Background and objectives Haemoglobin content is the well accepted indicator for anaemia assessment. The high prevalence of anaemia, maternal health care issues and adverse delivery outcome in Jharkhand, we investigated whether delivering women with anaemia would present a modifiable risk of preterm (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW). Methods A facility-based cross-sectional study involving pregnant women, with screening for pregnancy endpoints and haemoglobin assay, were conducted. Anaemia was classified according to World Health Organization's definition of anaemia in pregnancy. Confounding variables were adjusted in a logistic model. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used for analyzing the association among maternal anaemia, PTB and LBW. Results We observed a high prevalence of anaemia (78.45%) in delivering women, whereas high prevalence of preterm birth (34.75%) and LBW (32.81%) in delivering women overall. In the adjusted analysis, overall anaemia in pregnancy was strongly associated with preterm birth (OR, 3.42; 95% CI, 1.98–5.88; P ≤ .0001 ) as compared to LBW (OR, 1.12; 95% CI, 0.65–1.61; P = .0003 ). The risk of PTB and LBW were dependent on the stratification of the anaemia group, as the strongest association was observed in severe (OR, 4.86) followed by mild (OR, 3.66) and moderate (OR, 3.18) anaemia in PTB; whereas risk of LBW was found in severe (OR, 2.5) followed by moderate (OR, 1.11) and mild (OR, 0.57) anaemia. The risk of PTB and LBW across six pregnancy haemoglobin groups were compared, haemoglobin of 10–10.9 g/dl (OR, 1.25) and ≤ 8 g/dl (OR, 1.03) have shown association with PTB and LBW, respectively. However, high haemoglobin concentration was not associated with either PTB or LBW. Conclusions Anaemia in delivering women was associated with an elevated risk of PTB and LBW and the risk increased with the severity of anaemia in pregnant women.

Background:A needle stick injury (NSI) is an accidental skin-penetrating stab wound from a hollow-bore needle containing another person's blood or body fluid. Healthcare workers (HCWs) including dental professionals are at an occupational risk of exposure to blood-borne pathogens following NSIs and sharps injuries (SIs). A thorough understanding of the safe practices while handling needles and sharps is crucial for HCWs to create a risk-free work place environment.Aims and Objectives:To assess the knowledge, attitude, practice, and prevalence of NSIs and SIs among dental professionals in a dental college at Bangalore.Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional survey was conducted in September 2012 using a structured, pretested, guided interview-based questionnaire that was administered to 200 dental professionals in a dental college at Bangalore to assess the knowledge, attitude, practices, and self-report information of NSIs.Results:In the present study, 81.5% of dental professionals were vaccinated against hepatitis B. A total of 27.5% participants had an NSI during the previous 12 months. About 41.80% of NSIs occurred during device recapping. Most common reason for failure to report the incidents of NSIs, as declared by 29.09% of the participants, included the fear of being blamed or getting into trouble for having an NSI.Conclusion:The knowledge of dental professionals on NSIs and their preventive measures are inadequate; however, training on Universal Precaution Guidelines, protocols regarding post-exposure prophylaxis, and safety devices has to be provided to prevent such injuries in future among the dental professionals.

Given a closed and convex set K in Rn and two continuous maps F: K → Rn and η: K × K → Rn, the problem considered here is to find ε K such that.We call it a variational-like inequality problem, and develop a theory for the existence of a solution. We also show the relationship between the variational-like inequality problem and some mathematical programming problems.

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Nitric oxide (NO) has dicotomic influence on modulating host-parasite interplay, synchronizing physiological orchestrations and diagnostic potential; instigated us to investigate the plausible association and genetic regulation among NO level, components of oxidative stress, iNOS polymorphisms and risk of malaria. Here, we experimentally elucidate that iNOS promoter polymorphisms are associated with risk of malaria; employing mutation specific genotyping, functional interplay using western blot and RT-PCR, quantitative estimation of NO, total antioxidant content (TAC) and reactive oxygen species (ROS).Genotyping revealed significantly associated risk of P. vivax (adjusted OR = 1.92 and 1.72) and P. falciparum (adjusted OR = 1.68 and 1.75) infection with SNP at iNOS-954G/C and iNOS-1173C/T positions, respectively; though vivax showed higher risk of infection. Intriguingly, mutation and infection specific differential upregulation of iNOS expression/NO level was observed and found to be significantly associated with mutant genotypes. Moreover, P. vivax showed pronounced iNOS protein (2.4 fold) and mRNA (2.5 fold) expression relative to healthy subjects. Furthermore, TAC and ROS were significantly decreased in infection; and differentially decreased in mutant genotypes.Our findings endorse polymorphic regulation of iNOS expression, altered oxidant-antioxidant components and evidences of risk association as the hallmark of malaria pathogenesis. iNOS/NO may serve as potential diagnostic marker in assessing clinical malaria.