Effect of Antenatal Oral Vitamin D Supplementation on Serum 25(OH)D Concentration in Exclusively Breastfed Infants at 6 Months of age - A Randomized Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Trial.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the proportion of exclusively breastfed (EBF) infants having severe vitamin D deficiency (25(OH)D concentration <11 ng/mL) at 6 months of age when mothers were supplemented with 300,000 IU Vitamin D3 or placebo during the third trimester of pregnancy. METHODS: In this randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial, we recruited 100 pregnant women who were willing to exclusively breastfeed their babies for 6 months at 30-32 weeks gestation and the infants born to them. Pregnant women were randomized to receive either oral vitamin D3 60,000 IU or placebo, given weekly for 5 weeks during the third trimester. Serum 25(OH)D, calcium, phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase concentration were measured in all participants at recruitment, in the cord blood at delivery, and in infants at 6 months of age. The proportion of infants developing severe vitamin D deficiency and rickets at 6 months was assessed. RESULTS: A total 72 mother-infant dyads followed till 6 months. At enrolment, the mean (SD) serum 25(OH)D concentration were comparable in mothers in the intervention and control groups (12.90 (5.84) vs 12.84 (5.88), P = 0.96). The mean (SD) 25(OH)D concentration (ng/mL) in the cord blood was significantly higher in the intervention group compared to the control group [42.14 (17.08) vs 12.74 (6.28); P = 0.002]. The mean (SD) serum 25(OH)D levels (ng/mL) in the infants at 6 months' age were higher in the intervention group compared to the control group [31.82 (10.89) vs 12.46 (5.68); P < 0.001]. No infant in the intervention group had severe vitamin D deficiency at 6 months' age compared to 54.3% infants in the control group (P < 0.001). No infant in the intervention group developed rickets. CONCLUSIONS: Oral supplementation of vitamin D3 to pregnant women in the third trimester prevents severe hypovitaminosis D in the EBF infants at 6-months of age.

Intramural Duodenal Hematoma in a Case of Hyper IgM Syndrome.

Three-year-old boy who presented with colicky abdominal pain, diarrhoea and vomiting was investigated with computed tomography which revealed a mass in the peripancreatic region. An imaging possibility of duodenal intramural hematoma was considered after reassessment with ultrasound which was subsequently confirmed by magnetic resonance imaging. The development of a spontaneous duodenal hematoma lead to further evaluation of the patient and revealed X linked hyper IgM syndrome.

SVM prediction of ligand-binding sites in bacterial lipoproteins employing shape and physio-chemical descriptors.

Bacterial lipoproteins play critical roles in various physiological processes including the maintenance of pathogenicity and numbers of them are being considered as potential candidates for generating novel vaccines. In this work, we put forth an algorithm to identify and predict ligand-binding sites in bacterial lipoproteins. The method uses three types of pocket descriptors, namely fpocket descriptors, 3D Zernike descriptors and shell descriptors, and combines them with Support Vector Machine (SVM) method for the classification. The three types of descriptors represent shape-based properties of the pocket as well as its local physio-chemical features. All three types of descriptors, along with their hybrid combinations are evaluated with SVM and to improve classification performance, WEKA-InfoGain feature selection is applied. Results obtained in the study show that the classifier successfully differentiates between ligand-binding and non-binding pockets. For the combination of three types of descriptors, 10 fold cross-validation accuracy of 86.83% is obtained for training while the selected model achieved test Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) of 0.534. Individually or in combination with new and existing methods, our model can be a very useful tool for the prediction of potential ligand-binding sites in bacterial lipoproteins.