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Background Nocturia is widely prevalent condition with detrimental effects on quality of life and general health. In Malaysia, there is a lack of up-to-date prevalence study on nocturia. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of nocturia and awareness pertaining to nocturia among Malaysian adults. Methods A cross-sectional population-based study was conducted among Malaysian adults aged ≥ 18 years old. The data was collected by mixed mode self-administered questionnaire from May 2019 to September 2019. Nocturia was defined as one or more voids at night. Results There were a total of 4616 respondents with 74.5% of response rate. The overall prevalence of nocturia among Malaysian adults was found to be 57.3%. In multivariate analysis, respondents aged 31–40 (1.91 [1.52–2.40]) or > 60 years old (2.03 [1.48–2.71]), and those who presented with hypertension (2.84 [2.28–3.53]), diabetes mellitus (1.78 [1.42–2.25]), renal disease (3.58 [1.93–6.63]) or overactive bladder (1.61 [1.10–2.35]) were associated with higher prevalence of nocturia. A significantly lower disease prevalence (p < 0.05) was noted among those aged 41–50 (0.73 [0.59–0.91]), male (0.78 [0.69–0.88]) and Chinese (0.47 [0.30–0.74]) or Indian (0.34 [0.21–0.54]) ethnicities. A total of 37.3% of respondents with nocturia reported that they faced sleeping difficulty about half the time or more after waking up in the middle of night. Those who had ≥ 2 voids per night experienced significantly higher mean bother score than those who had 1 void per night (p < 0.001). Approximately half (56.7%) of all respondents were not aware that night time urination is a medical condition. Only 25.2% of respondents with nocturia had sought medical attention for their nocturia. Conclusions The prevalence of nocturia among Malaysian adults is high and strongly influenced by age, sex, race and comorbidities. However, the general awareness pertaining to nocturia being a health issue remains low among Malaysians. The findings also highlighted the impact of nocturia on sleep and the need for nocturia education to better address this disease.

Background: Nocturia is widely prevalent condition with detrimental effects on quality of life and general health. In Malaysia, there is a lack of up-to-date prevalence study on nocturia. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of nocturia and awareness pertaining to nocturia among Malaysian adults.Methods: A cross-sectional population-based study was conducted among Malaysian adults aged ≥ 18 years old. The data was collected by mixed mode self-administered questionnaire from May 2019 to September 2019. Nocturia was defined as one or more voids at night.Results: There were a total of 4616 respondents with 74.5% of response rate. The overall prevalence of nocturia among Malaysian adults was found to be 57.3%. In multivariate analysis, respondents aged 31 – 40 (1.91 [1.52 - 2.40]) or > 60 years old (2.03 [1.48 - 2.71]), and those who presented with hypertension (2.84 [2.28 - 3.53]), diabetes mellitus (1.78 [1.42 - 2.25]), renal disease (3.58 [1.93 - 6.63]) or overactive bladder (1.61 [1.10 - 2.35]) were associated with higher prevalence of nocturia. A significantly lower disease prevalence (p < 0.05) was noted among those aged 41 – 50 (0.73 [0.59 - 0.91]), male (0.78 [0.69 - 0.88]) and Chinese (0.47 [0.30 - 0.74]) or Indian (0.34 [0.21 - 0.54]) ethnicities. A total of 37.3% of respondents with nocturia reported that they faced sleeping difficulty about half the time or more after waking up in the middle of night. Those who had ≥ 2 voids per night experienced significantly higher mean bother score than those who had 1 void per night (p < 0.001). Approximately half (56.7%) of all respondents were not aware that night time urination is a medical condition. Only 25.2% of respondents with nocturia had sought medical attention for their nocturia.Conclusion: The prevalence of nocturia among Malaysian adults is high and strongly influenced by age, gender, race and comorbidities. However, the general awareness on nocturia among Malaysians is poor and relates to low treatment-seeking behaviour we found. The findings also highlighted the impact of nocturia on sleep and the need for nocturia education to better address this disease.

Background: Recent preclinical studies demonstrated the potential antiepileptogenic effect of curcumin. Its molecular pathways in modulating epileptogenesis remain unclear. Objectives: This study investigated the epileptogenic processes induced by kainic acid (KA) and to investigate the antiepileptogenic pathways associated with curcumin therapy. Methods: A single dose of KA 10 mg/kg was used to induce a convulsive status epilepticus in female Wistar rats. After one week of curcumin treatment, gene expression profiling by using microarray was conducted on hippocampal tissues. A set of differential expression changes was determined based on criteria of dual fold change in either direction and p < 0.05, whereas gene annotation and pathway analysis had been performed using Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery software. Results: A number of genes significantly altered in expression during KAinduced epileptogenesis. Inflammation and immune response were the prominent overexpressed processes induced by KA. Genes of cell surface molecule (CD74), cytokines and immune response related genes (IL18, IFNGR1, C3, RT1-BA) were significantly up-regulated. Changes of genes related to cell death and gliosis (NCSTN, CTSH) were also observed in KA-induced epileptogenesis. This study revealed that curcumin modulated the epileptogenic process by up-regulating genes related to antiinflammatory cytokines (IL10RB, CXCL16, and CXCL17) and protecting against cell loss by up-regulating NCSTN. It was also likely to exert neuroprotective effects through the up-regulation of CX3CL1 and CXCL16. Conclusion: This study provides novel insights into the mechanisms of curcumin in epileptic brain, which form the basis for future studies looking into its molecular pathway as an antiepileptogenic agent.

In the era of “Bad Bugs, No Drugs,” optimizing antibiotic therapy against multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogens is crucial. Mathematical modelling has been employed to further optimize dosing regimens. These models include mechanism-based PK/PD models, systems-based models, quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) and population PK models. Quantitative systems pharmacology has significant potential in precision antimicrobial chemotherapy in the clinic. Population PK models have been employed in model-informed precision dosing (MIPD). Several antibiotics require close monitoring and dose adjustments in order to ensure optimal outcomes in patients with infectious diseases. Success or failure of antibiotic therapy is dependent on the patient, antibiotic and bacterium. For some drugs, treatment responses vary greatly between individuals due to genotype and disease characteristics. Thus, for these drugs, tailored dosing is required for successful therapy. With antibiotics, inappropriate dosing such as insufficient dosing may put patients at risk of therapeutic failure which could lead to mortality. Conversely, doses that are too high could lead to toxicities. Hence, precision dosing which customizes doses to individual patients is crucial for antibiotics especially those with a narrow therapeutic index. In this review, we discuss the various strategies in optimizing antimicrobial therapy to address the challenges in the management of infectious diseases and delivering personalized therapy.

Cancer, also known as malignant tumour or neoplasm, is a leading cause of death worldwide. One distinct feature from normal cells is that cancerous cells often overexpress protein on the cell membrane—for instance, the overexpression of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. The expression of a specific protein on the cancerous cell surface acts as a marker that differentiates the normal cell and facilitates the recognition of cancerous cells. An emerging anticancer treatment, Antibody–Drug Conjugates (ADCs), utilises this unique feature to kill cancerous cells. ADCs consist of an antibody linked with a cytotoxic payload, mainly targeting the antigen found on cancerous cells. This design can increase the specificity in delivering the cytotoxin to the drug target, thus increasing the drug efficacy and reducing the side effect of cancer treatment due to off-target toxicities. There are tremendous quantities of clinical trials conducted to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of this magic drug in treating different types of cancers. However, only 12 ADCs have been approved by the FDA until now. This review provides the principles of ADCs and highlights the ADCs that FDA has approved. In addition, some of the ADCs that undergo clinical trials are discussed in this review. The application of computational techniques in addressing ADCs’ challenges and neoantigen-targeted cancer vaccines is also highlighted. Although ADCs have been seen as promising magic drugs in cancer treatment, the problems such as toxicity, the stability of the linker, the specificity of an antibody with antigen, and so on, remain a challenge in developing ADCs.

Yow, et al.: Anxiety and Recognition Memory Alteration by CurcuminThe effect of curcumin had been studied on anxiety and recognition memory in kainic acid-induced epilepsy. A single dose of intraperitoneal kainic acid (10 mg/kg) was used to induce status epilepticus in female Wistar rats, followed by respective treatments (vehicle dimethyl sulfoxide 50%, curcumin 100 mg/kg/d or levetiracetam 100 mg/kg/d) on the next day for 7 d, with minimum of six rats per group. The behavioural tests were performed before seizure induction and after treatment. Vehicle-treated epileptic rats showed an increase in anxiety-like behaviours in the open field test, which less observed in the light/dark box test. Levetiracetam-treated epileptic rats exhibited anxiolytic behaviours in both the tests. Curcumin-treated epileptic rats exhibited not much difference in anxiety-like behaviour before and after the treatment in open field test, but exhibited anxiolytic behaviours in light/dark box test. Kainic acid impaired the both spatial and non-spatial recognition memories of the rats. Curcumin treatment showed reversal in the non-spatial recognition impaired by kainic acid. In conclusion, kainic acid increases anxiety-like behaviours and impaired recognition memories during the early phase of epileptogenesis and curcumin was potentially improved anxiety and non-spatial recognition memory impaired by kainic acid. These benefits highlighted the potential effect of curcumin to improve psychiatric disorders in epilepsy.

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