No abstract

The study was conducted to investigate the effects of solid waste and industrial effluents on the water quality of Turag River. Both the upstream and downstream sampled water from the selected points were analyzed for color, odor, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), dissolved oxygen (DO), biological oxygen demand (BOD), copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), iron (Fe), lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) concentrations. Results of the study showed that the color of water was light to dark black and emitted noxious smell due to the industrial effluents. The upstream water was slightly alkaline with comparatively high DO content while low concentration of other parameters. The water after the solid waste and effluents received points as well as middle and downstream points was slightly alkaline with higher levels of other parameters when compared with upstream point. The minimum and maximum values of pH, EC, TDS, DO and BOD were 7.24-7.61, 425-2277 µS/cm, 239-1349 ppm, 1.22-3.66 ppm and -2.44-0.86 ppm, respectively. The continuous dumping of waste materials resulted in a marked increase in the concentration of metals in the river water varied in the order of Fe > Zn > Pb > Cu > Cd. The study concluded that the downstream water in the river was almost polluted and unsuitable for human consumption and aquaculture purposes.

Shigellosis, a bacillary dysentery, is closely associated with diarrhoea in human and causes infection of 165 million people worldwide per year. Casein-degrading serine protease autotransporter of enterobacteriaceae (SPATE) subfamily protein SigA, an outer membrane protein, exerts both cytopathic and enterotoxic effects especially cytopathic to human epithelial cell type-2 (HEp-2) and is shown to be highly immunogenic. In the present study, we have tried to impose the vaccinomics approach for designing a common peptide vaccine candidate against the immunogenic SigA of Shigella spp. At first, 44 SigA proteins from different variants of S. flexneri, S. dysenteriae, S. boydii, and S. sonnei were assessed to find the most antigenic protein. We retrieved 12 peptides based on the highest score for human leukocyte antigen (HLA) supertypes analysed by NetCTL. Initially, these peptides were assessed for the affinity with MHC class I and class II alleles, and four potential core epitopes VTARAGLGY, FHTVTVNTL, HTTWTLTGY, and IELAGTLTL were selected. From these, FHTVTVNTL and IELAGTLTL peptides were shown to have 100% conservancy. Finally, IELAGTLTL was shown to have the highest population coverage (83.86%) among the whole world population. In vivo study of the proposed epitope might contribute to the development of functional and unique widespread vaccine, which might be an operative alleyway to thwart dysentery from the world.

Thalassemia is one of the most common life-threatening yet preventable congenital hemoglobin disorders especially in South Asian regions like Bangladesh. It has become a rising public health concern for Bangladesh as 6–12% of the population are carriers and many of them are unaware of it. The purpose of the study is to inspect the knowledge and attitude towards thalassemia among the general people of Bangladesh. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in eight administrative regions of Bangladesh between January and October of 2020. A structured questionnaire was designed to collect information about thalassemia and socio-demographic characteristics. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with knowledge of thalassemia. A p-value <0.05 was considered significant. Of the 1,248 participants, only 47.4% had heard of thalassemia. Half of the participants who heard about the disease had no idea that thalassemia was not a transfusion transmitted disease. Only 49.8% of participant correctly identified consanguineous marriages as an important risk factor. Majority of them knew that marriage between two carriers can lead to a child with thalassemia major. About 72.5% knew that blood tests are a diagnosis method to determine thalassemia. Among the socio-demographic variables, the level of education of the respondents was identified as an independent predictor for knowledge (p<0.05) on thalassemia. For example, graduate (aOR: 24.88; 95% CI: 6.238–99.232) or post-graduate (aOR: 33.18; 95% CI: 7.864–140.001) participants were more aware of thalassemia than non-graduates. However, about 68.2% of the participants showed a positive attitude towards premarital screening of themselves or their family members and 85.3% were willing to donate blood to thalassemia patients. The study shows that there is a need to disseminate the information on thalassemia since the knowledge gap is huge among people. These findings will strengthen the implementation of thalassemia major awareness through educational programs, health counseling, premarital screening and campaigning.

No abstract

The present study was conducted on the rural dairy cows to detect the bacterial species from clinical mastitis in dairy cows with their antibiogram studies during the period from January 2015 to June 2015. For this purpose two upazilla were selected under the Nilphamari district. On the basis of morphology, staining, cultural and biochemical characteristics, the isolated organisms were classified as, Staphylococcus spp., Streptococcus spp., E. coli, and Bacillus spp. .For this study, a total of 48 samples were collected from affected mastitis cows. Out of 48 milk samples, 17 were positive for Staphylococcus spp. (35.42%), 9 were positive for Streptococcus spp. (18.75%), 7 were positive for E. coli (14.58%), 5 were positive for Bacillus spp.(10.41%),5 were positive for mixed organisms (10.41%) and 5 were unidentified organisms (10.41%). Antibiogram studies revealed that all of the isolates of Staphylococcus spp. were sensitive to gentamicin and were resistant to streptomycin. Gentamicin was sensitive to all of the isolates of Streptococcus spp. and was resistant to streptomycin. The isolates of Bacillus spp. were sensitive to ciprofloxacin and Bacillus spp. was resistant to streptomycin. All of the isolates of E. coli were sensitive to ciprofloxacin the isolates were resistant to ampicillin and amoxicillin. Over all sensitivity revealed that ciprofloxacin, gentamicin and enrofloxacin were most efficacious. Thus, it may be recommended that ciprofloxacin, gentamicin and enrofloxacin in optimum doses would resolve most cases of clinical mastitis in dairy cows.

In the case of medical science, one of the most restless researches is the identification of abnormalities in brain. Electroencephalogram (EEG)

The fish is an important food stuff and source of protein all over the world. In Bangladesh, fisheries sector contributes a lot, in the case of the earning foreign currency and meeting domestic need of the animal proteins. To fulfill the domestic need of protein and fish, Bangladesh imports fish and fish products from the neighboring county. In many studies, it was proved that most of the imported fishes are contaminated with formalin, which is the highly hazardous and carcinogenic chemical. Information was collected from the fish retailers and consumers on the marketing of the formalin treated fishes through survey using prescribed questionnaire at 18 different fish markets in 6 different districts of Bangladesh. It was found that most of the commercially imported fishes are highly contaminated with formalin. On the other hand, local big fishes, such as rui (Lobeo Rohita), catla (Catla catla) and mrigal (Cirrhinus cirrhosus) etc., are also formalin contaminated partially, but not all the fishes. All the local small fishes are free from the formalin contamination. In this study, it was found that, among the 939 fish samples collected from the different fish markets of the six districts, 213 fishes (22.68%) were directly contaminated with formalin. The contamination rate is so much higher in the big city like Dhaka (36.78%) and lower in the small town like Jamalpur districts (13.33%). This study also indicated that, all the village markets were totally free from the formalin contamination. As the fish traders used formalin to increase the shelf life of the fishes, it was also observed that, the shelf life of the local fishes or formalin free fishes was much higher and the organoleptic characteristics were much more excellent than the formalin contaminated local or imported fishes. The price of the imported fishes was also lower than the local fishes. It was also clear that, the organoleptic characteristics of the imported fishes and formalin contaminated fishes were greatly different than the local fishes, which were not satisfactory to the consumers. The study also indicated that, the overall hygienic practice and sanitary condi-* Corresponding author. tions of the markets and the fish traders/retailers were very poor, not satisfactory. This survey also revealed that, all the traders or retailers who were mixed formalin with the fishes, knew about the bad effects of the formalin.