COVID 19 quarantine and its impact on lifestyle of diabetic patients and on their follow up in Madinah, KSA

Objectives: This article aims to discover the impact of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown on diabetes patients living in Almadina, Saudi Arabia, in terms of their lifestyle and on their follow-up. Method(s): This is a cross-sectional, qualitative prospective study, a questionnaire was done to diabetic patients who underwent the quarantine period in Madinah, Saudi Arabia through an online questionnaire after getting informed consent to participation. The survey included personal, medical data, patient's compliance to treatment and overall lifestyle manner before and during lockdown period and psychological assessment using 10 questions of the (K10) Kessler psychological distress scale. Data analysis was performed using SPSS program version 26. Result(s): A total of patients 350 participated in the study. 56.6% of them were females(n;198), and 43.4% were males(n:152), their ages ranged from 18 years to more than 60 years. The vast majority 96.3% of participated were of Saudi nationality, while 3.7% are non-Saudi. Participants-with types 2 Diabetes represent 31.4% while 26% suffer from type 1 diabetes and the rest they don't which type they have. Results showed no significant differences in: (symptoms of low or high blood sugar, the extent to which a healthy diet is followed, the frequency of home blood sugar measurement) before and during the quarantine period. The rest of the variables shows a significant difference (P<0.05) Conclusion(s): The study showed a difference in the extent of adherence to medication during the quarantine period compared to before. A reduction constructive in lifestyle habits is detected. Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.

The Proliferation of Twitter Accounts in a Higher Education Institution

Social media networks in higher education have become effective tools. Students, instructors, staff, and society rely on social media to support educational activities, spreading information and news, and responding to user inquiries. Twitter, in particular, is considered one of the most influential social media tools in the education process. This has resulted in the emergence of many Twitter accounts affiliated with the same higher education institution. The purpose of this study was to identify the magnitude of this phenomenon and user attitudes toward it. The study was carried out at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University and included a digital exploration of all accounts that were released during the past decade and an online survey in which a sample of followers (1,200) and a group of account managers (116) participated. The results showed that multiple accounts did represent the higher education institution. Additionally,the study revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the emergence of new accounts and the abandoning of existing accounts. Furthermore, users confirmed their confidence in these accounts for information and support;however, they believe that the proliferation of Twitter accounts is distracting and overwhelming. Finally, this paper reveals some recommendations and opportunities for future studies related to the subject. © 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Deep Learning and Holt-Trend Algorithms for Predicting Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 epidemic poses a serious public health threat to the world, where people with little or no pre-existing human immunity can be more vulnerable to its effects. Thus, developing surveillance systems for predicting the Covid-19 pandemic at an early stage could save millions of lives. In this study, a deep learning algorithm and a Holt-trend model are proposed to predict the coronavirus. The Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) and Holt-trend algorithms were applied to predict confirmed numbers and death cases. The real time data used has been collected from the World Health Organization (WHO). In the proposed research, we have considered three countries to test the proposed model, namely Saudi Arabia, Spain and Italy. The results suggest that the LSTM models show better performance in predicting the cases of coronavirus patients. Standard measure performance Mean squared Error (MSE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Mean error and correlation are employed to estimate the results of the proposed models. The empirical results of the LSTM, using the correlation metrics, are 99.94%, 99.94% and 99.91% in predicting the number of confirmed cases in the three countries. As far as the results of the LSTM model in predicting the number of death of Covid-19, they are 99.86%, 98.876% and 99.16% with respect to Saudi Arabia, Italy and Spain respectively. Similarly, the experiment's results of the Holt-Trend model in predicting the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19, using the correlation metrics, are 99.06%, 99.96% and 99.94%, whereas the results of the Holt-Trend model in predicting the number of death cases are 99.80%, 99.96% and 99.94% with respect to the Saudi Arabia, Italy and Spain respectively. The empirical results indicate the efficient performance of the presented model in predicting the number of confirmed and death cases of Covid-19 in these countries. Such findings provide better insights regarding the future of Covid-19 this pandemic in general. The results were obtained by applying time series models, which need to be considered for the sake of saving the lives of many people.

The Common Pathological Factors Between Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and COVID-19 Infection: A Review

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a widespread hormone condition that engaged in infertility and metabolic disorders, like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The prevalence of PCOS among women of reproductive age ranged from 6% to 10%. There are many pathophysiologic factors associated with PCOS development, including increased blood insulin level, which stimulates the overproduction of androgens. The second important factor is the low-grade inflammations that accompany PCOS condition. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been announced the widespread of coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic. The researchers documented the presence of certain diseases as risk factors for increased COVID-19 infection and severity including diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. This study aims to review PCOS's comorbid conditions that can predispose to increased risk of acquiring COVID-19 infection or magnifying its complications or even causing death. Studies have indicated that women with PCOS have many factors and pathologies that greatly increase the incidence of complications of COVID-19. These factors include excessive androgen production, change in microbiome formation, obesity, insulin resistance, vitamin D deficiency, and NAFLD. These factors cause decreased immunity, increased inflammatory reactions, and increased expression of the ACE2 (the gate that enables the virus to penetrate the cells). Therefore, it is necessary to inform PCOS women in order to increase precautionary measures. These women with complicated health conditions should receive high-level health care.

Awareness of using radiology in diagnosing covid-19 among radiological students

The coronavirus (COVID-2019) has spread very rapidly over many countries around the world, producing an outbreak of acute infectious pneumonia. Medical imaging devices play a vital role in early diagnosis, evaluating severity and disease prognosis of confirmed patients with COVID-19. The aim of the study is to evaluate the awareness level of radiology students about COVID-19 and their understanding of the role of radiology devices in diagnosing COVID-19. An online cross-sectional questionnaire was conducted. Seventy-one students participated in this study. This study showed that students were properly aware of the basic knowledge of the COVID-19, 87 % of the students believed that radiology had an important role in diagnosing COVID-19. In addition, 50% of the students believed that CT was the most important modality in diagnosing COVID-19 and 32.35% believed that x-ray was the most important one. Lack of knowledge was found regarding the biomarkers that appear in radiological images in patients with COVID-19. 66.18 % of the students acquired the knowledge from their study in the radiology field and from social media (Twitter). The level of awareness among radiology students is high. There were two main reasons for this high level of awareness: Gained education and social media, especially Twitter. The outbreak of the COVID-19 was not only about its health effects but also how the population persevered this pandemic. However, this level of awareness tended to be lower when discussing detailed findings of radiological images such as detailed biomarkers. © 2021 by the authors.

Covan, COVID-associated nephropathy: An evolving epidemic of kidney disease

Introduction: We highlight COVID-19 related renal characteristics in 6 African American patients with positive nasopharyngeal RT-PCR for SARS-COV-2 infection, presenting without severe respiratory symptoms but with acute kidney injury and nephrotic range proteinuria. Case Description: One of the patients was a transplant recipient. None required mechanical ventilation and no COVID-19 specific therapy was prescribed. All underwent a renal biopsy that showed varying combinations of collapsing glomerulopathy, podocytopathy and protein overload tubulopathy (Fig 1A). Additionally, tubulo-reticular inclusions and virions (suspected to be SARS-COV-2 virions) were seen in electron micrographs (Fig 1B). APOL1 genotype was tested in 3 patients who were all found to carry high-risk genotypes, suggesting possible susceptibility of patients with high-risk APOL1 alleles to kidney involvement in SARS-Cov-2 (Fig 1C) Discussion: There was discordance between the high risk G1/G1 genotype of the transplant recipient and the low risk G1/G0 donor kidney genotype, suggesting the important possibility of a systemic APOL1-related mechanism in kidney injury. In conclusion, these 6 cases draw attention to proteinuric kidney disease in COVID-19 infection, possibly associated with a milder form of respiratory disease and high risk APOL1 genotype, emphasizing the need for ongoing vigilance and further investigation into this phenomenon.