Antimicrobial activity of comfort related properties of silk treated with herbal extracts in making of reusable masks

The study was aimed at divulging an eco-friendly antimicrobial finish on 100 % silk woven fabric. The leaves' extract of Azadirachata indica, Butea monosperma and Litche chinensis were used as the development of eco-friendly antimicrobial finish. The antimicrobial property and comfort related property were checked before and after applying antimicrobial finish. In comfort related property absorbency & air permeability were checked. The ASTEM E2149 Shake Flask method was used to check antimicrobial finish and AATCC method was used for checking fabric property. One way ANOVA statistical test was applied for analysis of results. The FTIR and SEM results showed the presences of finish on fabrics. In comfort related property, absorbency and air permeability was increased. The results showed that antimicrobial finish made 100% reduction against microorganism up to 25 washes which can be used in making reusable masks fight against COVID- 19.

Antiviral COVID-19 protein and molecular docking: In silico characterization of various antiviral compounds extracted from Arisaema jacquemontii Blume.

Arisaema jacquemontii Blume is a highly medicinal and poisonous plant belong to the family Araceae. It is used to treat several deadly diseases, including viral infections. It has antioxidant, anti-cancerous, antimalarial, anti-vermicidal, and antiviral activities. Therefore, five parts of the Arisaema jacquemontii Blume plant, such as leaf, seed, stem, pulp, and rhizome extract, were evaluated for metabolic and in silico characterization of probable compounds using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis. A total of 22 compounds were isolated from the methanolic extracts of A. jacquemontii Blume. A selected antiviral COVID-19 protein i.e., protease (6LU7) was docked against the obtained compounds. Different affinities were obtained through various compounds. The best results were shown by three different compounds identified in the rhizome. The maximum binding affinity of these compounds is 8.1 kJ/mol. Molecular docking (MD) indicate that these molecules have the highest binding energies and hydrogen bonding interactions. The binding mode of interaction was discovered to be reasonably effective for counteracting the SARS virus COVID-19. The findings of this study could be extremely useful in the development of more phytochemical-based COVID-19 therapeutics.

Perception of faculty towards e-learning vs. traditional learning in a public sector medical college

Objective: To evaluate the perception of medical teaching faculty of a public sector medical college in Pakistan and the barriers in e-learning methodologies according to faculty's opinion. Study Design: Analytical Cross-Sectional Study. Setting: Department of Medical Education, Sahiwal Medical College Sahiwal. Study Period: 1st April 2020 to 30th April 2020. Material & Methods: The questionnaire was sent to all the faculty members through Whatsapp due to COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan. Mean scores were calculated by using SPSS-26. Results: A total of sixty six faculty members responded to the questionnaire while it was sent to all 72. So the response rate of our study is 91.66%. According to our results, external sources barrier questions were found to be of highest mean value of 10.64 with standard deviation of 4.64. Internal source barriers were found to have least of the means value of 5.39 with standard deviation of 2.41. Motivation related to e-learning was with highest mean score of 2.67 and with standard deviation of 0.591. Lack of central policy was found to be of major concern by the respondents with mean value of 1.15 and standard deviation of 0.361. Conclusion: This study found that motivation towards e-learning as the most dominant factor. Also external sources barriers were predominately revealed in the college such arrangements are required to speedily guarantee that fast web get to and dependable systems are accessible at the higher education institutions. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Professional Medical Journal is the property of Professional Medical Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Outcomes of Neonates Born To Mothers Who Were COVID-19 Positive;An Observational Study from Pakistan

Objective: To assess outcomes of neonates born to mothers who were COVID-19 positive. Study Design: Prospective observational study. Place and Duration of Study: Secondary and Tertiary Care Hospitals of the Armed Forces, Pakistan, from Apr to Aug 2020. Methodology: We studied 106 pregnant women who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Stable asymptomatic newborn babies were kept in SARS-CoV-2 specified incubators, at specially designated areas for observation. Nasopharyngeal swabs were taken at first 24 hours and if negative, babies were handed over to clinically stable mothers who were educated regarding use of facemasks and proper hand washing. Neonates who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were evaluated for SARS-CoV-2 again at 48 hours and then every 48-72 hours, until found to be negative. Results: Total 106 women were found to be SARS-CoV-2 positive during the study period. All the women delivered singleton babies. Of the 106 babies, 5 (4.71%) were found to be positive for SARS-CoV-2 at 24 hours and only 1 (0.94%) baby was found to be positive at 48 hours and then tested negative at 7th day. Conclusion: Babies born to SARS-CoV-2 mothers were mostly asymptomatic and there was no increased risk of morbidity or mortality to the neonates suffering from the infection.

Detection of Fake News Text Classification on COVID-19 Using Deep Learning Approaches.

A vast amount of data is generated every second for microblogs, content sharing via social media sites, and social networking. Twitter is an essential popular microblog where people voice their opinions about daily issues. Recently, analyzing these opinions is the primary concern of Sentiment analysis or opinion mining. Efficiently capturing, gathering, and analyzing sentiments have been challenging for researchers. To deal with these challenges, in this research work, we propose a highly accurate approach for SA of fake news on COVID-19. The fake news dataset contains fake news on COVID-19; we started by data preprocessing (replace the missing value, noise removal, tokenization, and stemming). We applied a semantic model with term frequency and inverse document frequency weighting for data representation. In the measuring and evaluation step, we applied eight machine-learning algorithms such as Naive Bayesian, Adaboost, K-nearest neighbors, random forest, logistic regression, decision tree, neural networks, and support vector machine and four deep learning CNN, LSTM, RNN, and GRU. Afterward, based on the results, we boiled a highly efficient prediction model with python, and we trained and evaluated the classification model according to the performance measures (confusion matrix, classification rate, true positives rate...), then tested the model on a set of unclassified fake news on COVID-19, to predict the sentiment class of each fake news on COVID-19. Obtained results demonstrate a high accuracy compared to the other models. Finally, a set of recommendations is provided with future directions for this research to help researchers select an efficient sentiment analysis model on Twitter data.

OSPE (Objective structured practical examination): Perception of the faculty and students at A Public Sector Medical College in Pakistan

Objective: Objective Structured Practical Examination (OSPE) is a growing way of assessing the students of medical universities particularly. This study is targeted to compare and assess different perceptions of the faculty and the students towards OSPE at a public sector medical college. Study Design: Cross Sectional Survey. Setting: Sahiwal Medical College Sahiwal. Period: 1st July 2020 to 15th July 2020. Material & Methods: The questionnaire was sent to all the participants by Whatsapp because of COVID-19 pandemic. All the undergrad students of MBBS (500) and all the faculty members (65) of clinical and basic medical sciences were included in the study. Results: The response rate of faculty members was 78.46% and that of undergraduate students was 70.80%. Out of 51 members who responded, 23 (45.10%) were males while 28 (54.90%) were female. Female students were having majority of participation (71.20%). Most of the faculty and students agreed with the fact that ‘The questions asked in the OSPE stations were appropriate and related to the curriculum’ (60.10% and 45.10% respectively). Response to a question ‘OSPE is more transparent, fair and objective as compared to traditional practical examination’ got a nod from faculty members (49%). Almost 76% of the students (strongly agreed and agreed) thought that OSPE was tiring and stressful for them but their respected faculty members thought the opposite. Conclusion: Our study concludes that there is satisfaction of both students and the faculty regarding their perceptions of OSPE at public sector medical college. In our study while comparing, the majority of both the groups were having almost same opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Professional Medical Journal is the property of Professional Medical Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A Comprehensive Appraisal of the Wild Food Plants and Food System of Tribal Cultures in the Hindu Kush Mountain Range;a Way Forward for Balancing Human Nutrition and Food Security

The tribal belt of the Hindu Kush mountains is famous for its unique culture, ethnography, wild food plants, food systems, and traditional knowledge. People in this region gather wild plants and plant parts using them directly or in traditional cuisine, or sell them in local markets. However, there is a huge lack of documentation of the food system, particularly that related to wild food plants (WFP). In the current study, we focus on the uses and contributions of WFPs in the traditional tribal food system of the Hindu Kush valleys along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border. Ethnobotanical data were gathered through questionnaire surveys of 84 informants, including 69 men and 15 women, belonging to 21 different villages of the chosen area. In tribal societies men and women rarely mix and thus very few women took part in the surveys. We documented 63 WFP species belonging to 34 botanical families, of which 27 were used as vegetables, 24 as fruits, six in different kinds of chutneys (starters), and six as fresh food species. Fruits were the most used part (41%), followed by leaves (24%), aerial parts (24%), seeds (7%), stems (3%), and young inflorescences (1%). The reported uses of Carthamus oxyacantha, Pinus roxburghii seeds, and Marsilea quadrifolia leaves are novel for the gastronomy of Pakistan. The results reveal that WFPs provide a significant contribution to local food systems and play a role in addressing human nutritional needs, which are usually not met through farming practices. The tribal peoples of the Hindu Kush use WFPs for their nutritional value, but also as a cultural practice—an inseparable component of the tribal community’s lifestyle. This important traditional knowledge about the gathering and consumption of WFPs, however, is eroding at an alarming rate among younger generations due to the introduction of fast-food, modernization, and globalization. Therefore, appropriate strategies are imperative not only to safeguard traditional plants and food knowledge and practices, as well as the cultural heritage attached to them, but also to foster food security and thus public healthcare via local wild foods in the region.

COVID-19-Induced Mesenteric Thrombosis.

Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as diarrhea (most common among gastrointestinal symptoms), nausea/vomiting, anorexia, abdominal pain, abnormal liver enzymes, and pancreatitis, are being increasingly recognized in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Moreover, COVID-19 has also been implicated in coagulopathy, especially in patients with severe disease. Here, we report a case of acute intestinal ischemia secondary to superior mesenteric thrombosis in a young female patient with mild COVID-19.

Untying the Precise Impact of COVID-19 Policy on Social Distancing Behavior.

Social distancing has manifold effects and is used as a non-pharmacological measure to respond to pandemic situations such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), especially in the absence of vaccines and other useful antiviral drugs. Governments around the globe have adopted and implemented a series of social distancing strategies. The efficacy of various policies and their comparative influence on mechanisms led by public actions and adoptions have not been examined. The differences in types and effective dates of various social distancing policies in various provinces/territories of Pakistan constitute a pure ground to examine the causal effects of each COVID-19 policy. Using the location trends and population movement data released by Google, a quasi-experimental method was used to measure the impact of the government's various social distancing policies on the people's existence at home and their outside social mobility. Based on the magnitude and importance of policy influences, this research ranked six social distancing policies whose influence exceeded the effect of voluntary behavior. Our research outcomes describe that the trend of staying at home was firmly pushed by state-wide home order rather than necessary business closings and policies that were associated with public gathering restrictions. Strong government policies have a strong causal effect on reducing social interactions.

Impact of Traditional Plants and their Secondary Metabolites in the Discovery of COVID-19 Treatment.

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus Disease-2019 belongs to the family of viruses which cause serious pneumonia along with fever, breathing issues and infection of lungs, and was first reported in China and later spread worldwide. OBJECTIVE: Several studies and clinical trials have been conducted to identify potential drugs and vaccines for Coronavirus Disease-2019. The present study listed natural secondary metabolites identified from plant sources with antiviral properties and could be a safer and tolerable treatment for Coronavirus Disease-2019. METHODS: A comprehensive search on the reported studies was conducted using different search engines such as Google Scholar, SciFinder, Sciencedirect, Medline PubMed, and Scopus for the collection of research articles based on plant-derived secondary metabolites, herbal extracts, and traditional medicine for coronavirus infections. RESULTS: Status of COVID-19 worldwide and information of important molecular targets involved in COVID- 19 are described, and through literature search, it is highlighted that numerous plant species and their extracts possess antiviral properties and are studied with respect to coronavirus treatments. Chemical information, plant source, test system type with a mechanism of action for each secondary metabolite are also mentioned in this review paper. CONCLUSION: The present review has listed plants that have presented antiviral potential in the previous coronavirus pandemics and their secondary metabolites, which could be significant for the development of novel and a safer drug which could prevent and cure coronavirus infection worldwide.

COVID-19: Current Developments and Further Opportunities in Drug Delivery and Therapeutics.

SARS-CoV-2 has affected people from all age groups, races and ethnicities. Given that many infected individuals are asymptomatic, they transmit the disease to others unknowingly, which has resulted in the spread of infection at an alarming rate. This review aims to provide an overview of the pathophysiology, preventive measures to reduce the disease spread, therapies currently in use, an update on vaccine development and opportunities for vaccine delivery. The World Health Organization has advised several precautions including social distancing, hand washing and the use of PPE including gloves and face masks for minimizing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection. At present, several antiviral therapies previously approved for other infections are being repositioned to study their efficacy against SARS-CoV-2. In addition, some medicines (i.e., remdesivir, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine) have received emergency use authorisation from the FDA. Plasma therapy has also been authorised for emergency use for the treatment of COVID-19 on a smaller scale. However, no vaccine has been approved so far against this virus. Nevertheless, several potential vaccine targets have been reported, and development of different types of vaccines including DNA, mRNA, viral vector, inactivated, subunit and vaccine-like particles is in process. It is concluded that a suitable candidate delivered through an advanced drug delivery approach would effectively boost the immune system against this coronavirus.

Acute Upper Limb Ischemia Due To Arterial Thrombosis in a Mild COVID-19 Patient: A Case Report.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which has now been declared a global pandemic, initially began as a pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus called severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Wuhan, China. COVID-19, in addition to respiratory symptoms, is also being recognized to have different manifestations including myocardial infarction, seizures, meningitis, diarrhea, and coagulopathy. Here we report a case of a 75-year-old female patient with mild COVID-19 who later developed acute limb ischemia due to arterial thrombosis to highlight that, contrary to the association of coagulopathy with severe COVID-19, thrombosis can also occur in patients with mild COVID-19.

Diarrhoea: An Atypical Presentation of COVID-19.

Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is a viral pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease started as an epidemic in China in December 2019 that later achieved a pandemic potential spreading to over 210 countries with more than 3.5 million confirmed cases and close to 250,000 deaths till date. Its symptoms most commonly include, dry cough, fever, myalgia, and fatigue. As the number of new cases keeps on rising, many patients have been documented with gastrointestinal manifestations such as diarrhoea, vomiting and abdominal pain. We report a case of a 23-year-old female who presented with the primary complaint of diarrhoea, after positive contact history with a COVID-19 patient. Key Words: SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, Pneumonia, ARDS, Diarrhoea.