ABSTRACT
Background: The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues its deadly reign all over the world. Devising effective strategies for detecting and controlling the infection has become ever more critical. Effective prevention and control of the pandemic is entirely dependent on human behavior in terms of practicing preventive and curative measures. During the second wave of COVID-19, people’s perceptions of preventive and curative measures changed. Objective: To study healthcare-seeking behavior of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Methods: Hospitalized patients due to COVID-19 in the month of March, April and May of 2021 were included in the study. Their attendants/close relatives were contacted telephonically to know about the admitted patients’ healthcare-seeking behavior. Verbal consent was taken from attendants before the commencement of the interview, followed by informing them about the purpose of the interview. Results: Amongst the subjects, there were more males than females (67.5 vs 32.4%), age ranged between 18 to 88 with a mean value of 56.61 ± 14.7 years. Self-medication was significantly associated with study subjects’ mortality (p=0.03). Conclusion: Elderly people were having higher mortality rate than their younger counterparts. People were hesitant to visit primary care physicians after having symptoms of COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
Diabetes has become a serious threat to mankind, as it is found in all parts of the world. Alloxan induced diabetic mice were treated by metformin to study the impact of oxidative stress and endogenous antioxidants. Due to the establishment of diabetes, the oxidative stress indicators were found to be positively correlated with the elevation in the levels of endogenous antioxidants. Whereas, in metformin-treated diabetic mice, the data revealed the correction of diabetes by lowering of blood glucose level along with body weight. But the levels of endogenous antioxidants were not recorded to increase except GST. It shows that under in vivo system level of oxidative stress increases due to the metformin. The data revealed that metformin treatment of mice, however, manage the glucose level but not effective in controlling oxidative stress.