Diabetes mellitus (DM) has been increasing rapidly in Vietnam. We hypothesized that the main reason may be low fiber intake. Regarding sources, fiber comes mainly from vegetables. However, vegetables ...popular in Vietnam have low fiber (<2 g fiber/100 g vegetable), so it is difficult to supply sufficient fiber only from vegetables. Therefore, in this study we tried to increase fiber intake a day by using 60 g of Okara foods, containing about 6 g of fiber per day, and assess the effects on the blood glucose levels of DM patients. We contacted 300 type 2 DM outpatients at a hospital and selected 60 of them. We formed 30 pairs matched by gender, age, BMI and years with DM and divided them randomly into an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group consumed about 6 g of fiber from Okara per day for 2 wk. At the baseline and final periods, anthropometric measurements, blood withdrawal and a 3-d weighing method nutrition survey were conducted. Dietary fiber intake increased from 6.9 to 12.6 g (p<0.01) in the intervention group, but there was no change in the control group. Fasting blood glucose and fructosamine in the intervention group dropped from 6.3 to 5.4 mmol/L (p<0.05) and from 319 to 301 μmol/L (p<0.05), respectively but they remained unchanged in the control group. Vietnamese people consumed about 60 g of Okara per day from various menus and increased fiber intake to 6 g/d in 2 wk, which improved blood glucose in DM patients.
Health personnel and community workers are at the front line of the COVID-19 emergency response and need to be equipped with adequate knowledge related to epidemics for an effective response. This ...study aimed to identify the coverage of COVID-19 health information via different sources accessed by health workers and community workers in Vietnam. A cross-sectional study using a web-based survey was carried out from January to February 2020 in Vietnam. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) was used for recruiting participants. We utilized the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the construct validity of the questionnaire. A higher percentage of participants knew about "Clinical and pathogen characteristics of COVID-19", compared to "Regulations and policies related to COVID-19". The percentage of participants accessing the information on "Guidelines and policies on prevention and control of COVID-19" was the lowest, especially among medical students. "Mass media and peer-educators" channels had a higher score of accessing COVID-19 information, compared to "Organizations/ agencies/ associations" sources. Participants consumed most of their COVID-19 information via "Internet, online newspapers, social networks". Our findings indicate an urgency to re-design training programs and communication activities for a more effective dissemination of information related to the COVID-19 epidemic or epidemics in general.
Background: Childhood obesity has become a major global epidemic that causes substantial social and health burdens worldwide. The effectiveness of childhood obesity control and prevention depends ...largely on understanding the issue, including its current development and associated factors in a contextualized perspective. Objectives: Our study aimed to gauge this kind of understanding. Methods: We systematically searched the Web of Science database for studies concerning child obesity published up to 2017 and analyzed the volume of publications, growth rates, impact scores, collaborations, authors, affiliations, and journals. A total of 57,444 research papers were included. Results: The three subject categories with the highest number of papers (over 3,000) were (1) nutrition and dietetics, (2) pediatrics, and (3) public, environmental, and occupational health. We found a dramatic increase in the amount of scientific literature on childhood obesity in the past one or two decades, led by scholars from the USA – ranking at the top regarding the total number of papers (23,965 papers; 30.8%) and total number of citations (859,793 citations) – and multiple Western countries where the obesity epidemic is prevalent. Conclusions: The findings highlight the need for improving international and local research capacities and collaboration to accelerate knowledge production and translation into contextualized and effective childhood obesity prevention.
Abstract
Background
Myasthenia gravis (MG) patients interact unpredictably with anesthetic agents, including neuromuscular blocking agents. Here, we investigate the effectiveness of general ...anesthesia without muscle relaxants using either propofol via target-controlled infusion systems (TCI) or sevoflurane in MG patients undergoing thoracoscopic thymectomy.
Methods
This prospective, open-label, observational study was conducted in a university hospital. We included 90 myasthenic patients undergoing thoracoscopic thymectomy with general anesthesia. Patients received induction and maintenance anesthesia with propofol TCI (group P,
n
= 45) or induction with propofol 2–3 mg.kg
−1
and maintenance anesthesia with sevoflurane (group S,
n
= 45). In both groups, the procedure was performed under the guidance of entropy with sufentanil but not a muscle relaxant. Intubation conditions, hemodynamic changes, respiratory function, neuromuscular transmission, arterial blood gas, and complications were evaluated.
Results
All patients achieved good intubation conditions. Hemodynamic instability was more frequent in group S than in group P, mostly in the induction stage, and was controllable. The reduction in the intraoperative train-of-four ratio from baseline at 30 min, 60 min, and 90 min in group S was 10.3%, 14.2%, and 14.3%, respectively, significantly higher than that in group P (6.8%, 7.2%, and 8.4%, respectively), which completely recovered at the end of the surgery. All patients were extubated in the operating room without complications. No other significant differences between the groups were observed.
Conclusions
Anesthesia with propofol TCI or sevoflurane without muscle relaxants in MG patients offered safe and effective conditions for thoracoscopic thymectomy. Sevoflurane achieved higher levels of intraoperative muscular relaxation than propofol TCI. Postoperative neuromuscular function was not affected by these anesthetics.
In this study, a new optimal control law associated with sliding mode control is developed based on basis of the Bolza-Meyer criterion. The salient characteristic of the proposed controller is to ...have gains adjustability, where the gain values can be larger than one. This leads to enhancing control system performances with a given cost function. It should be pointed out that conventional optimal controllers usually have constant gains of one or less than one, and hence the control system performances such as the requirement on convergence speed may not be satisfactory. After formulating the proposed optimal control law for polynomial time-varying control systems, computer simulations are carried out to validate the benefits of the proposed approach. Firstly, as an illustrative example, three crucial index values including control gain index, main input control index and the state index are investigated. Secondly, the proposed controller is applied to a vehicle seat suspension system with magneto-rheological damper to evaluate vibration control performances. In simulation studies, a comparison between the proposed approach and a state-of-the-art optimal controller is undertaken to demonstrate additional benefits such as less power and faster convergence of the proposed optimal controller.
•The Meyer term is designed with a chosen constant to reduce control energy.•The critical issue of definite symmetry matrices of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman with values larger than one is thoroughly solved to provide both high performances and robustness.•The Bolza-Meyer method is used along with a modification of the Meyer term to simplify the control structure.
This study aimed to examine: (1) how the Internet has changed consumers food-buying behavior and identify its associated factors; (2) consumers' concern about food safety information of online food ...products. A cross-sectional study was performed from October to December 2015 in Hanoi-a Vietnamese epicenter of food service. One thousand seven hundred and thirty six (1736) customers were randomly chosen from food establishments of 176 communes. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews using structured questionnaires. The majority of participants reported using the Internet to search for food products (81.3%). The most crucial factors influencing food purchases through the Internet were convenience (69.1%) and price (59.3%). Only one-third of participants selected products based on accurate evidence about food safety certification or food origin. The majority of participants were concerned about the expiration date (51.6%), while brand (9.8%) and food licensing information (11.3%) were often neglected. People who were:(1) female, (2) highly influenced by online relationships, and (3) having difficulty in doing usual activities were more likely to look for online food products. These findings produce practical advice to consumers when purchasing their desired food products on the Internet, to online food retailers and to the Government of Vietnam to implement appropriate legislation regarding trading online food products.
Mode-I stress intensity factors are estimated for 28 buckled two-dimensional hexagonal materials, including 6 mono-elemental (silicene, indiene, blue phosphorene, arsenene, antimonene and bismuthene) ...and 22 binary (CS, CSe, CTe, SiO, SiS, SiSe, SiTe, SiGe, GeO, GeS, GeSe, GeTe, SnO, SnS, SnSe, SnTe, SnGe, SnSi, InAs, InSb, GaAs and AlSb) two-dimensional materials. The crack-tip displacement field revealed from linear elastic fracture mechanics is adopted to find the stress intensity factor. Atomic-scale finite element method with Stillinger-Weber potentials is used to simulate the tensile tests. Mode-I stress intensity factors of these 28 two-dimensional materials appear ≤ 0.8
which are very small in comparison with boronitrene and graphene. Most of them exhibit their fracture toughness below 0.5
Our findings are helpful in the design of nano-devices with these two-dimensional materials.
This study aimed to compare the in vivo effectiveness between curcumin-oligochitosan nanoplexes (CUR-OCH nanoplexes) and oligochitosan-coated curcumin-encapsulated liposomes (OCH-Lip-CUR) with ...respect to wound healing and scar treatment. Firstly, CUR-OCH nanoplexes was prepared by drug-polysaccharide complexation method and OCH-Lip-CUR was prepared by a combining method of lipid-film hydration and sonication. Their in vitro cytotoxicity and in vivo wound healing and scar treatment effectiveness were evaluated using 3T3 cells and mice Mus musculus var. Albino, respectively. The resutls indicated that both of them were in nanosize with a moderate PDI (less than 0.3), and exhibited negligible cytotoxicity at low CUR concentration (0.01 mg/mL). Moreover, their application onto wounds resulted in faster healing and higher scar treatment effectiveness than control samples. Interestingly, OCH-Lip-CUR exhibited higher in vivo effectiveness than CUR-OCH nanoplexes. However, based on their own advantages, both of them were good candidates for a commercial formulation for wound healing and scar treatment.
Oncology inpatients are at high risk of malnutrition. Identification of at risk patients by nutrition screening requires a practical and easy to use tool. The aim of this study was to determine the ...validity of the Bach Mai Boston Tool (BBT) compared to a ‘gold standard’ full nutrition assessment using the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA). A cross-sectional study was conducted on 270 oncology inpatients from January to December 2016. Cohen’s Kappa, sensitivity, specificity and ROC analyses were performed. 270 inpatients were included in this study with a mean age of 56.3 ± 12.1 years old. Of these patients, 51.8% were male, and 74.1% had gastrointestinal cancer. The mean body mass index of patients was 20.6 ± 3.0 kg/m2. The PG-SGA tool identified 146 (54.1%) malnourished patients, while the BBT identified 105 (39.9%) malnourished patients. The BBT had a medium consistency, with a Kappa value of 0.6. Using a cut-off point of ≥ 4, the BBT had a sensitivity of 87.7% and a specificity of 72.6%. On the other hand, a BBT with a cut-off point ≥ 5 resulted in a sensitivity of 67.1%, a specificity of 94.4%, and an AUC of 0.81. The BBT is a practical, informative and valid tool for detecting malnutrition in hospitalized oncology patients. We recommend using a cut-off point of 4 for screening the risk of malnutrition for oncology inpatients.
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