Botulinum toxin is the highly toxic substance that causes very dangerous neuroparalytic disease called botulism. It is produced by anaerobic and endospore forming bacteria called C. botulinum. In the ...absence of licensed vaccine against botulism, an immunoproteome-based approach was developed to find immunogenic proteins of C. botulinum type B for development of vaccine against botulism. Extracellular proteins of C. botulinum type B were separated by 2-DE and probed with hyper-immune antisera of extracellular proteins and antisera of live spores of C. botulinum type B to evaluate the reactivity of extracellular proteins by immunoblotting assay. Five proteins reacted with extracellular proteins antisera and one protein reacted with live spores' antisera. These identified immunogenic proteins will be further evaluated as the vaccine candidates against botulism.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global public health crisis and around the last decade, newspapers were one of the main sources of public dissemination of information for so. This study ...highlights how Bangladeshi mainstream newspapers represented AMR-related news and how they created the narrative of AMR in Bangladesh.
We conducted both quantitative and qualitative content analysis on 275 AMR-related news articles published in the twelve highest circulated dailies (January 2010 to September 2021). We divided the articles into report, opinion, and editorials and analyzed how their contents built the narrative of AMR in Bangladesh.
Bangladeshi newspapers reported misuse of antibiotics by the consumers the most (32.2%), followed by selling without prescriptions (29%), and over-prescription by the health providers (26.1%). There were hardly any news reports describing the impact of pharmaceutical companies in prescribing and selling antibiotics. Around 45% of the news articles were event-oriented. Moreover, they suggested inadequate recommendations to battle AMR.
Valid, consistent, and reliable AMR news coverage can play a crucial role in creating mass awareness, making providers accountable, and supporting national action plan in mitigating AMR threat. The Bangladeshi journalists interested in reporting AMR-issues should focus on disseminating more Bangla articles with scientific information, and reporting causes and recommendations responsibly.
Diseases triggered by microorganisms can be controlled by vaccines, which need neutralizing antigens. Hence, it is very crucial to identify extremely efficient immunogens for immune prevention. ...Botulism, a fatal neuroparalytic disease, is caused by botulinum neurotoxins produced by the anaerobic, Gram-positive spore-forming bacteria,
Clostridium botulinum
. Food-borne botulism and iatrogenic botulism are caused by botulinum toxin. Wound botulism, infant botulism, and adult intestinal botulism are caused by primarily
C. botulinum
followed by secondary intoxication. To identify protective antigens, whole cell proteome of
C. botulinum
type B was separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. 2-D gel of whole cell proteins was probed with hyper immune sera of whole cell proteins of
C. botulinum
types A, E, and F. Six cross immunoreactive proteins were identified. These immunoreactive proteins will be further tested for developing vaccines and serodiagnostic markers against botulism.
To find out the prevalence of refractive error and the eye morbidity in the school children and the associated factors.
One thousand students were selected from different schools of Karachi adopting ...two stage sampling technique. List of schools was obtained from Board of Secondary Education and 20 schools were randomly selected from the list in the five districts of Karachi during that period. Fifty students from each school were then selected adopting simple random technique.
A total of 1000 children from 20 schools were selected. However 940 were examined. The prevalence of refractive error was 8.9%. Mean age of the students was 9.49 +/- 2.5. Dominant ethnic group was Urdu speaking. Only 10.9% children were ever checked for their ophthalmic examination. Refractive error was associated with female sex but no association was found with class, age, ethnicity, parental education and other risk factors. About 1% students were color blind. Lack of association with increasing class may be due to poor educational training at Public sector schools.
An increased prevalence of refractive error was found in this study. There is a need of periodical eye examination, preferably while entering and leaving the school.
Aeromonas hydrophila PC5, a soil isolate, produced amylase and protease on a variety of substrates. The highest titers of both enzymes were observed with casein at 20°C and at pH 7.0. Unlike amylase, ...the protease was thermostable and retained about 50% activity at 60°C after 120min of exposure. Of the metal ions tested, only protease was stimulated by 10 mM Fe+2. EDTA and iodoacetamide inhibited both of the enzymes. Partial purification with DEAE-cellulose revealed that the enzyme complex consists of an α-amylase, a β-amylase and a metalloprotease.
•MgAl and ZnAl LDHs are prepared via hydrothermal route.•Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy properties of LDHs are studied by using fluorescence spectroscopy.•Yb doped ZnAl LDHs showed the best ...antibacterial activity.
Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) belong to a class of 2D nanomaterials having metallic ions of varying valences and interlayer spacing as in brucite. Since their discovery, they are being used everywhere. However, their biomedical properties are the most explored as they exhibit advantages like biodegradability, biocompatibility, and ease of making composites. In this research, two types of LDHs i.e. MgAl and ZnAl LDHs are synthesized via hydrothermal route. Two types of doping; Gd and Yb, are done to create GdMgAl, GdZnAl, YbMgAl and YbZnAl. After synthesis, LDHs are characterized by X-ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Dynamic Light Scattering, Energy dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy, and UV–vis spectroscopy. Average length for LDHs was found out to be in the range of 275–467 nm whereas thickness was in between 67 nm and 135 nm via SEM. Hydrodynamic size came out to be between 331 nm and 1720 nm for all samples. Absorption wavelength for all samples was between 251 and 261 nm. A novel antibacterial approach utilizing LDHs was introduced, employing antibacterial photodynamic treatment. The results were quantified using fluorescence spectroscopy, taking tryptophan peak as bacterial indicator at 270 nm excitation. Spectra recorded in 285–550 nm range showed considerable bacterial degradation, notably with YbZnAl LDHs. The efficacy was further tested with Colony Forming Units. Notably, all synthesized particles outperformed UV light alone, demonstrating their versatility as photocatalysts for bacterial inactivation. This pioneering method provides a unique and effective strategy for antibacterial treatment.
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Diseases can have a huge impact on the quality of life of the human population. Humans have always been in the quest to find strategies to avoid diseases that are life-threatening or affect the ...quality of life of humans. Effective use of resources available to human to control different diseases has always been critical. Researchers are recently more interested to find AI-based solutions to control the human population from diseases due to the overwhelming popularity of deep learning. There are many supervised techniques that have always been applied for disease diagnosis. However, the main problem of supervised based solutions is the availability of data, which is not always possible or not always complete. For instance, we do not have enough data that shows the different states of humans and different states of environments, and how all different actions taken by humans or viruses have ultimately resulted in a disease that eventually takes the lives of humans. Therefore, there is a need to find unsupervised based solutions or some techniques that do not have a dependency on the underlying dataset. In this paper, we have explored the reinforcement learning approach. We have tried different reinforcement learning algorithms to research different solutions for the prevention of diseases in the simulation of the human population. We have explored different techniques for controlling the transmission of diseases and its effects on health in the human population simulated in an environment. Our algorithms have found out policies that are best for the human population to protect themselves from the transmission and infection of malaria. The paper concludes that deep learning-based algorithms such as Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) have outperformed traditional algorithms such as Q-Learning or SARSA.
Objectives
To assess disease-related knowledge of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients
Patients and methods
Consecutive RA patients were invited from the rheumatology departments of BSMM University, ...Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Bangla version of the Patient Knowledge Questionnaire (B-PKQ) was used. Correlations between the B-PKQ scores and clinical-demographic data were measured using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Impact of independent variables on the level of knowledge about RA was analyzed through multiple regression analysis. Possible explanatory variables included the following: age, disease duration, formal education level, and Bangla Health Assessment Questionnaire (B-HAQ) score. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the difference between demographical, clinical, and socioeconomic variables. For statistical analysis, SPSS statistics version 20 was used.
Results
A total of 168 RA patients could be included. The mean B-PKQ score was 9.84 (range 1–20) from a possible maximum of 30. The mean time for answering the questionnaire was 24.3 min (range 15–34). Low scores were observed in all domains but the lowest were in medications and joint protection/energy conservation. Knowledge level was higher (15.5) in 6 patients who had RA education before enrollment. B-PKQ showed positive correlation with education level (
r
= 0.338) and negative correlation with HAQ (
r
= −0.169). The B-PKQ showed no correlation with age, disease duration, having first degree family member with RA, education from other sources (neighbor, RA patient, nurses), or information from mass media.
Conclusions
Disease-related knowledge of Bangladeshi RA patients was poor in all domains. Using these findings, improved education and knowledge will result in better disease control.
Key Points
•
Little is known about the knowledge of RA patients regarding their disease and its treatment in Bangladesh and in developing countries in general.
•
We found that the knowledge of Bangladeshi RA patients regarding their disease was poor in all domains; it correlated positive with education level and negative with function (HAQ), but showed no correlation with age or disease duration.
•
The findings of this study can be used for improving current patient education programs by health professionals and through mass media.
•
Better disease control of RA may be achieved by improving patient knowledge in a developing country like Bangladesh, but also in other parts of the world.
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