New drugs and new concerns: Gaining insight through Pharmacovigilance of direct acting Anti-Viral's in chronic HCV patients.

Objective: The study aimed to assess the safety profile of Direct Acting Anti-Viral's (DAAs) among patients with chronic Hepatitis C Virus (HCV).

Methods: This multicenter, analytical cross-sectional study was conducted in six gastroenterology and Hepatology centers including Liver Center Faisalabad, Allama Iqbal Medical Institute and Liver Center DHQ Hospital Sialkot, Isra Hospital Hyderabad, Allied Hospital Faisalabad and Rehman Medical Institute Peshawar, between May 2018 and May 2019. The data regarding patient demographics, treatment plan and the frequency of Adverse Events (AEs), and their severity was collected using a pre-designed questionnaire and analyzed through SPSS version 20.

Mores of the customer base for ecotourism industry: Development and validation of a new measurement scale.

To date, there is no such scale that may precisely measure mores of the customer base for the ecotourism industry. Therefore, a thematic analysis of literature has been conducted by examining various good quality research works on intrinsic characteristics eliciting pro-environmental actions. Based upon the thematic analysis, a new scale of measure has been proposed with the help of 17 scholars and 15 practitioners hailing from different countries by mutually agreed intended meanings and breadth of the theoretical concepts.

Reverse culture shock, distress symptoms and psychological well-being of fresh foreign degree holders in Pakistan.

This study explored to what extent does reverse culture shock predict the level of anxiety, depression, and psychological well-being among fresh foreign degree holders in Pakistan, in addition to finding out the relationship between the study variables. Participants consisted of 124 fresh foreign degree holders (109 men and 15 women) who were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Reverse Culture Shock Scale, Major Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, and WHO-5 Well-being Index were used to measure study variables.

Thalassemia Patients from Baluchistan in Pakistan Are Infected with Multiple Hepatitis B or C Virus Strains.

There are an estimated 2,000 children with β-thalassemia in the province Baluchistan of Pakistan. These children are at high risk of acquiring transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs) due to their need of regular blood transfusions for survival. Therefore, we investigated the frequencies of TTIs among these multi-transfused patients in a region where the WHO guidelines for blood safety are not always followed.

An experience of mass administration of fractional dose inactivated polio vaccine through intradermal needle-free injectors in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan.

Background: Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) campaign was conducted in February 2019 in Karachi where needle-free injectors were introduced for the administration of the fractional dose of IPV (fIPV) on a large scale. This study aimed to determine the impact of needle-free injectors on vaccination coverage.

Methods: In four towns of Karachi, fIPV was given using needle-free injectors "PharmaJet Tropis ID".

Awareness of sexually transmitted diseases among young adults of Karachi; a cross-sectional study.

Objective: To evaluate the young adults' awareness of sexually transmitted diseases, complications, prevention and management.

Methods: The descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted from September 4, 2017, to September 4, 2018, in Karachi, and comprised residents of the city aged 18-35 years of either gender. Data was collected from January 1 to March 31, 2018, using an online questionnaire.

Oil prices and E7 stock prices: an asymmetric evidence using multiple threshold nonlinear ARDL model.

For examining the short-run and long-run asymmetric effect of oil prices on stock prices, recent literature uses standard nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model. However, this model decomposes oil price series into partial sum of positive and negative changes only and fails to examine the effect of extreme changes in the oil price series on stock prices. This study, therefore, extends the existing literature by focusing on the emerging seven countries, i.

A machine learning-based framework for Predicting Treatment Failure in tuberculosis: A case study of six countries.

Tuberculosis is ranked as the 2nd deadliest disease in the world and is responsible for ten million deaths in 2017. Treatment failure is one of a main reason behind these deaths. Reasons of treatment failure are still unknown and the death rate due to TB is increasing.

Socio-religious Prognosticators of Psychosocial Burden of Beta Thalassemia Major.

The study investigates the socio-religious factors in the propagation of genetically inherited disease of Beta thalassemia. The disorder which reportedly has a significant protraction through repeated cousin marriages results in the social maladjustment of the parents of the sick children due to constant depression, anxiety, and weak social interaction and may lead to social isolation as well. This research aims to find out the significant effect of socio-religious trends on psychosocial burden of beta thalassemia major among cousin and non-cousin couples in the province of Punjab in Pakistan.

Critical Review of Data Analytics Techniques used in the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI).

Background: Immunization is a significant public health intervention to reduce child mortality and morbidity. However, its coverage, in spite of free accessibility, is still very low in developing countries. One of the primary reasons for this low coverage is the lack of analysis and proper utilization of immunization data at various healthcare facilities.

Mining Massive E-Health Data Streams for IoMT Enabled Healthcare Systems.

With the increasing popularity of the Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) and smart devices, huge volumes of data streams have been generated. This study aims to address the concept drift, which is a major challenge in the processing of voluminous data streams. Concept drift refers to overtime change in data distribution.

The Breast Size Satisfaction Survey (BSSS): Breast size dissatisfaction and its antecedents and outcomes in women from 40 nations.

The Breast Size Satisfaction Survey (BSSS) was established to assess women's breast size dissatisfaction and breasted experiences from a cross-national perspective. A total of 18,541 women were recruited from 61 research sites across 40 nations and completed measures of current-ideal breast size discrepancy, as well as measures of theorised antecedents (personality, Western and local media exposure, and proxies of socioeconomic status) and outcomes (weight and appearance dissatisfaction, breast awareness, and psychological well-being). In the total dataset, 47.

Folk standards of sound judgment: Rationality Versus Reasonableness.

Normative theories of judgment either focus on rationality (decontextualized preference maximization) or reasonableness (pragmatic balance of preferences and socially conscious norms). Despite centuries of work on these concepts, a critical question appears overlooked: How do people's intuitions and behavior align with the concepts of rationality from game theory and reasonableness from legal scholarship? We show that laypeople view rationality as abstract and preference maximizing, simultaneously viewing reasonableness as sensitive to social context, as evidenced in spontaneous descriptions, social perceptions, and linguistic analyses of cultural products (news, soap operas, legal opinions, and Google books). Further, experiments among North Americans and Pakistani bankers, street merchants, and samples engaging in exchange (versus market) economy show that rationality and reasonableness lead people to different conclusions about what constitutes good judgment in Dictator Games, Commons Dilemma, and Prisoner's Dilemma: Lay rationality is reductionist and instrumental, whereas reasonableness integrates preferences with particulars and moral concerns.

A sixteen decimal places' accurate Darcy friction factor database using non-linear Colebrook's equation with a million nodes: A way forward to the soft computing techniques.

The Colebrook's equation is considered as an empirical model to accurately compute the Darcy friction factor in pipes under fully-developed turbulent flow. Due to non-linearity and implicitness of the Colebrook's equation, one needs to use numerical methods to acquire reasonably good approximation to the true friction factor values. However, such idea is not preferred by practitioners as it demands use of computers - also more computational time and effort.

Using scalp EEG and intracranial EEG signals for predicting epileptic seizures: Review of available methodologies.

Patients suffering from epileptic seizures are usually treated with medication and/or surgical procedures. However, in more than 30% of cases, medication or surgery does not effectively control seizure activity. A method that predicts the onset of a seizure before it occurs may prove useful as patients might be alerted to make themselves safe or seizures could be prevented with therapeutic interventions just before they occur.

Prevention of cadmium-induced neurotoxicity in rats by essential nutrients present in nuts.

Cadmium, a heavy metal with no physiological function in the human body, is considered a bio-hazard. It is also considered to be a potent neurotoxin. The primary sources of cadmium exposure are diet and cigarette smoke.

A Context-Aware Accurate Wellness Determination (CAAWD) Model for Elderly People Using Lazy Associative Classification.

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) based smart homes are proving to be an ideal candidate to provide better healthcare facilities to elderly people in their living areas. Several currently proposed techniques have implementation and usage complexities (such as wearable devices and the charging of these devices) which make these proposed techniques less acceptable for elderly people, while the behavioral analysis based on visual techniques lacks privacy. In this paper, a context-aware accurate wellness determination (CAAWD) model for elderly people is presented, where behavior monitoring information is extracted by using simple sensor nodes attached to household objects and appliances for the analysis of daily, frequent behavior patterns of elderly people in a simple and non-obtrusive manner.

Lungs nodule detection framework from computed tomography images using support vector machine.

The emergence of cloud infrastructure has the potential to provide significant benefits in a variety of areas in the medical imaging field. The driving force behind the extensive use of cloud infrastructure for medical image processing is the exponential increase in the size of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. The size of a single CT/MRI image has increased manifold since the inception of these imagery techniques.

Effective and Reliable Framework for Lung Nodules Detection from CT Scan Images.

Lung cancer is considered more serious among other prevailing cancer types. One of the reasons for it is that it is usually not diagnosed until it has spread and by that time it becomes very difficult to treat. Early detection of lung cancer can significantly increase the chances of survival of a cancer patient.

Neurobehavioral and biochemical effects of magnesium chloride (MgCl2), magnesium sulphate (MgSO4) and magnesium-L-threonate (MgT) supplementation in rats: A dose dependent comparative study.

Magnesium (Mg) is an essential biomineral that acts as an intracellular cofactor for more than 300 enzymes. It is an important modulator of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor which is involved in memory function and depression. The purpose of this study was to compare the dose dependent effect of oral supplementation of Magnesium chloride (MgCl), Magnesium sulphate (MgSO) and Magnesium-L-threonate (MgT) on memory and depression-related behaviors in rats.

Herbal medicine use by pregnant women in Bangladesh: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Herbal medicines in pregnancy are increasingly used worldwide with prevalence of up to 67%. Although this popularity is mainly because of the common belief that these medicines are safe, recent reports suggest that several herbal medicines are potentially harmful to mother and fetus if used in pregnancy.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in July and August of year 2017, at maternity wards of two public hospitals in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Acute aluminum chloride toxicity revisited: Study on DNA damage and histopathological, biochemical and neurochemical alterations in rat brain.

Aims: Due to rapid increase in industrialization in the last few years, use of aluminum (Al) and its alloys have been increased in different industrial fields. Ample evidence supports the neurotoxic effects of chronic aluminum chloride (AlCl) administration in rats but acute Al toxicity has been less described so the present study was aimed to investigate the neurotoxic effects of acute AlCl.

Main Methods: To investigate such effects 12 male albino Wistar rats were randomly divided into control and test rats.

Awareness, knowledge and attitude towards breast cancer, breast screening and early detection techniques among women in Pakistan.

Objective: To document the knowledge and attitudes of women towards breast cancer, breast screening and early detection techniques.

Methods: This cross-sectional survey was conducted from December 2015 to May 2016 in Karachi and Islamabad, Pakistan, and comprised women aged above 18 years. The survey used breast cancer inventory as a research instrument after piloting and validation.

Epileptic Seizures Prediction Using Machine Learning Methods.

Epileptic seizures occur due to disorder in brain functionality which can affect patient's health. Prediction of epileptic seizures before the beginning of the onset is quite useful for preventing the seizure by medication. Machine learning techniques and computational methods are used for predicting epileptic seizures from Electroencephalograms (EEG) signals.