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Introduction: Liver Cancer is aggressive cancer and patients are mostly screened and diagnosed when they become symptomatic at advanced. Disease severity, depression, fatigue, joint pain, and poor appetite have been reported as strong determinants of quality of life (QoL) among liver cancer patients. Aims: The objective of the study was to assess the quality of life and depression among liver cancer patients in Pakistan. Study Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in healthcare facilities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan between June 2020-December 2020. Methodology: Two pre-validated questionnaires i.e. EORTC QLQ-C30 and HADS were self-administered to a sample of 100 liver cancer patients selected using a convenience sampling technique for measuring QoL and depression, respectively. After data collection, data was cleaned, coded, and entered in SPSS. Results: The results highlighted that the lowest scores observed in the domain of symptom scale were: Nausea and Vomiting (23.72, ± 28.238), Dyspnea (25.27, ± 26.90), Constipation (26.03, ± 34.75) followed by Diarrhea (22.63, ± 28.42), whereas highest scores in the symptom scale were observed in the domain of fatigue (37.69, ± 20.06), pain (40.37, ± 18.44), insomnia (41.65, ± 32.37) and financial difficulties (60.33, ± 33.830). On the other hand, highest score on the functional scale was observed for physical functioning (64, ± 21.76) and the lowest score was observed in social functioning (53.19, ± 20.66). Conclusion: The present study concluded that liver cancer had a negative impact on risk factors/past medical history, co-morbidities, and poor socio-economic of life across all domains along with moderate depression in liver cancer patients. Illiteracy, advanced liver cancer stage, risk factors/past medical history, co-morbidities and poor socio-economic status negatively affected functional and symptom scale. Appropriate health educational and psychological interventional programs targeting patients should be initiated to improve awareness and reduce depression among liver cancer patients.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is one of the most common autoimmune diseases present today. Although treatment options may differ among clinicians, a commonly prescribed treatment is hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), alone or in combination with other medications. HCQ has been studied for its immunomodulatory effects as well as its role in treating adverse conditions associated with RA. This systematic review examined the use of HCQ therapy in RA patients. A systematic search for relevant literature through PubMed, National Institute of Informatics, Japan (CiNii), and Science Direct databases were carried out in August 2021. Literature directly related to HCQ therapy for RA patients, RA-associated chronic kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease (including lipid profile) was considered relevant. HCQ associated retinopathic adverse effects were also selected for this review. Thirty-eight articles were found to be relevant, passed quality assessment, and were included in this review. Nine articles discussed HCQ therapy in comparison with other therapies (mainly methotrexate and sulfasalazine), but were contradictory in their outcomes, as were the seven papers that reviewed kidney function in RA patients with and without HCQ. Five articles credited better cardiovascular outcomes to RA patients taking HCQ. Sixteen articles studied the relationship between HCQ and retinal toxicity, providing insights into the risks associated with HCQ therapy. HCQ therapy was found not only to be beneficial in slowing the disease progression in RA patients but enhanced the effects of methotrexate in treating RA as well. Data strongly associates HCQ therapy with the mitigation of RA-related cardiovascular and kidney conditions. However, if HCQ is prescribed, it is imperative to be aware of the possible (although rare) retinopathic adverse effects associated with this therapy.

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) is the process of transferring the fecal microbiome from a healthy donor to an individual with repeated multiple episodes of Clostridium difficile infection. It is also known as stool transplant. Fecal microbiota transplant is effective and safe in various studies, the approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) remains pending. The main objective of this systemic review is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of stool transplant in studies with only treatment groups (FMT) and studies with treatment (FMT) and antibiotic (AB) groups and previous studies. Online databases PubMed, PubMed Central, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and Embase were searched for relevant articles in the last five years (2016 to 2021) using automation tools. Following the removal of duplicates, screening of eligibility criteria, titles/abstracts, and quality appraisal were done by two authors independently. In total, seven observational studies are in this review article. Out of the seven observational studies, five are retrospective and two prospective. Two of the five retrospective and one of two prospective studies have a control group. In both the prospective studies and one retrospective study, FMT efficacy of (68% to 93%) was demonstrated in the elderly population despite high index comorbidities. In the younger individuals with inflammatory bowel disease, and efficacy of 90% or above was found. The most common side effects were minor such as fever, abdominal pain, bloating, and flatulence. In one study, two cases of aspiration events occurred attributed to the gastroscopy route of donor feces delivery. There was no statistical significance in the incidence of diseases such as (allergies, autoimmune diseases, cancer, inflammatory bowel diseases, and neurological diseases like dementia and migraine). Fecal microbiota transplantation has shown to be effective and safe in recurrent Clostridium difficile infections. Since very few pragmatic studies have demonstrated its efficacy and safety, their application is not well established. Robust studies, both observation and experiment, are required in the future to well-establish its effectiveness, safety in the treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile infection.

Dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) is used in patients after drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation to prevent stent thrombosis and ischemic events. The ideal duration of DAPT in patients after DES implantation is a topic of debate among clinicians. In the past, many research studies were published related to an optimal duration of DAPT after DES implantation. In common practice, DAPT should be continued for one year or more after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) followed by DES implantation. The duration of DAPT is significant as long-term DAPT has beneficial effects but is associated with side effects like bleeding. On the other hand, short-term DAPT has a lower risk of bleeding, but it increases the rate of stent thrombosis or ischemic events. Our aim in this systematic review is to solve the dispute regarding the duration of DAPT after DES implantation. So, we tried to find the efficacy and safety of short-term (six months) DAPT by compiling data from randomized control trials (RCTs). We conducted this systematic review following the guidelines defined in the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) checklist. We searched for our data from multiple databases like PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar. We reviewed 10964 studies and then applied inclusion/exclusion criteria and PRISMA guidelines. Finally, we were left with only 21 studies regarding the optimal duration of DAPT after DES implantation. Our systematic review will help determine the non-inferiority of short-term (six months) DAPT to long-term (12 months) DAPT. Furthermore, we also noticed with short-term (six months) DAPT, there was decreased incidence of bleeding as compared to DAPT for long-term. But more studies were required to establish the safety and effectiveness of short-term (six months) DAPT compared to long-term (12 months) DAPT in patients after DES implantation.

Large-scale massive MIMO network deployments can provide higher spectral efficiency and better coverage for future communication systems like 5G. Due to the large number of antennas at the base station, the system achieves stable channel quality and spatially separable channels to the different users. In this paper, linear, planar, circular and cylindrical arrays are used in the evaluation of a large-scale multi-cell massive MIMO network. The system-level performance is predicted using two different kinds of channel models. First, a ray-based deterministic tool is utilized in a real North American city environment. Second, an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading channel model is considered, as often used in previously published massive MIMO studies. The analysis is conducted in a 16-macro-cell network with outdoor and randomly distributed users. It is shown that the array configuration has a large impact on the throughput statistics. Although the system-level performance with i.i.d. Rayleigh fading can be close to the deterministic prediction in some situations (e.g., with large linear arrays), significant differences are noticed when considering other types of arrays.

Massive MIMO systems serve multiple users in the same time-frequency resource by utilizing large antenna arrays. A uniform linear array (ULA) containing 128 antenna elements is considered in an urban North American city environment with multiple user channels. The simulations are conducted with a ray-based tool with the latest enhancements of outdoor-to-indoor (O2I) channel prediction capabilities. Most massive MIMO research often uses theoretical models which are based on various assumptions which cannot accurately predict the channel performance. In this paper, simulations are conducted to characterize and evaluate massive MIMO channels in O2I scenarios. A comparison is drawn with regard to line-of-sight (LoS) channels using the singular value spread (SVS) analysis for users located in a same building. It is concluded that the channel dispersion caused by the various multi-paths created at the O2I interface contributes to better channel performance in smaller antenna arrays which is only limited by the path-loss. For larger arrays, there is a saturation of the O2I SVS contribution.

Hybridation between ray-based deterministic propagation modelling and statistical components is viewed as a promising solution to assess the performance of outdoor small-cell network designs or allocation techniques. In the solution presented in this paper, the main properties of the propagation channel (i.e. the specular paths, and the blockage by large objects) are simulated from the 3D geographical data and the ray-based model, while the effect of small or dynamic in-street objects, like vehicles and human bodies, can be appropriately reproduced by a stochastic procedure. A new feature of the solution consists in the creation of random clusters of human bodies in the surrounding of the users (the impact of the user body itself was previously introduced in the hybrid model as a stochastic factor). The application and interest of the new feature is illustrated in a radio access 60-GHz small-cell scenario, where small-cells are installed on lampposts and users are distributed in the street. The blockage by the human bodies affects the cell selection and beam orientation; the degradation of the service coverage is evaluated based on the signal-to-noise ratio (SINR) and for various human crowd densities.

Deliverable D2.2 del proyecto 5GWireless The next generation (5G) of wireless communication will improve upon existing mobile communication standards significantly while taking into account the increasing amount of stress on the limited amount of available spectrum today. The millimetre wave (mmWave) spectrum provides abundant and contiguous resources to solve this issue. The work package 2 (WP2) of the 5G-wireless project is devoted to the modelling of mmWave propagation channels and development of appropriate mmWave beamforming and signal processing techniques. The deliverable D2.1 paved the way to better understand the state-of-the-art existing in mmWave channel measurements, characterization, modelling, antenna technologies, channel estimation, precoding algorithms and review of the evaluation and analysis tools. In this deliverable D2.2, advances to the state-of-the-art are made by proposing new methodologies in propagation channel characterization modelling, new antenna designs and innovative energy efficient architectures