Risk factors associated with retinopathy in young people with type 1 diabetes in Bangladesh.

Objectives: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the most common microvascular complications seen in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of retinopathy and its association with other risk factors in young people with type 1 diabetes. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study, which was done as part of the ongoing complication assessment in the paediatric diabetes clinic in BIRDEM (Bangladesh Institute of Research and Rehabilitation of Diabetes Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders), a tertiary care hospital. Children, adolescents and young adults with type 1 diabetes who were having diabetes duration >2 years were included in this study. Retinopathy was detected using fundal photography, and grading was done by National Screening Committee of UK by trained ophthalmologists. Results: Diabetic retinopathy was observed in 44 (6.6%) patients. Majority (95.4%) of them had early diabetic retinopathy in the form of mild NPDR (nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy) (R1). Patients with retinopathy had higher HbA1c 9.6[8.4-12.3] vs 9.1 [7.9-10.8] (P = .013), longer duration of diabetes 7.6 [5.5-10.7] vs 6.0 [4.5-8.2] years (P = .001) and were older 21.5 [18.0-23.0] vs 18 [16.0-21.0] years (P = .0001) compared with those without retinopathy. On multivariate regression analysis, higher age and median HbA1c were significantly associated with DR. Conclusions: Higher HbA1c was the only modifiable risk factor for development of DR in our study population. Early detection of DR with improvement of glycaemic control may reduce the risk of progression of severe stages of the disease.

An Investigation of the Interaction between NOx and SOx in Oxy-Combustion.

This study focuses on revealing the interaction of sulfur oxides (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and investigating the application of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to quantify SOx and NOx emissions from gas-phase oxy-combustion systems. The authors aim to contribute to the current state of knowledge by providing speciation data of NOx and SOx species and it elucidates the influence of nitric oxide (NO) on sulfur trioxide (SO3) generation. Detailed kinetic simulations revealed the influence of combustion parameters and the sensitivity analysis confirmed the dominating influence of hydrocarbon fragments on NO reduction. Accompanying experimental analysis exhibited higher reduction of NO to nitrogen (N2) comparing to the predictions by the kinetic simulations. Moreover, the presence of NO in the system was observed to influence the SO3 generation to a variable degree based on the reaction set employed for kinetic simulations. Experimentally, slight decrease in SO3 concentration was observed in the presence of NO and it can be explained by the radical consumption by NO as SOx and NOx species share the same radical pool. The oxy-combustion mechanisms available in the literature can be improved further to be able to predict this interaction.