The effects of educational program on child care knowledge and behaviors of mothers of children under five years with pneumonia.

Objectives: This study was aimed to evaluate the effects of the educational program on child care knowledge and behaviors of mothers of children aged under five years. Materials and Methods: The quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design was used to examine the effects of educational program on child care knowledge and behaviors of mothers of children under five years old with pneumonia. Fifty mothers of children under five years hospitalized with pneumonia were purposively assigned following standard procedure into either experimental or control group. Mothers of the study group received educational program together with children’s routine care, where as control group mothers just attended their children receiving treatment. Subsequently mothers’ knowledge, evaluated through structured Knowledge Questionnaire and behavioral information, through Behavioral Checklist Form were evaluated. Data were expressed as number (percent) and mean (SD) as appropriate. Demographic characteristics were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. Independent t-test and paired t-test were used to calculate statistical difference between groups as applicable. Results: Findings revealed that, subjects of both groups are homogenous in terms of demographic characteristics, but significant difference was observed regarding their mean (􀁲SD) knowledge (25.04􀁲5.81 vs 34.64􀁲3.86, p<0 .001) and behavior score (6.64􀁲2.23 vs 17.68􀁲1.89; p<0.001) between control and study group respectively. Conclusions: It was concluded that educational program supported that nurses need to involve themselves through helpful method of the educational program to teach the mothers’ knowledge about pneumonia and their behavior during caring their sick children. Such program could effectively increase both knowledge and behavior of mothers of children under five with pneumonia.

PCR can help early diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis.

One hundred and fifty-one patients, clinically suspected for pulmonary tuberculosis (age: 31 +/- 13 years, male/female: 112/39), were investigated to evaluate the diagnostic potential of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based detection of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in sputum. The diagnostic efficacy of PCR was compared with culture of Mycobacterium tuberculosis on egg-based Lowenstein-Jensen modified medium. PCR detected 71.5% (108/151), whereas culture detected 66.2% (100/151) of the clinically suspected patients. There was a significant association between the results of PCR and culture (chi2 = 59.524, p < 0.001). However, 23.2% (35/151) samples were found negative in both culture and PCR. Considering culture as the gold standard, the sensitivity of the PCR was 92%. and its specificity 70%. This lower apparent specificity may be due to the higher sensitivity of PCR.

Genetic background of diabetic and nondiabetic sibs in young Bangladeshis.

The prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the young is higher in Bangladesh like other Asian developing nations. Albeit, undernutrition has been shown to be associated with diabetes in the young, not all such individuals are diabetic. Diabetes Mellitus is a multigenic disease. In IDDM, DR3/4 heterozygotes were shown to have a greatly increased risk of developing the disease, suggesting the concept of genetic factor(s) being involved in the development of diabetes. Therefore, this study was undertaken to determine the distribution of HLA class II alleles (DRB) and to identify the HLA associated risk for developing diabetes mellitus in the young Bangladeshis. A total of fifty individuals were investigated. Half of them (n=25) were diabetic patients, registered in BIRDEM and half the participants were their non-diabetic sibs. A genomic DNA PCR and Enzyme Linked Probe Hybridization Assay (ELPHA, Bio-test, Germany) was used to determine HLA class II alleles (DRB1, DRB 3, 4, 5) by in vitro amplification of DRB gene. Among all the sero-equivalent antigens found in the study subjects, the prevalence of DR15 (DR2) was overrepresented, both in the diabetic subjects and in their non-diabetic sibs. Moreover, compared with the non-diabetic group the diabetic patients showed higher frequency of DR15 alleles (39 and 25%) though the difference was not significant (chisq. 1.7, p>0.05). Next to DR15, DR4 was the most prevalent HLA-DRB gene found in the study population. Interestingly, the frequency of DR4 was higher in the diabetic than in the non-diabetic group (20 vs. 14%). The study showed that the DR15 and DR4 were the most prevalent in the study population. Moreover, DR7 though not very significant, was higher in non-diabetic compared to their diabetic sibs. Comparison between the diabetic and non-diabetic sibs could have been interesting and significant but we could not confirm our findings, possibly, due to small sample size. A study in a larger paired sample of unrelated population is also needed to substantiate our findings, and also to prove the susceptibility or resistant haplotype in the young diabetic subjects.