| 1. |
- Salman, Muhammad, et al.
(författare)
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Evaluation of Conspiracy Beliefs, Vaccine Hesitancy, and Willingness to Pay towards COVID-19 Vaccines in Six Countries from Asian and African Regions : A Large Multinational Analysis
- 2022
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Ingår i: Vaccines. - : MDPI. - 2076-393X. ; 10:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Vaccination protects people from serious illness and associated complications. Conspiracy theories and misinformation on vaccines have been rampant during the COVID-19 pandemic and are considered significant drivers of vaccine hesitancy. Since vaccine hesitancy can undermine efforts to immunize the population against COVID-19 and interferes with the vaccination rate, this study aimed to ascertain the COVID-19-vaccine-related conspiracy beliefs, vaccine hesitancy, views regarding vaccine mandates, and willingness to pay for vaccines among the general population. A web-based, cross-sectional survey was conducted (April-August 2021) among the adult population in six countries (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Sudan, and Egypt). Participants were recruited using an exponential, non-discriminate snowball sampling method. A validated self-completed electronic questionnaire was used for the data collection. All the participants responded to questions on various domains of the study instrument, including conspiracy beliefs, vaccine hesitancy, and willingness to pay. The responses were scored according to predefined criteria and stratified into various groups. All data were entered and analyzed using SPSS version 22. A total of 2481 responses were included in the study (Pakistan 24.1%, Saudi Arabia 19.5%, India 11.6%, Malaysia 8.1%, Sudan 19.3%, and Egypt 17.3%). There was a preponderance of participants <= 40 years old (18-25 years: 55.8%, 26-40 years: 28.5%) and females (57.1%). The average score of the COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy belief scale (C19V-CBS) was 2.30 +/- 2.12 (median 2; range 0-7). Our analysis showed that 30% of the respondents were found to achieve the ideal score of zero, indicating no conspiracy belief. The mean score of the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy scale (C19V-HS) was 25.93 +/- 8.11 (range: 10-50). The majority (45.7%) had C19V-HA scores of 21-30 and nearly 28% achieved a score greater than 30, indicating a higher degree of hesitancy. There was a significant positive correlation between conspiracy beliefs and vaccine hesitancy (Spearman's rho = 0.547, p < 0.001). Half of the study population were against the vaccine mandate. Respondents in favor of governmental enforcement of COVID-19 vaccines had significantly (p < 0.001) lower scores on the C19V-CBS and C19V-HS scale. Nearly 52% reported that they would only take vaccine if it were free, and only 24% were willing to pay for COVID-19 vaccines. A high prevalence of conspiracy beliefs and vaccine hesitancy was observed in the targeted countries. Our findings highlight the dire need for aggressive measures to counter the conspiracy beliefs and factors underlying this vaccine hesitancy.
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| 2. |
- Khan, Ghazanfar Ali, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Occurrence and Abundance of Antibiotics and Resistance Genes in Rivers, Canal and near Drug Formulation Facilities – A Study in Pakistan
- 2013
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science. - 1932-6203. ; 8:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Antibiotic resistance (AR) is a global phenomenon that has severe epidemiological ramifications world-wide. It has been suggested that antibiotics that have been discharged into the natural aquatic environments after usage or manufacture can promote the occurrence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG). These environmental ARGs could serve as a reservoir and be horizontally transferred to human-associated bacteria and thus contribute to AR proliferation. The aim of this study was to investigate the anthropogenic load of antibiotics in Northern Pakistan and study the occurrence of ARGs in selected samples from this region. 19 sampling sites were selected; including six rivers, one dam, one canal, one sewage drain and four drug formulation facilities. Our results show that five of the rivers have antibiotic levels comparable to surface water measurements in unpolluted sites in Europe and the US. However, high levels of antibiotics could be detected in the downstream river in close vicinity of the 10 million city Lahore, 1100, 1700 and 2700 ng L−1 for oxytetracycline, trimethoprim, and sulfamethoxazole respectively. Highest detected levels were at one of the drug formulation facilities, with the measured levels of 1100, 4100, 6200, 7300, 8000, 27000, 28000 and 49000 ng L−1 of erythromycin, lincomycin, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, levofloxacin, oxytetracycline, trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole respectively. ARGs were also detected at the sites and the highest levels of ARGs detected, sulI and dfrA1, were directly associated with the antibiotics detected at the highest concentrations, sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim. Highest levels of both antibiotics and ARGs were seen at a drug formulation facility, within an industrial estate with a low number of local residents and no hospitals in the vicinity, which indicates that the levels of ARGs at this site were associated with the environmental levels of antibiotics.
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| 3. |
- Qadri, Syed Furqan, et al.
(författare)
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CT-based automatic spine segmentation using patch-based deep learning
- 2023
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Ingår i: International Journal of Intelligent Systems. - : Hindawi Publishing Corporation. - 0884-8173 .- 1098-111X. ; 2023
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- CT vertebral segmentation plays an essential role in various clinical applications, such as computer-assisted surgical interventions, assessment of spinal abnormalities, and vertebral compression fractures. Automatic CT vertebral segmentation is challenging due to the overlapping shadows of thoracoabdominal structures such as the lungs, bony structures such as the ribs, and other issues such as ambiguous object borders, complicated spine architecture, patient variability, and fluctuations in image contrast. Deep learning is an emerging technique for disease diagnosis in the medical field. This study proposes a patch-based deep learning approach to extract the discriminative features from unlabeled data using a stacked sparse autoencoder (SSAE). 2D slices from a CT volume are divided into overlapping patches fed into the model for training. A random under sampling (RUS)-module is applied to balance the training data by selecting a subset of the majority class. SSAE uses pixel intensities alone to learn high-level features to recognize distinctive features from image patches. Each image is subjected to a sliding window operation to express image patches using autoencoder high-level features, which are then fed into a sigmoid layer to classify whether each patch is a vertebra or not. We validate our approach on three diverse publicly available datasets: VerSe, CSI-Seg, and the Lumbar CT dataset. Our proposed method outperformed other models after configuration optimization by achieving 89.9% in precision, 90.2% in recall, 98.9% in accuracy, 90.4% in F-score, 82.6% in intersection over union (IoU), and 90.2% in Dice coefficient (DC). The results of this study demonstrate that our model's performance consistency using a variety of validation strategies is flexible, fast, and generalizable, making it suited for clinical application.
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| 4. |
- Bhat, Soha Maqbool, et al.
(författare)
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Design of Cost-Efficient SRAM Cell in Quantum Dot Cellular Automata Technology
- 2023
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Ingår i: Electronics. - : MDPI. - 2079-9292. ; 12:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- SRAM or Static Random-Access Memory is the most vital memory technology. SRAM is fast and robust but faces design challenges in nanoscale CMOS such as high leakage, power consumption, and reliability. Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is the alternative technology that can be used to address the challenges of conventional SRAM. In this paper, a cost-efficient single layer SRAM cell has been proposed in QCA. The design has 39 cells with a latency of 1.5 clock cycles and achieves an overall improvement in cell count, area, latency, and QCA cost compared to the reported designs. It can therefore be used to design nanoscale memory structures of higher order.
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| 5. |
- Chelban, V., et al.
(författare)
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PDXK mutations cause polyneuropathy responsive to pyridoxal 5′-phosphate supplementation
- 2019
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Ingår i: Annals of Neurology. - : Wiley. - 0364-5134 .- 1531-8249. ; 86:2, s. 225-240
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: To identify disease-causing variants in autosomal recessive axonal polyneuropathy with optic atrophy and provide targeted replacement therapy. Methods: We performed genome-wide sequencing, homozygosity mapping, and segregation analysis for novel disease-causing gene discovery. We used circular dichroism to show secondary structure changes and isothermal titration calorimetry to investigate the impact of variants on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) binding. Pathogenicity was further supported by enzymatic assays and mass spectroscopy on recombinant protein, patient-derived fibroblasts, plasma, and erythrocytes. Response to supplementation was measured with clinical validated rating scales, electrophysiology, and biochemical quantification. Results: We identified biallelic mutations in PDXK in 5 individuals from 2 unrelated families with primary axonal polyneuropathy and optic atrophy. The natural history of this disorder suggests that untreated, affected individuals become wheelchair-bound and blind. We identified conformational rearrangement in the mutant enzyme around the ATP-binding pocket. Low PDXK ATP binding resulted in decreased erythrocyte PDXK activity and low pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP) concentrations. We rescued the clinical and biochemical profile with PLP supplementation in 1 family, improvement in power, pain, and fatigue contributing to patients regaining their ability to walk independently during the first year of PLP normalization. Interpretation: We show that mutations in PDXK cause autosomal recessive axonal peripheral polyneuropathy leading to disease via reduced PDXK enzymatic activity and low PLP. We show that the biochemical profile can be rescued with PLP supplementation associated with clinical improvement. As B6 is a cofactor in diverse essential biological pathways, our findings may have direct implications for neuropathies of unknown etiology characterized by reduced PLP levels. ANN NEUROL 2019;86:225–240. © 2019 The Authors. Annals of Neurology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Neurological Association.
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| 6. |
- Maqbool, S., et al.
(författare)
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Engraftment syndrome following Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation : a systematic approach toward diagnosis and management
- 2023
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Ingår i: Medical Oncology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1357-0560 .- 1559-131X. ; 40:1
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Engraftment syndrome (ES) is a non-infectious complication seen both in autologous and allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplants and is characterized by the presence of non-infectious fever, diarrhea, skin rash, pulmonary infiltration, pulmonary edema, and deranged renal and liver function tests This review will be delineating the incidence of ES, important differential diagnoses to be considered and management options. The literature search was done through various databases like PubMed, Google scholar, Cochrane library, and EMBASE. The incidence of engraftment syndrome was ranging from 8 to 50% in patients undergoing Autologous stem cell transplantation while the incidence was 10–77% in patients undergoing Allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Fever was the most commonly observed symptom of ES in both Autologous and Allogeneic stem cell transplantation while the second most frequently reported symptom was non-infectious diarrhea in patients undergoing autologous stem cell transplantation and Skin rash in patients with Allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Pro-inflammatory cytokines and immune response dysregulation were highlighted as the mechanism behind ES development. The significant difference between ES and aGVHD was observed based on cytokines, with IL-12, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and IFN-γ levels in plasma being higher in patients with ES as compared to patients with aGVHD. Intravenous methylprednisolone was used as the treatment of choice in the majority of the studies. Overall the incidence of ES was high in patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cells transplantation. The survival in patients developing ES was less compared to those who did not develop ES. Engraftment syndrome is one of the complications following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation that need early identification, differentiation from infectious complications, and aGVHD and timely initiation of corticosteroids therapy.
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| 7. |
- Maqbool, S., et al.
(författare)
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Ovary and fallopian tube as contents of indirect inguinal hernia : A case report
- 2022
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Ingår i: International Journal of Surgery Case Reports. - : Elsevier BV. - 2210-2612. ; 100
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction and importance: Ovarian and fallopian tube indirect inguinal hernias are rare hernias encountered on surgical floor. Herein, we are reporting a rare happening of obstructed ovarian and fallopian tube indirect inguinal hernia in an unmarried female. Presentation of case: A 19 years old unmarried female presented to surgical emergency with complain of swelling in left inguinal region that was about 3 × 3 cm on visual inspection from last 4 days that was associated with menstruation. Abdominal ultrasound (USG) was showing left ovarian and fallopian tube indirect inguinal hernia with preserved internal follicles and intact vasculature. The diagnosis of obstructed ovarian and fallopian tube indirect inguinal hernia was made and diagnostic laparoscopy and left sided hernioplasty was performed. Ovary was retrieved back into abdominal cavity and stitched to lateral pelvic wall. Discussion: Inguinal hernia itself is a rare happening in females and the presence of ovary and fallopian tube along with other hernial content can become a topic of discussion due to rarity of this case. It is of paramount significance to diagnose such cases with great expertise in order to avoid long term complications in terms of preserving fertility among females. Early utilization of radiological investigations like USG abdomen and laparoscopic retrieval of adnexal structures are standard approach in management of such cases. Conclusion: Presence of ovary and fallopian tube in indirect inguinal hernia is a rare happening that need to be diagnosed and treated at earliest to avoid infertility among females.
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