Exploring the use of association rules in random forest for predicting heart disease.

Heart disease is one of the most dangerous diseases in the world. People with these diseases, most of them end up losing their lives. Therefore, machine learning algorithms have proven to be useful in this sense to help decision-making and prediction from the large amount of data generated by the healthcare sector. In this work, we have proposed a novel method that allows increasing the performance of the classical random forest technique so that this technique can be used for the prediction of heart disease with its better performance. We used in this study other classifiers such as classical random forest, support vector machine, decision tree, Naïve Bayes, and XGBoost. This work was done in the heart dataset Cleveland. According to the experimental results, the accuracy of the proposed model is better than that of other classifiers with 83.5%.This study contributed to the optimization of the random forest technique as well as gave solid knowledge of the formation of this technique.

Chemical Composition, Antioxidant, Anti-Diabetic, Anti-Acetylcholinesterase, Anti-Inflammatory, and Antimicrobial Properties of Arbutus unedo L. and Laurus nobilis L. Essential Oils.

The objectives of this work were to determine the phytochemical composition and antioxidant, anti-diabetic, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-acetylcholinesterase properties of Arbutus unedo L. and Laurus nobilis L. EOs. The antioxidant effects were estimated using four complementary methods. In addition, the anti-diabetic activity was assessed by targeting three carbohydrate-hydrolyzing enzymes, namely α-amylase, α-glucosidase, and lipase. The anti-inflammatory and anti-acetylcholinesterase effects were evaluated by testing the inhibitory potential of both plants on lipo-oxygenase and acetylcholinesterase (AChE), respectively. The antimicrobial activity of these oils was evaluated using disc-diffusion, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), and minimum lethal concentration (MLC) tests. The chemical composition of L. nobilis essential oil (EO) was dominated by eucalyptol (36.40%), followed by α-terpineole (13.05%), α-terpinyl acetate (10.61%), linalool (10.34%), and northujane (5.74%). The main volatile compounds of A. unedo EOs were decenal (13.47%), α-terpineol (7.8%), and palmitic acid (6.00%). L. nobilis and A. unedo EOs inhibited α-amylase with IC50 values of 42.51 ± 0.012 and 102 ± 0.06 µg/mL, respectively. Moreover, both oils inhibited the activity of α-glucosidase (IC50 = 1.347 ± 0.021 µg/mL and IC50 = 76 ± 0.021 µg/mL) and lipase (IC50 = 21.23 ± 0.021 µg/mL and IC50 = 97.018 ± 0.012 µg/mL, respectively). In addition, L. nobilis EO showed an anti-AChE activity (IC50 = 89.44 ± 0.07 µg/mL) higher than that of A. unedo EO (IC50 = 378.57 ± 0.05 µg/mL). Regarding anti-inflammatory activity, in vitro assays showed that L. nobilis significantly inhibits (IC50 = 48.31 ± 0.07 µg/mL) 5-lipoxygenase compared to A. unedo (IC50 = 86.14 ± 0.05 µg/mL). This was confirmed in vivo via a notable inhibition of inflammation recorded after 6 h of treatment in both plants at a dose of 50 mg/kg. The microbiological results revealed that EOs from both plants inhibited the growth of all tested organisms except P. aeruginosa, with the highest antimicrobial effect for L. nobilis. The results of these tests showed that these two plants possess remarkable biological and pharmacological properties, explaining their medicinal effects and suggesting them as promising sources of natural drugs.

Incidence of surgical site infections and prediction of risk factors in a hospital center in Morocco.

INTRODUCTION: Surgical site infections (SSIs) remain the major cause of morbidity and mortality in the postoperative period and are important surgical and hospital quality indicators. In this context, our study aims to identify SSIs associated risk factors and to develop a predictive model. METHODOLOGY: 2521 patients who underwent surgery, between June 2018 and May 2019, in four surgery departments, at the Taza Provincial Hospital (Morocco) were diagnosed for SSI according to the standards of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The SSIs' risk factors were assessed by univariate statistical analysis and logistic regression using the Scikit Learn function of Python. RESULTS: The average age of the studied population was 35 ± 1 years. The overall SSI incidence was 6.3% (17.95%, 6.86%, 6.67% and 3.16% respectively in child, female, male and gynaecological-obstetrical surgeries. The univariate statistical analysis has shown a highly significant (p < 0.001) and a very significant (p < 0.01) relationship between SSIs and almost all risk factors; and the logistic regression model has revealed a strong association between SSI and people who have had previous surgery, urinary catheter, antibiotic use duration, co-morbidity, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score, duration of intervention, emergency preoperative and postoperative durations, service, specialty and age range. The prediction score exceeds 96% which justifies our model's quality. CONCLUSIONS: SSIs are generally frequent among postoperative patients. Therefore, pre-operative preparation, post-operative surveillance and the environment quality of the wards are necessary to reduce SSI rates in the hospital.

The Relationship between Nasal Carriage of Staphylococcus aureus and Surgical Site Infections in a Hospital Center in Morocco.

BACKGROUND: Surgical site infection is a major public health problem in the world. Nasal carriage is a major risk factor for the development of nosocomial Staphylococcus aureus infection, especially methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Our work aims to determine the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and the associated risk factors and to evaluate their sensitivity to 27 antibiotics. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 100 patients, hospitalized in preoperative care of surgery units at the Taza Provincial Hospital Center in the Fez-Meknes region, from January to June 2019. Samples were taken from the patient's anterior nostril using single-use sterile dry or wet cotton swabs and then analyzed in the Provincial Public Health Laboratory in Taza. The carriage of Staphylococcus aureus was studied by conventional bacteriological methods by spreading nasal swabs on Chapman culture medium, while antibiotic resistance was determined by the Mueller-Hinton agar disc diffusion method according to the recommendations described by the Antibiogram Committee of the French Society of Microbiology 2019 (CA SFM 2019). RESULTS: Of the 84 patients found to be positive, 45.24% had coagulase-positive Staphylococcus aureus and 54.76% had coagulase-negative Staphylococcus. After surgery in the postoperative phase, 16 patients developed surgical site infections, of which two had a negative nasal culture and 14 had positive nasal culture. Among the Staphylococcus aureus-positive patients, 36.84% were colonized by a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and 63.16% by a methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA). Of these, 57.14% of MRSA colonized patients developed an infection of the surgical site and 42.85% showed no sign of SSI, while for patients colonized by MSSA, 16.67% developed SSI and 83.33% showed no sign of SSI. Moreover, children were the most affected by MRSA. Concerning antibiotic sensitivity, multiresistance of MRSA to more than 3 antibiotics has been found. CONCLUSION: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study carried out in this hospital center with the aim of knowing the prevalence of nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA and to identify the risk factors in order to prevent infections related to nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA.

Main Therapeutic Uses of Some Moroccan Hot Springs' Waters.

Morocco has an important groundwater reserve, especially in the Atlas domain, corresponding to its largest water reservoir. This reserve comes from rainwater infiltrated into rocks and sediments to give rise to mineralized waters feeding many springs and having curative properties, which confer each spa-specific therapeutic indications, based on the medicinal properties of its waters. All over the world, mineral waters of thermal springs have interesting therapeutic uses to cure some diseases; unfortunately, such potential is underexploited in Morocco. This narrative review deals with the distribution of thermal springs in Morocco, the classification of their thermal waters, and their health effects, with the aim to enhance them. For this purpose, previous studies' results on different aspects of thermal waters were searched in the most famous scientific databases, by using targeted specific keywords. Literature has shown that Morocco contains several thermal springs, scattered throughout the Middle Atlas, in the South, and in the Rif, which are regarded as waters of high therapeutic quality, whose thermal cures are often recommended to people suffering from rheumatism and locomotor system's diseases, skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis, cardiovascular diseases, overweight, or respiratory troubles. However, apart from the unique and real thermal station of Moulay Yacoub, the other thermal springs are exploited in an empirical and artisanal way, mainly by a local population. So, as hydrotherapy constitutes a good choice of natural therapy using water components as a complement or alternative to conventional treatments, a better understanding of the thermal springs' distribution in Morocco, their thermal waters' classification, and their potential health effects may enable their valorization through a better use of their waters.

Microbiological Monitoring of the Environment Using the "Association Rules" Approach and Disinfection Procedure Evaluation in a Hospital Center in Morocco.

Background: The hospital environment, especially surfaces and medical devices, is a source of contamination for patients. Objective: This study carried out, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time at Taza Hospital in Morocco aimed to assess the microbiological quality of surfaces and medical devices in surgical departments and to evaluate the disinfection procedure in time and space. Methods: Samples were taken by swabbing after cleaning the hospital surface or medical device, to isolate and identify germs which were inoculated on semiselective culture media then identified by standard biochemical and physiological tests, using the analytical profile index (API) galleries. Moreover, the association rules extraction model between sites on the one hand and germs on the other hand was used for sampling. Results: The study showed that 83% of the samples have been contaminated after biocleaning. The most contaminated services have been men's and women's surgeries. 62% of isolated germs have been identified as Gram-positive bacteria, 29% as Gram-negative bacteria, and 9% as fungi. Concerning the association rules extraction model, a strong association between some contaminated sites and the presence of germ has been found, such as the association between wall and nightstand and door cuff, meaning that the wall and nightstand contamination is systematically linked to that of the door cuff. The disinfection procedure efficacy evaluation has enabled suggesting renewing it each 4 h. Conclusion: Microbiological monitoring of surfaces is necessary at hospital level through the use of the association rule extraction model, which is very important to optimize the sampling, cleaning, and disinfection site scenarios of the most contaminated ones.

Environmental Impact Assessment of Taza City's Wastewater: Application through Principal Component Analysis.

Taza City is among the Moroccan cities which is in full urban expansion, with a daily wastewater discharge volume estimated at 16534 m3/d in 2020, and expected to reach 20056 m3/d by 2030. These waters, collected in a combined sewerage network, are directly released into the natural environment without any treatment. Indeed, a large part of this water is discharged into Oued Defali, the main tributary of Oued Larbâa. In order to manage and better understand these discharges impact on the streams crossing this city, wastewater sampling campaigns were carried out for one year from May 2018 to April 2019 at domestic (S1) and industrial (S2) sites. The wastewater physicochemical characterization revealed that these discharges are highly loaded with organic matter in terms of chemical oxygen demand (S1 avg = 1231.44 mg/l and S2 avg = 933.03 mg/l), biochemical oxygen demand (S1 avg = 511.87 mg/l and S2 avg = 464.35 mg/l), and suspended matter (S1 avg = 744.11 mg/l and S2 avg = 578.13 mg/l). The use of principal component analysis (PCA) has allowed us to collect as much information as possible from the database of the physicochemical analyses performed for the studied parameters.