Public discourse and sentiment during Mpox outbreak: an analysis using natural language processing.

OBJECTIVES: Mpox has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization on July 23, 2022. Since early May 2022, Mpox has been continuously reported in several endemic countries with alarming death rates. This led to several discussions and deliberations on the Mpox virus among the general public through social media and platforms such as health forums. This study proposes natural language processing techniques such as topic modeling to unearth the general public's perspectives and sentiments on growing Mpox cases worldwide. STUDY DESIGN: This was a detailed qualitative study using natural language processing on the user-generated comments from social media. METHODS: A detailed analysis using topic modeling and sentiment analysis on Reddit comments (n = 289,073) that were posted between June 1 and August 5, 2022, was conducted. While the topic modeling was used to infer major themes related to the health emergency and user concerns, the sentiment analysis was conducted to see how the general public responded to different aspects of the outbreak. RESULTS: The results revealed several interesting and useful themes, such as Mpox symptoms, Mpox transmission, international travel, government interventions, and homophobia from the user-generated contents. The results further confirm that there are many stigmas and fear of the unknown nature of the Mpox virus, which is prevalent in almost all topics and themes unearthed. CONCLUSIONS: Analyzing public discourse and sentiments toward health emergencies and disease outbreaks is highly important. The insights that could be leveraged from the user-generated comments from public forums such as social media may be important for community health intervention programs and infodemiology researchers. The findings from this study effectively analyzed the public perceptions that may enable quantifying the effectiveness of measures imposed by governmental administrations. The themes unearthed may also benefit health policy researchers and decision-makers to make informed and data-driven decisions.

Population genetic structure and evolutionary demographic patterns of Phrynoderma karaavali, an edible frog species of Kerala, India.

Trade and collection of edible frogs are banned in India. We used mitochondrial (16 and 12S DNA) and nuclear gene (Rag-1 and Rhodopsin) sequences to examine the population genetic and demographic structure of an edible frog species, Phrynoderma karaavali (Karaavali Skittering frog) from Kerala as it exist after the ban. Frogs from 11 sites show high mtDNA haplotype and nDNA diversity which indicates a stable or expanding population. The evolutionary demographic pattern suggests population expansion across its geographical range, even though the species is still subject to poaching. Two major population clusters were observed at the northern and southern end of the species range. Gene flow occurs despite of geographic barriers. Genetic distance increases with geographical distance. P. karaavali diverged from its sister species in Phrynoderma around 11 mya in the late Miocene.

An additional record of Fejervarya manoharani Garg and Biju from the Western Ghats with a description of its complete mitochondrial genome.

An additional sighting of newly described frog species, Fejervarya manoharani Garg and Biju, outside of the type locality along with their morphological data is reported herewith. We are also providing the whole DNA sequence of the mitochondrial genome with its gene organization as additional data to distinguish this species from its congeners. The mitogenome of F. manoharani was 17,654 bp in length. It contains 38 genes including two rRNAs, 23 tRNAs, 13 protein-coding genes and a control region. Similar to other dicroglossid frogs, a tandem duplication of tRNAMet was found. The ND5 gene was located at the 3' end of the control region like in three other Fejervarya species for which mitogenomic data are available. A rearrangement of four tRNA genes, namely Leucine, Threonine, Proline, and Phenylalanine, between ND5 and 12S rRNA, differing from other Fejervarya species, was also observed.