Search results

This paper aims to examine the association between the dietary inflammatory index, the consumption of Enteral Nutrition Supplemented with probiotics with certain serum inflammation markers and gastrointestinal complications among individuals diagnosed with COVID-19.

This cross-sectional investigation involved 100 COVID-19 patients who were admitted to intensive care units in hospitals. These patients were administered two different types of Enteral Nutrition, so the dietary inflammatory index (DII), gastrointestinal complications and some serum inflammation markers have been compared between two groups.

The mean DII scores in all patients were significantly pro-inflammatory (probiotic formula 2.81 ± 0.01 vs usual formula group 2.93 ± 0.14 p = 0.19). The probiotic formula consumption had an inverse association with High-sensitivity C-reactive Protein concentration (coef = −3.19, 95% CI −1.25, −5.14 p = 0.001) and lead to a reduction of 2.14 mm/h in the serum level of Erythrocyte sedimentation rate compared to normal formula. The incidence of diarrhea, abdominal pain and vomiting in probiotic formula patients was respectively 94%, 14% and 86% less than in usual formula patients (p = 0.05).

In this cross-sectional study for the first time, the authors found that probiotic formula consumption was inversely associated with serum inflammation markers and gastrointestinal complications incidence. The high DII leads to more gastrointestinal complications incidence and inflammation markers. More studies are needed to prove this relationship.

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is the most common nutritional anemia in the world and a pervasive health problem, especially in developing countries. Children under two years of age are more prone to be affected by IDA. The best strategy to prevent and treat IDA is to use iron supplements. This study aims to examine the factors associated with noncompliance (such as non-utilization or inconsistent usage) of iron drop supplementation among infants between 6 and 24 months old.

Online databases (PubMed, Scopus and SID) were searched to retrieve relevant articles published from inception up to July 2023. Among the 2,177 articles detected, after removing duplicate and irrelevant titles, 21 cross-sectional studies that met the authors’ inclusion criteria were included. Screening for articles and data extraction were conducted separately by two researchers.

The findings suggest that some factors related to mothers, such as education, knowledge, attitude and performance; some factors associated with child such as child’s gastrointestinal and dental complications; taste and smell of iron drops; and birth order and gender are the main determinants of adherence to iron supplementation.

It can be proposed that the most significant factors affecting the feeding of iron drops to children under the age of two include: the level of mother’s awareness, socio-economic status of the household and the occurrence of digestive complications following the supplementation. Given these observations, adopting proper policies toward improving the nutritional awareness of mothers and producing iron supplements with minimal side effects seems crucial.

The paper's purpose is to document a clinical study of children with Henoch‐Schonlein Purpura that facilitated decision‐making with regard to investigations, follow up and timely referral to a nephrologist.

A retrospective analysis of clinical records of 33 children diagnosed with Henoch‐Schonlein purpura who attended the Whiston Hospital Paediatric unit over a 60‐month period between January 2001 and December 2005 was performed.

In the study 53 per cent (n 17) of the patients were boys. The commonest age group affected was between five to ten years (n 17), with mean age of 7.2 years (range 1 to 17 years). Of the cases , 71 per cent (n 22) presented between July and December. Four patients (13 per cent) had haematuria on dipstick examination at presentation. Eight patients (25 per cent) had neither blood pressure measurement on admission nor a documented plan for urine dipstick or blood pressure measurement on discharge. Daily urine dipstick was performed in 47 per cent (n 15) patients with one patient having checks twice a week. Information to parents was not documented in 72 per cent (n 23) of case notes.

The need to provide better parental education and support in the form of an information leaflet was identified.

This study highlights the importance of follow up of children with HSP with emphasis on regular urine dipstick examination and measurement of blood pressure even if they remain asymptomatic to ensure that they do not develop long‐term renal impairment.

The nutritional status of a woman before and during pregnancy is important for a healthy pregnancy outcome. The increasing prevalence of maternal overweight and obesity worldwide has become a problem of concern among public health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence regarding the impact of maternal weight on pregnancy outcomes to facilitate the provision of evidence-based information to pregnant women during antenatal clinics in Ghana.

A search was conducted in PubMed, PLOS ONE, Cochrane, Embase and bibliographies for all studies on maternal weight and pregnancy outcomes published from January 2000 to May 2013. The key words used for the search were: “pre-pregnancy BMI”, “gestational weight gain”, “maternal weight”, “pregnancy outcomes” and “birth outcomes”.

The search yielded 113 papers; out of these, 35 studies were included in the review after exclusion of duplicates and irrelevant papers. Excluded papers included animal studies and human studies that did not meet inclusion criteria.

The review only considered papers published from 2000 to 2013 and might have left out other important papers published before 2000 and after 2013.

The origins of the studies included in the review suggest paucity of studies on maternal weight and pregnancy outcomes in developing countries where there is a double burden of malnutrition. There is the need for more studies to be initiated in this area.

Results of this review have revealed that the extremes of maternal weight prior to and during pregnancy increase the risk of maternal and fetal complications.

This paper provides evidential information on the impact of maternal weight on pregnancy outcomes for counseling during antenatal clinics.

This paper presents a framework which combines data and text retrieval techniques to exercise and evaluate ontology based query expansions. We prepare by using linguistic techniques to identify query and document concepts, locating them in a ontologically defined semantic space. Expansions originate from the identified query concepts, with success determined by matching in the relevant document set. We identify three orthogonal dimensions that can affect query expansion success; relationship source, success measure technique, and query expansion technique. Expansion technique is further divided into six different categories: simple pruning, complex probability, voting, directional, semantic propagation, and multiple source concept. We describe each technique and show examples where they would be useful. The system architecture used facilitates plugging in of various expansion and evaluation routines, and flowing results from one method to the next. The system is useful for microanalysis of query expansion, discovering which components of ontological derived knowledge most influence query expansion success. In this work, we apply our framework to the medical domain.

Nonstandard work schedules are increasingly common in today’s economy, and work during these nonstandard hours has a negative impact on health. Scholars investigating work schedules have yet to explore how marital status, which is linked with better health, may protect the health of US workers with nonstandard schedules. This study uses binomial logistic regression models to analyze pooled data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (N = 6,376). Interaction terms are utilized to test if marital status variations occur in the relationship between work schedule and health for men and women.

The results demonstrate that while working a nonstandard schedule puts men and women at a lower odds of reporting good health compared to those who work a standard schedule, there is no difference in this relationship across marital status for men. However, nonstandard schedules are worse for the health of cohabiting and divorced, separated, or widowed women than for married women. The results indicate a significant interaction between work schedule and marital status exists for female workers and should be considered when examining the health of the population with nonstandard work schedules.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of both occupational safety and health (OSH) and worksite health promotion (WHP) efforts targeted at long-haul truck drivers (LHTDs) and to identify strengths and weaknesses to inform future interventions and/or policy changes.

Review of the literature was done to identify theoretical and methodological approaches frequently used for protecting and promoting the health and well-being of LHTDs.

Health and safety issues impacting LHTDs are complex and naturally interrelated. Historically, the majority of approaches to the health and safety of LHTDs have emphasized the safety side and there has been a lack of comprehensive and integrated WHP/OSH attempts.

The literature pertaining to LHTD health has expanded in recent years, but intervention and policy efforts have had limited success. Several scholars have discussed the need for integrating WHP/OSH efforts for LHTD health, but have not actually provided a description or a framework of what it entails in which the authors provide a conclusion to the review of the literature. The authors provide a critical discussion regarding a collaborative approach focused on National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health’s Total Worker Health model. The integration further promotes an advancement of theoretical and methodological strategies.

This article examines the impact of the 1919 influenza pandemic on the life and culture of Australian universities, and the curious absence of sustained discussion about the crisis in university magazines. It considers two contexts, from the perspective of the general university population, and from the particular focus of medical students.

The primary source for this analysis is based on detailed reading of university magazines across three universities, as well as other primary and secondary literature. The article was written during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which has limited access to some other magazines held in library collections, but the corpus of material is more than sufficient.

This article shows that the pandemic further deferred the resumption of university life after a hiatus during the First World War. The failure to identify the causal agent limited technical discussion in medical school magazines.

This is one of the first dedicated studies of the effect of the 1919 influenza pandemic on Australian universities. It joins a growing body of work considering the effect of the influenza on different community groups.

The purpose of the paper was to assess the functional properties vegetable gourds & the validated health claims so as to help the future researchers to locate the gaps. However, emphasizing on the scientifically available reports was required to make information available in a nutshell to the health-conscious consumers, as well as the researcher from the area of functional foods and nutrition.

The paper is a mini-review of scientific findings in different studies on gourd vegetables. The approach to information collection was finding the research gaps and potential areas for future work with a nutritional perspective.

Ash gourd, bitter gourd and bottle gourd have been extensively studied, and several health benefits and functional components have been reported, while ridge gourd, snake gourd and pointed gourd have been sparsely studied for their therapeutic benefits and the validation thereof; hence, there lies a scope for researchers.

The scarcity of scientific reports compared to the traditional usage and folkloric beliefs was a limitation.

Understanding the nutritional potential of gourd vegetables from scientific reports may influence both the work areas and consumers in the appropriate direction.

This study explores the impact of workplace tele pressure on innovative work performance. The study also tests the mediating effect of the work-family conflict and the moderating influence of job burnout between the work-family conflict and innovative work performance.

Data for the present study were collected through structured questionnaires from 285 employees working in the public and private sector universities. Data were analysed through SPSS and Smart-PLS.

Results confirmed the relationship between workplace tele pressure and innovative work performance, the mediating effect of work-family conflict between workplace tele pressure and innovative work performance and the moderating influence of job burnout between work-family conflicts and innovative work performance.

This study model is supported by the job demands-control model and effort-recovery theory, which is being tested for the first time to support the relationship between workplace tele pressure and innovative work performance. Further, the model “workplace tele pressure → work-family conflicts → job burnout → innovative work performance” was developed and tested for the first time to study the technology-based pressure in the education sector.