Effectiveness Of Vision Screening Program Conducted By Preschool Teachers

@#Vision impairment when undetected early can affect the social and mental development of a child. Early detection of visual impairment can provide better prognosis and can be conducted through vision screening at pre-school. Vision screening performed using pre-school teachers would allow cost and time savings while providing greater access to perform this screening. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of vision screening conducted by pre-school teachers. A total of sixty pre-school teachers from KEMAS Tabika’s and Taska’s in the Klang Valley were randomly selected and divided into two groups i.e. a Study Group and a Control Group. The Study Group was given participative and handson vision screening training whereas the Control Group was only given brief verbal instructions on conducting the screening. Each of these pre-school teachers was asked to conduct vision screening on 15 pre-school children aged 4 to 6 years old. Trained optometrists then repeated the vision screening on the same children. The results showed that there was a higher validity in the vision screening findings from the Study Group (sensitivity = 79%, specificity = 95%) compared to the Control Group (sensitivity = 26%, specificity = 95%). The level of agreement concurrence between the pre-school teachers in the Study Group and the optometrist was high for all tests (AC1 ≥ 0.89). In conclusion, the vision screening program conducted by pre-school teachers was effective but needed proper training for the screeners. This program is seen to be able to empower pre-school teachers using vison screening techniques to allow them to identify pre-school children with vision impairment who would then require further examination and management by an eye-care professional. This program would be able to reduce the prevalence of vision impairment among pre-school children in Malaysia in the long term.

Association of ADIPOQ and ADIPOR Variants with Risk of Colorectal Cancer: A Meta-analysis / 华中科技大学学报（医学）（英德文版）

Numerous epidemiological studies have studied the association of adiponectin (ADIPOQ) gene and adiponectin receptor (ADIPOR) gene polymorphisms with risk of colorectal cancer (CRC),but the outcomes were incomplete and inconsistent.Therefore,we conducted a meta-analysis to assess the associations systematically.All eligible case-control studies published up to Jan.2015 were searched from PubMed,the Cochrane library,Elsevier,Wiley Online library,China National Knowledge Infrastructure,WanFang data and Chongqing VIP.Effect sizes of odds ratio (OR) and 95％ confidence interval (95％CI) were calculated by using a fixed-or random-effect model.Twelve case-control studies including 6141 cases and 7398 controls were selected.Significant differences in the distributions of allele frequency with CRC risk were directly present in ADIPOQ variants rs2241766,rs1501299 and ADIPOR variant rs1342387.In stratified analysis for different populations,significant differences were present in ADIPOQ variant rs822396 for Ashkenazi Jewish,in ADIPOQ variant rs1501299 and ADIPOR variant rs1342387 for Chinese and in ADIPOQ variant rs 2241766 for Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese.In addition,the factors correlated with insulin resistance had synergistic effect with ADIPOQ variants rs2241766 T/G and rs1501299 G/T on risk of CRC.ADIPOQ variants rs2241766 T/G,rs1501299 G/T and ADIPOR variant ADIPOR rs1342387 G/A had a population specific correlation with CRC risk,which may be mediated by insulin resistance.And large well-designed studies are still needed for further evaluation of rs822396 and rs1063538,especially for their interaction and combined effect in the correlation with CRC risk.