IntroductionPre-eclampsia is one of the leading causes of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) in pregnancy is one of the established risk factors for pre-eclampsia, the link between iodine deficiency, the main cause of hypothyroidism and pre-eclampsia remains uncertain. About two billion people live in areas with iodine insufficiency. The increased renal blood flow during pregnancy leading to increased renal iodine clearance together with the increased placental transfer of iodine to the fetus leads to further iodine deficiency in pregnancy. Iodine is one of the most potent exogenous antioxidants whose deficiency is associated with oxidant imbalance and endothelial dysfunction, one of the mechanisms associated with increased risk of pre-eclampsia.Methods and analysisA systematic search of published literature will be conducted for case–control studies that directly determined the iodine nutrition status of women with pre-eclampsia and appropriate normotensive controls. A similar search will be conducted for cohort studies in which the incidence of pre-eclampsia among pregnant women with adequate and inadequate iodine nutrition status was reported. Databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, SCOPUS and Africa Wide Information will be searched up to 31 December 2018. Screening of identified articles and data extraction will be conducted independently by two investigators. Risk of bias of the included studies will be assessed using a Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Appropriate meta-analytic techniques will be used to pool prevalence and incidence rates, odds and relative risk of pre-eclampsia from studies with similar features, overall and by geographical regions. Heterogeneity of the estimates across studies will be assessed and quantified and publication bias investigated. This protocol is reported according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 guidelines.Ethics and disseminationSince the proposed study will use published data, there is no requirement for ethical approval. This review seeks to identify the risk of pre-eclampsia associated with insufficient iodine nutrition in pregnancy. This will help to ascertain whether insufficient iodine intake may be an independent risk factor for pre-eclampsia. This will advise policy makers on the possibility of maximising iodine nutrition in pregnancy and reproductive age as one of the remedies for prevention of pre-eclampsia among populations at risk of inadequate iodine intake. This review is part of the thesis that will be submitted for the award of a PhD in Medicine to the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Cape Town. In addition the results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42018099427.
A critical inquiry into the politics, practices, and infrastructures of open access and the reconfiguration of scholarly communication in digital societies. The Open Access Movement proposes to remove price and permission barriers for accessing peer-reviewed research work—to use the power of the internet to duplicate material at an infinitesimal cost-per-copy. In this volume, contributors show that open access does not exist in a technological or policy vacuum; there are complex social, political, cultural, philosophical, and economic implications for opening research through digital technologies. The contributors examine open access from the perspectives of colonial legacies, knowledge frameworks, publics and politics, archives and digital preservation, infrastructures and platforms, and global communities. The contributors consider such topics as the perpetuation of colonial-era inequalities in research production and promulgation; the historical evolution of peer review; the problematic histories and discriminatory politics that shape our choices of what materials to preserve; the idea of scholarship as data; and resistance to the commercialization of platforms. Case studies report on such initiatives as the Making and Knowing Project, which created an openly accessible critical digital edition of a sixteenth-century French manuscript, the role of formats in Bruno Latour's An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, and the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), a network of more than 1,200 journals from sixteen countries. Taken together, the contributions represent a substantive critical engagement with the politics, practices, infrastructures, and imaginaries of open access, suggesting alternative trajectories, values, and possible futures. The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding and support from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, the Open Society Foundations, the Open Knowledge Foundation, Knowledge Unlatched, and Birkbeck, University of London.
BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has impacted every country globally, infecting almost 7 million people. The respiratory disease is spread through oral and nasal droplets and fomites (surface contact). Preventative measures to slow the transmission includes social distancing, wearing masks, and hygiene practices. Contact tracing has been identified as an essential preventative measure in the management of COVID-19. Digital health solutions are being used in the management and prevention of COVID-19. OBJECTIVE The aim of the scoping review is to: (1) identify the types of digital health solutions used for COVID-19 contact tracing (2) assessing the impact of the solution and (3) determining the research and innovation gaps. METHODS This review utilized scoping review methodologies to effectively, efficiently, and rapidly gather evidence related to COVID-19, contact tracing and digital health. The framework to evaluate the evidence consisted of five stages. A search strategy was developed, and relevant articles was retrieved from PubMed, EBSCO and Web of Science. Articles was screened for eligibility using the research question as a guide. RESULTS A total of 33 was found from the various databases, 16 duplicates was removed. The title and abstract of 17 articles was screened, 3 articles was removed. The full-text articles were screened, and 9 articles was excluded as they did not include any data as they were presented in the form of editorials, commentary or viewpoints. The results highlighted the use of digital technology to aid in contact tracing. The primary focus of the applications was finding the geographical location of the contacts. CONCLUSIONS Although the COVID-19 pandemic is a recent ongoing event, the limited articles published provides key information to strengthen future digital health contact tracing initiatives. The readiness checklist could assist with the current and future contact tracing initiatives.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.