About 3.5% Americans identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual while 0.3% identify themselves as transgender. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community belongs to almost every race, ethnicity, religion, age, and socioeconomic group. The LGBT youth are at a higher risk for substance use, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), cancers, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, bullying, isolation, rejection, anxiety, depression, and suicide as compared to the general population. LGBT youth receive poor quality of care due to stigma, lack of healthcare providers’ awareness, and insensitivity to the unique needs of this community. The main objective of this literature review is to highlight the challenges faced by the LGBT youth and to enhance the awareness among physicians about the existing disparities in order to provide a more comprehensive, evidence-based, and humane medical care to this community.

Classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, the novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has spread to Bangladesh since early March of 2020, and people are getting daily updates from the social and electronic media. We aimed at assessing the prevalence of anxiety among Bangladeshi people during the pandemic in connection with social media exposure (SME) and electronic media exposure (EME). For this cross-sectional study, data were collected from 880 participants by a self-administered online-based questionnaire relating personal characteristics, self-rate health (SRH), SME, and EME with anxiety. Findings show that around half of the surveyed population experienced a spike of anxiety (49.1%) during the pandemic, ten times higher than the national anxiety rate in 2019. The participants with an increased SME of over four hours per day experienced a higher level of anxiety than individuals with < = 2 hours exposure to social media. Similarly, the anxiety was higher among people with fair/bad SRH compared to individuals with excellent SRH. It is highly recommended to develop active surveillance and effective monitoring systems to reduce the spread of misinformation from both social and electronic media to improve the state of mental health conditions during the pandemic.

Systematic reviews are ranked very high in research and are considered the most valid form of medical evidence. They provide a complete summary of the current literature relevant to a research question and can be of immense use to medical professionals. Our goal with this paper is to conduct a narrative review of the literature about systematic reviews and outline the essential elements of a systematic review along with the limitations of such a review.

The erratic nature of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) forced the Bangladeshi government to shut down all the educational institutions since March 18, 2020. This prolonged closure not only detached the students from their study but also increased anxiety among them regarding their future academic as well as professional careers. The present study aimed to explore the perception and understanding of the students and teachers regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the academic life and career pursuit of university students in Bangladesh. With a semistructured interview schedule, data for this qualitative study were collected from 8 purposively selected participants, using telephone interviews, affiliated with a public university in Bangladesh. Students argued that the extended closure is responsible for the delayed graduation of the senior students, thereby, mounting mental stress and frustration among them. The informants unequivocally opposed the online education platform, as a solution for the ongoing gap, due to scarcity of the resources, and unequal accesses and opportunities for all. It has been suggested that the education gap can be reduced by shortening the term, curtailing the preparatory leave, and taking extra classes over the weekends when the universities reopen together with enforced collective health hygiene.

The outbreak of new coronavirus disease has triggered a global panic, affecting the mental well-being of people of all ages, including students. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between selfreported mental health concerns and subjective sleep quality of the Bangladeshi university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. A web-based cross-sectional study was conducted to maintain the social distancing recommended by the World Health Organization. There were 1,317 student responses from 49 universities across Bangladesh. Data was analyzed by executing both bi-variate and multivariate analysis. Findings indicate that 27.1%, 51.0%, 45.9%, and 86.0% of students had poor subjective sleep quality, anxiety, depression, and fear of COVID-19, respectively. Anxiety (AOR ¼ 1.09, 95% CI: 1.06-1.12, p < 0.001) was a risk factor for increasing the poor subjective sleep quality of university students. In contrast, the odds of poor subjective sleep quality were lower with increasing the score of depression (AOR ¼ 0.88, 95% CI: 0.86-0.90, p < 0.001) and fear of COVID-19 (AOR ¼ 0.97, 95% CI: 0.94-0.99, p < 0.05). Compared to public university students, private university students were more likely to report poor subjective sleep quality since the pandemic began. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that psychiatric conditions of university students should be monitored during the COVID-19 epidemic, and necessary strategies, such as allocation of resources, implementation of awareness programs, establishment of psychological counselling unit, should carefully be devised.

The aim of this study was to determine the risk factors associated with generalized anxiety, depression, and subjective sleep quality among university students during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Bangladesh. Data for this web-based cross-sectional study were collected from 1317 university students from 49 universities using a self-administered e-questionnaire in the last week of April 2020. Findings suggest that university students have been experiencing heightened generalized anxiety (51%), depression (45.9%), and poor subjective sleep quality (27.1%). Results also indicate that university students were severely frightened about COVID-19. The severity of fear and geographical locations were the key determinants in shaping the state of mind as well as subjective sleep quality of university students. It is, therefore, strongly recommended to initiate not only effective strategies to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 but also a strict monitoring mechanism to detect the presence of mental ailments among university students, and to offer necessary supports through family, community, and institutional agencies to curb psychological problems, especially during this unprecedented health emergency.

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The present study was designed to investigate the effects of cadmium (Cd) on biochemical, physiological and cytological parameters of Capsicum annuum L. treated with five different concentrations (20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 ppm) of the metal. Shoot-root length, pigment and protein content showed a continuous decrease with increasing Cd concentrations and the maximal decline was observed at the higher concentration. Proline content was found to be increased upto 60 ppm while at higher concentrations it gradually decreased. MDA content and chromosomal aberrations increased as the concentration increased. Additionally Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique was used for the detection of genotoxicity induced by Cd. A total of 184 bands (62 polymorphic and 122 monomorphic) were generated in 5 different concentrations with 10 primers where primer OPA-02 generated the highest percentage of polymorphism (52.63%). Dendrogram showed that control, R1 and R2 showed similar cluster and R4 and R5 grouped with R3 into one cluster, which showed that plants from higher doses showed much difference than the plants selected at mild doses which resemble control at the DNA level. This investigation showed that RAPD marker is a useful tool for evaluation of genetic diversity and relationship among different metal concentrations.