Treatment related problems in Jordanian hemodialysis patients

International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy - Background Treatment related problems are any event or circumstance involving patient treatment that actually or potentially interferes with an optimum...     

Reasoning Abilities and Potential Correlates Among Jordanian School Children

Objectives To investigate factors related to reasoning skills in 434 school children aged 5–9 years. Methods The Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised was used to assess reasoning skills. Demographic, work and family income data, information on child’s daily behavior and school academic achievement were provided by the participating children’s parents. Results Reasoning scores increased by 4.56 points with increasing subject’s age, 1.71 points with increasing level of father’s occupation, 1.86 points with each increase in the subject’s GPA, 1.13 points with consumption of breakfast at home and 1.81 points when child slept more hours. Having a father who smoked and living in a rural area decreased scores in reasoning. Conclusions for Practice Screening of reasoning and associated factors is essential for a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the child’s abilities and limitations. Understanding the child’s reasoning abilities is critical for establishing intervention goals and planning therapeutic activities.     

Echocardiography in Patients with Complications Related to Pacemakers and Cardiac Defibrillators

The evolving indications and uses for implantable cardiac devices have led to a significant increase in the number of implanted devices each year. Implantation of endocardial leads for permanent pacemakers and cardiac defibrillators can cause many delayed complications. Complications may be mechanical and related to the interaction of the device leads with the valves and endomyocardium, e.g., perforation, infection, and thrombosis, or due to the electrical pacing of the myocardium and conduction abnormalities, e.g., left ventricular dyssynchrony. Tricuspid regurgitation, another delayed complication in these patients, may be secondary to both mechanical and pacing effects of the device leads. Echocardiography plays an important role in the diagnosis of these device‐related complications. Both two‐dimensional transthoracic echocardiography and transesophageal echocardiography provide useful diagnostic information. Real time three‐dimensional echocardiography is a novel technique that can further enhance the detection of lead‐related complications.     

Significance of serum VIP and PACAP in multiple sclerosis: an exploratory case–control study

Neurological Sciences - Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system. Vasoactive and intestinal peptide (VIP) and pituitary adenylate...     

Prevalence of COVID-19 among blood donors: The Jordan University of Science and Technology experience

The corona virus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, had health and economic results that profoundly affected communities worldwide. Investigating the seroprevalence of SARS-Cov-2 in blood donors is of a significant clinical and scientific value as it adds to knowledge about local herd immunity levels.To study the prevalence of SARS-Cov-2 infection among blood donors at a tertiary referral hospital in the north of Jordan.This is a prospective study that included all blood donors between September 2020 and March 2021. Donors’ IgG antibodies were qualitatively immunoassayed to determine the antibody status against SARS-CoV-2. The Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 technique was utilized.One thousand samples were tested by total antibody against SARS-CoV-2. The median age was 29 years, 96.7% were males. The seroprevalence was 14.5%, and 80% of the positive participants did not report previous COVID-19 infection. The seroprevalence of COVID-19 antibodies was less among smokers and those with an O blood group and higher among donors with an AB blood group.The prevalence of COVID-19 among healthy young blood donors at a tertiary teaching health facility in the north of Jordan was 14.5%. Smokers and those with an O blood group were less likely to be seropositive, as opposed to donors with an AB blood group.     

Rapid and cost effective detection of small mutations in the DMD gene by high resolution melting curve analysis

Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD) is caused by large deletions or duplications in two-thirds of the cases. The remaining one-third DMD patients have small mutations in the DMD gene. Screening for such small mutations is a daunting and costly task. High resolution melting curve analysis (HR-MCA) followed by sequencing for amplicons with altered melting profiles can be used to scan DNA for small alterations. We first validated the technique as screening procedure for the DMD gene and then screened a group of unrelated 22 DMD/BMD patients and 11 females. We managed to identify all previously found mutations by means of HR-MCA, which provided its validation. Furthermore, 17 different pathogenic mutations were found in the screening group, of which 10 were novel. Our results provide validation of HR-MCA as a powerful and inexpensive pre-sequencing scanning method. This technology is now ready for routine diagnostic use on DMD/BMD patients and female carriers.     

Randomised controlled trial of pharmacist-led patient counselling in controlling hypoglycaemic attacks in older adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (ROSE-ADAM): A study protocol of the SUGAR intervention

IntroductionHypoglycaemia is one of the most serious adverse effects of diabetes treatment. Older adults are at the highest risk to develop hypoglycaemia. Several studies have established the important positive role of educational interventions on achieving glycaemic control and other clinical outcomes, however, there is still a lack in studies that evaluate the impact of such type of interventions on hypoglycaemia risk in elderly patients with type 2 diabetes. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of pharmacist-led patient counselling on reducing hypoglycaemic attacks in older adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.Methodsand analysis: This study is an open-label, parallel controlled randomised trial, which will be conducted in the outpatient clinics at the largest referral hospital in the north of Jordan. Participants who are elderly (age ≥ 65 years), diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus, and taking insulin, sulfonylurea, or any three anti-diabetic medications will be randomly assigned to intervention (SUGAR Handshake) and control (usual care) groups. The SUGAR Handshake participants will have an interactive, individualised, medications-focused counselling session reinforced with a pictogram and a phone call at week six of enrolment. The primary outcome measure is the frequency of total hypoglycaemic events within 12 weeks of follow up. Secondary outcomes include the frequency of asymptomatic, symptomatic, and severe hypoglycaemic events, hypoglycaemia incidence, and time to the first hypoglycaemic attack. We will also conduct a nested qualitative study for process evaluation.Ethics and disseminationThe Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Lincoln and the Institutional Review Board of King Abdullah University Hospital approved this protocol. The findings of this study will be presented in international conferences and published in a peer-reviewed journal.Trial registration numberThe study protocol has been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04081766.