Risk factors of mydelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) remain largely unknown. We conducted a hospital-based case-control study consisting of 403 newly diagnosed MDS patients according to World Health Organization classification and 806 individually gender and age-matched patient controls from 27 major hospitals in Shanghai, China, to examine relation of lifestyle, environmental, and occupational factors to risk of MDS. The study showed that all MDS (all subtypes combined) risk factors included anti tuberculosis drugs [odds ratio (OR) IntroductionMyelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) represent a heterogeneous group of neoplastic clonal stem cell disorders characterized by clinical presentations of anemia, thrombocytopenia, and leucopenia. MDS may be categorized into subtypes according to histological, immunological, and genetic characteristics. MDS was usually diagnosed by French-American-British (FAB) classification with subtypes including refractory anemia (RA), RA with ringed sideroblasts (RARS), RA with excess of blasts (RAEB), RAEB in transformation (RAEB-T), and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) [1]. Since its publication in 2001, World Health Organization (WHO) classification for MDS has become widely adopted [2]. In the WHO MDS system, blast cutoff is less than 20% compared to 30% in FAB system. Additional WHO MDS subtypes include refractory cytopenia with multiple dysplasia (RCMD), MDS with isolated del(5q), and MDS unclassifiable (MDS-u) and the WHO MDS system does not include CMML [3].Secondary MDS is usually resulted from radiation and chemotherapy. Little is known about the etiology of primary or de novo MDS. Most previous studies on MDS risk factors focused on FAB MDS [4][5][6]. Here, we report a large hospital-based case-control study of 403 WHO MDS cases and 806 age and sex-matched controls in a Chinese population to assess effects of lifestyle, environmental, and occupational factors on MDS development.

The COVID-19 pandemic is dangerous to people’s lives and livelihoods, creating immediate obstacles for organizations that support impacted populations. This research concentrates on the consequences for local microfinance institutions in Pakistan, which is a well-developed sector that has pulled many households out of the poverty trap. Microfinance programs in Pakistan provide financial resources to vulnerable and deprived people to engage in income-generating practices on more favorable terms. As a result, this study addressed and assessed the financial dimensions of managing poverty reduction in rural Pakistan through the microfinance segment and its effectiveness on poverty-reduction programs in Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary data were collected through a questionnaire survey to determine the views of the households, beneficiaries, and non-beneficiaries on the outcome and efficacy of poverty-reduction programs during the pandemic to meet the study objectives. The Mann-Whitney U test of the non-parametric method and Cronbach’s alpha of the data reliability test have been applied for the empirical analysis. According to the non-parametric findings, programs, marital status, working women members, and resources such as land, livestock, business assets, shares, and loans have all been affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Education, wages, gender, size, child dependency, and district variables are significant factors related to poverty, but they fell into second position during COVID-19. These findings suggests that the small loan system must be improved and made efficient during the pandemic. This could be a practical tool to maintain poor people’s current economic and poverty position.