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As per the news and articles published in mass media in recent years, the usage of formalin in fruits and vegetables has become a worrisome condition in Bangladesh. In this context, this study was conducted to observe the effect of formalin on postharvest quality, shelf life, and nutritional profile of carrot, papaya, plum, apple plum, and guava. Fruits and vegetables sample were treated with different concentrations of formalin solutions (1%, 10%, 20%, and 30%) in two different modes (dipping and spraying) and stored for seven days. Physical parameters (color, texture, and flavor), weight loss, and shelf life were observed on every alternate day during the study period. Furthermore, 20% formalin-treated samples were used to find out the changes in nutritional profile (moisture, ash, carbohydrate, fat, and protein), pH, and vitamin C content. The study results revealed that different concentrations of formalin and treatment methods (dipping and spraying) did not bring up any positive effect in increasing the shelf-life and physical characteristics of selected fruits and vegetables during storage. Moreover, formalin treatment with higher concentration went in faster deterioration in color, texture, and flavor of samples compared to the control. The weight loss of fruits and vegetables is not dependent on formalin application. Formalin treatment worked negatively on the shelf life of samples. A significant reduction (P

Background: Co-existing frailty in older patients with hepatopancreaticobiliary (HPB) malignancies is common. This study assessed the relationship between the Rockwood Clinical Frailty scale (CFS) and systemic anti-cancer therapy dose intensity (SACT-DI) and overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced HPB malignancies. Research design and methods: CFS was assessed prospectively for consecutive patients with newly diagnosed advanced HPB malignancy (The Christie; Sep-2019 to June-2020). Mann-Whitney U test assessed association between CFS, ECOG Performance Status (ECOG PS), and SACT-DI and Spearman’s rank assessed the association between ECOG PS, age, and frailty. Survival analysis was performed using Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression. Results: Two hundred patients met inclusion criteria. SACT-DI was higher in Group-1 (not frail) (CFS 1–3)(median = 61%) than Group-2 (vulnerable/mildly frail) (CFS 4–5)(median = 25.1%), p

Background: The profession of solid waste collection is inherently hazardous, especially to the health of solid waste collectors. Consequently, they face a wide range of health problems including physical, occupational and psychological issues. Aim: The objective of this scoping review is to explore the scientific literature concerned with the physical, occupational and psychological health problems of solid waste collectors in India, primarily in the past two decades. Methods: In accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, a scoping review of the available relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature was performed for comprehensive analysis of the extent of health problems and issues of solid waste collectors in India. Two prominent online databases namely, PubMed and Google Scholar were searched extensively using predefined criteria. Original research papers published in peer-reviewed reputed scientific journals post the year 2000 were screened and selected for this study. A total of 20 scientific research articles concerned with the health problems of solid waste collectors were included in this study. Results: Scoping review of original research articles revealed that 2 – 90 per cent of the solid waste collectors suffered from dermatological health problems, 8.1-95 per cent from respiratory problems, 3.8-33 per cent from different types of ophthalmological health problems, 25-76.6 per cent from musculoskeletal health problems and 4.5-15 per cent from gastrointestinal problems. 3 - 16 per cent solid waste workers were affected by tuberculosis while 2.5-83.3 by viral fever. Among occupational health problems, 43.5-91.7 per cent solid waste collectors faced injuries during work, bruises, cuts and lacerations, 9.6-16.5 per cent were affected by animal bites, more than 70 per cent suffered from injury by sharp objects, 70 per cent of the solid waste collectors suffered from mild to severe depression, 55 per cent of them were affected by mild to severe anxiety, 25 per cent of the solid waste collectors felt constantly under strain, 39.5 per cent felt unhappy and depressed, 40 per cent suffered from loss of sleep and faced loss of concentration. Conclusion: Solid waste collectors in India face a wide range of health problems which are physical, occupational as well as psychological in nature. Review of research revealed that the frequency of occurrence of health problems is higher in solid waste collectors than in rest of population. Targeted health surveillance and greater access to healthcare could help improve the state of health of solid waste collectors. Additionally, they should be provided with first aid kit, safety equipment to guard against animal attacks and regular counseling for psychological well-being.

The study aimed at evaluating the performance of coconut fibre ash as an alternative low-cost adsorbent to the synthetic adsorbents used in wastewater treatment. This research aims to identify the optimum condition for the adsorption process, considering the effect of particle size, adsorbent dosage, and contact time of adsorbents of coconut fibre ash in removing lead (Pb), copper (Cu), and zinc (Zn) metal ions from electroplating wastewater. The adsorbents coconut fibre ash was prepared through activation of carbon at 450º C after following proper cleaning and drying process. The experiments were conducted at varying adsorbent dosages (0.2 g, 0.6 g, and 1 g), particle size (50 to 200 microns), and contact times (40 minutes, 80 minutes, and 120 minutes). The result shows that adsorbents show less efficiency in removing Zn metal ions, which is not more than 34% in the case of 1g adsorbent dosage, particle size ranges 100-200 microns, and 120 minute contact time. The maximum removal efficiency of 95.04% and 80% was obtained at the optimum amount (1g) of adsorbent dosage for Pb and Cu respectively. In the case of contact time, it was identified that the optimum condition for maximum removal efficiency is 120 minutes with a 1g adsorbent dosage both for Pb and Cu ions. To ensure maximum removal of metal avoiding any desorption of the metal ion from the adsorbent surface, it was identified that a maximum contact time of 120 minutes should be allowed for adsorption. However, it could be concluded that adsorbents of coconut fibre ash can be used in treating wastewater facilitating good adsorption capacity in removing heavy metals, low cost and availability.

Malnutrition refers to a nutritional ailment that functionally and clinically distresses the body. It is very common in aged people. The nutritional status of this vulnerable group in low-income countries does not remain focused upon. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the magnitude of malnutrition and to correlate different factors amongst aged patients administered in a reputed Medical College Hospital in Dinajpur district, Bangladesh. An observational cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the nutritional eminence of hospitalized aged patients through the original 18-item full Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) screening tool. We evaluated 238 patients in this study. Of whom, 144 (60.5%) were men and 94 (39.5%) were women, whose average age were 68.7 ± 7 years. MNA revealed a prevalence of 46.2% for risk of malnutrition, 31.9% for malnutrition, and 21.8% for within normal. Aged patients who lived alone were malnourished than the patients living with others (p < 0.001). Laboratory investigation revealed that malnourished individuals had substantively decreased levels of serum albumin (2.5 ± 0.7 g/dl), hemoglobin (10.3 ± 1.7 g/dl), lymphocytes (1.4 ± 0.9×10^9/L), and cholesterol (150 ± 35.9 mg/dl). About forty-nine and 32.9 percent of individuals with malnutrition had a severe or a moderate decrease in food intakes respectively. Different health problems collectively had influenced malnutrition. Malnourished patients had a tendency to hospitalize for a longer period of time. Thus malnutrition in hospitalized aged patients was highly prevalent and was associated with low food intake, the presence of health problems, and prolonged length of hospital stay.

Background: Brain metastases (BMs) in patients with extra-pulmonary neuroendocrine neoplasms (EP–NENs) are rare, and limited clinical information is available. The aim of this study was to detail the clinicopathological features, management and outcomes in patients with EP–NENs who developed BMs. Methods: A retrospective single-centre analysis of consecutive patients with EP–NENs (August 2004–February 2020) was conducted. Median overall survival (OS)/survival from BMs diagnosis was estimated (Kaplan–Meier). Results: Of 730 patients, 17 (1.9%) had BMs, median age 61 years (range 15–77); 8 (53%) male, unknown primary NEN site: 40%. Patients with BMs had grade 3 (G3) EP–NENs 11 (73%), G2: 3 (20%), G1: 1 (7%). Eight (53%) had poorly differentiated NENs, 6 were well-differentiated and 1 was not recorded. Additionally, 2 (13%) patients had synchronous BMs at diagnosis, whilst 13 (87%) developed BMs metachronously. The relative risk of developing BMs was 7.48 in patients with G3 disease vs. G1 + G2 disease (p = 0.0001). Median time to the development of BMs after NEN diagnosis: 15.9 months (range 2.5–139.5). Five patients had a solitary BM, 12 had multiple BMs. Treatment of BMs were surgery (n = 3); radiotherapy (n = 5); 4: whole brain radiotherapy, 1: conformal radiotherapy (orbit). Nine (53%) had best supportive care. Median OS from NEN diagnosis was 23.6 months [95% CI 15.2–31.3]; median time to death from BMs diagnosis was 3.0 months [95% CI 0.0–8.3]. Conclusion: BMs in patients with EP–NENs are rare and of increased risk in G3 vs. G1 + G2 EP–NENs. Survival outcomes are poor, and a greater understanding is needed to improve therapeutic outcomes.

Occupational exposure to wood dust leads to lung function abnormalities that are prominent causes of morbidity and disability of sawmill workers. The adverse respiratory effects of wood dust in sawmills have not been studied thoroughly in Bangladesh. This study aimed to investigate the effect of wood dust on the respiratory health of sawmill workers compared to controls as well as to determine the association of wood dust-exposing effects with inflammatory blood biomarkers, such as immunoglobulin E (IgE), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and C-reactive protein (CRP).This cross-sectional study included 100 sawmill workers from 25 distinct sawmills in various areas of Tangail, Bangladesh as well as 100 healthy volunteers who were adopted as a control group. Questionaries' survey and pulmonary function tests were performed face to face. Furthermore, after performing lung function tests, blood was drawn for further IgE, ESR, and CRP analyses.Respiratory symptoms including breathlessness (32%), coughing (39%), sneezing (43%), chest tightness (30%), and itching (40%) were significantly higher in sawmill workers compared with control. Besides, sawmill workers' exposure to wood dust revealed a significantly lower level of spirometry parameters (forced vital capacity ​​​​​[FVC], FVC (%), forced expiratory volume in 1 s [FEV1], FEV1 (%), peak expiratory flow [PEF], PEF (%), FEV1/FVC (%), FEF25, FEF75, and FEF2575) compared with control and these spirometry parameters decreased with the increasing length of service. Moreover, a significantly higher level of IgE was observed in sawmill workers (290.90 ± 39.49) than in the control (120.95 ± 23.00). The high level of IgE suggests that the lower pulmonary function may be linked to allergic responses to wood dust among sawmill workers.This study suggested that exposure to wood dust can cause impairment of respiratory function along with high IgE levels.

The majority of patients diagnosed with cancer are ≥65 years. However, inclusion of older patients with cancer in clinical trials is limited, and so there is less evidence to guide systemic therapeutic decisions in these patients. There is also debate surrounding the definition of “older patients”. Additionally, comorbidities, as well as life expectancy will influence compliance to any treatment, and physicians may favour less intense regimens for these patients or best supportive care alone. In patients with biliary tract cancer (BTC), surgery followed by adjuvant capecitabine (BILCAP phase 3 trial) is the only potentially curative option, but patients often present with advanced disease, and palliative systemic treatment is given. The availability of novel targeted therapies (oral and monotherapy) in selected populations of patients with BTC may increase the therapeutic artillery for these older patients. Trials to date in patients with BTC have not been age-specific and have not always included age subgroup analysis, and so the evidence to support treatment of older patients is derived via extrapolation, primarily, with only 35% being >60 years in the adjuvant BILCAP study, for example. When this evidence is provided, treated patients tend to gain equivalent survival benefit, irrespective of age. A comprehensive clinical geriatric assessment is recommended. Revision of existing BTC treatment guidelines should incorporate some reference to best practice in older patients with BTC. Observational data may also provide valuable insights in this population. Age sub-group analysis should be encouraged in prospective clinical trials including patients with BTC, with age-specific trials favoured.

Aims: Tinospora cordifolia is a herb used in the traditional folk medicine due to their health benefits. Studies reported the biochemical composition and some biological properties of the plant stem. The aim of the current study was to investigate the antimicrobial and cytotoxic properties from the extract of Tinospora cordifolia stem. Place and Duration of Study: The study was accomplished by eleven months in the Department of Pharmacy, University of Science and Technology Chittagong (USTC), Bangladesh. Methodology: Presence of phytochemical constituents such as alkaloids, flavonoids and tannins, saponins were evaluated. Antimicrobial activity of the stem extract was assayed separately using an agar diffusion method against some gram negative and gram positive bacteria. The cytotoxic potential of the stem extract was evaluated by the Brine-Shrimp Lethality Assay mathod. Results: The zone of inhibition formed by the methanolic extract in the antimicrobial assays was significant. In addition, cytotoxicity of the extract was found to be significant as compared to the standard gallic acid in Brine-Shrimp lethality assay. Conclusion: The methanolic extract of Tinospora cordifolia may possess significant antimicrobial property which requires more studies to isolate the specific bioactive compound for developing a new antimicrobial agent from this plant.

The pandemic situation of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global threat on our current planet, with its rapid spread and high mortality rate. Sarcoidosis patients are at high risk to COVID-19 severity for having lung injuries as well as treating with immunosuppressive agents. So, physicians are in dilemma whether they should use immunosuppressive agents or not for the patients with sarcoidosis history and COVID-19 infection. Therefore, common factors should be identified to provide effective treatment. For determining the common genes between COVID-19 and sarcoidosis, GSE164805 and GSE18781 were retrieved from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Common upregulated genes were identified by using R language to investigate their involved pathways and gene ontologies (GO). With the aid of the STRING Cytoscape plugin tool, protein-protein interactions (PPIs) network was constructed. From the PPIs network, Hub genes and essential modules were detected by using Cytohubba, and MCODE respectively. For hub genes, TFs, TFs-miRNA, and drug, interaction networks were built through the NetworkAnalyst web platform. A total of 34 common upregulated genes were identified and among them, five hub genes, including TET2, MUC5AC, VDR, NFE2L2, and BCL6 were determined. In addition, a cluster having VDR and NFE2L2 was detected from the PPIs network. Moreover, 32 transcription factors and 9 miRNA were recognized for hub genes. Furthermore, vitamin D and some of its analogous compounds were obtained from the drug interaction network. In conclusion, hub genes identified in this study might have potential roles in modulating COVID-19 infection and sarcoidosis. However, further studies are required to corroborate this study., Graphical abstract Image 1

IntroductionPancreatic exocrine insufficiency (PEI) in patients with pancreatic malignancy is well documented in the literature and is known to negatively impact on overall survival and quality of life. A lack of consensus opinion remains on the optimal diagnostic test that can be adapted for use in a clinical setting for this cohort of patients. This study aims to better understand the prevalence of PEI and the most suitable diagnostic techniques in patients with advanced pancreatic malignancy.Methods and analysisThis prospective observational study will be carried out in patients with pancreatic malignancy (including adenocarcinoma and neuroendocrine neoplasms). Consecutive patients with inoperable pancreatic malignancy referred for consideration of first-line chemotherapy will be considered for eligibility. The study comprises three cohorts: demographic cohort (primary objective to prospectively investigate the prevalence of PEI in patients with inoperable pancreatic malignancy); sample size 50, diagnostic cohort (primary objective to design and evaluate an optimal diagnostic panel to detect PEI in patients with inoperable pancreatic malignancy); sample size 25 and follow-up cohort (primary objective to prospectively evaluate the proposed PEI diagnostic panel in a cohort of patients with inoperable pancreatic malignancy); sample size 50. The following is a summary of the protocol and methodology.Ethics and disseminationFull ethical approval has been granted by the North West Greater Manchester East Research and Ethics Committee, reference: 17/NW/0597. This manuscript reflects the latest protocol V.8 approved 21 April 2020. Findings will be disseminated by presentation at national/international conferences, publication in peer-review journals and distribution via patient advocate groups.Trial registration number194255, NCT0361643.

This study was conducted to evaluate the toxic effects of an azo dye carmoisine widely used in foods and to investigate its relation to carcinogenicity. Carmoisine administered into mice orally in four different doses as control, low, medium, and high equivalent to 0, 4, 200, and 400 mg/kg bw, respectively, for 120 days. The key toxicological endpoint was observed including animal body weight, organ weights, hematology, biochemistry, and molecular biology assessment. The body weights of medium‐ and high‐dose carmoisine‐treated mice group were significantly decreased as compared to the control mice group. Platelet, white blood cell and monocyte counts of treated group were considerably higher, while Hb and red blood cell counts were drastically lower than the control group. The biochemical parameters such as serum alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, total protein, globulin, urea, and creatinine level were significantly increased, while serum cholesterol level was decreased after treatment as compared to the control. RT‐PCR results showed that expression of Bcl‐x and PARP gene was intensively increased, whereas expression of p53 gene was decreased in the mouse liver tissues treated with carmoisine. This study revealed that high‐dose (400 mg/kg bw) treatment of carmoisine was attributable to renal failure and hepatotoxicity. It also would be suspected as a culprit for liver oncogenesis.

The use of container-oriented orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes, is becoming more popular due to their ability to hide from developers the deployment details of the application and the capability of these platforms to support autoscaling and failure recovery. Most container orchestration environments have focused on supporting the HTTP protocol and are challenging to use in protocols such as SIP and RTP. When SIP/RTP services are deployed in the Kubernetes environment, failures related to port mapping and affinity occur. These failures are reflected as packets sent to the non-existent ports in either the overlay or underlay network in Kubernetes. This paper details these failures and presents solutions for resolving the SIP/RTP port mapping and the RTP affinity constraint failures. The SIP/RTP port mapping failure is solved by correctly mapping the internal SIP/RTP ports to those exposed externally by Kubernetes while the RTP affinity constraint solution leverages the concept of the creation of unique endpoints and labels for each RTP service port opened for a SIP call. The paper also offers some insight into the challenges faced in replicating the SIP constraint affinity failure. These solutions have been implemented in a Kubernetes aware SIP Proxy (SIP-K8S-Proxy) that supports port mapping and managing of the RTP affinity as well. The overhead associated with implementing this solution has been computed to be about 2 seconds in the establishment of a SIP call.

Breast cancer (BC) is considered the second leading cause of cancer-related death in women. Accurate diagnosis is thus of utmost importance to avoid the burden of BC. Ankyrin 2 (ANK2) encodes the structural membrane adapter protein ankyrin-B, which is ubiquitously expressed in the human body. In this study, bioinformatics tools were used to determine whether ANK2 could be used as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in BC. ANK2 expression was analyzed using ONCOMINE, UALCAN, GEPIA2, and GENT2. Data from these servers showed the downregulated expression of ANK2 in BC relative to that in normal tissue. Further, downregulated ANK2 expression was found in such conditions as estrogen receptor-negative, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive, positive nodal status, basal-like tumor, and triple-negative breast cancer, according to the data from the bc-GenExMiner v4.5 server. Analysis of 18 BC studies retrieved from the cBioPortal database revealed 88 missense mutations with 0.46%–5.09% copy number alterations in the ANK2 gene sequence. Additionally, a positive correlation between downregulated ANK2 expression and reduced survival probability of BC patients was revealed by a Kaplan–Meier plotter. Moreover, chordin-like 1, a tumor suppressor, was highly co-expressed with ANK2, as shown by the ONCOMINE, UCSC Xena, and GEPIA2 tools. The signaling pathways and gene ontologies of ANK2 and its co-expressed genes were identified using the Enrichr platform. The present results suggest that the ANK2 may serve as a biomarker for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic purposes in BC.