Search

Background: Rheumatic arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune progressive disease affecting one percentage of the general population Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of health teaching for mothers' on quality of life for children with rheumatic arthritis. Design: A quasiexperimental design was used to conduct this study (pre &post-test). Setting: the study was conducted at Pediatric Rheumatic Fever Clinic of Tanta University Hospital. Subject and method: A quasi-experimental research design was used with a convenience sample of 60 mothers and their children with rheumatic arthritis. Data were collected using three tools: tool (I) Structured Interview Schedule sheet: it was be divided into two part: part (A) Socio demographic characteristics of studied mothers and their children, part (B) Mothers' knowledge and practice about rheumatic arthritis (Pre/Post): Tool (II) Quality of life domains for children with rheumatic arthritis (Pre/Post). Tool (III) FLACC behavioral pain assessment scale (Pre/Post). Results: The results revealed that more than a third of the total score of knowledge about rheumatic arthritis at pre-education compared to less than three quarters of them at post education, and one third of them had good total quality of life at preeducation compared to more than half of them at post education. Also, one third of them had mild pain at pre-education compared to that more than half of them at post education. Conclusion and Recommendations: it can be concluded that after health education was implemented, the quality of life for children with rheumatic arthritis improved. Establish continuous educational and training program for children and their mothers about rheumatic arthritis are recommended to increase their knowledge, quality of life, and management of RA and prevent its complication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. In 2018, Egypt underwent a health system reform programme, in which a universal health insurance system rolled out across the country beginning, with the Port-Said Governorate in July 2019. Objectives. This study was conducted to assess patient satisfaction and health system responsiveness among attendants to family health centres and units affiliated with universal health insurance in the Port Said Governorate, Egypt. Material and methods. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted that included 156 patients who were seeking health care in family health centres and units affiliated with universal health insurance in the Port Said Governorate. A multi-clustering sampling technique was used. Data was collected using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Results. Among the 156 patients who were enrolled in the current study, 54 were male (34.6%) and 102 were female (65.4%), with a mean age of 37.10 ± 15.22 years. Regarding domains of health system responsiveness, about 73% of the attendants perceived the overall health system responsiveness as good regarding the domains of basic amenities, communication and confidentiality. On the other hand, three domains were perceived as poor, including autonomy, prompt attention and dignity (37.8%, 34% and 30.8%, respectively). Conclusions. It was found that more than two third of the attendants perceived the overall health system responsiveness as good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Diabetes-related distress and glycemic control are of a particular concern to primary care physicians because of the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic on diabetic patients' lifestyle, psychological well-being and healthcare access. Our aim was to evaluate the relationship between diabetes-related distress and glycemic control in diabetic patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in primary care settings during the pandemic. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted at primary healthcare clinics in a rural area in Egypt among 430 patients with T2DM during the period from September 2020 to June 2021. All patients were interviewed for their sociodemographic, lifestyle, and clinical characteristics. Diabetes-related distress was measured by the problem areas in the diabetes scale (PAID), where a total score of ≥40 indicated a severe diabetes-related distress. The most recent glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) measurements were used to indicate the glycemic control. Quantile regression model (0.50 quantile) was used to perform the multivariate analysis to identify significant factors associated with HbA1c level. RESULTS: Most of the participants had a suboptimal glycemic control (92.3%), while 13.3% had severe diabetes-related distress. HbA1c level was significantly and positively correlated with the total PAID score and all its sub-domains. Multivariate quantile regression revealed that obesity, multi-morbidity, and severe diabetes-related distress were the only significant determinants of the HbA1c median level. Obese patients had significantly higher median HbA1c compared to patients who were not obese (coefficient = 0.25, P < 0.001). Patients with two or more comorbidities (i.e., multimorbidity) had a significantly higher median HbA1c than patients with single or no chronic comorbidities (coefficient = 0.41, P < 0.001). Severe diabetes-related distress was significantly associated with higher median HbA1c compared to nonsevere diabetes-related distress (coefficient = 0.20, P = 0.018). CONCLUSION: Diabetes-related distress had a significant association with HbA1c level. Family physicians should implement multifaceted programs to optimize diabetes control and reduce any associated distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This study was aimed to screen and isolate soil and endophytic fungi with the ability to biosynthesize stable silver nanoparticles (SNPs) with antimicrobial and antiproliferative activities. Methodology and results: A total of 60 fungal isolates isolated from soil and plant samples were screened for their ability to biosynthesize SNPs. Among which, 21 isolates have supported the biosynthesis of SNPs. Furthermore, the endophytic isolate PRR2.1 synthesized highly thermostable SNPs with long shelf life. The PRR2.1 isolate was identified as Albifimbria verrucaria by morphological and molecular means. The synthesis of SNPs was initially monitored by UV-Vis spectroscopy. Further characterization by transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and dynamic light scattering revealed well-dispersed spherical crystalline in nature SNPs with a mean size of 14 nm and zeta potential of - 24.47 mV. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy showed the presence of biomolecules adsorbed on the surface of biosynthesized SNPs responsible for their synthesis and stability. The mycosynthesized SNPs exhibited stronger antifungal activity against pathogenic strains of Aspergillus niger, A. flavus, A. fumigatus and Candida albicans with respect to its antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus and Klebsiella pneumoniae compared to standard antifungal itraconazole and antibiotic cefadroxil with mostly consistent minimum inhibitory concentration of 5.31 µg/mL. The biosynthesized SNPs demonstrated dose-dependent in vitro antiproliferative activity against cancerous HeLa cell line with IC50 value of 2.52 µg/mL and less cytotoxic activity against WI-38 (normal human lung fibroblasts) cell line with CC50 value of 10.2 µg/mL. Conclusion, significance and impact of study: These results show the potential of endophytic fungi biosynthesized SNPs as possible biofriendly, safe and efficient antimicrobial agents with promising antiproliferative activity and low cytotoxicity, which can be furtherly implemented in various biomedical and biotechnological applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on extracting and analyzing different spectral features from transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) images for prostate cancer recognition. First, the information about the images' frequency domain features and spatial domain features are combined using a Gabor filter and then integrated with the expert radiologist's information to identify the highly suspicious regions of interest (ROIs). The next stage of the proposed algorithm is to scan each identified region in order to generate the corresponding 1-D signal that represents each region. For each ROI, possible spectral feature sets are constructed using different new geometrical features extracted from the power spectrum density (PSD) of each region's signal. Next, a classifier-based algorithm for feature selection using particle swarm optimization (PSO) is adopted and used to select the optimal feature subset from the constructed feature sets. A new spectral feature set for the TRUS images using estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance technique (ESPRIT) is also constructed, and its ability to represent tissue texture is compared to the PSD-based spectral feature sets using the support vector machines (SVMs) classifier. The accuracy obtained ranges from 72.2 % to 94.4 %, with the best accuracy achieved by the ESPRIT feature set. Index Terms--Cancer, image classification, optimization methods, spectral analysis.

Camel minced meat is widely used in the world especially they were used to produce low cost protein when compared with other animals. Therefore, the current study aimed to assess the effects of chitosan, rosemary essential oils, and sodium lactate on the organoleptic, chemical, and bacteriological quality of camel minced meat during refrigerated storage at 4°C. Twenty kg of camel meat (round meat) were obtained 24 hours after slaughter. The meat was minced and classified into four groups; untreated control and three treated groups (0.2% rosemary oil, 2% sodium lactate and 1% chitosan), which was kept under chilling conditions at 3±1° C and examined at different storage periods (zero-time, 3rd, 5th and 7th days of storage). The organoleptic, chemical, and bacteriological quality of minced meat was assessed. The surface discoloration was noticed on the 3rd day of the control group, but all treated groups retained their normal color especially 1% chitosan group, which maintained the highest value of redness. The sodium lactate group at 7th day of storage had pH, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N mg/ 100 g) and thiobarbituric acid (TBA mg/kg) of 6.13, 14.3 and 1.08, respectively, while they were 6.37, 16.4 and 0.82 of rosemary group and 6.29, 15.64 and 0.72 of chitosan group, respectively. Spermine, spermidine, putrescine and tyramine were detected without significant differences in all examined groups but cadaverine and tryptamine were significantly low in all groups when comparing with the control group. Sodium lactate exhibits a great effect against bacterial growth on the 7th day of chilling by minimizing the bacterial load to be 5.95, 3.44 and 3.21 log10 CFU/g for psychrotrophic, Enterobacteriaceae and pseudomonas, respectively with original counts of 6.98, 4.51, and 4.29 log10 CFU/g, respectively. The current study concluded that the quality of camel minced meat could be enhanced by adding rosemary, sodium lactate, and chitosan, but sodium lactate was the best in controlling bacterial proliferation and biogenic amine formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Chromium salt possesses unique characteristics that render it useful in numerous applications in several industrial processes, especially tanning of animal hides which act as a major source of hexavalent chromium toxicity in environment. This study aimed to evaluate the efficiency of loofah immobilized Cladosporium cladosporioides CEL14 in remediate tannery wastewater which contains hexavalent chromium. Methodology and results: A total of 18 fungal species were isolated from three different sites of tannery wastewater in Egypt, of which C. cladosporioides CEL14 was the most capable species of chromate remediation with 81% after 7 days of incubation as free cells. The experiments were conducted in minimum salt medium supplemented with 200 ppm chromate in the form of potassium dichromate. Different process parameters studies demonstrated that chromate was completely removed at 30 °C, pH 6, 0.1% malt extract and 0.2% glucose after 7 days of incubation with 20% inoculum size. After that, C. cladosporioides was immobilized on a natural support material (loofah). The removal ability of chromate was enhanced through permanent viable immobilization on loofah pieces, which showing complete removal of chromate within 3 days. The toxicity assessment of treated tannery effluents revealed that 74% of Brassica napus seeds were germinated upon exposure to the treated effluent. Conclusion, significance and impact of study: This study revealed that C. cladosporioides CEL14 isolate has high potential as bioremediating agent against toxic hexavalent chromium. The removal ability of toxic chromate was enhanced through permanent viable immobilization on loofah pieces. This technology is simple, cost effective, efficient and environmentally friendly. The loofah immobilized with C. cladosporioides CEL14 has potential to be applied in wastewater treatment of small-scale tanneries after onsite trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Identifying the location and the volume of the prostate is important for ultrasound-guided prostate brachytherapy. Prostate volume is also important for prostate cancer diagnosis. Manual outlining of the prostate border is able to determine the prostate volume accurately, however, it is time consuming and tedious. Therefore, a number of investigations have been devoted to designing algorithms that are suitable for segmenting the prostate boundary in ultrasound images. The most popular method is the deformable model (snakes), a method that involves designing an energy function and then optimizing this function. The snakes algorithm usually requires either an initial contour or some points on the prostate boundary to be estimated close enough to the original boundary which is considered a drawback to this powerful method. Methods The proposed spectral clustering segmentation algorithm is built on a totally different foundation that doesn't involve any function design or optimization. It also doesn't need any contour or any points on the boundary to be estimated. The proposed algorithm depends mainly on graph theory techniques. Results Spectral clustering is used in this paper for both prostate gland segmentation from the background and internal gland segmentation. The obtained segmented images were compared to the expert radiologist segmented images. The proposed algorithm obtained excellent gland segmentation results with 93% average overlap areas. It is also able to internally segment the gland where the segmentation showed consistency with the cancerous regions identified by the expert radiologist. Conclusion The proposed spectral clustering segmentation algorithm obtained fast excellent estimates that can give rough prostate volume and location as well as internal gland segmentation without any user interaction.

Objective: In dynamic renal scans, 99mTc-diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA) is copiously used and it yields information about the renal blood-flow and the excretory capacity. 99mTc-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) is used for static renal imaging and can likewise uncover the renal cortical structure. This work was intended to evaluate whether DMSA can be declared as a radiopharmaceutical in dynamic renal scans or not. It also aimed at comparing the outcomes procured from DMSA and with DTPA examinations. Materials and Methods: A comparison of the information gained from the renograms of 47 subjects (normal subjects and subjects with abnormal renal function having: obstructive nephropathy, bilateral nephropathy, hydronephrosis, reduced or non-function kidney, and/or atrophic kidney) who had 99mTc-DMSA and 99mTc-DTPA dynamic scintigraphies utilizing the same protocol. Results: A strong positive correlation had come in view on the evaluation of the left kidney, right kidney, and total glomerular filtration rate (GFR) from 99mTc-DTPA and 99mTc-DMSA renograms. In addition, the estimation of the time of the peak height from 99mTc-DTPA and 99mTc-DMSA renograms for the right and left kidneys demonstrated as non-significant varieties and a strong positive correlation for both the normal subjects and subjects with kidney abnormalities. Conclusion: In the light of the outcomes gained from the present investigation, it could be prescribed that 99mTc-DMSA can favorably replace 99mTc-DTPA in dynamic renograms in the case of the renal conditions that had been examined in the present work. As scheduled, this will be cost-effective and time saving and will decrease the radiation dose administered to the subjects. Also, the same qualities of results are accomplished with both radiopharmaceuticals in normal subjects and subjects with abnormal renal function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]