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Background: Standard Precaution (SPs) practices protect health-care workers prevent hospital-acquired infections. With Competency Based Medical Education (CBME) and early clinical exposure (ECE) implemented in the new curriculum, the first year medical students need to be aware of SPs, so as to protect themselves and the patients from these hazards. Aims & objective: To assess the knowledge of standard precautions among the medical students and find out association of knowledge with selected demographic variables. Methods and material: This cross-sectional study was done among first year medical undergraduate students of a medical college.Data was collected through google form with researcher-made questionnaire including questions on knowledge about SPs and socio-demographic variables of the study participant and their parents. Results: Response rate was 97.9%. Mean age of the participants was 19.13 ± 0.858 years; 57.7% were girls.Although 80.3% had heard of SPs but as high as 83.1% were of the opinion that “SPs were only for protection of the health-care team”, 23.2% felt that it should “only be used in patients diagnosed with infection”. 96.5% knew that “hand hygiene should be performed while providing care to patients”, 97.2% had knowledge about respiratory and cough hygiene practices, 14.1% of them felt that “PPE can be shared”. 57% of the respondents answered that “needle should be recapped after giving injections”. Conclusions: Students in early clinical years were found to have a varied level of knowledge of SPs and a lot of gaps in correct understanding of required facts. Continued medical education and skill-assessment to test their knowledge, must be incorporated into their teaching curriculum before ECE, so as to minimize the risk of preventable infections.

Screen dependency disorder is on a rising trend and being less researched, the study tried to find out the prevalence and pattern of screen viewing (SV) among children less than two-years of age. Data was collected through in-person interviews from their mothers. Increasing child-age and type of family were significantly associated with higher prevalence of SV. Smart phones had similar usage rates as TVs. Parental knowledge and practices were found to influence the SV and screen-time in children. Modifiable factors like parental knowledge on SV, parental SV practices can help in designing health promotion strategies and recommendations on SV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are important for stress adaptation in prokaryotes, including persistence, antibiotic resistance, pathogenicity, and biofilm formation. Toxins can cause cell death, reversible growth stasis, and direct inhibition of crucial cellular processes through various mechanisms, while antitoxins neutralize the effects of toxins. In bacteria, these systems have been studied in detail, whereas their function in archaea remains elusive. During heat stress, the thermoacidophilic archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius exhibited an increase in the expression of several bicistronic type II vapBC TA systems, with the highest expression observed in the vapBC4 system. In the current study, we performed a comprehensive biochemical characterization of the VapBC4 TA system, establishing it as a bonafide type II toxin-antitoxin system. The VapC4 toxin is shown to have high-temperature catalyzed RNase activity specific for mRNA and rRNA, while the VapB4 antitoxin inhibits the toxic activity of VapC4 by interacting with it. VapC4 toxin expression led to heat-induced persister-like cell formation, allowing the cell to cope with the stress. Furthermore, this study explored the impact of vapBC4 deletion on biofilm formation, whereby deletion of vapC4 led to increased biofilm formation, suggesting its role in regulating biofilm formation. Thus, during heat stress, the liberated VapC4 toxin in cells could potentially signal a preference for persister cell formation over biofilm growth. Thus, our findings shed light on the diverse roles of the VapC4 toxin in inhibiting translation, inducing persister cell formation, and regulating biofilm formation in S. acidocaldarius , enhancing our understanding of TA systems in archaea., Importance: This research enhances our knowledge of toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems in archaea, specifically in the thermoacidophilic archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius . TA systems are widespread in both bacterial and archaeal genomes, indicating their evolutionary importance. However, their exact functions in archaeal cellular physiology are still not well understood. This study sheds light on the complex roles of TA systems and their critical involvement in archaeal stress adaptation, including persistence and biofilm formation. By focusing on S. acidocaldarius , which lives in habitats with fluctuating temperatures that can reach up to 90°C, the study reveals the unique challenges and survival mechanisms of this organism. The detailed biochemical analysis of the VapBC4 TA system, and its crucial role during heat stress, provides insights into how extremophiles can survive in harsh conditions. The findings of this study show the various functions of the VapC4 toxin, including inhibiting translation, inducing persister-like cell formation, and regulating biofilm formation. This knowledge improves our understanding of TA systems in thermoacidophiles and has broader implications for understanding how microorganisms adapt to extreme environments., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

The number of cases of drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections is on the rise globally and new strategies to identify drug candidates with novel mechanisms of action are in urgent need. Here, we report the synthesis and evaluation of a series of benzo[b]phenanthridine-5,7,12(6H)-triones, which were designed based on redox-active natural products. We find that the in vitro inhibitory activity of 6-(prop-2-ynyl)benzo[b]phenanthridine-5,7,12(6H)-trione (1f) against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), including a panel of patient-derived strains, is comparable or better than vancomycin. We show that the lead compound generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the cell, contributing to its antibacterial activity.