Search

Background Bangladesh has seen a significant decline in child mortality in recent decades, but morbidity among children <5 y of age remains high. The aim of this analysis was to examine trends and identify risk factors related to child morbidity in Bangladesh. Methods This analysis is based on data from four successive cross-sectional Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys for the years 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2017–18. Several count regression models were fitted and the best model was used to identify risk factors associated with morbidity in children <5 y of age. Results According to the results of the trend analysis, the prevalence of non-symptomatic children increased and the prevalence of fever, diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections (ARIs) decreased over the years. The Vuong's non-nested test indicated that Poisson regression could be used as the best model. From the results of the Poisson regression model, child age, sex, underweight, wasted, stunting, maternal education, wealth status, religion and region were the important determinants associated with the risk of child morbidity. The risk was considerably higher among women with a primary education compared with women with a secondary or greater education in Bangladesh. Conclusions This analysis concluded that child morbidity is still a major public health problem for Bangladesh. Thus it is important to take the necessary measures to reduce child morbidity (particularly fever, diarrhoea and ARI) by improving significant influencing factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented health crisis and dramatically changed human lives. This study aims to identify risk factors related to health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among COVID-19 patients who were discharged from the hospital. Material and Methods: A total of 557 COVID-19 patients of Jhenaidah district of Bangladesh who had tested positive before February 1 of 2021 were selected for this cross-sectional study. The EuroQol 5-dimensional-5 level questionnaire was used to measure the HRQoL. Thai value set was used to assess the full health status. Chi-square test was used to find out the association of HRQoL with sociodemographic and clinical factors. Finally, logistic regression was used to find out the predictors of the dimensions of HRQoL. Results: Using the Thai value set, it is observed that 57.27% of participants had reported that they had experienced moderate or severe health problems. About 40.57% of the respondent reported anxiety or depression, whereas 39.14% of the participants had experienced moderate or severe pain or discomfort. The result of the logistic regression showed that age, gender, occupation, place of care, heart problems, and diabetes significantly affect various dimensions of the HRQoL. Conclusion: The COVID-19 significantly depletes the health condition of the patients in both mental and physical aspects. Therefore, the policy-makers and government should need to come with comprehensive strategies to reduce the psychological and physical health woe of COVID-19 patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even in a natural ecosystem, plants are continuously threatened by various microbial diseases. To save themselves from these diverse infections, plants build a robust, multilayered immune system through their natural chemical compounds. Among the several crucial bioactive compounds possessed by plants' immune systems, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) rank in the first tier. These AMPs are environmentally friendly, anti-pathogenic, and do not bring harm to humans. Antimicrobial peptides can be isolated in several ways, but recombinant protein production has become increasingly popular in recent years, with the Escherichia coli expression system being the most widely used. However, the efficacy of this expression system is compromised due to the difficulty of removing endotoxin from its system. Therefore, this review suggests a high-throughput cDNA library-based plant-derived AMP isolation technique using the Bacillus subtilis expression system. This method can be performed for large-scale screening of plant sources to classify unique or homologous AMPs for the agronomic and applied field of plant studies. Furthermore, this review also focuses on the efficacy of plant AMPs, which are dependent on their numerous modes of action and exceptional structural stability to function against a wide range of invaders. To conclude, the findings from this study will be useful in investigating how novel AMPs are distributed among plants and provide detailed guidelines for an effective screening strategy of AMPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]