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In the era of COVID pandemic, it is highly desirable to improve body's immune responses. Many of the diseases including COVID impact the immune system and make it defenseless. There is a growing interest of herbal medicine around the world owing to effective pharmacological actions attributed by its unique phytocompounds. Majority of the immunomodulatory drugs including both immunosuppressor and immuno-stimulators are synthetic organic compounds having side effects. Therefore, there is a growing interest to use plant-based products to regulate immune responses. The present chapter deals with the recognition of members of the family Solanaceae for their use as potential immunomodulators. There are quite a few reports of active phytocompounds isolated from different solanaceous plants that have a myriad of medicinal properties. Various phytochemicals such as phenolic compounds, flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenes, lactones, and glycosides have been shown to have various therapeutic effects on human body owing to their ability to influence body's immune system. The present chapter will give a comprehensive overview of plant-based therapeutics of solanaceous plants including withanolides isolated from Withania somnifera and Physalis sps, capsaicinoids isolated from Capsicum, and lycopene from tomato. Solanaceae is one of the superfamily having huge repertoire of plants belonging to major food crops utilized throughout the world (tomato, potato, capsicum etc.) as well as in medicine category. Besides several members of the Solanaceae family such as Physalis sps, Atropa sps, Datura stramonium, and Solanum xanthocarpum have potential phytomolecules belonging to alkaloids, terpenoids, and steroid category, which are recognized as medicines. This chapter will also give a critical overview of the possibilities, facts, and prospects of the use of members of Solanaceae family as potential future immunomodulatory drugs. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.
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The way consumers behave is fundamental to marketing. Journal of Consumer Behaviour (JCB) is an international journal dedicated to publishing the latest developments of consumer behaviour. To gain an understanding of the evolution and trends in consumer behaviour, this study presents a retrospective review of JCB using bibliometric analysis. Using bibliographic records of JCB from Scopus, this study finds that consumer behaviour research in JCB has grown substantially in terms of collaboration (co-authorships), global reach (countries), productivity (publications), and impact (citations). The major themes explored by consumer behaviour research in JCB include consumer information processing, consumption communities, consumption value, sustainable consumption, intergenerational consumer behaviour, consumer-brand relationship, consumer ethics, and conditional relationships in consumer behaviour. The most recent consumer behaviour research in JCB has considered externalities such as the COVID-19 pandemic and focused on themes such as consumer ethics and sustainable consumption in line with the global movement toward environmental social governance (ESG) and sustainable development goals (SDGs). © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Consumer Behaviour published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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The Covid-19 pandemic transformed the global entrepreneurship arena. The healthcare sector also transitioned from the traditional in-person patient-physician interaction to the virtual telemedicine healthcare delivery system with global outreach. The entrepreneur alliances in the healthcare sector almost doubled during the pandemic with maximum tie-ups with international healthcare institutions. The study takes a bibliometric perspective by analyzing articles on global entrepreneurship in healthcare. It provides the most influential authors and institutions, the thematic structure through cluster analysis, co-word network analysis, and co-citation analysis related to the literature on global entrepreneurship in the healthcare domain. The findings emphasized the importance of local alliances compared to global alliances in healthcare service delivery, especially during a pandemic. Technology was found to be a great enabler for global entrepreneurship. The study also highlights the emerging research themes for scholars working on global entrepreneurship in the healthcare sector. © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has already attracted substantial attention of the scientific community. Medical Science had never faced a tougher challenge than this pandemic. The rapid spread of the virus has caused a monumental increase in hospital admissions and deaths resulting in availability of data for analysis. Moreover, the disease has now become asymptomatic in most cases yet could be fatal for co-morbid patients. Patients on arrival to hospitals, whatever the case may be, are generally advised to opt for economically reasonable routine blood tests and certain aspects of this blood testing can assist us in determining if a patient is infected with coronavirus or not, at a very early stage. We can utilize ensemble classifiers (i.e., conglomerate of advanced and improved ensemble of learning algorithms) to distinguish between infected and non-infected individuals and rule out the scope of further spreading. In this paper, we have done a comparative study of the diverse ensemble learning techniques that are implemented over different patient's blood test reports and can presage if a patient is infected with coronavirus. © 2022 IEEE.
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SARS-CoV-2 is highly infectious and has ability to mutate into newer, more contagious, and lethal strains. Moreover, presence of comorbidities and low immunity increases the COVID-19 susceptibility and severity. Thus, COVID-19 is challenging to treat and eradicate globally. This increase stress and anxiety among the patients, worsening their condition. Even health care workers (HCWs) are distressed and anxious while managing the COVID-19. Mental stress and depression increases risk of COVID-19. Yogic breathing techniques may be beneficial in improving immunity and reducing stress and anxiety. The present study investigated the effectiveness of short and controlled Yoga-based breathing protocols in COVID-positive, COVID-recovered and HCWs. Study subjects were recruited from Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India from 13th October, 2020 to 7th January 2021. Each group was randomly divided into intervention or yoga group and non-intervention or control group. COVID-positive practiced a 5-min routine and COVID-recovered and HCW practiced 5-min and 18-min routines for 15 days. Pre-post estimation of neuropsychological parameters and heart rate variability and baseline, 7th and 15th day estimation of biochemical parameters, 6-minute walk and 1-minute sit-stand tests were conducted. Based on Ayurveda, Prakriti-type was assessed. WBC count was elevated in COVID-positive intervention (p<0.001) and control groups (p=0.003). WBC count (p=0.002) and D-dimer (p=0.002) was decreased in COVID-recovered intervention. A non-significant reduction in perceived stress and tension was noted in COVID-positive intervention. Tension was reduced and quality of life improved in HCW intervention (p>0.05). The Kapha Prakriti (48.9 %) was dominant among COVID-19 infected (positive and recovered) subjects. Distance covered in 6-min increased after intervention in COVID-positive (p=0.01) and HCW (p=0.002). The covered distance was more after intervention in all groups than control sub-group. COVID-positive intervention group shows reduced heart rate (p>0.05) and high-frequency power (p=0.01). The interventions were capable of improving exercise capacity in patients and HCW and reduced cardiovascular risk in COVID-19. The studied breathing protocol can be integrated for the management of COVID-19 and is beneficial to HCWs.
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Objectives: Background: COVID-19 infection has been affecting humans globally since December, 2019 and Remdesivir was first approved by FDA for treating severe COVID-19 pneumonia in July, 2020 though its hepatic safety has not been adequately studied. Remdesivir, a nucleotide analog prodrug, has been found to create derangement in liver function. However, COVID-19 infection itself has transient implications over liver enzymes. Aims: To evaluate the effect of Remdesivir on liver function in COVID-19 in-patients with normal liver function. Materials and Methods: This prospective study was conducted at Mediplus Hospital and Trauma Center from 1st September, 2020 to 31st May, 2021. Ethical approval was obtained and 107 PCR positive COVID-19 in-patients with normal liver function test (LFT) were included in the study. Liver enzymes ( alanine and aspartate transaminases and alkaline phosphatases) and serum bilirubin were sent after 72 h of initiation of the drug. Data was entered in Microsoft excel and result studied. Results: Out of 125 included patients, LFT became deranged in 39 (31.2%) patients. Among those 39 patients, 16 (41.0%) had isolated raised ALT, 9 (23.1%) had isolated raised AST and 14 (35.9%) had all three enzymes (AST, ALT and ALP) raised, while serum bilirubin was found to be raised in only 11 (28.2%) (Diagram1). Conclusion: Biochemical alteration in liver function has been noted in Covid-19 patients after the Remdesivir therapy. However, that effect could also be due to hepatic implications of Covid-19 infection itself and concomitant use of other drugs.
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The Drugs & Cosmetic act is meant to regularize safety & quality of medical devices, which is applied to all medical devices, implemented from 1st April 2020. Earlier 37 medical devices were regulated/ notified in India. The present study focuses on the devices which require regulations but still lack the quality check points for scrutiny from Central Drug standard control organization (CDSCO), Delhi. Furthermore, it aims to provide quality checklist for two upcoming devices (Ventilator) which is neither categorized nor regulated by Central Drug standard control organization, Delhi. Since the medical devices aid in diagnosing, treatment and palliative care, it is essential to check the quality such that it matches with the International standards. Post covid-19 outbreak ventilators have come under surveillance and notified as medical devices. The present study monitors all parameters for regulation of the ventilator. The survey based quality & regulation standards for ventilator as medical devices has been incorporated in this study.
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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the scholarly contribution of literature published on the much-hyped term fake news and associated terms such as misinformation, disinformation and post-truth in various disciplines, which contributes heavily to information disorder. Design/methodology/approach: The study conducted a bibliometric inquiry of literature published in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases (2001-2020) and steered in-depth quantitative content analysis of top-cited publications. The data mining covers 1,776 and 1,056 publications from WoS and Scopus databases, respectively. Bibliometrix R-package, VOSviewer Software tool and Microsoft Excel were used for analysis. Findings: The study concluded that the past seven years (2014–2020) are the most productive period in studying fake news and its associated terms due to the unprecedented rise of social media and digital media. The prominent themes of the study were conducted in political, health, technology, media and social media space, whereas the output is minor in the pure science field. It is also inferred that both databases are contributing consistently in the domain of fake news literature. Practical implications: The study helps in expansion of knowledge based on the research topic as well as in understanding the evolution of fake news in support of further research in this area. Originality/value: Mapping scholarly contributions of scientific research provides a guiding approach and helps counter the information chaos stimulated by fake news phenomena in the digital era. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic [1] is causing a public health crisis. One of the most helpful methods to treat the disease is to wear a face mask. This paper describes a facemask detection method that authorities may use to develop COVID-19 mitigation, evaluation, prevention, and response plans. FaMaDAS – Face Mask Detection and Alert System for COVID 19 is proposed in this work, which uses Machine Learning to identify fine-grained wearing state of a facemask, such as face without mask, face with suitable mask, and face with wrong mask. Face mask identification was achieved in this study using a binary classifier based on supervised learning algorithm. Collecting data, pre- processing, splitting data, testing model and implementing models are phases in developing model. The main aspect of the model is that anytime a CCTV camera detects a person without a face mask, an alarm message is sent to the individual as well as the necessary authorities, and a report is created. The built model can recognize whether or not someone is wearing a face mask with a 98 percent accuracy rate. On the basis of Training Accuracy and Loss, Validation Accuracy and lost the testing result reveals that FaMaDAS is adoptable and can be implement in today’s pandemic scenario. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The SARS-CoV-2 virus, accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic, is now sweeping the globe. As a result, as this disease resists testing and adoption of new treatments, repositioning existing medications may provide a quick and appealing method with established safety, features, and dose used. They are not, however, specific or focused. However, numerous medications have been studied for their efficacy and safety in treatment of COVID-19, with the majority currently undergoing clinical trials. The goal is to rapidly expand novel preventative and therapeutic medications, as well as to apply preventive methods such as early patient identification, isolation, and treatment. Moreover, reducing transmission through physical contact is also important. In the fight against this dangerous disease, finding the proper treatment is crucial. This article summarizes several anti-malarial, anti-parasitic, monoclonal antibodies, immunosuppressant, and immunomodulating agents in clinical trials for COVID-19. The purpose of this article is to evaluate and explore the potential roles of several medications now utilized in COVID-19.
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Timely cleaning of dustbin is a big challenge and if left unaddressed, it may pose several health risks by making the place unhygienic. Current system for the waste management in local areas of small and highly populated cities is sluggish which leads to a lot of garbage strewn all over the city. The rate of generation of waste is so high that if the garbage collector doesn't visit a place for a couple of days it creates the conditions adverse. In covid-19 pandemic situation, it was very important to monitor and decompose medical waste properly. The handling of normal home garbage was also challenging due to lockdown. In this situation automatic monitoring and controlling of garbage using IOT can play a significance role in garbage management. This paper proposes a smart and fast approach for waste management by creating a network of smart dustbins equipped with sensors and microcontrollers in a city which is monitored by a central control unit to speed up the process in an intelligent and smart way thereby eliminating such hazardous conditions caused by the current sluggish system. The proposed system also takes into account the issue of improper internet connectivity. © 2021 IEEE.
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This paper focuses on the spread of disinformation on novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and creating the larger phenomena of information disorder. It analyses an array of definitional meaning and disinformation on COVID-19, which has been identified and grounded with valid information by the fact-checkers. The study's aim is to explore and analyse the intents behind the circulation of misleading information (intended and unintended) on COVID-19. For the study, quantitative content analysis and qualitative discourse analysis methods were utilised to explore the extent of the misleading information on COVID-19. Further, in-depth interviews were conducted with factcheckers, media professionals, academicians, and a psychologist to understand the purpose of disinformation and its impact on society at large. The study's findings propose that fact-checking is a crucial method to identify fake/misleading information, which can be counter acted by accurate and verified information. This paper argues that holding journalists, fact-checkers, the Government, and the citizens' accountable, is necessary to counter the threat of disinformation about the pandemic.
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India at present has 145,779 active coronavirus disease (COVID) cases and 8884 deaths. Being the largest tertiary care health facility under Delhi Government, our center was designated as a 2000 bedded dedicated COVID hospital. In addition to establishing areas for COVID management, COVID Obstetrics and Gynecology area requires a dedicated set up for delivering women, an operating room, and a neonatal care unit. A phased evacuation plan begins by curtailing non-emergency services and postponing elective surgeries, this process may take longer for obstetrics than other specialties on account of labor and postnatal care. The percentage reduction in the number of elective obstetric and gynecological surgeries was 73% and further fell by 98% (n = 4;category C, D) over a period of 1 month of the evacuation phase, whereas the reduction in emergency cases was only 15% (n = 200) in the beginning and fell to 89%. During the surge phase of COVID, we were able to increase the inpatient surge capacity by 8% (n = 100) as the bed occupancy increased exponentially from 30% to 88%. The start of evacuation of the facility until the endpoint of the surge marks the most dynamic phase of establishing a COVID facility during a pandemic. Pre-event planning for surge capacity at the inception of such pandemics should be based on the local and regional policies which depend on the competing demands of resources to maintain sustainability. These logistical demands are dynamic and vary as the pandemic progresses through its phases.