Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second leading neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by severe locomotor abnormalities. Levodopa (L-DOPA) treatment has been considered a mainstay for the ...management of PD; however, its prolonged treatment is often associated with abnormal involuntary movements and results in L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia (LID). Although LID is encountered after chronic administration of L-DOPA, the appearance of dyskinesia after weeks or months of the L-DOPA treatment has complicated our understanding of its pathogenesis. Pathophysiology of LID is mainly associated with alteration of direct and indirect pathways of the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic loop, which regulates normal fine motor movements. Hypersensitivity of dopamine receptors has been involved in the development of LID; moreover, these symptoms are worsened by concurrent non-dopaminergic innervations including glutamatergic, serotonergic, and peptidergic neurotransmission. The present study is focused on discussing the recent updates in molecular mechanisms and therapeutic approaches for the effective management of LID in PD patients.
To report a case of proliferative retinopathy with tractional retinal detachment associated with beta thalassemia minor in a 27-year-old female.
A young lady having beta thalassemia minor presented ...with decreased vision in both eyes, the effect being more severe in her right eye. The patient's other systemic history, including ophthalmic history, was unremarkable. The fundus examination revealed peripheral retinal ischemia in both eyes and tractional retinal detachment in the right eye.
and Importance: Beta thalassemia minor is not associated with striking retinal pathology, nevertheless proliferative retinopathy. However, in this case the patient developed tractional retinal detachment that required surgery. This indicates that proliferative changes may develop in patients with beta thalassemia, and routine fundus examinations could be recommended for these patients.
Background: Vaccination of primary healthcare workers (PHCWs) help to prevent the spread of influenza among at-risk patients.
Objectives: To assesses seasonal influenza vaccination (SIV) coverage and ...the factors affecting SIV's utilization among PHCWs in Abha city, southwestern Saudi Arabia.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out between June 2018 and August 2018 in all primary healthcare centers in Abha city. It targeted physicians, nurses, technicians, and pharmacists. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data regarding SIV status during the 2017-2018 season, obtain knowledge regarding SIV and influenza disease, and identify potential motivators for and barriers to SIV.
Results: Of 312 PHCWs, the SIV coverage rate was 45.5% in the 2017-2018 vaccination season. A multivariable logistic regression model showed that the risk groups for non-vaccination were PHCWs less than 40 years old (adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR) = 4.07, 95% CI: 1.50-11.03), technicians (aOR = 3.73, 95% CI: 1.20-11.54), single PHCWs (aOR = 2.36, 95% CI:1.20-4.62), and PHCWs lacking adequate influenza vaccine knowledge (aOR = 4.22, 95% CI: 2.13-8.35). Approximately 23% and 32% of PHCWs were found to have inadequate knowledge about SIV and influenza disease, respectively. PHCWs' awareness about their risk of infection and their need for protection was found to be the most common motivator (77.5%), and a fear of side effects was found to be the most frequent barrier (40%).
Conclusion: SIV coverage rate is suboptimal. Knowledge gaps and misconceptions about the influenza vaccine are the main barriers to an adequate coverage.
Abstract
Previous studies have reported adverse effects of short and long sleep duration on cardiovascular health. However, how sleep time and sleep efficiency affect angina have not been studied in ...hypertensive individuals. This study aimed to assess the relationship of sleep with angina. Using a cross-sectional design, data from 1563 hypertensive individuals were collected from the parent Sleep Heart Health Study (SHHS). Age, alcohol use, average diastolic blood pressure (ADBP), average systolic blood pressure (ASBP), cigarette use, sleep time, sleep efficiency, percent time in stage N3 of sleep, and body mass index (BMI) were used as covariates. Multiple linear regression, the Chi-Square test, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used for data analysis. Unadjusted sleep efficiency, sleep time, ADBP, and age were significant (p < 0.05) predictors of the number of angina episodes (Angina
n
). When the covariates were adjusted, only ADBP and ASBP were significant (p < 0.05) predictors of Angina
n
. Sleep efficiency, BMI, ADBP, sleep time, and age had a significant (p < 0.05) correlation with Angina
n
. In hypertensive individuals, sleep time and sleep efficiency did not affect Angina
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when adjusted for covariates. ADBP and ASBP were found to be significant predictors of Angina
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when the covariates were adjusted.
The world faces multiple public health emergencies simultaneously, such as COVID-19 and Monkeypox (mpox). mpox, from being a neglected disease, has emerged as a global threat that has spread to more ...than 100 nonendemic countries, even as COVID-19 has been spreading for more than 3 years now. The general mpox symptoms are similar to chickenpox and measles, thus leading to a possible misdiagnosis. This study aimed at facilitating a rapid and high-brevity mpox diagnosis. Reportedly, mpox circulates among particular groups, such as sexually promiscuous gay and bisexuals. Hence, selectively vaccinating, isolating, and treating them seems difficult due to the associated social stigma. Deep learning (DL) has great promise in image-based diagnosis and could help in error-free bulk diagnosis. The novelty proposed, the system adopted, and the methods and approaches are discussed in the article. The present work proposes the use of DL models for automated early mpox diagnosis. The performances of the proposed algorithms were evaluated using the data set available in public domain. The data set adopted for the study was meant for both training and testing, the details of which are elaborated. The performances of CNN, VGG19, ResNet 50, Inception v3, and Autoencoder algorithms were compared. It was concluded that CNN, VGG19, and Inception v3 could help in early detection of mpox skin lesions, and Inception v3 returned the best (96.56%) classification accuracy.
Background: Good teeth play a significant role in keeping a healthy personality and a decent quality of life. Loss of tooth is listed among the top hundred health condition affecting the world ...population, resulting not only in aesthetic and functional damage but also has negative social impact thus affecting the overall quality of life. It has been estimated to cause 7.6 million disability adjusted life years (DALY). Tooth loss has negative consequences on oral health as it may cause drifting of adjacent teeth or over eruption of opposing teeth, further loss of adjacent tooth and temporomandibular diseases (TMDs). Methods: This cross sectional study was performed in the clinics of Aseer Dental Centre and King Khalid University during the period from February 2020 to April 2020. In the current study, we kept a 95% level of confidence, precision error of 5%, and we anticipated the awareness among targeted population to be 85%. The sample size for our study was 200. Patients attending the Prosthodontic department for any dental consultation with a prosthetically unrestored partial edentulous areas in oral cavity were the target population. Results: Out of total 200 patients 50% of them were male while 50% of them were female. Mean Age ± S.D = 57.8 ± 22.5. We have observed that demographical variables have significant relationship regarding teeth awareness and treatment. Conclusion: Although tooth loss has a high prevalence, the common causes found were dental caries and loosing of teeth. As both these conditions can be prevented, repeated awareness campaign should be carried out in order to increase the awareness regarding oral hygiene..
Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT or 'sleeping sickness') is a neglected tropical disease. If untreated, it is always fatal and leads to death. A few treatments are available for HAT, but most of ...them require a skilled professional, which increases the financial burden on the patient. Recently, fexinidazole (FEX) has been approved by the European Medicine Agency (EMA) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) as the first all-oral therapy for the treatment of stage-1 (hemolymphatic) as well as stage-2 (meningoencephalitic) of HAT. Before the FEX approval, there were separate treatments for stage-1 and stage-2 of HAT. This study reviews the discovery, development timeline, inventions, and patent literature of FEX. It was first approved by EMA and USFDA in 2018 and 2021, respectively. FEX was also added to the World Health Organization's list of essential drugs in 2019. The patent literature search revealed many types of patents/patent applications (compound, salt, process, method of treatment, drug combinations, and compositions) related to FEX, which have been summarized in this article. The authors foresee a great scope to develop more inventions based on FEX (novel salts, polymorphs, drug conjugates, cyclodextrin complex, etc.) for the treatment of many protozoal diseases (Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease), inflammatory diseases, and other microbial infections. New combinations of FEX with other treatments of HAT may also provide fruitful results. This review might be useful to the scientists working on the HAT and other neglected diseases to develop novel inventions and innovations of therapeutic relevance.
Objectives: Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a global health issue with notable morbidity and mortality. Currently, red cell distribution width (RDW) has appeared to be potential prognostic marker in ...patients with CHF.This study aims to assess the prognostic value of RDW in Saudi population with CHF. Methods: This study was a retrospective cohort study that included 233 CHF patients treated with standard anti-failure drugs. RDW were ascertained at baseline with 2-D echocardiographic assessments of left ventricular mass and function. The follow up period was 24 months. Primary endpoint was the relationship between RDW and all-cause mortality (ACM). Secondary endpoints included the potential association with major adverse cardiovascular events (classical 3-point MACE). Results: The mean age of patients was 60.15 ± 12.24 years, and 64.8% were males. Baseline RDW was 14.40 (13.50, 15.80) % (median, and interquartile ranges); 43 deaths occurred during the follow-up period. RDW was found to be the most significant and independent predictor of ACM, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.238 (95% CI; 1.090, 1.407) (P=0.001). While RDW change over 12 months had similar predictive value for ACM with HR 1.226 (95% CI; 1.117, 1.346) (P<0.0001). RDW was also found to be a significant and independent predictor for secondary endpoints. Conclusion: Our study supports the usefulness of RDW as an independent prognostic indicator for ACM and other CV outcomes in Saudi population with CHF.
•Cyber-crimes reported in the last quarter globally, 21% fall into the phishing category•character-level encoding decreases the discrete workspace and can be effective even in an energy-constrained ...environment•lightweight deep learning model for the detection of malicious URLs•use of character-level embedding was performed, and it was found that the execution time was 30%
A cyber threat is generally a malicious activity that damages or steals data, or something that disrupts digital life. Such threats include viruses, security breaches, DoS attacks, and data theft. Phishing is a type of cyber threat whereby the attackers mimic a genuine URL or a webpage and steal user data, 21% fall into the phishing category. The novel approach of using the character-level encoding of URLs is introduced. Unlike word-level encoding, the use of character-level encoding decreases the discrete workspace and can be effective even in an energy-constrained environment. The experimental results of comparisons to other state-of-the-art methods demonstrate that the proposed method achieved 98.12% of true positive instances. Moreover, Conclusions: An experimental evaluation was performed to demonstrate the efficiency, and it was observed that the accuracy reached an all-time high of 98.13%. the experiments prove that the proposed method can operate efficiently even in energy-saving modes of phishing detection systems.
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