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Background: Uncontrolled blood pressure is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Fixed-dose combination (FDC) therapy offers a promising approach to addressing this challenge by providing a convenient single-tablet solution that enhances the effectiveness of blood pressure control. In our systematic review, we assess the effectiveness of perindopril/amlodipine FDC in managing blood pressure.Methods: We conducted a comprehensive search across four primary electronic databases, namely, PubMed, Virtual Health Library (VHL), Global Health Library (GHL), and Google Scholar, as of 8 February 2022. Additionally, we performed a manual search to find relevant articles. The quality of the selected articles was evaluated using the Study Quality Assessment Tools (SQAT) checklist from the National Institute of Health and the ROB2 tool from Cochrane.Results: Our systematic review included 17 eligible articles. The findings show that the use of perindopril/amlodipine FDC significantly lowers blood pressure and enhances the quality of blood pressure control. Compared to the comparison group, the perindopril/amlodipine combination tablet resulted in a higher rate of blood pressure response and normalization. Importantly, perindopril/amlodipine FDC contributes to improved patient adherence with minimal side effects. However, studies conducted to date have not provided assessments of the cost-effectiveness of perindopril/amlodipine FDC.Conclusion: In summary, our analysis confirms the effectiveness of perindopril/amlodipine FDC in lowering blood pressure, with combination therapy outperforming monotherapy and placebo. Although mild adverse reactions were observed in a small subset of participants, cost-effectiveness assessments for this treatment remain lacking in the literature.

Abstract Background Meta-analyses are on top of the evidence-based medicine pyramid, yet many of them are not completed after they are begun. Many factors impacting the publication of meta-analysis works have been discussed, and their association with publication likelihood has been investigated. These factors include the type of systematic review, journal metrics, h-index of the corresponding author, country of the corresponding author, funding sources, and duration of publication. In our current review, we aim to investigate these various factors and their impact on the likelihood of publication. A comprehensive review of 397 registered protocols retrieved from five databases was performed to investigate the different factors that might affect the likelihood of publication. These factors include the type of systematic review, journal metrics, h-index of the corresponding author, country of the corresponding author, funding sources, and duration of publication. Results We found that corresponding authors in developed countries and English-speaking countries had higher likelihoods of publication: 206/320 (p = 0.018) and 158/236 (p = 0.006), respectively. Factors affecting publications are the countries of corresponding author (p = 0.033), whether they are from developed countries (OR: 1.9, 95% CI: 1.2–3.1, p = 0.016), from English-speaking countries (OR: 1.8, 95% CI: 1.2–2.7, p = 0.005), update status of the protocol (OR: 1.6, 95% CI: 1.0–2.6, p = 0.033), and external funding (OR: 1.7, 95% CI: 1.1–2.7, p = 0.025). Multivariable regression retains three variables as significant predictors for the publication of a systematic review: whether it is the corresponding author from developed countries (p = 0.013), update status of the protocol (p = 0.014), and external funding (p = 0.047). Conclusion Being on top of the evidence hierarchy, systematic review and meta-analysis are the keys to informed clinical decision-making. Updating protocol status and external funding are significant influences on their publications. More attentions should be paid to the methodological quality of this type of publication.

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and adverse events of favipiravir in patients with COVID-19. Methods: Our protocol was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42020206305). Fourteen databases were searched until February 8th, 2021. An update search for new RCTs was done on March 2nd, 2022. Meta-analysis was done for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and non-RCTs. Results: Overall, 157 studies (24 RCTs, 1 non-RCT, 21 observational studies, 2 case series, and 106 case reports) were included. On hospitalized patients, in comparison to standard of care, favipiravir showed a higher rate of viral clearance at day 5 (RR = 1.60, p = 0.02), defervescence at day 3–4 (RR = 1.99, p

Background: Drinking water quality affects directly human health. Assessment and prevention of water-borne diseases are crucial for primary prevention, especially for children. Objective: The main aim of this study was to investigate the quality of drinking water from tap water in preschools and primary schools in a district area in Hanoi City, Vietnam. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed from August to October 2019. Water samples from tap water of 154 schools in a district area of Hanoi were collected to determine the quality of drinking water. From each school, at least 2 bottles of water samples were collected on the basis of a standard operating procedure (SOP). Each water sample was analyzed for microbial and physicochemical parameters, including Color, Taste and Odor, Turbidity, pH, Nitrite, Nitrate, Ammonium, Total Iron, Permanganate, Chloride, Hardness, Total Manganese, Sulfate, Arsenic, Coliform , and E.coli , by analytical methods. The obtained values of each parameter were compared with the standard values set by WHO and National Technical Regulation on Domestic Water Quality of Vietnam. Results: All of the schools employed community water system as a main source for drinking water. The results showed that all tested samples were found to be within the standards for some physicochemical properties, including Color, Taste and Odor, Hardness, Chloride, Total Iron (Fe 2+ và Fe 3+ ), Total Manganese (Mn), Nitrate (NO 3 – ), Sulfate (SO 4 2– ), and Total Arsenic (As). On the other hand, some samples did not meet the allowable limits of the national standard, due to pH (3.9%), Turbidity (0.6%), Nitrite (3.2%), Permanganate (6.5%), and Ammonium (5.8%). Furthermore, the microbial data revealed that the substandard water samples from municipal water systems were contaminated by Coliform (9.7%) and/or E.coli ( 7.8%). Conclusions and recommendations: Contaminants such as bacterial and chemical agents in to drinking water could be occurred during transport, storage and handling before using by the consumer without regular surveillance. A periodic treatment procedure and monitoring system to keep the level of microbial and chemical contamination of drinking water in schools under control should be performed.

In this paper, we propose and evaluate the performance of fountain codes (FCs) based secure transmission protocols in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems, in presence of a passive eavesdropper. In the proposed protocols, a source selects its best antenna to transmit fountain encoded packets to a destination that employs selection combining (SC) or maximal ratio combing (MRC) to enhance reliability of the decoding. The transmission is terminated when the destination has a required number of the encoded packets to reconstruct the original data of the source. Similarly, the eavesdropper also has the ability to recover the source data if it can intercept a sufficient number of the encoded packets. To reduce the number of time slots used, the source can employ non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to send two encoded packets to the destination at each time slot. For performance analysis, exact formulas of average number of time slots (TS) and intercept probability (IP) over Rayleigh fading channel are derived and then verified by Monte-Carlo simulations. The results presented that the protocol using NOMA not only reduces TS but also obtains lower IP at medium and high transmit signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), as compared with the corresponding protocol without using NOMA.

In this paper, we consider a cooperative multi-hop secured transmission protocol to underlay cognitive radio networks. In the proposed protocol, a secondary source attempts to transmit its data to a secondary destination with the assistance of multiple secondary relays. In addition, there exists a secondary eavesdropper who tries to overhear the source data. Under a maximum interference level required by a primary user, the secondary source and relay nodes must adjust their transmit power. We first formulate effective signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) as well as secrecy capacity under the constraints of the maximum transmit power, the interference threshold and the hardware impairment level. Furthermore, when the hardware impairment level is relaxed, we derive exact and asymptotic expressions of end-to-end secrecy outage probability over Rayleigh fading channels by using the recursive method. The derived expressions were verified by simulations, in which the proposed scheme outperformed the conventional multi-hop direct transmission protocol.

The study aims to report empirical findings of quantitative research investigating what variables are significant leading proxies of fraudulent financial reporting (FFR) and the performance of the fraud detection model. The paper used financial and non-financial proxies as indicators to detect FFR with the panel data of 2235 observations of listed companies on the Vietnamese Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2020. Based on the materiality principle in auditing, the study divided the profit variance ratio into four material fraud thresholds of over 5%, 10%, 20%, and 50%. Two data mining techniques were employed: random forest for the classification model and an artificial neural network for building the best fraud prediction model. The findings show that the average accuracy of the prediction results of the random forest algorithm (RFA) reaches 91% for a material fraud threshold of 5%; when the materiality of fraud increases to above 50% of profit variance, the predictability is 98%. The average prediction accuracy of an artificial neural network (ANN) for the training set is 99%, and the test set is 97% at different fraud thresholds. These results confirm that RFA and ANN give a high accuracy in predicting fraud, and the determinants of firms committing to FFR are proxies of financial stability, followed by cash in the business and the nature of the industry. Notably, the three most important proxies related to FFR include return on total assets, return on equity, and EBT on total assets. The findings have practical implications: to identify fraudulent firms, creditors, analysts, and other stakeholders should use financial and non-financial ratios and employ data mining techniques instead of traditional fraud detection methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the nonlinear dynamic response of sandwich plates placed on the Kerr elastic substrate under blast loading. The plate is composed of an auxetic honeycomb core and functionally graded material (FGM) coating layers. The volume fraction of FGM is determined following the power-law model (P-FGM). The equations of motion of the plate are formulated by using the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) in conjunction with the use of the Airy stress function. The Runge-Kutta scheme, with the assistance of the Galerkin technique, is utilized in the present study to obtain numerical results for the nonlinear dynamic response of the plate. After verifying the proposed solution, the influences of material characteristics, blast loading, elastic substrate, and geometry parameters on the free vibration and nonlinear dynamic behavior of the plate are investigated comprehensively. The results show that negative Poisson's ratio has a significant effect on the linear and nonlinear vibration characteristics of the auxetic-FGM sandwich plate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juvenile granulosa cell tumor (GCT) is a rare ovarian tumor in children, presenting with a multiloculated cystic pattern and irregular wall-thickening on imaging and serous cystadenoma (SCA) is also another rare benign cystic ovarian tumor in children. The appearance of two uncommon types of ovarian tumors on both sides in children is extremely rare. We report the case of a 4-year-old female presenting with symptoms of precocious puberty and diagnosed with juvenile GCT on the left ovary after surgical resection. However, during follow-up 1 year after GCT resection, she presented with another multiloculated cystic mass in the right ovary, and diagnosed as SCA after surgical resection and histopathologic evaluations. The appearance of cystic ovarian tumor after primarily GCT resection need to differentiate between the recurrence of the primarily GCT and other cystic ovarian tumors although it is very uncommon. Furthermore, the imaging features played a key role in the differential diagnosis between benign and malignant ovarian tumors.

The article studies the factors affecting the dividend policy of enterprises in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, such as profitability, business size, financial leverage, growth rate, solvency, and enterprise longevity. The study collects data on enterprises listed on the Vietnamese stock market from 2019 to 2022 with 2736 observations. Using the general regression method (GLS) and the fixed regression method (FEM), the authors have identified the factors that have a positive and statistically significant impact: (i) profitability and the longevity of the business; (ii) At the same time, the research results also show that the factors that have a negative impact on the dividend payout ratio are revenue growth rate, business size, financial leverage, solvency. Besides, in the context of the Covid 19 pandemic, the dividend yield tends to decrease. The research results are a scientific basis for businesses to have more appropriate dividend payment policies, better capital attraction in the stock market, and especially a hedging strategy for risks such as Covid 19 epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]