Malnutrition and sarcopenia in liver cirrhosis: Indian expert opinion perspective on screening and managements

Malnutrition and sarcopenia in Liver cirrhosis led to poor outcomes, complications, quality-of-life and increased mortality. This review discusses the prevalence of malnutrition and causative factors from an Indian patient and clinician perspective, nutritional assessment strategies, and management of malnutrition and sarcopenia. A group of experts discussed the dietary and lifestyle factors leading to malnutrition, screening tools and management algorithms to assess severity of malnutrition, and imaging modalities for diagnosing sarcopenia. They discussed the lack of routine screening in cirrhotic patients and advocated the use of quick and practical screening tools such as hand grip strength (HGS), gait speed, and body mass index (BMI) in clinical settings for early assessment of nutritional status and sarcopenia. Following screening and diagnosis of nutritional deficiencies, a comprehensive nutritional management plan consisting of adequate dietary protein and caloric intake, along with multivitamin and BCAA supplementation is recommended and has shown better clinical outcomes. Suitable screening and management strategies were considered essential to improve prognosis of cirrhotic patients

Barcoding of Asian seabass across its geographic range provides evidence for its bifurcation into two distinct species

Asian seabass or barramundi (Lates calcarifer) is an important food fish with commercial value and a wide geographic distribution. Though some reports based on molecular and/or morphological data exist, a comprehensive effort to establish species identity across its range is lacking. In order to address this issue and especially to ascertain whether the wide-spread distribution has resulted in bifurcation of the species, we collected Asian seabass samples from various locations representing the Western and Eastern Coastline of India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bangladesh and Australia. Samples from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore were collected as part of a previous study. DNA sequence variations, including cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI), 16S rDNA and the highly variable D-loop (or control region), were examined to establish species delineation. Data from all the sequences analyzed concordantly point to the existence of at least two distinct species—one representing the Indian subcontinent plus Myanmar, and a second, representing Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia) plus Northern Australia. These data are useful for conservation ecology, aquaculture management, for establishing the extent of genetic diversity in the Asian seabass and implementing selective breeding programs for members of this species complex

Explainable AI Framework for COVID-19 Prediction in Different Provinces of India

In 2020, covid-19 virus had reached more than 200 countries. Till December 20th 2021, 221 nations in the world had collectively reported 275M confirmed cases of covid-19 & total death toll of 5.37M. Many countries which include United States, India, Brazil, United Kingdom, Russia etc were badly affected by covid-19 pandemic due to the large population. The total confirmed cases reported in this country are 51.7M, 34.7M, 22.2M, 11.3M, 10.2M respectively till December 20, 2021. This pandemic can be controlled with the help of precautionary steps by government & civilians of the country. The early prediction of covid-19 cases helps to track the transmission dynamics & alert the government to take the necessary precautions. Recurrent Deep learning algorithms is a data driven model which plays a key role to capture the patterns present in time series data. In many literatures, the Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based model are proposed for the efficient prediction of COVID-19 cases for different provinces. The study in the literature doesnt involve the interpretation of the model behavior & robustness. In this study, The LSTM model is proposed for the efficient prediction of active cases in each provinces of India. The active cases dataset for each province in India is taken from John Hopkins publicly available dataset for the duration from 10th June, 2020 to 4th August, 2021. The proposed LSTM model is trained on one state i.e., Maharashtra and tested for rest of the provinces in India. The concept of Explainable AI is involved in this study for the better interpretation & understanding of the model behavior. The proposed model is used to forecast the active cases in India from 16th December, 2021 to 5th March, 2022. It is notated that there will be a emergence of third wave on January, 2022 in India.Comment: 12 page

Levofloxacin-loaded microneedles produced using 3D-printed molds for Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilm control

Additive manufacturing advancements contribute considerably to several fields, and its use in the medical field is gaining attention due to its easily customizable option (patient-specific), low cost, and fast turnout time in developing drug delivery and diagnostic tools. Here, wereport the fabrication of a microneedle (MN) platform using a stereolithography 3D printer, varying the 3D printing angle and aspect ratio (2:1, 3:1, 4:1). The optimal printing angle was30, resulting in needle tip and base diameters of 50 µm and 330 µm, and heights of 550/850/1180 µm. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) MNs produced with varying levofloxacin concentrations showed variability of 4% in tip and 3% base diameters and 15% in height compared to the 3D-printed MNs. Geometry B wasused to produce levofloxacin-loaded PVA MNs and tested against Klebsiella pneumoniae colony biofilms. Levofloxacin wasreleased gradually, as assessed by spectrofluorimetry. The MIC of levofloxacin against the K. pneumoniae clinical isolate was4 µg/mL, but this concentration wasinsufficient to cause any effect on K. pneumoniae biofilms. Only concentrations 32 µg/mL werestatistically different compared to the unloaded MNs. 3D printing is an attractive solution to produce molds for fabricating biopolymeric MNs for topical drug delivery.S.S. acknowledges funding by FCT through the individual scientific employment program contract (2020.03171.CEECIND). The radius was corrected to diameter on June 12, 2023.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio