Prevalence of Nutritional Anaemia with Association of Body Mass Index among Karachi University students, Pakistan s.

OBJECTIVE: The main objective of the study was to evaluate the health of University of Karachi students (aged 19 to 21) by observing the correlation of haemoglobin level with underweight BMI. METHODS: In this study 151 students were enrolled from the Department of Biotechnology, University of Karachi, Sindh Pakistan. Blood samples were collected and Haemoglobin estimation was performed by Sahli's Haemoglobinometer. BMI of each student was calculated as per WHO criteria for South Asian. RESULTS: Out of 151 students, 60 (39.7%) students had anaemia, among which 41(27.1%) were showing grade 1 anaemia and 19(12.5%) were showing grade 2 anaemia. BMI results showed that 50 (33.1%) students were underweight whereas, 19(12.5%) students were overweight and 12( 7.9%) students were obese. Correlation showed that 34 (22.5%) students had anaemia with underweight BMI. CONCLUSIONS: This study concluded that anaemia with underweight BMI is more prevalent among females especially adolescent girls. This could be as they followed poor dietary habits and had some infections. This data evaluated the health status of University students on a small scale.

Detection of Typhoidal and Paratyphoidal Salmonella in Blood by Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction.

BACKGROUND: The gold standard for diagnosis of enteric fever caused by Salmonella Typhi or Salmonella Paratyphi A or B is bone marrow culture. However, because bone marrow aspiration is highly invasive, many hospitals and large health centers perform blood culture instead. As blood culture has several limitations, there is a need for novel typhoid diagnostics with improved sensitivity and more rapid time to detection. METHODS: We developed a clyA-based real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) method to detect Salmonella Typhi and Salmonella Paratyphi A simultaneously in blood. The sensitivity and specificity of this probeset was first evaluated in vitro in the laboratory and then in a typhoid-endemic population, in Karachi, Pakistan, and in healthy US volunteers. RESULTS: We optimized a DNA extraction and real-time PCR-based method that could reliably detect 1 colony-forming unit/mL of Salmonella Typhi. The probe set was able to detect clinical Salmonella Typhi and Salmonella Paratyphi A strains and also diarrheagenic Escherichia coli, but not invasive E. coli or other invasive bacteria. In the field, the clyA qPCR diagnostic was 40% as sensitive as blood culture. However, when qPCR-positive specimens were considered to be true positives, blood culture only exhibited 28.57% sensitivity. Specificity was ≥90% for all comparisons and in the healthy US volunteers. qPCR was significantly faster than blood culture in terms of detection of typhoid and paratyphoid. CONCLUSIONS: Based on lessons learned, we recommend that future field trials of this and other novel diagnostics that detect typhoidal and nontyphoidal Salmonella employ multiple methodologies to define a "positive" sample.