Tag: nevin manimala

J Infect Dev Ctries. 2021 Mar 7;15(2):280-288. doi: 10.3855/jidc.12141.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Salivirus (SalV) represents an emerging problem in public health especially during the recent years. In this study, the Bayesian evolutionary history and the spread of the virus through the different countries have been reported.

METHODOLOGY: a database of 81 sequences of SalV structural VP1 fragment were downloaded from GenBank, aligned and manually edited by Bioedit Software. ModelTest v. 3.7 software was used to estimate the simplest evolutionary model fitting the sequence dataset. A Maximum-Likelihood tree has been generated using MEGA-X to test the “clockliness” signal using TempEst 1.5.1. The Bayesian phylogenetic tree was built by BEAST. Homology modelling was performed by SWISS-Model and protein variability evaluated by ConSurf server.

RESULTS: the phylogenetic tree showed a clade of SalV A2 and three main clades of SalV A1, revealing several infections in humans in South Korea, India, Tunisia, China, Nigeria, Ethiopia and USA. The Bayesian maximum clade credibility tree and the time of the most common recent ancestor dated back the root of the tree to the year 1788 with the probable origin in USA. Selective pressure analysis revealed two positive selection sites, His at 100th and Leu at 116th positions that at the homology modelling resulted important to guarantee protein stability and variability. This could contribute to the development of new mutations modifying the clinical features of this evolving virus.

CONCLUSIONS: Bayesian phylogenetic and phylodynamic represented a useful tool to follow the transmission dynamic of SalV and to prevent new epidemics worldwide.

PMID:33690212 | DOI:10.3855/jidc.12141

J Infect Dev Ctries. 2021 Mar 7;15(2):289-296. doi: 10.3855/jidc.12864.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Increased risk of cardiovascular disease in HIV-infected patients was tought to be the cause of multiple mechanistic factors, which changing the HIV care landscape. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), especially protease inhibitors (PI), is one of common HIV treatments that may have some association with this. The mechanism of PI in comparison to other regimens, however, are not clearly understood.

METHODOLOGY: Age-and gender-match HIV-infected patients treated with either boosted-PI-based regimen (boosted-PI group, N=30) or NNRTI-based ART (non-PI group, N = 30) were recruited for this cross-sectional study. Parameters determined cardiovascular risks, inflammation, endothelial function, and bone metabolic function were evaluated.

RESULTS: Compared with non-PI, patients in the boosted-PI group had more evidence of dyslipidemia. No statistical difference in the prevalence of subclinical atherosclerosis was found between the two groups. Circulating levels of inflammatory markers, C-reactive protein (CRP) (5.4±9.1 vs. 14.9 ± 19.4 mg/L, p = 0.019) and lectin-liked oxidized lipoprotein receptor-1 (LOX-1) (387 ± 299 vs. 554 ± 324 pg/mL, p = 0.042) were lower in boosted-PI group. Contrastingly, Vascular adhesion molecules-1 (VCAM-1) (160.2 ± 80.0 vs. 147.8 ± 66.3 ng/mL, p = 0.010), and osteoprotegerin (OPG) (153.7 ± 57.1 vs. 126.4 ± 35.8, p = 0.031) were higher. After adjustment in the multivariate analysis, PI treatment is the only independent parameter associated with the changes of CRP, LOX-1, VCAM-1, and OPG. Subgroup analysis showed that ARV treatment effects differed among participant having dyslipidemia.

CONCLUSIONS: The major mechanism in which PI-mediated was triggering atherogenesis could be through alteration of lipid metabolism and endothelial function, but no evidence of accelerated pro-inflammatory response was attested.

PMID:33690213 | DOI:10.3855/jidc.12864

J Wound Ostomy Continence Nurs. 2021 Mar-Apr 01;48(2):153-161. doi: 10.1097/WON.0000000000000740.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: We evaluated the effects of biofeedback-guided pelvic floor muscle training (EMG-BF), with and without extracorporeal magnetic innervation (EMG-BF+ExMI) therapy on lower urinary tract symptoms based on frequency of stress urinary incontinence (SUI) and grams of urine loss, health-related quality of life, and sexual function in women with SUI.

DESIGN: This was a randomized controlled trial.

SUBJECTS AND SETTING: The sample comprised 51 adult women with SUI. Their mean age was 50.92 years (SD 8.88). Twenty-six were randomly allocated to EMG-BF alone and 25 were allocated to undergo EMG-BF+ExMI.

METHODS: This study’s main outcome was lower urinary tract symptoms measured via the 1-hour pad test (grams of urine loss) and a 3-day bladder diary (frequency of stress incontinence episodes). Additional outcome measures were health-related quality of life measured with the Incontinence Quality of Life (I-QOL) questionnaire, sexual function evaluated via the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), and pelvic floor muscle contraction force measured via a perineometer and Modified Oxford Scale (MOS). All participants underwent biofeedback-enhanced pelvic floor muscle training using EMG during 20-minute sessions twice weekly for a period of 8 weeks. In addition to the EMG-BF+ExMI group, ExMI was applied during 20-minute sessions twice weekly for a period of 8 weeks. Participants from both groups were asked to perform pelvic floor muscle exercises at home (60 pelvic floor muscle contractions daily, divided into 3 sessions of 20 contractions each). Outcome measures were made at baseline and repeated at the end of treatment.

RESULTS: Fifteen (57.7%) in the EMG-BF group and 13 (52.0%) in the EMG-BF+ExMI group achieved dryness. Four participants (15.4%) in the EMG-BF group and 5 (20%) in the EMG-BF+ExMI group experienced improvement. Seven patients (26.9%) in the EMG-BF group and 7 (28%) in the EMG-BF+ExMI group did not benefit from the treatments. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of cure and improvement (P = .895).

CONCLUSIONS: Findings indicate that use of magnetic innervation does not improve lower urinary tract symptoms, health-related quality of life, sexual function, and pelvic floor muscle strength when compared to pelvic floor muscle training alone.

PMID:33690249 | DOI:10.1097/WON.0000000000000740

J Appl Biomech. 2021 Mar 8:1-7. doi: 10.1123/jab.2020-0206. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Knee osteoarthritis is thought to result, in part, from excessive and unbalanced joint loading. Toe-in and toe-out gait modifications produce alterations in external knee joint moments, and some improvements in pain over the short- and long-term. The aim of this study was to probe mechanisms of altered joint loading through the assessment of tibiofemoral contact in standing with toe-in and toe-out positions using an open magnetic resonance scanner. In this study, 15 young, healthy participants underwent standing magnetic resonance imaging of one of their knees in 3 foot positions. Images were analyzed to determine contact in the tibiofemoral joint, with primary outcomes including centroid of contact and contact area for each compartment and overall. The centroid of contact shifted laterally in the lateral compartment with both toe-in and toe-out postures, compared with the neutral position (P < .01), while contact area in the medial and lateral compartments showed no statistical differences. Findings from this study indicate that changes in the loading anatomy are present in the tibiofemoral joint with toe-in and toe-out and that a small amount of lateralization of contact, especially in the lateral compartment, does occur with these altered lower limb orientations.

PMID:33690165 | DOI:10.1123/jab.2020-0206

J Phys Condens Matter. 2021 Mar 9. doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/abed1d. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

In the Hamiltonian adaptive resolution simulation method (H-AdResS) it is possible to simulate coexisting atomistic and ideal gas representations of a physical system that belong to different subdomains within the simulation box. The Hamiltonian includes a field that bridges both models by smoothly switching on (off) the intermolecular potential as particles enter (leave) the atomistic region. In practice, external one-body forces are calculated and applied to enforce a reference density throughout the simulation box, and the resulting external potential adds up to the Hamiltonian. This procedure suggests an apparent dependence of the final Hamiltonian on the system’s thermodynamic state that challenges the method’s statistical mechanics consistency. In this paper, we explicitly include an external potential that depends on the switching function. Hence, we build a grand canonical potential for this inhomogeneous system to find the equivalence between H-AdResS and density functional theory (DFT). We thus verify that the external potential inducing a constant density profile is equal to the system’s excess chemical potential. Given DFT’s one-to-one correspondence between external potential and equilibrium density, we find that a Hamiltonian description of the system is compatible with the numerical implementation based on enforcing the reference density across the simulation box. In the second part of the manuscript, we focus on assessing our approach’s convergence and computing efficiency concerning various model parameters, including sample size and solute concentrations. To this aim, we compute the excess chemical potential of water, aqueous urea solutions and Lennard-Jones mixtures. The results’ convergence and accuracy are convincing in all cases, thus emphasising the method’s robustness and capabilities.

PMID:33690194 | DOI:10.1088/1361-648X/abed1d

J Infect Dev Ctries. 2021 Mar 7;15(2):230-236. doi: 10.3855/jidc.13926.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: The spatiotemporal patterns of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is detected in the United States, which shows temperature difference (TD) with cumulative hysteresis effect significantly changes the daily new confirmed cases after eliminating the interference of population density.

METHODOLOGY: The nonlinear feature of updated cases is captured through Generalized Additive Mixed Model (GAMM) with threshold points; Exposure-response curve suggests that daily confirmed cases is changed at the different stages of TD according to the threshold points of piecewise function, which traces out the rule of updated cases under different meteorological condition.

RESULTS: Our results show that the confirmed cases decreased by 0.390% (95% CI: -0.478 ~ -0.302) for increasing each one degree of TD if TD is less than 11.5°C; It will increase by 0.302% (95% CI: 0.215 ~ 0.388) for every 1°C increase in the TD (lag0-4) at the interval [11.5, 16]; Meanwhile the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases will increase by 0.321% (95% CI: 0.142 ~ 0.499) for every 1°C increase in the TD (lag0-4) when the TD (lag0-4) is over 16°C, and the most fluctuation occurred on Sunday. The results of the sensitivity analysis confirmed our model robust.

CONCLUSIONS: In US, this interval effect of TD reminds us that it is urgent to control the spread and infection of COVID-19 when TD becomes greater in autumn and the ongoing winter.

PMID:33690205 | DOI:10.3855/jidc.13926

IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2021 Mar 10;PP. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2021.3065124. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes a novel visualization method, Missingness Glyph, for analysis and exploration of missing values in data. Missing values are a common challenge in most data generating domains and may cause a range of analysis issues. Missingness in data may indicate potential problems in data collection and pre-processing, or highlight important data characteristics. While the development and improvement of statistical methods for dealing with missing data is a research area in its own right, mainly focussing on replacing missing values with estimated values, considerably less focus has been put on visualization of missing values. Nonetheless, visualization and explorative analysis has great potential to support understanding of missingness in data, and to enable gaining of novel insights into patterns of missingness in a way that statistical methods are unable to. The Missingness Glyph supports identification of relevant missingness patterns in data, and is evaluated and compared to two other visualization methods in context of the missingness patterns. The results are promising and confirms that the Missingness Glyph in several cases perform better than the alternative visualization methods.

PMID:33690119 | DOI:10.1109/TVCG.2021.3065124

J Med Internet Res. 2021 Mar 4. doi: 10.2196/27009. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The dissemination of rumor rebuttal on social media is vital for rumor control and disease containment during the public health crisis. Previous researches on the effectiveness of rumor rebuttal, to a certain extent, ignored or simplified the structure of dissemination network and users’ cognition, decision-making and interaction behaviors.

OBJECTIVE: This research aimed to roughly evaluate the effectiveness of rumor rebuttal, deeply dig into the attitude-based echo chamber effect in the users’ response towards rumor rebuttal under multiple topics on Weibo, a Chinese social media, in the early stage of COVID-19 epidemic, and its impact on information characteristics of user interaction content.

METHODS: We called Sina Weibo API to crawl rumor rebuttal related to COVID-19 from 10:00 a.m. on January 23, 2020 to 0:00 a.m. on April 8, 2020. Using content analysis, sentiment analysis, social network analysis and statistical analysis, we first analyzed whether and to what extent there was echo chamber effect in individual’s attitude shaping when retweeting or commenting on others. Then, we tested the heterogeneity of attitude distribution within communities and the homophily of interactions between communities. Based on the results of user- and community- levels, we made comprehensive judgments. Finally, we examined the users’ interaction content from three dimensions of sentimental expression, information seeking/sharing, and civilization to test the impact of echo chamber effect.

RESULTS: Our results indicated that the retweeting mechanism played an essential role in promoting polarization and the commenting mechanism in consensus building, denied that there might be significant echo chamber effect in community interaction, and verified that compared to like-minded interactions, cross-cutting interactions significantly contained more negative sentiment, information seeking/sharing and incivility. Besides, we found that online users’ information seeking was accompanied by incivility, and information sharing was accompanied by more negative sentiment, which was often accompanied by incivility.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings revealed the existence and degree of echo chamber effect from multiple dimensions (such as topic, interaction mechanism, interaction level) and its impact on interaction content. These findings can provide several suggestions for preventing or alleviating group polarization to achieve better rumor rebuttal.

PMID:33690145 | DOI:10.2196/27009

Eur J Endocrinol. 2021 Mar 1:EJE-20-1253.R1. doi: 10.1530/EJE-20-1253. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Testosterone is a critical determinant of health in both genders. However, the relationship between circulating levels of testosterone and mortality remains undetermined.

METHODS: We examined the associations of serum total testosterone (TT) and free testosterone (FT) with all-cause and cause-specific mortality in 154,965 men and 93,314 postmenopausal women from UK Biobank. Cox regression models were used to calculate the hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Given multiple testing, P < 0.005 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS: Over a median follow-up of 8.9 (inter-quartile range, 8.3-9.5) years, we documented 5,754 deaths in men, including 1,243 (21.6%) from CVD and 2,987 (51.9%) from cancer. In postmenopausal women, 2,435 deaths occurred, including 346 (14.2%) from CVD and 1,583 (65.0%) from cancer. TT and FT concentrations were inversely associated with all-cause mortality in men, with the multivariable HR of 0.82 (95% CI: 0.75-0.91) and 0.80 (95% CI: 0.73-0.87) for the highest (Q5) versus the lowest quintile (Q1), respectively. In postmenopausal women, TT concentrations showed a positive association with all-cause mortality (HR for Q5 versus Q1 = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.06-1.37). Furthermore, higher TT and FT concentrations were associated with a lower risk of cancer mortality in men (both P for trend = 0.001), whereas TT concentrations were suggestively associated with a higher risk of cancer mortality in postmenopausal women (P for trend = 0.03).

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that high levels of circulating testosterone may be beneficial for all-cause and cancer mortality in men but detrimental in postmenopausal women.

PMID:33690154 | DOI:10.1530/EJE-20-1253

Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2021 Mar 9:tpmd201451. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.20-1451. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Coronavirus infection (COVID-19) has significantly increased the mortality and morbidity rates worldwide. The present study was conducted to assess the general public’s awareness of COVID-19 and its association with mental health, dietary habits, and physical activity. A web-based survey was conducted to gather information about demographics, knowledge about COVID-19, dietary habits, mental health, and anthropometry among the general public of Pakistan. Descriptive statistics, chi-square test, and multiple logistic regression were used for data analysis. The majority of the participants were suffering from anxiety (71.0%) and depression (52.0%) during the COVID-19 pandemic; 32.4% of participants had poor COVID-19-related knowledge. COVID-19 lockdown reduced the physical activity of 66.9% of participants and increased weight of 38.8% of the survey participants. Demographic variables, including age, gender, ethnicity, education, employment, family type, and geographical location, were significantly associated with knowledge about COVID-19 (P < 0.05). Depression was inversely associated with COVID-19 knowledge (P < 0.05). Healthy changes in dietary habits including decreased consumption of fast foods, soft and cola drinks, fruit drinks, cooked meat (outside the home), sugar, and fats, and were associated with increased knowledge of COVID-19. Vitamin C and immunity-boosting supplement consumption were significantly associated with increased knowledge regarding COVID-19 (< 0.05). Inadequate knowledge about COVID-19 and the presence of anxiety and depression were found among most of the study participants. There is a need to conduct educational seminars to limit the health consequences resulting from COVID-19 lockdown.

PMID:33690156 | DOI:10.4269/ajtmh.20-1451