Preparation for practice: What are students learning for?

Background: Junior doctors often feel inadequately prepared for clinical practice. Current approaches to optimising the pre-clinical to clinical transition generally overlook intrinsic factors, yet motivation and emotional engagement are likely to be important in building clinical competence. To address this gap, we explored the attitudes of medical undergraduates and clinicians towards learning and how these attitudes seemed to affect learning motivation.

Clinical and prognostic relevance of sST2 in adults with dengue-associated cardiac impairment and severe dengue.

Background: Dengue can be complicated by severe outcomes including cardiac impairment, and the lack of reliable prognostic biomarkers poses a challenge in managing febrile dengue patients. Here, we investigated the functionality of soluble suppressor of tumorigenicity (sST2) as a predictive marker of severe dengue and its association in dengue-associated cardiac impairment.

Methods: Plasma samples, aged >16 years, collected from 36 dengue fever, 43 dengue with warning signs, 11 severe dengue (collected at febrile, critical and recovery phases) and 30 controls were assayed for plasma levels of sST2, troponin T and N-terminal (NT)-pro hormone brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) by ELISA.

Malaria in Pregnancy: From Placental Infection to Its Abnormal Development and Damage.

Malaria remains a global health burden with accounting for the highest mortality and morbidity. Malaria in pregnancy can lead to the development of placental malaria, where -infected erythrocytes adhere to placental receptors, triggering placental inflammation and subsequent damage, causing harm to both mother and her infant. Histopathological studies of -infected placentas revealed various placental abnormalities such as excessive perivillous fibrinoid deposits, breakdown of syncytiotrophoblast integrity, trophoblast basal lamina thickening, increased syncytial knotting, and accumulation of mononuclear immune cells within intervillous spaces.