Smokeless tobacco comes in two different forms, which are ‘tobacco snuff’ and ‘chewing tobacco’. Tobacco snuff is the powdered form blended with potash as the main additive in Nigeria. This eight-week study was designed to investigate the effect of tobacco snuff consumption on organ weight. A total of (42) Adult Wistar rats weighing 150-300g were involved. They were divided into four groups; group A serving as control, while groups B, C and D served as the test groups. The test groups were further divided into four groups (B1, C1, D1; B2, C2, D2; B3, C3, D3; and B4, C4, D4) representing four experimental phases/duration of 2, 4, 6 and 8 weeks respectively. The rats were fed with varying doses of tobacco snuff and at the end of every 2 weeks; three randomly selected rats were prepared for organ harvest followed by organ weight measurement. The results showed statistically significant organ weight changes throughout the study. Heart, liver, lungs, spleen, small intestine, right and left kidney and right and left testis all presented organ weight loss when test groups were compared with the control. Brian showed both increase and decrease weight changes that were duration dependent when test groups were compared with the control (1.83 ± 0.18) throughout the study. Based on the existing facts, our findings support the assertion that smokeless tobacco is not safe and has the capabilities of inducing intracellular damages due to its innate and acquired deleterious effects.
Breast cancer has become the most common cancer diagnosed in women and reason for most death arising from cancer, especially in developing countries. In Port Harcourt, Nigeria, there has been a steady increase in the incidence of breast cancer, surpassing cervical cancer. Hence this study is to find the link between micronutrients and the risk of breast cancer as research studies are looking towards possible ways the human body resistance could be adequately improved or enhanced to help the body overcome the onslaught of most cancer-causing agent humans are exposed to. Serum and urine selenium levels and serum vitamin E levels in 100 breast cancer patients and 50 normal healthy individuals were investigated using the ELISA method. Graphpad prism (version 7) was used for statistical analysis. The respective mean values for serum and urine selenium (μg/l) and serum vitamin E (μg/ml) were reduced in the cancer subjects 0.89 ± 1.0; 0.19 ±0.03 and 11.44 ± 6.1 when compared with control subjects with values of 4.92 ± 3.2; 4.46 ± 3.9 and 17.68 ± 16.0 for serum and urine selenium and serum vitamin E samples respectively. The significantly (p<0.05) lowered values in the cancer patients could be indicating that reduced levels of selenium and /or vitamin E are the possible risk of breast cancer.
Using a recirculation procedure to perfuse anaesthetised rat jejunum, E. coli STa enterotoxin can be shown to inhibit net fluid absorption profoundly, while not causing net fluid secretion, provided fluid measurement is by mass or volume. This observation contradicts many reports of STa causing secretion, implying that the recovered volume technique in the anaesthetised animal over a period of some hours cannot detect secretion because of conjectured or unspecified flaws. Experiments are presented here confirming the viability of the perfusion protocol used in this laboratory but also demonstrate that if secretion were to be occurring, the recovered volume protocol would detect it. It will only return a negative finding, if secretion does not occur. To this end, the effect of two secretory toxins on intestinal fluid movement in a closed loop preparation were studied to demonstrate that the anaesthetic, intestinal preparation or perfusion duration did not hinder the demonstration of net secretion when the intestine was exposed to E. coli LT and C. difficile toxin A.. It is evident that STa itself only reduces net absorption but can appear to be secretory if driving forces such as luminal osmotic pressure or capillary hydrostatic pressure through vasodilatation are introduced, as was likely to have occurred with pithing and theophylline. The recognition that STa is a non-secretory enterotoxin necessarily falsifies several alternative methods that claim to demonstrate secretion. Since STa is not secretory many other substances identified by these methods need also not be secretory and alternative explanations must be found to explain their action. The importance of recognising that action on the small intestine cannot be attributed to a secretory mechanism within the enterocyte adds further weight to the concept that where net secretion does occur, the likely mechanism for it is a combination of increased vasodilatation together with increased hydraulic conductivity.
Background: Globally approximately one in five pregnancies ends in an induced abortion, and it was one of the direct cause of maternal death in the world, unsafe abortion accounts for 13% of all maternal deaths and as much as 25% in some countries and developing world. This emphasized the need to solving the problem of abortion.
Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and associated factors of unsafe abortion among women of reproductive age group in Gondar town, North West Ethiopia, 2017.
Methods: A community-based cross sectional study design was conducted among women of reproductive age group in Gondar town, North West Ethiopia. Data were collected by using a pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire and systematic random sampling technique was used, the data was entered and analyzed with SPSS version 20. Frequency distribution, and the bivariate and multivariate binary logistic regression was used to cheek the association of unsafe abortion with the dependent variables by using 95%CI.
Results: This study found that the overall prevalence of unsafe induced abortion among women of reproductive age group was 3.9% [95%CI (1.3-7.1)] and marital status of the respondents was significantly associated with unsafe abortion [AOR = 6.9 (1.88-25.4)].
Conclusion: Our study demonstrated the high prevalence of unsafe abortion in this area and unmarried women were more likely to procure unsafe abortion. This study can be helpful for making health policy in this area and also may be applicable to some area. Providing reproductive health education for unmarried women as well as a community based health educations might be vital to prevent unsafe abortion.
Aim: This study is aimed at evaluating the eye care cadre utilisation and knowledge about the cadre of eye care professionals among undergraduate students of the University of Calabar, Nigeria.
Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study among Eighty- seven undergraduate university students. After obtaining ethical clearance and informed consent, data was obtained using a self-administered, semi-structured questionnaire elucidating demographics with items on different cadre and utilisation of eye care professionals. Ocular examination including visual acuity, anterior and posterior segment examinations was also carried out. Data were analysed using SPSS for IBM (version 20.0 SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA) for presentation as frequencies and tables.
Results: Of the Eighty-seven respondents, 87.4% were females with mean age of all respondents being 21.5±4.0. About sixty-three percent (63.2%) of respondents had never had their eyes checked, 52.9% of them were unaware of the various cadres of eye care professionals, 52.9% felt an optometrist was a medical doctor while 60% knew that an ophthalmologist was a medical doctor. Thirty-four and a half percent (34.5%) had received a previous eye check of which 10.3% was at a teaching hospital.
Conclusion: The knowledge and awareness about a cadre of eye care professionals among university students was fair. The services of ophthalmologists and optometrists were most sought after compared to other eye care providers. There is some confusion about the status of the optometrist, and this may make the populace place more demand on them in areas of care outside their domain. The university students, as well as the public, therefore, need to be educated on eye care services and the cadre of eye care professionals to help them seek appropriate eye care service based on the expertise of the eye care worker.
Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the awareness and practices of dental waste management among dental students at College of Dentistry, Taibah University, Madinah Saudi Arabia.
Methodology: An observational analytical cross-sectional study was conducted at College of dentistry, Taibah University, which targeted all male and female dental students within clinical years (third, fourth and fifth) and interns using an anonymous self-administered online questionnaire.
Results: Amongst the total respondents, 15.1% (11) were male and 84.9% (62) were female. Significantly, 8 (11%) dental students stated that they were not aware of the different categories of biomedical waste generated at dental clinics.
Furthermore, 35 (47.9%) students reported that they dispose extracted teeth in yellow containers. While 6 (8.2%) dispose them in common bins. When asked about the colour coding followed for different biomedical waste, 31 (42.5%) dental students said they were not aware about it. On the other hand, 58 (79%) of them segregate different waste according to the laws related to biomedical waste management. Approximately, 5 (6.8%) dental students correctly answered that used needles and syringes fall under Category 4 (sharp waste), whereas only 3 (4.1%) of them informed that they dispose such needles in common bins after use.
Conclusion: The majority of the dental students answered questions pertaining to dental waste management incorrectly and followed wrong practices to dispose different waste. Moreover, a substantial percentage of them were not aware of the different colour codes adhered to for biomedical waste. Therefore, this research work denotes an urgent need to implement educational programs and develop stricter laws regarding this vital issue.
