Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Toward Cervical Cancer Screening Among Female University Students in Ishaka Western Uganda.

Purpose: Cervical cancer (CC) is the leading cause of cancer-related death among women living in third-world countries. CC is preventable, with the possibility of complete treatment if detected early. The objective of the study was to assess the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice on CC screening (CCS) among female university students (FUS) in Ishaka, western Uganda. Methods: The study was a descriptive cross-sectional study among FUS (n = 407) in western Uganda conducted after the first nationwide lockdown in Uganda. Information was collected using a questionnaire and descriptively presented as frequency and percentages. Results: The majority of our respondents were medical students 283 (69.5%), below 25 years 339 (83.3%), with Anglican Christian religious background 150 (36.9%). Respondents above the age of 25 years (p = 0.0052) and those in the medical profession (p < 0.001) had more knowledge. More medical students had a better attitude (p = 0.0043) and favorable practices (0.0134) compared to their non-medical counterparts. There is a weak correlation between attitude (r = 0.206, p < 0.001) and practice (r = 0.181, p = 0.0003) with knowledge on CCS. Conclusion: Observation from the present study suggests the need for more efforts in the fight against cervical cancer and encouragement of positive attitude and practice towards cervical cancer screening and uptake of vaccination.

Meta-synthesis and science mapping analysis of HIV/HPV co-infection: a global perspective with emphasis on Africa.

BACKGROUND: Viral infections are emerging with diverse clinical relevance both in endemic environments and non-endemic regions of the world. Some of the viruses cause co-infections that are of public health importance. The progress of studies on human immunodeficiency virus / Human papillomavirus (HIV/HPV) co-infection is not well documented especially in Africa where cases are endemic. METHOD: Using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we conducted a global three-decade meta-synthesis and science mapping analysis on HIV/HPV co-infections. Assessment of progress, Author/Country productivity/trends, topic conceptual framework, and international collaborative networks were analyzed. RESULTS: We recovered 196 documents of 115 sources from the web of science database. The meta-synthesis revealed 1203 prolific authors containing nine solo authors, an annual growth rate of 8.09%, a significant average citation per article of 20.7%, and an average citation per year per document of 2.1. A significant high correlation between the mean/TC per article and the mean total citation (TC) per year showed 80.98% of the articles produced between 2005 and 2007 on HPV/HIV co-infection. The co-author per document index were 7.0 and the collaboration index was 6.4. The meta-analysis also revealed inadequate funding from individual or governmental organizations; among the 196 documents dataset, 114 (58.2%) were funded, and only 31 (15.8%) were funded in Africa where HIV/HPV co-infection cases are endemic. CONCLUSIONS: Authors' collaboration network, countries' collaboration, authors' citations and implementation of research-based finding in previous studies are yet to receive the relevant outcome, especially as various countries in the African continent have received poor funding with a repeated reporting of co-infection associated with HIV/HPV. African needs to re-awaken and stir up research-based interest in HPV/HIV co-infection studies to resolve indigenous public health concerns associated with the viral endemicity.

Substance Use, Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, and Liver Enzymes: Evidence From a Cross-Sectional Study of HIV-Infected Adult Patients Without Comorbidities on HAART in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital.

This study applied a structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the role of substance use (alcohol, smoking, and trado-medicine use) to changes in the liver enzymes (AST, ALT, and ALP) levels in HIV-infected adult patients on a highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) for not <1 year. The study was a cross-sectional, part of a randomized comparative trial (Ref: UPH/CEREMAD/REC/19), involving 129 (46 males and 83 females) HIV-infected adult patients. Liver enzyme levels were determined from analyzed blood samples using the Clinical Chemistry Analyser (VS10) manufactured by Vitro Scient, while the study determined substance use using a reliable (Cronbach alpha = 0.805) rapid-exploratory survey questionnaire. Liver enzyme values were further categorized into: normal or abnormal using normal reference ranges (ALT = 7-55 U/L, AST = 8-48 U/L, and ALP = 40-129 U/L). STATGRAPHICS V16.1.11 (StatPoint Tech., Inc.) and SPSS (IBM® Amos V21.0.0, USA) were used to analyze the data. Among the HIV-HAART patients, 27.9% were alcohol users, 20.9% smokers, and 20.1% trado-medicine users. In addition, ALP (71.3%) abnormality was higher than ALT (34.9%) and AST (28.7%). The result from the SEM provided only a partial support for our hypotheses of direct substance use effects on the liver enzyme levels and abnormalities; with a direct association of alcohol with an elevated AST (b = 0.170, p = 0.05) and smoking with a higher AST (b = 0.484, p < 0.01) and ALT (b = 0.423, p < 0.01) values. Trado-medicine use was not directly associated with enzyme elevation and abnormality. In conclusion, ALP abnormality was the most common, and there is a close association between an elevated ALT and AST, with or without an elevated ALP. The study found that HIV-HAART patients who drink or smoke will have at least one or more abnormal transaminases. The possible explanation to the increased risk among HIV-HAART patients could be associated with the metabolic pressures and supra-additive effects on the livers.

Evaluation of sexual dimorphism by discriminant function analysis of toe length (1T-5T) of adult Igbo populace in Nigeria.

BACKGROUND: Sex determination is an important and one of the foremost criteria in establishing the identity of an individual, and this is achieved by investigating various anatomical structures to establish sex discriminatory features. The present study conducted baseline data for the toe with a view of finding discriminatory sex characteristics. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 420 subjects were studied by direct linear measurements of the toe length (big toe [1T] to the fifth toes [5T]) of both feet using a digital Vernier caliper with accuracy of 0.01 mm. Statistical Package for Social Sciences  (IBM, version 23, Armonk, New York, USA), Levene's ANOVA outcome informed the use of t-tests to compare mean differences. Discriminant function analysis (DFA) was used to evaluate the possibility of sex categorization. The significance level was set at 95%. RESULTS: The mean ± standard deviation values of the right (R) toes for the males were 49.63 ± 4.43 mm (1T), 36.92 ± 5.14 mm (2T), 30.35 ± 4.95 mm (3T), 25.55 ± 3.97 mm (4T) and 22.21 ± 2.94 mm (5T), whereas the female values were 45.73 ± 4.07 mm (1T), 33.31 ± 4.66 mm (2T), 26.63 ± 4.02 mm (3T), 22.89 ± 3.43 mm (4T), and 19.77 ± 2.70 mm (5T). The left male values were 49.16 ± 4.32 mm (1T), 36.82 ± 5.16 mm (2T), 30.88 ± 4.91 mm (3T), 26.13 ± 3.99 mm (4T), and 22.46 ± 3.24 mm (5T), whereas the female values were 45.33 ± 4.05 mm (1T), 33.05 ± 4.70 mm (2T), 27.27 ± 4.29 mm (3T), 23.10 ± 3.36 mm (4T), 19.81 ± 2.59 mm (5T). From the results, males displayed significantly higher mean values than females in all measured parameters (t = 2.405, P = 0.018) with no asymmetry (P > 0.05); although T3 and T4 were larger on the left foot. The DFA model when tested with the present data derived a significant F likelihood ratio test (P < 0.001), a Wilks' lambda predictability value of 0.759 having a model accuracy of 69.5% with a better prediction for female (70%) than males (69%). CONCLUSION: The use of toe length alone may not be effective for sex differentiation; however, it can serve as an adjunct in forensic investigation involving sex identification.