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Introduction: Obesity is on the increasing trend among children, which leads to many co-morbidities. Obesity which was once a health problem of developed countries has now swept developing countries like India. As the home environment has a powerful influence on the health of a child it is very essential to intervene early in childhood and adolescence to prevent obesity/overweight. Aim: To assess the Knowledge Attitude and Practice (KAP) among mothers regarding obesity in children. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted from October 2019 to March 2020. The sample size included 220 mothers with children aged between 6 to 14 years, who have attended the Paediatric outpatient department, Sree Balaji Medical College and Hospital in Tamil Nadu, India. After obtaining ethical clearance from the Institutional ethics committee, a predesigned questionnaire was used to collect the socio-demographic variables which included mother's education and occupation, residence, family income, and the total number of family members, and for assessing KAP among mothers. Statistical analysis was carried out using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 22.0). Results: The prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity was 52 (23.63%), with overweight representing 23 (10.45%) and obesity 29 (13.18%). There was a statistical significance difference when comparing mother's knowledge of children with overweight/obesity versus normal weight regarding physical inactivity (p=0.01) and eating unhealthy foods (p=0.01), an attitude that a child being obese was not a problem (p=0.03), the practice of mothers who allowed seeing television while eating (p=0.001), not restricting media usage (p=0.01), not allowing children to play outdoors every day (p=0.001), and allowed children to eat junk foods (p=0.001). Conclusion: Overweight and obesity were significant in children whose mothers were unaware of the risk factors like eating unhealthy foods and physical inactivity. Health education and interventional programs have to be planned to educate mothers as they play a major role in preventing obesity in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Typhoid fever causes a clinically indistinguishable disease with a wide range of clinical severity. This study was done to compare the Diazo test with blood culture. Methods: A cross-sectional comparative study was done for one year with a sample size of 100 children up to the age of 15 years in the Department of Paediatrics, Sree Balaji Medical College and Hospital, Tamilnadu, India. Diazo test and blood culture were done in enrolled children who had clinical symptoms and signs suggestive of typhoid fever. Results: Blood culture-positive cases were 26% and diazopositive cases were 34%. Out of 26 blood culture-positive cases, 19 cases showed positive results and seven had a negative result by Diazo test and this was statistically significant. Diazo test had sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, positive predictive value, negative predictive value of 73.08%, 79.73%, 3.61, 0.34, 55.8%, 89.4% respectively. The measure of agreement Kappa value was found to be 0.480 which is considered to be a significant moderate agreement between the Diazo test and blood culture. Conclusions: Diazo test is a simple bedside test with a comparable degree of sensitivity and specificity and can be utilized for the diagnosis of typhoid fever in children in areas of scarce resources and thereby reducing the complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]