Search

Abstract Background A complete blood count (CBC) analysis is one of the most common conventional blood tests that physicians frequently prescribe. The objective of this study was to determine the reference intervals (RIs) of CBC parameters in the population of healthy adults living in the western Sudan region. Methods A cross-sectional study of healthy people residing in the western area of Sudan was carried out. We assessed the CBC RIs in samples taken from 153 individuals using an automated haematology analyser (Sysmex KX-21) and a modified Box–Cox transformation procedure to transform the data into a Gaussian distribution after eliminating outliers using the Dixon method. IBM SPSS Statistics version 25 was used to analyse the data, and t tests were employed to examine variations in the mean CBC parameters according to sex and age. P was considered significant at ≤ 0.05. Results Beyond all the other measured values, the only CBC parameters that significantly differed between the sexes were haemoglobin (HGB) and white blood cell (WBC) counts. Women were found to experience more WBC counts than men did. However, they have less HGB RIs.The male participants in our study exhibited lower WBC count RIs, a significantly lower limit, and a greater upper limit of platelet RIs than did the individuals from other nations. Conclusions Compared with males, females had higher platelet and WBC counts and lower HGB.

Introduction: Serum creatinine and urea levels are affected by numerous factors such as ethnicity, environment, age, sex, and anthropometric measurements. The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) recommends that each laboratory should establish its own reference intervals for biochemistry and haematology. There are no local reference intervals for serum creatinine and blood urea in Sudan; instead, intervals derived from worldwide research are used. The purpose of this study was to determine the blood urea and serum creatinine reference intervals for healthy adults in the Western Sudanese population. Method: Randomly selected adult Sudanese residents of Al Fashir City who were from the Western Sudan states of Kordofan and Darfur were the subjects of a cross-sectional study conducted in September and October 2018. We recruited 153 participants. After giving their consent, they were evaluated using a questionnaire that collected medical history and demographic information. We used standard techniques to measure blood pressure, body mass index, urea, and creatinine. Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used to assess the distributions of the creatinine and urea values, and reference intervals calculated. T-tests were used to investigate differences of mean creatinine and urea levels by sex and age. IBM SPSS Statistics version 25 was used to analyse the data and p ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Overall, the reference intervals (Mean±1.96*SD) for serum creatinine and urea levels were 0.45-0.92 mg/dL and 7.6-27.9 mg/dL respectively, compared to international reference intervals adopted from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) serum creatinine (males 0.7-1.3, females 0.5-1.1 mg/dL) and blood urea (17.12-42.8 mg/dL for both sexes) and The Western Sudanese population’s mean serum creatinine and urea levels were, respectively, 0.69 mg/dL and 17.8 mg/dL. Male sex was associated with higher levels of both creatinine and urea (p

Abstract Background Lectures are one of the most common teaching methods in medical education. Didactic lectures were perceived by the students as the least effective method. Teaching methods that encourage self-directed learning can be effective in delivering core knowledge leading to increased learning. Problem based learning has been introduced as an active way of learning but it has some obstacles in developing countries where the intake is huge with minimum resources. This study introduces a new teaching approach: lectures based on problems (LBP) and evaluates their effectiveness compared to traditional lectures (TL) in physiology teaching. Methods LBP and TL were applied in physiology teaching of medical students at University of Science and Technology during their study of introduction to physiology and respiratory physiology courses. Equal number of lectures was given as LBP and as TL in each course. Students were given quizzes at the end of each course which were used to compare the effectiveness of the two types of lectures. A questionnaire was used to assess students’ satisfaction about LBP and the perceived effects of the two methods on the students’ attitude and practice towards learning physiology. Results In LBP the students have better attention (P = 0.002) and more active role (P = 0.003) than in TL. Higher percentage of students think that LBP stimulated them to use references more (P = 0.00006) and to use the lecture time more effectively (P = 0.0001) compared to TL. However, there was no significant difference between LBP and TL in the awareness of the learning objectives. About 64% of students think that LBP is more enjoyable and it improved their understanding of physiology concepts. Comparison of the students’ quiz marks showed that the means of the students’ marks in the introduction to physiology and respiratory courses were higher in the quizzes of LBP than in TL with a significant difference between them ((P = .000), (P = .006) respectively. Conclusions LBP improved students’ understanding of physiology concepts and increased students’ satisfaction about physiology learning. LBP achieved some of the objectives of PBL with the minimum resources and it can be used to improve the effectiveness of the lectures.