METHODOLOGY: A prospective study was performed on children with diarrhoea of more than 14 days' duration who were managed at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Malaya Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur from 1 January 1996 to 31 December 1997.
RESULTS: Twenty-seven patients (14 boys and 13 girls) were studied. The median age of onset of diarrhoea was 6 months and the mean duration of symptoms before referral was 66.5 days. The underlying causes of diarrhoea were found to be: (i) prolonged diarrhoea due to well-defined entities (intestinal lymphangiectasia, two cases; congenital glucose-galactose malabsorption, one case; post-small bowel resection, one case; (ii) postenteritis diarrhoea (cow's milk protein intolerance, eight cases; secondary lactose intolerance, four cases; transient monosaccharide intolerance, one case; (iii) gastrointestinal infections (nontyphoid Salmonella gastroenteritis, three cases; trichuriasis, two cases; amoebiasis, one case; adenovirus, one case; (iv) cases in which a firm diagnosis could not be established (three cases). The mean duration of hospital admission was 63 days. Sixteen cases required a change in diet, while nine cases required total parenteral nutrition. One death occurred.
CONCLUSIONS: Chronic childhood diarrhoea in Malaysia had a variety of aetiologies. A specific diagnosis could be established in 90% of cases. Making a diagnosis was important because this led to appropriate therapy and a good outcome in 96% of cases.
Methods: A multi-center cross sectional study was conducted for a month in out-patient wards of hospitals in Khobar, Dammam, Makkah, and Madinah, Saudi Arabia. Patients were randomly selected from a registered patient pools at hospitals and the item-subject ratio was kept at 1:20. The tool was assessed for factorial, construct, convergent, known group and predictive validities as well as, reliability and internal consistency of scale were also evaluated. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were also evaluated. Data were analyzed using SPSS v24 and MedCalc v19.2. The study was approved by concerned ethics committees (IRB-129-25/6/1439) and (IRB-2019-05-002).
Results: A total of 282 responses were received. The values for normed fit index (NFI), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker Lewis index (TLI) and incremental fit index (IFI) were 0.960, 0.979, 0.954 and 0.980. All values were >0.95. The value for root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was 0.059, i.e., <0.06. Hence, factorial validity was established. The average factor loading of the scale was 0.725, i.e., >0.7, that established convergent validity. Known group validity was established by obtaining significant p-value <0.05, for the associations based on hypotheses. Cronbach's α was 0.865, i.e., >0.7. Predictive validity was established by evaluating odds ratios (OR) of demographic factors with adherence score using logistic regression. Sensitivity was 78.16%, specificity was 76.85% and, accuracy of the tool was 77.66%, i.e., >70%.
Conclusion: The Arabic version of GMAS achieved all required statistical parameters and was validated in Saudi patients with chronic diseases.
Method: This study was conducted between November and December 2016 at two primary care clinics that offered integrated diabetes care at the time. These sites were selected to assess the discriminative validity of the PACIC. Site 1 is a Malaysian Ministry of Health-run primary care clinic while site 2 is a university-run hospital-based primary care clinic. Only site 1 annually monitors patient performance and encourages them to achieve their HbA1c targets using a standard checklist. Patients with diabetes mellitus who understood English were recruited. Participants were asked to fill out the PACIC at baseline and two weeks later.
Results: A total of 200 out of the 212 invited agreed to participate (response rate=94.3%). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the 5-factor structure of the PACIC. The overall PACIC score and the score in two of the five domains were significantly higher at site 1 than at site 2. The overall Cronbach's alpha was 0.924. At test-retest, intra-class correlation coefficient values ranged from 0.641 to 0.882.
Conclusion: The English version of the PACIC was found to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess the quality of care among patients with diabetes mellitus in Malaysia.
OBJECTIVE: The present study was designed to investigate anti-porcine pancreatic lipase effect of isolated compounds from Aquilaria subintegra and its mechanism.
METHODS: Compounds were isolated with serial column chromatography and their structure were identified using spectroscopic methods. Isolated compounds were tested for anti-lipase potential activity using colorimetric assay. The prediction of energy binding between isolated compounds and enzyme was described using YASARA software.
RESULTS: Four compounds were successfully isolated from the bark of A. subintegra, namely, 5- hydroxy-7,4'-dimethoxyflavone, luteolin-7,3',4'-trimethyl ether, 5,3'-dihydroxy-7,4'-dimethoxyflavone and β-sitosterol. The results indicated that all compounds displayed promising pancreatic lipase inhibitory activity ranging between of 6% to 53% inhibition. Compound 5-hydroxy-7,4'- dimethoxyflavone was a competitive inhibitor and decreases the enzyme catalysis. Meanwhile, β- sitosterol was a non- competitive inhibitor since the latter was bind allosterically toward enzyme.
CONCLUSION: This finding is significant for further investigation of bioactive compounds from A. subintegra on animal study.
METHODS: Relevant published studies, literature and reports were searched from accessible electronic databases and related institutional databases. We used keywords, viz; microbiome, microbiota, microbiome drug delivery and respiratory disease. Selected articles were carefully read through, clustered, segregated into subtopics and reviewed.
FINDINGS: The traditional belief of sterile lungs was challenged by the emergence of culture-independent molecular techniques and the recently introduced invasive broncho-alveolar lavage (BAL) sampling method. The constitution of a lung microbiome mainly depends on three main ecological factors, which include; firstly, the immigration of microbes into airways, secondly, the removal of microbes from airways and lastly, the regional growth conditions. In healthy conditions, the microbial communities that co-exist in our lungs can build significant pulmonary immunity and could act as a barrier against diseases, whereas, in an adverse way, microbiomes may interact with other pathogenic bacteriomes and viromes, acting as a cofactor in inflammation and host immune responses, which may lead to the progression of a disease. Thus, the use of microbiota as a target, and as a drug delivery system in the possible modification of a disease state, has started to gain massive attention in recent years. Microbiota, owing to its unique characteristics, could serve as a potential drug delivery system, that could be bioengineered to suit the interest. The engineered microbiome-derived therapeutics can be delivered through BC, bacteriophage, bacteria-derived lipid vesicles and microbe-derived extracellular vesicles. This review highlights the relationships between microbiota and different types of respiratory diseases, the importance of microbiota towards human health and diseases, including the role of novel microbiome drug delivery systems in targeting various respiratory diseases.
Methods: This was an observational prospective study carried out at multiple centers. In total, 172 breast cancer patients were included. The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue Questionnaire was used to measure QOL, while the Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) was used to assess the severity of fatigue.
Results: The total average mean and standard deviation of QOL were 84.58±18.07 and 4.65±1.14 for BFI scores, respectively. A significant association between fatigue and QOL was found in linear and multiple regression analyses. The relationships between fatigue severity and cancer stage, chemotherapy dose delay, dose reduction, chemotherapy regimen, and ethnicity were determined using binary logistic regression analysis.
Conclusion: The findings of this study are believed to be useful for helping oncologists effectively evaluate, monitor, and treat fatigue related to QOL changes.