ABSTRACT
Background: Stroke is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in today’s world. With early intervention and improvements in critical care the mortality from stroke is decreasing. Today there are more chances of a patient surviving after a stroke than it was 2 decades ago. But this downward shift in mortality has caused increased prevalence of patients surviving with considerable neurodeficits and cognitive dysfunction. These patients are at increased risk of developing depression which may directly affect the recovery process. Yet the depression in post-stroke patient is rarely recognised and treated. Many a times such patients remain bed-ridden, neglected depressed and only a small number of these patients are treated for depression. Some of this has to do with the fact that there are not many randomised controlled trials dealing with this aspect. Gradually with increasing survival of the patients with stroke data is becoming available suggesting that the treatment of depression in post-stroke patient have a positive effect on recovery of these patients. We conducted this study to identify the prevalence and severity of depression in post stroke patients and to assess its relationship with demographic variables and stroke characteristics. Methods: This was a cross sectional study comprising of 52 patients selected on the basis of pre-defined inclusion criteria and was carried out in Department of Neurology of a tertiary care medical institute situated in an urban area. All patients attending follow up stroke OPDS having a history of stroke confirmed on imaging (Computed tomographic, MRI or MR angiography) were included in this study. Dependent variable of our study was depression while independent variables were demographic and clinical factors such as age, gender, marital status, financial status, residence status, education level and the clinical variables were stroke type, side and site of stroke. All the patients were interviewed using the preformed questionnaire specifically designed for this study. The data was tabulated and analysed. SPSS Statistics version 2.0 was used to analyze the collected data. Results: Forty four patients with stroke out of 52 (85%) met the criteria for depression. out of which 40 were males and 12 were females with a M: F ratio being 1:0.3. Demographic variables and stroke types (hemorrhagic versus thromboembolic) were not significantly associated with post stroke depression. A peculiar finding we encountered was infarcts in the middle cerebral artery territory were significantly associated with depression. Majority of the patients (87 %) had ischaemic stroke and most common location was found to be left hemisphere (60%). Most common territory was found to be left middle cerebral artery territory which was affected in 50% of the patients.81% patients were found to be having illness since more than 6 months. Depression was more common in male patients of more than 45 years of age. There was a significant association between the post stroke depression and left middle cerebral artery infarction. Conclusion: These results highlighted the need to investigate, diagnose and treat post-stroke depression. From a neurologist’s point of view it is important to recognize the symptoms of depression so that a psychiatric opinion can be sought.
ABSTRACT
Genetic diversity was analysed in three populations of the mangrove species, Avicennia marina by using random amplified polymorphic DNA-polymerase chain reaction (RAPD-PCR). Ten random decamer primers were used to score the diversity from three locations of eastcoast of India: Parangipettai (Tamil Nadu), Kakkinada (Andhra Pradesh) and Sundarbans (West Bengal). These primers produced 388 scorable DNA fragments, of which 252 (64.98%) were polymorphic, 182 (46.90%) were monomorphic, and 14 (3.61%) were unique. RAPD banding patterns displayed variations between and within the populations, while, there was no morphological variation.