Malaysian Journal of Applied Sciences (Journal of UniSZA - Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin)
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Analysis of Diabetes Data using Extended Cox Model with Frailty under Partial and Penalized partial likelihood estimation methods
Get PDFData on Diabetes were analyzed using partial likelihood (Pl) and penalized partial likelihood (Ppl) estimation methods in non-proportional hazards model with dichotomous time-varying covariates. Gamma and Inverse Gaussian frailty distributions were used to account for patient- specific unobserved heterogeneity. Four likelihood configurations were formed from the combinations of the two estimation methods and frailty distributions. These are Partial likelihood with Gamma frailty, Partial likelihood with Inverse Gaussian frailty, Penalized partial likelihood with Gamma frailty and Penalized partial likelihood with Gamma frailty. The results revealed that age and body mass index of the patients significantly increased the risk of death from diabetes, while regular exercise had significant decreased risk of death. Penalized partial likelihood estimation method generally outperformed models with Partial likelihood under all scenarios for the data and Gamma frailty provided a better fit in accounting for unobserved heterogeneity among the diabetic patients
Tualang Honey Exerts Antidepressant-like Effects and Antioxidant Properties in Stress-exposed Rats
No full textRecent evidence has exhibited dietary influence on the manifestation of depressive-like behaviour induced by stressor tasks. The present study examined the effects of Tualang honey supplement administered with the goal of preventing or attenuating the occurrence of depressive-like behaviour in male rats subjected to noise stress. Forty-eight adult male rats were randomly divided into the following groups: i) nonstressed with placebo, ii) nonstressed with honey, iii) stressed with placebo, and iv) stressed with honey. Tualang honey (200 mg/kg body weight) was administered for 28 days. Stressed rats were subjected to loud noise 100 dB(A) 4 hours daily for 14 days. Forced swimming test was performed to evaluate depressive-like behaviour. Stressed control rats displayed significant increase in depressive-like behaviour, serum adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), corticosterone, and brain oxidative stress markers levels, with significant decrease in antioxidant enzymes activities and total antioxidant status. Honey supplementation successfully counteracted the stress effects whereby the honey treated rats exhibited significant decrease in depressive-like behaviour and levels of ACTH, corticosterone, and oxidative stress markers, with significant increase in antioxidant enzymes activities and total antioxidant status. In conclusion, Tualang honey mediated antidepressant-like effects in stressed rats, possibly acting via restoration of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis through its antioxidant properties
Ambulance Response Time at Three Selected Tertiary Hospitals In Malaysia: Performance of Hospital-Based Ambulance Equipped With Computerized Call Centre System
Get PDFAbstractIntroduction. The importance of rapid ambulance response to emergency medical crises is undeniable and early access to advanced care is a crucial to safe life. Modern computerized call centre and the hospital based ambulance are believed to enhance the quality of service delivery. However, whether it will further reduce the response time is debatable.Methodology. A cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2012 until July 2012 at three selected tertiary hospitals in Malaysia. The aims were to determine and compare the association of response time in the hospital based ambulance and community-based ambulance and hospital with computerized call centre system and the call centre using voice only respectively. The ambulance response time was expressed in a median and interquartile range (IQR) and Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the associations between types of ambulance and computerized call centre system versus voice only. Wilcoxon Rank Sign Test was used to assess the significance of means difference.Result. A hospital-based ambulance had the median of 0.19 minutes while community-based ambulance had the median of 0.20 minutes (The Z score - 0.916, P value - 0.360). The hospital with computer call centre had the median of 0.19 minutes while hospital without computer call centre had the median of 0.20 minutes (The Z score - 0.816, P value - 0.414).Conclusions. The response time of hospital-based ambulance equipped with computerized call center system is comparable in three selected tertiary hospitals in Malaysia. Keywords: Ambulance response time; Hospital-based ambulance; computerised call centre
Effectiveness of Antibiotic Prophylaxis for Leptospirosis among Adults: A Systematic Review
Get PDFLeptospirosis is one of the most widespread re-emerging zoonoses in the world. Malaysia is known to be an endemic country for human leptospirosis, with a case fatality rate of 2.11%, and an average annual incidence rate of 7.80 cases per 100,000 individuals. This systematic review is conducted to determine the effectiveness of antibiotic prophylaxis for leptospirosis among the adult populations who are highly at risk of getting infected. A systematic search was performed for the relevant titles, abstracts and keywords on PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane and Google Scholar from inception to November 2017 based on the PICO strategy; which returned 126 studies. Screening of abstracts had shortlisted 19 studies and data extraction was conducted for 8 studies which had been accepted after review of the full text. For the evaluation of antibiotics prophylaxis effectiveness against leptospirosis, only trials and cohort studies with risk ratio (RR) were selected. The articles were analyzed from the viewpoint of the dosage, adverse effects, study settings and effectiveness of the antibiotic prophylaxis. Using fixed effects model, pooled RR showed protective association between antibiotic prophylaxis use against the incidence of leptospirosis (RR = 0.31; 95% CI: 0.20, 0.48). Antibiotic prophylaxis for leptospirosis had been shown to be effective in preventing the incidence of the disease among high-risk populations and carries minimal adverse effects. It is recommended that the practice of antibiotic prophylaxis for leptospirosis is included in the standard protocol for leptospirosis prevention among people at high-risk, including disaster response teams and patrons of eco-sports tourism activities; with the drug of choice being doxycycline, either as a single 200 mg dose or weekly dose of 200 mg for the duration of exposure, based on the setting, duration of event and resources available
Comparative Larvicidal Properties and Detoxification Machinery of Bioactive Fractions of Leaf Extracts of Hyptis Suaveolens and Chromolaena Odorata on Anopheles gambiae s.l from North West Nigeria.
Get PDFMalaria is endemic in Nigeria and the impact of chemical insecticides is being undermined by widespread resistance in mosquito vectors. This calls for development of alternative bio-insecticidal approach. The aim of this work was to determine the active fractions of leaves of Hyptis. suaveolens and Chromolena. odorata with insecticidal potential on the larva of Anopheles gambiae s.l. Leaf extracts of the two plants were screen for phytochemicals and the active fractions were subjected to GC-MS analysis. In addition, the detoxification enzymes (GST, esterase and cytochromes P450) as well Glutathione levels on the susceptible and resistant individuals of the larvae were biochemically assayed. Larval bioassay was carried out by the standard procedure described by WHO. The phytochemicals detected include flavonoids, tannins, saponins, terpenoids, alkaloids, phenols and phlobatannins. Butanol fracton of H. suaveolens displayed higher larvicidal activity (LC50 2167.92ppm) followed by the aqueous fraction (LC50 2613.01ppm). Both butanol and aqueous fractions of C. odorata also displayed larvicidal activities (LC50 3117.97ppm; LC50 3497.27ppm) respectively, but were lower than that observed in Hyptis suaveolens. Biochemical assay of the detoxification enzymes showed significance difference at P <0.05 between the resistant and susceptible larvae for all enzymes. There was however no significant difference in the levels detoxification enzymes in both resistant and susceptible individuals for butanol and aqueous fractions of H. suaveolens when compared with their corresponding fractions of C. odorata at P< 0.05 respectively. The observations recorded in this study showed a promising larvicidal potential of these two plants which if further characterized could offer a promising novel bioinsecticide compound that could substitute the present classes of chemical insecticides used in malaria vector control
Evaluation of Some Soil Properties on Dehydrogenase Activity in River Getsi Kano State, Nigeria
Get PDFAbstractThe study aimed at evaluating some soil physicochemical properties of soil on dehydrogenase activity in the soil of the area which was achieved by assessing some selected physicochemical properties of soil and dehydrogenase activities, and determine the relationship between some selected physicochemical properties of soil and dehydrogenase activities of soil in the area. One square kilometer of irrigated land was selected randomly and then divided in to 10 grids square and samples were collected in each grid using composite method and analyzed using standard laboratory procedures. The results shows that, clay recorded mean values of 3.8 cmol/kg ±0.84, EC 1385 dSm-1 ±760, pH 7.66±0.46, OC 1.37%±125, total nitrogen 0.15%±0.04, CEC 2.8 cmol/kg±0.06 and DHA 0.005±0.06. The findings shows that, there is no significant relationship between clay, EC, pH, Oc, nitrogen and dehydrogenase activities using correlation analyses at p ˂0.05 probability level, while the regression analyses show that the coefficient of determination (r2) values obtained are 0.05, 0.44, 0.001, 0.03, 0.006 and 0.09 for clay, EC, pH, Oc, TN and CEC respectively. From the findings it was concluded that Ec, pH, OC, N and CEC have no significant effect on DHA of the soil in the area. It is therefore recommended that appropriate soil management practice should be encourage more to enhance microbial activity in the soil of the area.Keywords: Soil, Enzymes, Dehydrogenase, Soil properties, River Gets
A Survey on Tax Evasion Using Randomized Response Technique
Get PDFTaxation is a tool used by government to raise revenue. It is also used as an instrument of economic and social policy. This paper adopted Randomized Response Technique to estimate proportions of non-compliance of taxpayers in Akure metropolis as well as analysing socio-demographic variables which may affect those proportions. Survey questionnaires were administered on taxpayers in Akure with a view to collecting data from them. The data collected were analysed using z-test. The findings of this study revealed that among the respondents completing the Randomized Response survey instrument, 47.7% admitted tax evasion by trading goods and not reporting it in tax form, 48.7% admitted evasion by excluding some outside income, 49.8% admitted tax evasion by being paid in cash and not reporting it, 43.7% admitted evasion by hiding investment to avoid payment of tax while 43% admitted evasion by cheating on tax whenever the chances arises respectively
Multi-step Homotopy Analysis Method for Solving Malaria Model
Get PDFIn this paper, we consider the modified epidemiological malaria model proposed by Abadi and Harald. The multi-step homotopy analysis method (MHAM) is employed to compute an approximation to the solution of the model of fractional order. The fractional derivatives are described in the Caputo sense. We illustrated the profiles of the solutions of each of the compartments. Figurative comparisons between the MHAM and the classical fourth-order reveal that this method is very effective
The Assessment of Water Quality and Metals Concentration in Surface Water of Kenyir Lake
Get PDFSurface water quality is an important environmental factor affecting both humans and other living things. This present study is purposely to provide a baseline information on physicochemical parameters and metals concentration from surface water of Kenyir Lake and their water quality status. Determination of metals concentration was carried out using ICP-MS. The mean physicochemical parameters were 31.14°C (Temp), 16.29mg/L (TDS), 27.79µS/cm (COND), 4.75mg/L (DO), 7.03 (pH), 1.33NTU (TUR), 0.96mg/L (BOD), 6.48mg/L (COD), 0.11mg/L (AN), 2.17mg/L (TSS) and 227.10mV (ORP) while the mean concentration of metals (µg/L) Al 23.0845, As 0.2983, B 4.1711, Ba 5.0655, Ca 2033.4024, Cu 1.7407, Fe 43.7747, K 916.9054, Mg 456.7255, Mn 4.7387, Ni 0.3346, Se 0.5032, V 0.1428 and Zn 1.6796 respectively. The results revealed that physicochemical parameters and metals concentration at all sampling stations near Kenyir Lake are within Class I and Class II of Malaysia National Water Quality Standard (NWQS) except for dissolved oxygen (DO) that was classified into Class III and Class IV due to high activities of microorganisms that uses up a great amount of oxygen to carry out their metabolizing activities as well as degradation of organic matters. Furthermore, most metals are significantly correlated to each other (p˂0.05) which may derive from a common source of metals except for Al and Cu, As and Fe, Ba and Ca, Ca and Cu, Ca and Se, Ca and Zn, Cu and Fe, Cu and Mn, Cu and Ni, Cu and Se, Cu and Zn, Fe and Ni, Fe and Se, Fe and Zn, Mn and Zn and V and Zn respectively. Therefore, data from the present study will be useful as baseline data for future reference
Chemical Composition and The Potential Biological Activities Of Piper Betel – A Review
Get PDFPiper betel is a member of the family Piperaceae, commonly known as Sirih (Malaysia and Indonesia), Paan (India and Bangladesh), Betel (English) and Phlu (Thailand). It is widely found and grown in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, other Southeast Asian and East African countries. Piper betel is widely used throughout the world even in modern days due to its known medicinal properties. Betel plant contains various biologically active compounds, which are responsible for its numerous pharmacological actions. The medicinal profile reveals Piper betel to have a high potential for treating many diseases and conditions. Further studies of betel plant are recommended to focus on the variety of metabolic activities in human, thus, improving its usage medically that will be beneficial to mankind