further investigated. We evaluated the AMR of commensal Escherichia coli in three mammalian herbivore species-impala (Aepyceros melampus), greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), and plains zebra (Equus quagga)-targeting populations living under two conditions: captivity (French zoos) and free ranging (natural and private parks in Zimbabwe). From 137 fecal samples from these three host species, 328 E. coli isolates were isolated. We measured the AMR of each isolate against eight antibiotics, and we assessed the presence of AMR genes and mobile genetic element class 1 integrons (int1). Isolates obtained from captive hosts had a higher probability of being resistant than those obtained from free-ranging hosts (odds ratio, 293.8; confidence interval, 10-94,000). This statistically higher proportion of AMR bacteria in zoos than in natural parks was especially observed for bacteria resistant to amoxicillin. The percentage of int1 detection was higher when isolates were obtained from captive hosts, particularly captive impalas. Ninety percent of bacterial isolates with genes involved in antibiotic resistance also had the int1 gene. The sul1, sul2, blaTEM, and stra genes were found in 14, 19, 0, and 31%, respectively, of E. coli with respective antibiotic resistance. Finally, plains zebra carried AMR significantly more often than the other species.

PMID:37074787 | DOI:10.7589/JWD-D-21-00153