A cross-sectional study on aetiology of diarrhoeal disease, India.

BACKGROUND: Global, regional and national estimates clearly place diarrhoeal diseases as a major, albeit to an extant neglected public health problem. Deaths of children aged <5 years owing to diarrhoea was estimated to be 1.87 million at the global level (uncertainty range from 1.56 to 2.19 million), which is approximately 19% of total child deaths. OBJECTIVES: The present report is a cross-sectional study undertaken to estimate the role of various aetiological agents causing diarrhoea in North Karnataka and adjoining areas of Maharashtra and Goa. METHODS: Three hundred stool samples were collected from patients seeking health care at KLES Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Belgaum; and processed for detection of various bacterial, viral and parasitic agents. RESULTS: Bacterial pathogens attributed to 65.7% of diarrhoea cases, followed by viral infection (22%), parasitic infection (16.3%) and infection by Candida spp. (5.6%). The study identified Escherichia coli in general and Enteropathogenic E. coli in particular, and Group A Rotavirus to be the most frequently isolated pathogens among diarrhoea patients. CONCLUSION: The data generated from the current study will help the health officials for better interventional and treatment strategies for diarrhoeal diseases.

Group B rotavirus infection in patients with acute gastroenteritis from India: 1994-1995 and 2004-2010.

Faecal specimens collected from 2101 patients with acute gastroenteritis from three cities (Pune, Alappuzha, Belgaum) in India during 1994-1995 and 2004-2010 were tested for group B rotavirus (RVB) by amplification of the NSP2 gene using RT-PCR. Seventy-five (3.6%) specimens were shown to contain RVB RNA. The positivity rate in Pune, Alappuzha and Belgaum was 4.1%, 7.3% and 4.1%, respectively, in the 2000s which was not significantly different from the detection rate in the 1990s in Pune (2.5%, P>0.05). RVB infections prevailed in adolescents and adults (62/1082, 5.7%) compared to children (13/1019, 1.3%, P<0.001) and were detected throughout the year. Phylogenetically, all strains clustered in an NSP2 lineage together with Indian-Bangladeshi RVB strains belonging to VP7 genotype G2. The study confirmed the occurrence of RVB infections in western India and reported for the first time circulation of RVB strains in southern India, suggesting that an increased awareness and monitoring for RVB infections is necessary in India.

Discrepancies in identification of Vibrio cholerae strains as members of Aeromonadaceae and Enterobacteriaceae by automated microbial identification system.

AIMS: Incidental observation of a discrepancy in identification of Vibrio cholerae prompted a study to understand the ability of an automated microbial identification system to identify this important pathogen. METHODS AND RESULTS: Twenty clinical isolates of V. cholerae showing difference in genetic profiles by random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fingerprinting, serologically confirmed as O1, and showing presence of ctxA and tcpA genes in PCR were subjected to analysis by Vitek 2 Compact automated identification system for identification. Vitek 2 Compact detected 10 of 20 isolates correctly, whereas the remaining 10 were identified as various members of Aeromonadaceae and Enterobacteriaceae. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that Vitek 2 Compact automated microbial system does not always identify V. cholerae strains correctly. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF STUDY: These observations should create awareness among end users about possible misidentifications by automated systems and encourage simultaneous use of serology and/or PCR for correct identification at least for V. cholerae, which is one of the most important enteric pathogens.

Improved accuracy using recursive bayesian estimation based language model fusion in ERP-based BCI typing systems.

RSVP Keyboard™ is an electroencephalography (EEG) based brain computer interface (BCI) typing system, designed as an assistive technology for the communication needs of people with locked-in syndrome (LIS). It relies on rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) and does not require precise eye gaze control. Existing BCI typing systems which uses event related potentials (ERP) in EEG suffer from low accuracy due to low signal-to-noise ratio. Henceforth, RSVP Keyboard™ utilizes a context based decision making via incorporating a language model, to improve the accuracy of letter decisions. To further improve the contributions of the language model, we propose recursive bayesian estimation, which relies on non-committing string decisions, and conduct an offline analysis, which compares it with the existing naïve bayesian fusion approach. The results indicate the superiority of the recursive bayesian fusion and in the next generation of RSVP Keyboard™ we plan to incorporate this new approach.

On Visually Evoked Potentials in EEG Induced by Multiple Pseudorandom Binary Sequences for Brain Computer Interface Design.

Visually evoked potentials have attracted great attention in the last two decades for the purpose of brain computer interface design. Visually evoked P300 response is a major signal of interest that has been widely studied. Steady state visual evoked potentials that occur in response to periodically flickering visual stimuli have been primarily investigated as an alternative. There also exists some work on the use of an m-sequence and its shifted versions to induce responses that are primarily in the visual cortex but are not periodic. In this paper, we study the use of multiple m-sequences for intent discrimination in the brain interface, as opposed to a single m-sequence whose shifted versions are to be discriminated from each other. Specifically we used four different m-sequences of length 31. Our main goal is to study if the bit presentation rate of the m-sequences have an impact on classification accuracy and speed. In this initial study, where we compared two basic classifier schemes using EEG data acquired with 15Hz and 30Hz bit presentation rates, our results are mixed; while on one subject, we got promising results indicating bit presentation rate could be increased without decrease in classification accuracy; thus leading to a faster decision-rate in the brain interface, on our second subject, this conclusion is not supported. Further detailed experimental studies as well as signal processing methodology design, especially for information fusion across EEG channels, will be conducted to investigate this question further.

Clinical evaluation of the mycobacteriophage-based assay in rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in respiratory specimens.

CONTEXT: Search for a cost-effective, rapid and accurate test has renewed interest in mycobacteriophage as a tool in the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). There has been no reported data on the performance of phage assay in a high burden, low-resource setting like Kanpur city, India. AIMS: To assess the sensitivity and specificity of the FASTPlaque TB kit ability to impact the bacillary load in the phage assay and its performance in the sputum smear sample negative cases. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study involved a cross-sectional blinded assessment of phage assay using the FASTPlaque TB kit on 68 suspected cases of pulmonary TB against sputum smear microscopy by Ziehl-Neilsen staining and culture by the LJ method. RESULTS: The sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values of the phage assay were 90.7, 96, 97.5 and 85.7%, respectively. The assay was negative in all the five specimens growing mycobacteria other than TB. The sensitivity of the phage assay tended to decrease with the bacillary load. Of the smear-negative cases, three were false negative, and all of which were detected by the phage assay. Smear microscopy (three smears per patient) had a sensitivity and specificity of 93 and 64%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The phage assay has the potential clinical utility as a simple means of rapid and accurate detection of live Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli; however, its performance has been inconsistent across various studies, which highlights that the assay requires a high degree of quality control demanding infrastructure and its performance is vulnerable to common adversities observed in "out of research" practice settings like storage, transport and cross-contamination.

Infective endocarditis due to brucella.

One of the complications of brucellosis is infective endocarditis, which carries a high mortality rate if undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. We report a case of Brucella infective endocarditis, which was diagnosed serologically and by polymerase chain reaction. After Brucella specific treatment, patient showed dramatic improvement clinically, as evident by echocardiogram findings and other investigations.

Consistency study of semi-solid pharmaceutical preparations.

The study of the consistency of a number of semi-solid pharmaceutical preparation, namely: simple ointment base, paraffin ointment base, emulsifying ointment base and soft paraffin (m.p. 47--49 degrees C) was conducted using an apparatus designed for the purpose in this laboratory. Factors such as temperature and shearing stress of motive force were taken into consideration. A mathematical equation was developed for the extrapolation of the results.