Aagesenpaul7250

Visceral leishmaniasis caused by the protozoan Leishmania infantum is a zoonosis. The domestic dog is the primary reservoir in urban areas. This study aimed to evaluate the frequency, active infection and load of L. infantum in the genital tract of male and female dogs seropositive for this parasite, as well as to identify histological genital alterations associated with this protozoan. We studied 45 male and 25 female L. infantum-seropositive noncastrated dogs from the same endemic area in Brazil. Tissue samples from the testis, epididymis, prostate, vulva, vagina, and uterus were examined by singleplex qPCR and parasitological tests (histopathology, immunohistochemistry, and parasitological culture). The latter were performed for the detection of active infection (parasites able to multiply and to induce lesions). Forty-four (98%) males and 25 (100%) females were positive for L. infantum in the genital tract (epididymis 98%; vulva 92%; vagina 92%; testis 91%; uterus 84%; prostate 66%). Active infection in the genital tract was confirmed in 69% of males and 64% of females (32% in the uterus). Parasite loads were similar in the testis, vulva, epididymis and vagina and lower in the prostate. Only the parasite load in the vagina was significantly associated with the number of clinical signs. Granulomatous inflammation predominated in all organs, except for the prostate. Only in the testis and epididymis was the inflammatory infiltrate significantly more intense among dogs with a higher parasite load in these organs. The high frequency, detection of active infection and similarity of L. infantum loads in the genital tract of infected males and females suggest the potential of venereal transmission of this parasite by both sexes and of vertical transmission by females in the area studied. Additionally, vertical transmission may be frequent since active L. infantum infection was a common observation in the uterus.

Giving patients anti-osteoporotic agents peri-operatively is a well-accepted strategy to increase fusion rate and prevent complications. The purpose of this study was to investigate effectiveness of teriparatide and bisphosphonate on fusion surgery of thoracic and lumbar spine.

We searched EMBASE and PubMed for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and prospective comparative studies using teriparatide or bisphosphonate in peri-operative spinal fusion surgery. HA130 Our synthesized data of fusion rate, Oswestry disability index (ODI), and adverse event in contrast-based network meta-analysis. Pooled results were presented in risk ratio (RR) or mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence interval (CI).

Our search hit eight RCTs and three prospective studies with 676 patients receiving spinal surgery. Pooled result showed that teriparatide+Denosumab leads to significantly higher fusion rate than placebo (RR, 2.84; 95% CI 1.22 to 6.60) and bisphosphonate (RR, 2.59; 95% CI 1.13 to 5.96). We did not observe significant finding among placebo, teriparatide, and bisphosphonate in the two network models.

This is the first network meta-analysis providing an overview of the use of teriparatide and bisphosphonate for spinal fusion surgery. Teriparatide treatments are worth to be consider for spinal fusion surgery.

This is the first network meta-analysis providing an overview of the use of teriparatide and bisphosphonate for spinal fusion surgery. Teriparatide treatments are worth to be consider for spinal fusion surgery.

Unhealthy food vending can expose children to malnutrition and other diet related challenges such as obesity. This study sought to describe types and sources of food in basic schools in urban Accra, and to describe food purchases by pupils.

This was a cross-sectional study of five basic schools (3 public; 2 private) and 644 pupils in the Ga-East Municipality in Ghana. Check-lists were used to document available sources of foods during school hours. Pupils were intercepted after making purchases during breaktime and the type, cost and sources of foods purchased documented. Energy content of foods were read from labels when available or estimated using the Ghana Food Composition database when unlabelled. Frequencies and crosstabs were used to compare food type by source and school type.

Foods were purchased from school canteen, school store, private stores, and 'table-top' vendors. Meals were most frequently purchased (38%) although single purchases were sweetened drinks, savoury snacks and confectioneries. About 53% of retailers located within the schools sold relatively healthier food options. Similar foods with comparable energy content were purchased within and outside of school.

Basic schools in urban Ghana provide ready access to energy dense food options, which are purchased by pupils both within and outside of school premises. Timely interventions inclusive of school food policies can encourage healthier diets among pupils.

Basic schools in urban Ghana provide ready access to energy dense food options, which are purchased by pupils both within and outside of school premises. Timely interventions inclusive of school food policies can encourage healthier diets among pupils.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States and African Americans (AA) have a disproportionately greater burden of CVD as compared to Whites. The American Heart Association (AHA) Life's Simple 7 (LS7) framework outlines goals for attaining ideal cardiovascular health. Yet, there is a lack of evidence summarizing best practices to maximize LS7 attainment. The objective of the present study was to systematically review the extant peer-reviewed literature on community-engaged and community-based participatory research (CBPR) aimed at improving one or more LS7 metrics among AA.

PubMed, CINAHL, and Embase databases were searched. We included articles that reported quantitative results for one or more of the following LS7 metrics physical activity, diet, cholesterol, blood pressure, body mass index, smoking, and glycemia. We included analyses with a greater than 50% AA study population focused on adults (≥18 years of age).

Of the 1008 unique studies identified, 54 met includiversity and utilizing the AHA LS7 framework are required to establish a validated program to improve LS7 in AAs.This paper presents an improved method to estimate the blur parameters of motion deblurring algorithm for single image restoration based on the point spread function (PSF) in frequency spectrum. We then introduce a modification to the Radon transform in the blur angle estimation scheme with our proposed difference value vs angle curve. Subsequently, the auto-correlation matrix is employed to estimate the blur angle by measuring the distance between the conjugated-correlated troughs. Finally, we evaluate the accuracy, robustness and time efficiency of our proposed method with the existing algorithms on the public benchmarks and the natural real motion blurred images. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed PSF estimation scheme not only could obtain a higher accuracy for the blur angle and blur length, but also demonstrate stronger robustness and higher time efficiency under different circumstances.Despite rapid macro-economic growth, one-third of the global burden of childhood stunting is contributed by India. This burden is characterized by wide-spread geographical variation within the country. This paper explores two research questions (i) are the drivers of severe and moderate stunting similar? (ii) differential endowments or policy-effect, how do community-level nutrition and sanitary practices affect inter-state differences? Using data from Indian National Family and Health Survey 4, 2015-16, six states holding different ranks in the stunting continuum are compared to Tamil Nadu, taken as the benchmark state due to its laudable performance in the health care sector. Applying quantile regression approaches, the difference in state-level performance is decomposed into detailed covariate effects (differential endowments) and coefficient effects (differential strength of association between the drivers and outcome). The explanatory variables are not similarly associated with severe and moderate stunting. Decomposition results demonstrate a significant role of community-level sanitation practices compared to child nutrition behaviour in explaining the inter-state disparity. Coefficient effects play a dominant role in the lower tail of HAZ distribution for the poor performing states indicating that the worse outcomes of these states are due to weaker policy effects of the control variables on stunting. Multi-sectoral approach, identification and differentiation between severe and moderate stunting cases can be more instrumental in managing and reducing the scourge. This paper also advocates the potential benefits of customizing centrally-launched policies as per the state's performance and introducing the concept coproduction in the existing nutrition and health policy framework. This will instigate a feeling of ownership of the problem of childhood stunting among the policy consumers and strengthen the influence of policies on the outcomes.The establishment of link between high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and occurrence of cervical cancer has resulted in development of various HPV related control strategies for the prevention of cervical cancer. The objective of the present study was to assess the cost effectiveness of various screening strategies for cervical cancer and human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination in India. A Markov model based on societal perspective was designed to estimate the lifetime costs and consequences of screening (with either visual inspect with acetic acid (VIA), Papanicolaou test or HPV DNA test at various time intervals) in a hypothetical cohort of 30-65 years age women or vaccination among adolescent girls. Diagnostic accuracy of the screening strategies, efficacy of HPV vaccination and data on transition probabilities was based on the results of the existing meta-analyses. Primary data was collected for assessing per person cost of screening, cost of treating cervical cancer and quality of life. We fouPV vaccination alone and vaccination plus screening (with VIA every 5 yearly and VIA 10 yearly) appears to be cost effective with ICERs in the range of US$ 86 (INR 5,693) to US$ 476 (INR 31,511) per QALY gained. In the long run, when the cohort of adolescent girls, who were immunized for HPV, reach the age of 30 years, the screening frequency using VIA should be determined based on the coverage of HPV vaccination in that cohort.The proposed method is to do simplification for Digital Elevation Model (DEM), which uses a few of original nodes representing the terrain surface while maintaining the accuracy. The original DEM nodes are sampled using the Maximal Poisson-disk Sampling (MPS), in which, the disk's size of each sample is computed on basis of the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). MPS can generate the hyper-uniformly distributed samples and was taken to do DEM adaptive sampling by being combined with the geodesic metric. However, the geodesic distance computation is complex and the requirement for memory is high. As such, this paper proposes an extension of the classic MPS based method for selecting quasi-randomly distributed points from DEM nodes based on the distribution of eigenvalues, accounting for surface heterogeneity. To achieve this objective, uniform MPS is conducted to sample the DEM nodes by setting the related disk radius to be inversely proportional to the local terrain complexity, which is defined as an index expressing the local terrain variation.