SEROEPIDEMIOLOGY OF HBV ANTIGEN AND ANTI-HCV AMONG GENERAL POPULATION IN A RURAL LOCAL IN BAUCHI STATE, NIGERIA.

Background: HBV and HCV infections are a significant public health issue in developing countries with weak healthcare systems, high poverty rates, illiteracy, low HBV immunization coverage, and low public health education. A study assessed the sero epidemiology of HBV antigen, anti- HCV markers, biochemical and heamatological indices of 559 participants in Dambam local government during hepatitis day. A structured questionnaire was administered to assess demographic information and risk factors. Rapid latex immunochromtographic kits were used for HBV, HCV, and HBV Combo serological markers, with positive and negative control included in each batch analysis. Descriptive statistics analysis was conducted on the data. Results: The 559 study participants, had a mean age of 35.5+10.9years, majority within the age- group, 18-39years 279(49.04%), female accounted for 291(52.1%) compared to male 268(47.9), educational background, tertiary 244(43.6%), married, 356(68.7%) and student were 254(45.4%). Seroprevalence of HBsAg was 10.7%, serological markers as follows, HbsAb 1.7%, HbeAg 13.3%, HbeAb 60.0% HbcAb 95.0% and Anti-HCV of 3.4%. Gender breakdown(M vs F) of HBV(13.4% vs 8.2%) and HCV(3.0% vs 3.8%). Significant association was observed in the seroprevalence of HBV and HCV with age-group, gender, marital status and occupation(<0.05). No significant difference was observed with the risk factors of HBV and HCV. Biochemical and heamatological indices showed a significant difference between seropositive and negative study participants(<0.05). Conclusion: The study's findings affirmed the endemicity of HBV infection and the increasing trend of HCV infection in Bauchi state, posing serious public health concerns. HBV serological markers suggest a low HBV immunization coverage rate and exposure of participants to the viral etiology in the community. Strengthening immunization coverage and population-based surveillance is strategic in the prevention and control of viral hepatitis in Bauchi state.

A model based on multi-features to enhance healthcare and medical document retrieval.

OBJECTIVE: A major problem in biomedical informatics is the contextual retrieval and ranking of medical and healthcare information. In this article, we present a model for extracting semantic relations among medical and clinical documents. The purpose is to maximise contextual retrieval and ranking performance with minimum input from users. DESIGN: We developed and evaluated a medical search engine that relies on a multi-features similarity model. The indexed documents are represented as a network that reflects the semantic relations among documents to assess topical rankings. MEASUREMENT: The evaluation measurements include the following: recall, precision and R-precision. We used OHSUMED collection to evaluate our work with runs submitted to TREC-9. We provide a comparison of the top five runs that achieved the highest average precision scores. In addition, we used questionnaire-based evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the ranking task. RESULTS: The results indicated that the proposed model achieved a higher average precision in comparison with top-scored runs submitted to TREC-9; the improvement of our model over other methods is statistically significant (p-value <0.0001). Furthermore, a questionnaire-based experiment showed that the proposed model performed quite well in ranking retrieved documents according to their topics.

Vegetation stress detection through chlorophyll a + b estimation and fluorescence effects on hyperspectral imagery.

Physical principles applied to remote sensing data are key to successfully quantifying vegetation physiological condition from the study of the light interaction with the canopy under observation. We used the fluorescence-reflectance-transmittance (FRT) and PROSPECT leaf models to simulate reflectance as a function of leaf biochemical and fluorescence variables. A series of laboratory measurements of spectral reflectance at leaf and canopy levels and a modeling study were conducted, demonstrating that effects of chlorophyll fluorescence (CF) can be detected by remote sensing. The coupled FRT and PROSPECT model enabled CF and chlorophyll a + b (Ca + b) content to be estimated by inversion. Laboratory measurements of leaf reflectance (r) and transmittance (t) from leaves with constant Ca + b allowed the study of CF effects on specific fluorescence-sensitive indices calculated in the Photosystem I (PS-I) and Photosystem II (PS-II) optical region, such as the curvature index [CUR; (R675.R690)/R2(683)]. Dark-adapted and steady-state fluorescence measurements, such as the ratio of variable to maximal fluorescence (Fv/Fm), steady state maximal fluorescence (F'm), steady state fluorescence (Ft), and the effective quantum yield (delta F/F'm) are accurately estimated by inverting the FRT-PROSPECT model. A double peak in the derivative reflectance (DR) was related to increased CF and Ca + b concentration. These results were consistent with imagery collected with a compact airborne spectrographic imager (CASI) sensor from sites of sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marshall) of high and low stress conditions, showing a double peak on canopy derivative reflectance in the red-edge spectral region. We developed a derivative chlorophyll index (DCI; calculated as D705/D722), a function of the combined effects of CF and Ca + b content, and used it to detect vegetation stress.

Pregnancy-associated breast cancer: a case-control study in a young population with a high-fertility rate.

Pregnancy-associated breast cancer (PABC) is not a rare event. The association frequently imposes a management challenge. We intended to review the clinical features, therapy, and outcome of patients with PABC seen at a single institution over a five-year period and to compare those with that seen in a matched control group. Data of all patients with PABC diagnosed during pregnancy were retrospectively reviewed (Group I). For each patient in Group I, three matched controls with breast cancer without pregnancy were identified (matched for age, stage, and year of diagnosis, Group II). 72 patients in Group I and 216 in Group II were identified. Their median age was similar (34 vs 35 y, respectively). The median number of prior pregnancies for patients in Groups I and II was 5. Patients had shorter duration of symptoms prior to diagnosis as compared with their controls (5.6 vs 9.4 months, P < 0.0001). 3%, 31%, 40%, and 26% of patients had Stage I to IV, respectively. A pattern that was similar to that seen in our breast cancer population. Pregnancy was terminated in 34 patients (47%), while 38 (53%) had normal spontaneous vaginal delivery. 47 patients in Group I had surgery; 37 (52%) had modified radical mastectomy and 10 (14%) had conservative surgery. In 37 patients surgery was performed after termination of pregnancy and 10 had surgery performed during pregnancy. The median number of positive lymph nodes in Group I was 4 as compared with 2 for patients in Group II. No patients in Group I had systemic chemotherapy during first trimester, while only 4 (6%) and 3 (4%) received adjuvant or neoadjuvant during second and third trimester, respectively. No congenital malformation in the newborns was diagnosed. None of the patients in Group I received radiotherapy during pregnancy. Over a median of 47.5 months, 48 (67%) patients in Group I were alive as compared to 126 (58%) in Group II, with no difference in the median survival (P= 0.79). Comparing overall survival (OS) between the two groups stage for stage also showed no significant difference. Also there was no difference in progression-free survival between the two groups. Cox proportional hazard model identified advanced stage as the only independent adverse prognostic variable that influenced OS in Group I. Despite that this series included a relatively young population with a high fertility rate, the study confirmed the lack of a survival difference between patients with PABC and their matched controls.

Ex vitro photosynthetic activity in plantlets of tissue-cultured Douglas-fir.

Plantlets of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) had lower rates of net CO(2) uptake and higher rates of root respiration than greenhouse-grown seedlings. They also had a lower photosynthetic efficiency at high photosynthetic photon flux density, and exhibited significant depression of CO(2) uptake under water stress. The ability of plantlets to utilize high irradiance and to photosynthesize under conditions of water stress was enhanced by the presence of many roots. Carbon dioxide uptake rate increased with increasing root number, and decreased as the needle surface area/root surface area ratio decreased. High root number, low needle surface area/root surface area ratio, and elongated roots were associated with low apparent rates of shoot and root respiration.