The positive impact of social media on health behavior towards the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh: A web-based cross-sectional study

BackgroundHealth information has a profound impact on developing awareness and ultimately preventing the burden of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, but study in Bangladesh is lacking.AimsTherefore, this study was conducted to investigate the impact of information from social media and television in developing health awareness among people amid the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsData was collected during December 10, 2020 to February 10, 2021 from 1808 people. Data was collected by using questionnaire about information source and their impact on COVID-19 related health measures. Pearson's correlation analyses was conducted.ResultsFemale (52%, 937 of 1808) was the most prevalent sex and the mean age was 24 ± 3.9 years. Most of the social media users were students (63%, 1131 of 1808). Social media (53%, 959 of 1808) and television (44%, 800 of 1808) were the most popular sources and Facebook (66.5%, 1203 of 1808) was the most common source of getting health information. About 87% people received health information on social media and television. Users of social media had about 3 times more likelihood to follow the health rules. About 80% participants who used social media followed the health measures after 0–28 days of getting the information. The strongest correlation was found between social distancing and the information on television (r = 0.943).ConclusionStrong correlation of health information was present among the participants in building awareness about taking preventive measures. This is the first study to describe the positive influence of information amid COVID-19 in Bangladesh.     

Outcomes of kidney transplant tourism in children: a single center experience

Transplant tourism is a necessity for children with end-stage renal disease living in regions without established local transplantation programs. The use of kidneys from living unrelated donors (LURDs) was common practice in Asia prior to the recent global condemnation of commercial organ transplantation. Objective information on the outcomes of pediatric transplant tourism is scarce. Here, we report the Dubai experience with 45 renal allograft transplantations performed outside the United Arab Emirates (UAE) between 1993 and 2009. Transplantation from 33 LURDs, ten living related donors (LRDs) and two deceased donors was performed in 14 different countries. The mean number of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) A/B/DR allele matches was 1.4 ± 0.8 in the LURD graft recipients and 3.9 ± 0.7 in the LRD recipients. Outcomes were compared with those of a matched group of 3,150 pediatric LRD transplantations from the Collaborative Transplant Study (CTS). Ten-year patient survival was 100% in the LRD patients, 91.2% in the LURD patients, and 92% in the CTS patients. The three deaths in the LURD group occurred within the first 4 months after transplantation and were related to acute rejection. One-year and 10-year graft survival was 100% in the LRD group and 94.8% and 66.7% in the CTS-LRD groups, vs 87.8% and 43.4% in the LURD group. Major viral infections [Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), varicella zoster (VZV)] were four-times more common in patients that had received LURD grafts than in those that had received LRD grafts. In conclusion, whereas LRD kidney transplantation performed abroad yields excellent long-term results, transplantation of LURD kidneys is fraught with a high complication rate affecting graft and even early patient survival.     

Use of Exclusive Enteral Nutrition Is Just as Effective as Corticosteroids in Newly Diagnosed Pediatric Crohn’s Disease

Background

The efficacy of exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) in induction of remission in pediatric Crohn’s disease (CD) is reported to be equivalent to that of corticosteroids (CS).

Aims

Our objective was to compare the efficacy of EEN and CS in inducing remission in pediatric onset CD and the effects of the treatment on nutritional status and bone mineral density (BMD).

Methods

Medical charts were retrospectively studied for patients diagnosed with CD between 2000 and 2010 at the Stollery children’s hospital in Edmonton, Alberta. Anthropometric and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) data were collected to assess effects of therapy; clinical remission, relapse, and severity were defined on the basis of the pediatric Crohn’s disease activity index.

Results

To induce remission at first presentation, 36 patients (mean age 12.9 years) received EEN and 69 (mean age 11.2 years) received CS. Remission (88.9 % in the EEN group versus 91.3 % in the CS group (p = 0.73) at 3 months) and relapse (40.6 vs. 28.6 %, respectively (p = 0.12) over 12 months) were similar in both treatment groups. Thirty-four patients had paired DXA scans at the time of diagnosis and one year later: 16 given EEN and 18 given CS. Change in BMD spine z-scores based on bone age adjusted for height and chronological age was greater for EEN patients but not statistically significant (Δz-score 0.30 vs. 0.03, p = 0.28).

Conclusions

EEN has similar efficacy to corticosteroids; however, EEN may lead to better BMD accrual. EEN should be preferred to corticosteroids as first-line therapy for induction of remission in pediatric CD.     

Traumatized youth and substance abuse treatment outcomes: a longitudinal study

This longitudinal study examined whether youth with high traumatic stress (HTS) respond differently to outpatient substance abuse treatment compared to youth without HTS at intake, and at 3 and 6 months following intake. Data were analyzed using a mixed-effects two-part model to fit repeated data with zero saturation. Clients in both groups significantly increased their odds of abstinence and full symptom remission of substance problems from baseline to 6 months. Of youth still using substances, the group with HTS reduced substance use significantly more than substance users without HTS. Recommendations for future research are provided.     

Medicinal perceptions of vegetables traditionally consumed by South-Asian migrants living in Bradford, Northern England

Dietary habits change rapidly amongst migrant communities in Western countries, and these changes can cause major concerns for public-health policymakers because they frequently lead to increases in diet-related diseases like diabetes. Such is the case in most South-Asian communities in the UK. In this study, we carried out an ethnobiological survey of the vegetables traditionally consumed among the Indian and Pakistani communities of Bradford, in Western Yorkshire, UK. Our purpose was to analyse in depth details of the traditional culinary use of vegetables within these households, and to assess the health perceptions of them. Semi-structured interviews with a total of 150 South-Asian women were carried out. Twenty-five vegetables were recorded, as well as their traditional culinary use and their frequency of use. We found that a few of these vegetables, particularly those presenting bitter or aromatic tastes, were perceived to have remarkable medicinal value particularly against diabetes. Our study also found important generational differences in the women's knowledge of the culinary processes related to these foods, confirming that the consumption of traditional vegetables is inextricably embedded in cultural heritage and the representation of identity among migrants. Our findings may offer evidence of a link between the choice of food and the foods' perceived medicinal value among South-Asian migrants. It may also provide important information for health care professionals when designing strategies for improving health care counteracting type 2 diabetes. We strongly believe such strategies should take into account socio-cultural components and emic health beliefs, as well as patients' views of traditional dietary ingredients.     

Inhibitory effect of compounds from Goniothalamus tapis Miq. and Goniothalamus uvaroides King on platelet-activating factor receptor binding

Phytochemical investigation on the bark of Goniothalamus tapis Miq. and G. uvaroides King has resulted in the isolation of eight styryl-lactones, (-)-cryptomeridiol, liriodenine, 3-methyl-1H-benz[f]indole-4,9-dione, (-)-stigmasterol and dimethyl terephthalate. The structures of the compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic techniques. The compounds were evaluated for their effect on platelet-activating factor (PAF) receptor binding on rabbit platelets using (3) H-PAF as a ligand. Among the compounds tested, (-)-cryptomeridiol, (+)-goniothalamin and (+)-isoaltholactone exhibited a significant and concentration-dependent inhibitory effect on PAF receptor binding, with inhibitory concentration (IC)(50) values of 17.5, 19.7 and 46.5 μm, respectively. The inhibitory effects of the first two compounds were comparable to that obtained from the positive control, cedrol. The results indicated that these compounds were strong PAF receptor binding inhibitors.     

High-dose etoposide in allogeneic stem cell transplantation

The anti-leukemic effect of etoposide is well documented. High-dose etoposide 60?mg/kg in combination with fractionated total body irradiation (TBI), usually single fractions of 1.2?Gy up to a total of 13.2?Gy, is used as conditioning therapy for allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Most studies of this conditioning regimen have included patients with acute leukemia receiving bone marrow or mobilized stem cell grafts derived from family or matched unrelated donors, and the treatment is then effective even in patients with high-risk disease. The most common adverse effects are fever with hypotension and rash, nausea and vomiting, sialoadenitis, neuropathy and metabolic acidosis. A small minority of patients develop severe allergic reactions. Etoposide has also been tested in a wide range of combination regimens, but for many of these combinations, relatively few patients are included, and some combinations have only been tested in patients who have undergone autologous transplants. However, the general conclusion is that many of these combinations are effective in patients with high-risk malignancies and the toxicity often seems acceptable. Thus, etoposide-based conditioning therapy should be further evaluated in patients having allogeneic transplants, but randomized trials are needed and the design of future trials should be based on the well-characterized TBI?+?high-dose etoposide regimen.     

Predictive data clustering of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy for brain tumor analysis

Limited by the lack of training spectral data in different kinds of tissues, the diagnostic accuracy of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is hard to reach the desired level with normal supervised learning identification methods. In this paper, we proposed to apply the predictive data clustering methods with supervised learning methods together to identify tissue information accurately. The meanshift clustering method is introduced to compare with three other clustering methods which have been used in LIBS field. We proposed the cluster precision (CP) score as a new criterion to work with Calinski-Harabasz (CH) score together for the evaluation of the clustering effect. The influences of principal component analysis (PCA) on all four kinds of clustering methods are also analyzed. PCA-meanshift shows the best clustering effect based on the comprehensive evaluation combined CH and CP scores. Based on the spatial location and feature similarity information provided by the predictive clustering, the PCA-Meanshift can improve diagnosis accuracy from less than 95% to 100% for all classifiers including support vector machine (SVM), k nearest neighbor (k-NN), soft independent modeling of class analogy (Simca) and random forests (RF) models.