In-vitro cytotoxic evaluation, hemolytic and thrombolytic potential of newly designed acefylline based hydrazones as potent anticancer agents against human lung cancer cell line (A549).

Hydrazones of theophylline-7-acetic acid 5a-g have been synthesized using ultrasonic irradiation as well as conventional heating system and analyzed for their anticancer characteristics against human lung cancer cell line (A549). Compound 5g with cell viability 33.19±0.49% (100 µg/µL) compared to the starting reference drug acefylline having cell viability 86.32±11.75% (100 µg/µL) was found to be the most active anticancer agent among all. The synthesized derivatives were also exposed to hemolytic and thrombolytic studies to determine their cytotoxic profile and results revealed their low toxicity and moderate clot lysis activity.

Comparison of physiotherapy with and without intra-articular corticosteroid injection for treatment of frozen shoulder: A comparative study.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the combination of corticosteroid injection and physiotherapy with physiotherapy alone in patients of frozen shoulder in terms of SPADI score. METHODS: This study included 80 patients of either gender from PMC and affiliated hospitals of Faisalabad with ages between 18-55 years having frozen shoulder of either gender with more than 1 month duration. Patients having frozen shoulder secondary to trauma, cerebrovascular accident and taking steroid injections were excluded. Combination of corticosteroid injection and physiotherapy was performed in combination therapy group (n=40) and physiotherapy alone was performed in Single therapy group (n=40). RESULTS: A total of 80 patients, 30(37.5%) males and 50(62.5%) females were selected for the study. Each group, combination therapy and single therapy had 40 patients each. The combination therapy group included 18(45.0%) males and 22(44.0%) females whereas the single therapy group comprised of 12(39.9%) males and 28(70%) females. The treatment method was independent of duration of disease (p= 0.251 for c2= 1.317). After six weeks of treatment, the t-test applied on SPADI score showed that combined treatment is better than the single treatment method (p= 0.016). However, both treatment methods were found same after stratification of duration of disease. CONCLUSIONS: Combination of corticosteroid injection and physiotherapy is more effective than the physiotherapy alone in resolving the shoulder pain and disability of shoulder.

Model Selection and Identification of Osteoporosis Risk Factors in Women to Improve Their Healthcare.

Osteoporosis is characterized by low bone mineral density leading to enhanced bone fragility and a consequent increase in fracture risk. The focus of this case-control study was to identify significant socioeconomic risk factors of osteoporosis in Pakistani women and examine how the risk increases for different levels of risk factors. A case-control study was conducted from November 2018 to August 2019 in two main hospitals in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Multiple logistic regression was used to explore the significant risk factors of osteoporosis and how the risk increases in cases (cases = 120) as compared to the control group (controls = 120) in the presence of these risk factors. The mean age ± standard deviation for cases and controls was 59.62 ± 10.75 and 54.27 ± 10.09, respectively. The minimum and maximum ages were 36 and 80 years, respectively. In addition to age, bone fracture, family history, regular physical activity, family size, use of meat, type of birth, breastfeeding, premature menopause, loss of appetite, and use of anticoagulants were significant risk factors with p-values less than 0.05. The risk prediction model with significant risk factors was a good fit with a p-value of 0.28, corresponding to the Hosmer-Lemeshow test value (χ2 = 9.78). This parsimonious model with Cox-Snell R2 = 0.50 (with a maximum value = 0.75) and Nagelkerke R2 = 0.66 showed an AUC of 0.924 as compared to the full model with all risk factors under study that exhibited an AUC of 0.949.

Self-Adaptation Resource Allocation for Continuous Offloading Tasks in Pervasive Computing.

Advancement in technology has led to an increase in data. Consequently, techniques such as deep learning and artificial intelligence which are used in deciphering data are increasingly becoming popular. Further, advancement in technology does increase user expectations on devices, including consumer interfaces such as mobile apps, virtual environments, or popular software systems. As a result, power from the battery is consumed fast as it is used in providing high definition display as well as in charging the sensors of the devices. Low latency requires more power consumption in certain conditions. Cloud computing improves the computational difficulties of smart devices with offloading. By optimizing the device's parameters to make it easier to find optimal decisions for offloading tasks, using a metaheuristic algorithm to transfer the data or offload the task, cloud computing makes it easier. In cloud servers, we offload the tasks and limit their resources by simulating them in a virtual environment. Then we check resource parameters and compare them using metaheuristic algorithms. When comparing the default algorithm FCFS to ACO or PSO, we find that PSO has less battery or makespan time compared to FCFS or ACO. The energy consumption of devices is reduced if their resources are offloaded, so we compare the results of metaheuristic algorithms to find less battery usage or makespan time, resulting in the PSO increasing battery life or making the system more efficient.

Multiple imputation with compatibility for high-dimensional data.

Multiple Imputation (MI) is always challenging in high dimensional settings. The imputation model with some selected number of predictors can be incompatible with the analysis model leading to inconsistent and biased estimates. Although compatibility in such cases may not be achieved, but one can obtain consistent and unbiased estimates using a semi-compatible imputation model. We propose to relax the lasso penalty for selecting a large set of variables (at most n). The substantive model that also uses some formal variable selection procedure in high-dimensional structures is then expected to be nested in this imputation model. The resulting imputation model will be semi-compatible with high probability. The likelihood estimates can be unstable and can face the convergence issues as the number of variables becomes nearly as large as the sample size. To address these issues, we further propose to use a ridge penalty for obtaining the posterior distribution of the parameters based on the observed data. The proposed technique is compared with the standard MI software and MI techniques available for high-dimensional data in simulation studies and a real life dataset. Our results exhibit the superiority of the proposed approach to the existing MI approaches while addressing the compatibility issue.

Impact of different cooking methods on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in rabbit meat.

The influence of a variety of cooking methods (poaching, boiling, grilling (charcoal or gas)), frying (pan, deep frying, and stir frying) with a variety of oils (vegetable oil, extra virgin olive oil, sesame oil, extra light olive oil, and sunflower oil), microwaving, and oven roasting on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) formation in rabbit meat samples was investigated. Meat samples (including three replicates) were prepared without additives or spices. PAHs extraction was carried out by saponification method with potassium hydroxide in methanol which was followed by a silica gel column technique and the samples were quantified by using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). PAHs standards, fluorene, naphthalene, anthracene, phenanthrene, pyrene, acenaphthalene, fluoranthene, and benzopyrene, were used for this study. The other PAHs except fluorene were not observed (detection limit-0.009 µg/g) in all the samples. Among traditional processing techniques, higher PAH contents were observed as a result of frying. Frying with vegetable oil produced higher fluorene content (0.06-0.13 µg/g) in the deep-fried sample, although sesame oil is the best oil which produces lowest PAH contents in fried samples. Among all the processing techniques, lower fluorene (0.01-0.02 µg/g) content was noticed in poaching. Benzo(a)pyrene was not observed in all the investigated samples which is viewed as a reliable strategy of the cooking process for human consumption. After processing, the cooking loss was determined and oven roasting and grilling exhibited greater moisture loss.

Gender based survival prediction models for heart failure patients: A case study in Pakistan.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to build and assess the performance of survival prediction models using the gender-specific informative risk factors for patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction. METHODS: A lasso approach was used to decide the informative predictors for building semi-parametric proportional hazards Cox model. Separate models were built for all patients [N = 299], male patients [Nmale = 194 (64.88%)], and female patients [Nfemale = 105 (35.12%)], to observe the risk factors associated with the individual's risk of death. The likelihood- ratio test was used to test the goodness of fit of the selected model, and the C-index was used to assess the predictive performance of the selected model(s) with respect to the overall model with all observed risk factors. RESULTS: The survival prediction model for females is notably different from that for males. For males, smoking, diabetes, and anaemia, whereas for females, ejection fraction, sodium, and platelets count are non-informative with zero regression coefficients. The goodness of fit of the selected models with respect to the general model with all observed risk factors is tested using the likelihood-ratio test. The results are in favor of the selected models with p-values 0.51,0.61, and 0.70 for all patients, male patients, and female patients, respectively. The same values of C-index for the full model and the selected models for overall data, for males, and for females (0.72, 0.73, and 0.77 for overall data, male data, and female data, respectively) indicate that the selected models are as good as the corresponding overall models regarding their predictive performance. CONCLUSION: There is a substantial difference in the survival prediction models for heart failure (HF) of male and female patients in this study. More studies are needed in Pakistan for confirming this striking male-female difference regarding the potential risk factors to predict survival with heart failure.

Adjunctive Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) in Infrabony Regenerative Treatment: A Systematic Review and RCT's Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to highlight the clinical performance of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) used as an adjunctive tool for regeneration in infrabony periodontal defects using different biomaterials or performing different surgical flap approaches. Comparative evaluation of main clinical outcomes as probing pocket depth reduction, clinical attachment gain, and recession reduction with and without the use of PRP has been analysed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: According to the focused question, an electronic and hand searching has been performed up to December 2016. From a batch of 73 articles, the selection strategy and Jadad quality assessment led us to include 15 studies for the meta-analysis. RESULTS: Despite the high heterogeneity found and the lack of complete data regarding the selected clinical outcomes, a comparative analysis has been possible by the categorization of used biomaterials and surgical flap approaches. This method led us to observe the best performance of grafts with the use of adjunctive PRP in CAL gain and PPD reduction. No difference has been outlined with a specific surgical flap. CONCLUSIONS: Although PRP is considered a cheap and patient's derived growth factor, the not conclusive data reported would suggest that its use in addition to bone substitutes could be of some clinical benefit in the regenerative treatment of infrabony defects. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: This systematic review was intended to sort out the huge controversial debate in the field about the possible use of PRP in regenerative surgery in infrabony defect. The clinical relevance of using blood-borne growth factors to conventional procedures is effective as these could determine a better performance and outcomes despite the surgical approach adopted and limit the use of additional biomaterials for the blood clot stabilization.