Developing and Validating Quantitative Food Frequency Questionnaire to Assess Dietary Vitamin D Intake among Adults in Indian Population.

ABSTRACT: The objective of this study is to create and validate a quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) for the assessment of Vitamin D intake among adults in Indian population. A quantitative FFQ was developed consisting of Vitamin D dietary-rich sources selected from IFCT, 2017. Further, the FFQ was validated against 24-h dietary recall from randomly selected 385 adults, both men and women above 25 years of age. The mean dietary Vitamin D intake estimated using quantitative FFQ was 402.61 ± 101.21 IU/day and that from 24-h dietary recall was 392.83 ± 120.86 IU/day. The coefficient of correlation between these two methods was 0.86 (P < 0.001) suggestive of high correlation between the two dietary assessment tools. This indicates that Vitamin D intake from FFQ and 24-h recall was similar. This efficient FFQ can assess adult Vitamin D intake in epidemiological studies, offering convenience, and ease of evaluation.

Hybrid Multi-Label Classification Model for Medical Applications Based on Adaptive Synthetic Data and Ensemble Learning.

In recent years, both machine learning and computer vision have seen growth in the use of multi-label categorization. SMOTE is now being utilized in existing research for data balance, and SMOTE does not consider that nearby examples may be from different classes when producing synthetic samples. As a result, there can be more class overlap and more noise. To avoid this problem, this work presented an innovative technique called Adaptive Synthetic Data-Based Multi-label Classification (ASDMLC). Adaptive Synthetic (ADASYN) sampling is a sampling strategy for learning from unbalanced data sets. ADASYN weights minority class instances by learning difficulty. For hard-to-learn minority class cases, synthetic data are created. Their numerical variables are normalized with the help of the Min-Max technique to standardize the magnitude of each variable's impact on the outcomes. The values of the attribute in this work are changed to a new range, from 0 to 1, using the normalization approach. To raise the accuracy of multi-label classification, Velocity-Equalized Particle Swarm Optimization (VPSO) is utilized for feature selection. In the proposed approach, to overcome the premature convergence problem, standard PSO has been improved by equalizing the velocity with each dimension of the problem. To expose the inherent label dependencies, the multi-label classification ensemble of Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN), and Clustering-Based Decision tree methods will be processed based on an averaging method. The following criteria, including precision, recall, accuracy, and error rate, are used to assess performance. The suggested model's multi-label classification accuracy is 90.88%, better than previous techniques, which is PCT, HOMER, and ML-Forest is 65.57%, 70.66%, and 82.29%, respectively.

Successful treatment of severe form of bovine tropical theileriosis in dairy cattle and genotyping of Theileria annulata isolates of Tamil Nadu, India.

Bovine tropical theileriosis (BTT) is a tick-borne protozoan disease of cattle and responsible for major economic losses to the dairy farmers in India. This report describes diagnosis, genotyping and successful treatment of heavy infection of Theileria annulata in an organized dairy farm at Kattupakkam, Chennai. Four cross bred cows of 2 to 5 years of age showed clinical signs i.e., anorexia, salivation and panting. Clinical examination revealed pyrexia (40.0 °C to 40.1 °C), pale mucus membranes, enlarged prescapular lymph nodes and haemoglobinuria. The peripheral blood smear examination of infected cows revealed presence of piroplasm within the RBCs indicating high parasitemia. Haematology results suggested that decreased levels of Hb, RBC, WBC and PCV in the infected cows when compared with normal reference values. There were increased serum ALT and AST values and reduced serum total protein, albumin, calcium and phosphorous values in the infected cows. Semi-nested PCR using T. annulata specific oligonucleotide primers amplified 199 bp of the partial T. annulata 18S rRNA gene. Presence of four satellite markers TS6, TS8, TS9, and TS12 in the Theileria annulata isolates 1 and 2 indicating that the isolates were the same haplotype and suggested the infection in the farm was due to a single haplotype of T. annulata parasite. Based on the clinical signs, microscopic examination of blood smear and molecular diagnosis, the condition was diagnosed as tropical theileriosis. Infected cows were successfully treated with a single deep intramuscular injection of buparvaquone (Zubion®, INTAS pharmaceuticals LTD, Ahmedabad, India) along with supportive medication.

Restricting high-end antibiotics usage - challenge accepted!

OBJECTIVES: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) leads to increased morbidity, mortality, and healthcare expenditure. The rate of development of AMR is accelerated by the use and misuse of antimicrobials. Preauthorization and restricted use of high-end antibiotics are the key modalities of antimicrobial stewardship. Hence, choosing the right antibiotics is the key to better clinical outcomes and preventing resistance in hospitals as well as communities. The present study was done to assess the judicious usage of high-end antibiotics among inpatients treated at our hospital. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective observational study was conducted on high-end antibiotic usage using a structured proforma among inpatients treated at our hospital for a 3 month period. Department wise educational intervention was done and feedbacks were provided, after which reassessment was done. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS: Meropenem was the most commonly used high-end antibiotics. After the feedback and intervention, there was 51.2% reduction in the unjustified antibiotic usage. The appropriateness of the usage increased from 77% observed during preintervention to 88% postintervention. CONCLUSION: The increasing compliance of judicious usage of high-end antibiotics needs to be sustained. Therefore, continuous strengthening of antimicrobial stewardship practices are crucial.