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Dengue is a vector-borne viral disease caused by multiple serotypes (DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, and DENV-4) of the dengue virus. It has been a public health concern since 2000 in Bangladesh. However, Bangladesh experienced a higher prevalence and death rate in the year 2022 than the previous year surpassing the COVID-19 situation. While climatic factors had always been a prominent reason for dengue incidence, reports stated that DEN 4 serotype was identified for the first time in the country, which made the dengue cases worse. In this article, we presented the 5 years prevalence of hospitalization and death cases owing to dengue fever and also provided a comparison of death cases caused by dengue and COVID-19 in Bangladesh. We described the possible reasons for the sudden surges of dengue infection and mentioned the actions led by the government to deal with this dengue occurrence. Lastly, we recommend a few strategies to counter the future outbreak of dengue infection in the country.
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Background and Aims: Monkeypox (Mpox) has become a concern worldwide after spreading into nonendemic countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared this a public health emergency of international concern and recommended to get vaccinated first who are at the highest risk. Risk perception and subjective norms can influence the decision of vaccine uptake. Therefore, we intended to perform a cross-sectional study on the male population in our country to assess their risk perception and subjective norms on Mpox. Methods: We measured participants' risk perception and subjective norms using Google form. Demographic profile of participants was obtained using a structured questionnaire. We performed a χ 2 test to compare the levels of risk perception and subjective norm perception and multiple logistic regression analysis to determine the association between the study parameters and the sociodemographic profile of the participants. Results: Among the participants, 93 (23.72%), 288 (73.47%), and 11 (2.81%) had high, medium, and low-risk perceptions, respectively. For subjective norms, we observed 288 (58.16%) participants had a medium, 117 (29.85%) had high, and 47 (11.99%) had low levels of subjective norms, respectively. Most participants possessed medium risk perception (73.47%) and subjective norms (58.16%). Moreover, we observed that moderate risk perception was prevalent in people with body mass index (BMI) level between 18.5 and 25 (73.3%), married (63.5%), low economic background (94.1%), living with a family (77.1%), smokers (68.4%), heterosexuals (99%), people with no/little impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) on life (91%). Proportions of people with moderate subjective norms BMI level of 18.5-25 (73.2%), married (60.5%), low economic status (93.9%), rural (58.8%), living with family (77.2%), nonsmokers (71.1%), and people with no/little impact of Covid-19 in their lives (91.2%). Conclusion: The majority of participants perceived medium risk perception and subjective norms related to Mpox. Furthermore, we observed a significant association between the study parameters and the sociodemographic characteristics of our study participants. We recommend that further longitudinal studies to yield more accurate results.
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Objectives: Numerous earlier studies have stated an association between major depressive disorder (MDD) and altered expression of inflammatory process. However, it still needs to determine whether the alteration of cytokines is the causative factor or a consequence of this disorder. Therefore, we attempted to evaluate the role of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-2 in the pathophysiology of depression. Methods: We collected blood samples from 111 MDD patients and 112 healthy controls (HCs) matched by age and sex. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5) score was used to assess study participants. We determined the severity of depression using the Hamilton Depression (Ham-D) rating scale. We assayed serum levels of IL-2 using the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) kit. Results: Elevated levels of IL-2 were detected in MDD patients than HCs (29.79 ± 6.18 and 12.77 ± 4.84 pg/ml, P < 0.05). We observed a higher level of IL-2 in female MDD patients compared to female HCs (31.98 ± 8.34 and 7.76 ± 0.36 pg/ml, P < 0.05). We witnessed a sex-specific correlation between the serum IL-2 levels and the Ham-D score and found that the females with higher Ham-D scores had higher serum IL-2 levels. Moreover, the ROC curve represented the good diagnostic performance of serum IL-2 levels as a biomarker with sensitivity and specificity values of 83.7% and 80.4%, respectively. Conclusions: The current study findings indicate that elevated serum IL-2 levels are associated with MDD. This alteration may be the cause of triggering depression or a result of the activated inflammatory process during the depression. Therefore, we recommend further interventional research to clarify the actual reasons for these altered IL-2 levels in MDD patients.
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Background: Previous studies have suggested the involvement of an activated inflammatory process in major depressive disorder (MDD), as altered expression of inflammatory cytokines is observed in depression. This alteration can be the cause or a consequence of MDD. However, acknowledging inflammatory cytokines as prospective biomarkers would aid in diagnosing or guiding better therapeutic options. Therefore, we designed this study to assess the macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) in depression. Method: We collected blood samples from 115 MDD patients and 113 healthy controls (HCs) matched by age and sex. MDD patients were diagnosed by a qualified psychiatrist based on the symptoms mentioned in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5). We applied the Hamilton depression (Ham-D) rating scale to assess the severity of depression. We assessed serum levels of MIF using ELISA kit (Boster Bio, USA). Result: We detected increased serum MIF levels in MDD patients compared to HCs (6.15 ± 0.23 ng/mL vs 3.95 ± 0.21 ng/mL, P < 0.001). Moreover, this increase is more among female patients than female controls. Also, we noticed a positive correlation between altered MIF levels and the Ham-D scores (r = 0.233; P = 0.012), where we found that patients who scored higher on the Ham-D scale had higher MIF levels in serum. Moreover, the area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve represented the good diagnostic performance of altered serum MIF. Conclusion: Our study findings indicate the association of pro-inflammatory cytokine MIF in the pathophysiology of depression as we identified elevated serum MIF levels in depressive patients compared to HCs. However, more researches are required to confirm whether this alteration of cytokine is the causative factor or a consequence of depression. We recommend conducting further studies to understand the pattern of this alteration of MIF levels in MDD patients.