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The COVID-19 pandemic is a worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus was confirmed to have spread to Bangladesh in March 2020. The first three known cases were reported on 8 March 2020. COVID-19 is a systemic infection with a significant impact on the hematopoietic system and hemostasis. In this study, we retrospectively analyzed 92 adult patients, confirmed as case of COVID- 19 infection by RT- PCR from April, 2020 to June, 2020. We divided the patients into two groups; ICU and Non – ICU groups. We analyzed haematological indices including haemoglobin, total white cell count, absolute neutrophil count , absolute lymphocyte count, platelet count, D-Dimer, ferritin, LDH in patients of both groups during admission. Our study showed that on admission, neutrophilic leukocytosis, lymphopenia, hyperferritinemia and very high D-DIMER were usually associated with ICU admission.

Background: Ectopic pregnancy is a common clinical condition. Diagnosis and managementof this condition is necessary in due to day practice. Methods: A cross sectional study on ectopic pregnancy was conducted in Sir SalimullahMedical College and Mitford Hospital (SSMC & MH) , Dhaka, with the objective to analyzethe risk factors and assess the results of management with respect to maternal morbidityand mortality of ectopic pregnancy during the last two years. Result: Fifty patients were admitted with ectopic pregnancy from 1st January 2008 to 31stDecember 2010.Frequency of ectopic pregnancy were 1.5% of total 3252 pregnancies. Riskfactors were found in 45% of cases. Surgical treatment were performed in total 43 patients.There was one heterotrophic pregnancy and one case of abdominal pregnancy. Four patientswere given intramuscular Methotrexate and two un-ruptured ectopics resolved spontaneouslyafter by expectant management. Conclusion: Conservative management was an option but surgical treatment was donemore often because of late referrals. Screening of high risk cases, early diagnosis and earlyintervention would reduce the morbidity in ectopic pregnancies. Bangladesh J Obstet Gynaecol, 2018; Vol. 33(1) : 49-53

ObjectiveThis study explored the illness experiences and healthcare-seeking behaviour of a cross-section of street dwellers of Dhaka City for designing a customised intervention.DesignA qualitative exploratory study of a sample of street dwellers of Dhaka City.SettingSamples were taken from three purposively selected spots of Dhaka City with a high concentration of the target population.ParticipantsFifteen in-depth interviews and six informal group discussions with 40 street dwellers (≥18 years), and key informant interviews with service providers (n=6) and policymakers (n=3) were conducted during January–June 2019 to elicit necessary data.Primary outcome measuresQualitative narrative of illness experiences of the sampled street dwellers, relevant healthcare-seeking behaviour and experiences of interactions with health systems.ResultsWe focused on three main themes, namely, reported illnesses, relevant healthcare-seeking behaviour and health system experiences of the street dwellers. Findings reveal that most of the street dwellers suffered from fever and respiratory illnesses in the last 6 months; however, a majority did not visit formal facilities. They preferred visiting retail drug shops for advice and treatment or waited for self-recovery. Formal facilities were visited only when treatment from drug shops failed to cure them or they suffered serious illnesses or traumatic injury. The reproductive-age women did not seek pregnancy care and most deliveries took place in the street dwellings. Lack of awareness, financial constraints and fear of visiting formal facilities were some of the reasons mentioned. Those who visited formal facilities faced barriers like the cost of medicines and diagnostic tests, long waiting time and opportunity cost.ConclusionsThe street dwellers lacked access to formal health systems for needed services as the latter lags far behind to outreach this extremely vulnerable population. What they need is explicit targeting with a customised package of services based on their illness profile, at a time and place convenient to them with minimum or no cost implications.

Background Maternal morbidity is common in Bangladesh, where the maternal mortality rate has plateaued over the last 6 years. Maternal undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies contribute to morbidity, but few interventions have measured maternal outcomes. We compared reported prevalence of antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum complications among recently delivered women between maternal nutrition intervention and control areas in Bangladesh. Methods and findings We conducted a cross-sectional assessment nested within a population-based cluster-randomized trial comparing a nutrition counseling and micronutrient supplement intervention integrated within a structured home-based maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) program to the MNCH program alone in 10 sub-districts each across 4 Bangladesh districts. Eligible consenting women, delivering within 42–60 days of enrollment and identified by community-level health workers, completed an interviewer-administered questionnaire detailing the index pregnancy and delivery and allowed review of their home-based care register. We compared pooled and specific reported antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum complications between study groups using hierarchical logistic regression. There were 594 women in the intervention group and 506 in the control group; overall, mean age was 24 years, 31% were primiparas, and 39% reported facility-based delivery, with no significant difference by study group. There were no significant differences between the intervention and control groups in household-level characteristics, including reported mean monthly income (intervention, 6,552 taka, versus control, 6,017 taka; p = 0.48), having electricity (69.6% versus 71.4%, p = 0.84), and television ownership (41.1% versus 38.7%, p = 0.81). Women in the intervention group had higher recorded iron and folic acid and calcium supplement consumption and mean dietary diversity scores, but reported anemia rates were similar between the 2 groups (5.7%, intervention; 6.5%, control; p = 0.83). Reported antepartum (69.4%, intervention; 79.2%, control; p = 0.12) and intrapartum (41.4%, intervention; 48.5%, control; p = 0.18) complication rates were high and not significantly different between groups. Reported postpartum complications were significantly lower among women in the intervention group than the control group (33.5% versus 48.2%, p = 0.02), and this difference persisted in adjusted analysis (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 0.51, 95% CI 0.32–0.82; p < 0.001). For specific conditions, odds of retained placenta (AOR = 0.35, 95% CI 0.19–0.67; p = 0.001), postpartum bleeding (AOR = 0.37, 95% CI 0.15–0.92; p = 0.033), and postpartum fever/infection (AOR = 0.27, 95% CI 0.11–0.65; p = 0.001) were significantly lower in the intervention group in adjusted analysis. There were no significant differences in reported hospitalization for antepartum (49.8% versus 45.1%, p = 0.37), intrapartum (69.9% versus 59.8%, p = 0.18), or postpartum (36.1% versus 29.9%, p = 0.49) complications between the intervention and control groups. The main limitations of this study are outcome measures based on participant report, non-probabilistic selection of community-level workers’ catchment areas for sampling, some missing data for variables derived from secondary sources (e.g., dietary diversity score), and possible recall bias for reported dietary intake and supplement use. Conclusions Reported overall postpartum and specific intrapartum and postpartum complications were significantly lower for women in intervention areas than control areas, despite similar rates of facility-based delivery and hospitalization for reported complications, in this exploratory analysis. Maternal nutrition interventions providing intensive counseling and micronutrient supplements may reduce some pregnancy complications or impact women’s ability to accurately recognize complications, but more rigorous evaluation is needed for these outcomes., Catherine Todd and colleagues reveal that nutritional education and micronutrient supplements can reduce intrapartum and postpartum complications in pregnant women in Bangladesh., Author summary Why was this study done? Adequate nutrition during pregnancy reduces risks of poor infant outcomes, like low birthweight, but there is relatively little information about whether nutrition is linked to reducing a woman’s risk of pregnancy complications. Maternal nutrition interventions starting during pregnancy are being implemented at scale in multiple settings, including in Bangladesh, and determining whether these interventions reduce maternal complications may strengthen efforts to implement similar interventions to optimize maternal and newborn health. What did the researchers do and find? At the time of the endline evaluation for the parent trial—which compared an intervention of home-based intensive maternal nutrition counseling and iron and calcium supplement provision combined with home-based antenatal care to home-based antenatal care alone—we interviewed women who had delivered within the last 60 days to inquire about complications during pregnancy, during delivery, and after delivery. This study included 594 women in the intervention group and 506 in the control group across 4 districts in Bangladesh; women in the 2 groups were similar with regard to number of prior pregnancies, age, and household assets. Reported complication rates during pregnancy or during delivery were somewhat lower among women from intervention areas, while reported complications after delivery were significantly lower among women from intervention areas, compared to those from control areas. What do these findings mean? Differences in reported complication rates may be due to actual differing levels resulting from intervention exposure, or to different perceptions of what conditions constitute pregnancy complications, which could also result from intervention exposure. The intervention did not appear to impact care-seeking during pregnancy or during labor based on similar skilled/facility-based care statistics for the intervention and control groups. Community-based care providers recorded key obstetric events accurately and at high rates, but greater understanding of client and provider perceptions regarding what constitutes maternal complications and ensuring provision of appropriate care are needed. Given the cross-sectional nature of the study and that complications were self-reported, the findings should be interpreted with caution.

The reciprocity of the channel transfer functions between legitimate users changing randomly delivers the common randomness used in physical-layer key generation. Time-Division Duplexing (TDD) provides this symmetry of the bidirectional channel measurements, despite of uncorrelated noise on both sides and possible hardware imperfections. We now show that also Frequency-Division Duplexing (FDD) yields a usable symmetry as far as the direction of arrival is concerned. Even in wireline communications, be it over power lines or twisted pairs, transfer and far-end crosstalk functions provide useful symmetries, where especially key generation for power line communication may become important for IoT applications.

Histopathology is gold standard in diagnosis of prostate cancer but it is a cumbersome method. On the other hand, prostate specific screening has revolutionized in detection of prostate cancer but due to PSA’s lack of sensitivity and as it is not cancer specific novel biomarkers are needed to improve risk assessment. To measure and compare the level of soluble E-cadherin and prostate specific antigen in the detection of prostate cancer, this cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Laboratory Medicine in collaboration with the Department of Urology, BSMMU, Dhaka, from March 2017 to February 2018. Total 70 patients were enrolled and divided into Group A (PCa) and Group B (BPH). Each group was consisted of 35 subjects who had histopathologically proven prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia. E-cadherin with a cut off value 7.3, 95% CI 0.91-1.00, had 74.3% sensitivity and 97.1% specificity for prediction of PCa. 80 KDa fragment of E-cadherin is more specific but was not available. Comparison of E-cadherin in prostate cancer without metastasis and with metastasis is recommended. Immunohistochemical examination of E-cadherin in biopsy sample is also recommended.

Ayurvedic system of medicine is a major component of indigenous systems of medicine in Bangladesh. We used an Ayurvedic drug ‘Mrityunjay’ which is traditionally used for high blood pressure, heart diseases and heartquake. We measured the electrocardiographical (ECG) parameters using an ECG machine (Vet 300, EDAN, China) in rat model before and after administration of the test drug. We observed that, Mrityunjay at high doses (800 ?g/Kg, 1600?g/kg, 3200?g/kg) produced heart blocks and other arrhythmias, but in normal dose (200?g/Kg) it has no serious untoward effects on cardiac muscle. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bpj.v16i1.14503 Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Journal 16(1): 99-105, 2013

Physical layer security is a technique that makes use of the physical communication channel or medium to provide additional robustness to eavesdroppers and attackers. Key establishment exploiting a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) reciprocal wireless channel is proposed and its performance investigated, indicating that secure keys can be rapidly generated between two nodes, even in the presence of close eavesdroppers. The use of reconfigurable antennas is investigated and experimentally proven as a key establishment solution for static channels with limited multipath. Additionally, different options are discussed to handle key-differences due to non-correlated noise together with quantization, either by simply introducing guard intervals or by joint source coding with LDPC codes.

This paper presents a multi-priority and multi-path selection algorithm for heterogeneous traffic for wireless ad-hoc networks. The main objectives are achieving higher throughput, better resource utilization through load balancing and relinquish network congestion. The proposed algorithm has considered signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR), available link bandwidth, link delay (transmission delay and queuing delay), trust value of a node and traffic class (such as real time and non-real time traffic) to select optimal path. The performance of the proposed Multi-Priority and Trusted Multi-Path Selection (MTMS) algorithm has been evaluated by OPNET Modeler 14.5 simulator. It is found that in terms of average throughput (bit/second) and link delay proposed MTMS algorithm outperforms ad-hoc on-demand distant vector (AODV) and dynamic source routing (DSR).