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Introduction: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by altered bowel habits and recurrent abdominal pain. The Rome III criteria are the main mainstay for its diagnosis. The reliability on any biochemical markers is reduced provided all warning signs have been excluded. The aim of our study was to assess the prevalence of IBS among medical students in our region (Western Punjab) and to investigate the lifestyle, sociodemographic and clinical factors associated with IBS. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among Indian medical students. Participants (first- to fifth year medical students from different courses) were invited to complete an anonymous questionnaire addressing social, demographic and clinical characteristics. 456 medical students were recruited in this study. Rome III criteria were used to identify patients with IBS. This questionnaire was used to gather baseline information like the family history of irritable bowel syndrome, socio-demographic data, history of chronic disease, previous diagnosis of IBS, daily sleep hours, smoking, food habits etc. Results: This study included 268 male medical students and 188 were female medical students. Approximately two third of the (69.2%) were in the age group 21 to 24 years and 26.3% had the age between 18 and 20 year and very few among age group of 24-27 years. IBS was diagnosed among 276 out of 456 participants based on Rome III Criteria. The profiles for symptoms were characterized by constipation predominant (IBS-C) (45.6%), diarrhea predominant (IBS-D) (44.7%), and others as mixed type (9.7%). The prevalence of IBS was reported as 72.3% among the female medical students studying at various medical colleges in Punjab and 53.7% among male students. Conclusion: In conclusion, 60.5% of medical students, in this study, met the Rome III criteria for IBS diagnosis. Risk factors for IBS among them included depression, anxiety, low fruits and vegetables intake, taking caffeine and any chronic medication's intake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prediction of lifestyle diseases is a vital domain in healthcare informatics research. This task is primarily achieved using the widely available machine learning algorithms. However, the highdimensionality of data amplifies the computation complexity and significantly reduces the models’ efficiency. Conspicuously, we presented a multi-disease prediction strategy for intelligent decision support using ensemble learning. The proposed work leverages genetic algorithm-based recursive feature elimination and AdaBoost to predict two prominent lifestyle diseases. Alongside the proposed approach, various benchmark machine learning techniques are also trained and validated using selected features under k-fold cross-validation. The results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in predicting multiple diseases in comparison to past works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Pelvic and acetabular fractures (PAFs) usually result from high-energy, potentially life-threatening accidents. They are one of the major injuries that lead to death in patients involved in such accidents. We studied the recent epidemiology of these injuries in Singapore.Methods: This is a retrospective data analysis of all trauma patients who underwent surgery for PAFs from 2008 to 2016 in a tertiary trauma centre in Singapore. Data including patient demographics, mechanism of injury and associated injuries was collected.Results: A total of 169 patients were admitted for PAFs over the eight-year period. The majority (79.3%) were male. The mean age was 41 (range 13-79) years. Most patients (51.5%) were Chinese. The most common mechanisms of injury were road traffic accidents (53.8%), falls (33.1%) and crush injuries (13.0%). 46.2% sustained acetabular fractures, while 44.4% sustained pelvic fractures. PAFs were most commonly associated with upper and lower limb injuries, followed by spinal and thoracic injuries. Average of length of stay in hospital was 24 (range 2-375) days.Conclusion: PAF predominantly affects young working males. Compared to previously published local data, there has been a significant reduction in the incidence of PAFs, likely due to improved road and work safety. The demographics of PAFs have changed, with fewer injuries in females (20.7% vs. 33.3%), a reduction in the proportion of injuries in the Chinese (51.5% vs. 70.1%). While road traffic accidents remain the most common cause, crush injuries are now more prevalent (13.0%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]