Impact of child marriage on nutritional status and anaemia of children under 5 years of age: empirical evidence from India.

OBJECTIVE: Despite several international commitments and national policies to eliminate the practice of girl child marriage, it remains pervasive in India. In this study, we aimed to examine the association between child marriage and nutritional status and anaemia in children aged below 5 years. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: We have used the data from the latest round of the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS), conducted in 2015-2016. For this study, the sample was limited to 80,539 living children aged below 5 years born to 60,003 ever-married women aged 15-24 years. We have considered children's stunting, wasting, underweight and anaemia as outcomes variables and child marriage (married below 18 years) as the exposure of variables of interest. Pearson's Chi-squared test and binary logistic regressions were applied to assess the associations. RESULTS: About 58% of sample women were married before 18 years of age. The prevalence of children's stunting, wasting and underweight were 37%, 23% and 36%, respectively. More than half of the sample children (62%) were anaemic. Regression analysis revealed that child marriage (<18 years) was significantly associated with increased likelihood of stunting (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.06, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.02-1.10) and underweight (AOR = 1.04, 95% CI = 1.00-1.08) even after controlling for relevant confounding variables. Child marriage had no significant association with children being wasted and anaemic in crude analyses. However, it is found that child marriage significantly increases the risk of childhood anaemia in adjusted analyses (AOR = 1.08, 95% CI = 1.03-1.13). CONCLUSIONS: The findings of our study suggest that there is a need for effective policies and programmes to end the practice of child marriage and targeted intervention should be made to improve nutritional outcomes of children born to women married in childhood.

Hydration of nail plate: a novel screening model for transungual drug permeation enhancers.

Drug delivery by topical route for the treatment of onychomycosis, a nail fungal infection, is challenging due to the unique barrier properties of the nail plate which imparts high resistance to the passage of antifungal drugs. Permeation enhancers are used in transungual formulations to improve the drug flux across the nail plate. Selection of the effective permeation enhancer among the available large pool of permeation enhancers is a difficult task. Screening the large number of permeation enhancers using conventional Franz diffusion cells is laborious and expensive. The objective of present study was to evolve a simple, accurate and rapid method for screening of transungual drug permeation enhancers based on the principle of hydration of nail plate. The permeation enhancer which affects the structural or physicochemical properties of nail plate would also affect their hydration capacity. Two screening procedures namely primary and secondary screenings were evolved wherein hydration and uptake of ciclopirox olamine by nail plates were measured. Hydration enhancement factor, HEF(24) and drug uptake enhancement factor, UEF(24) were determined for screening of 23 typical permeation enhancers. The Pearson's correlation coefficient between HEF(24) and UEF(24) was determined. A good agreement between the HEF(24) and UEF(24) data proved the validity of the proposed nail plate hydration model as a screening technique for permeation enhancers.

Design and development of a radio frequency quadrupole linac postaccelerator for the Variable Energy Cyclotron Center rare ion beam project.

A four-rod type heavy-ion radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) linac has been designed, constructed, and tested for the rare ion beam (RIB) facility project at VECC. Designed for cw operation, this RFQ is the first postaccelerator in the RIB beam line. It will accelerate A/q < or = 14 heavy ions coming from the ion source to the energy of around 100 keV/u for subsequent acceleration in a number of Interdigital H-Linac. Operating at a resonance frequency of 37.83 MHz, maximum intervane voltage of around 54 kV will be needed to achieve the final energy over a vane length of 3.12 m for a power loss of 35 kW. In the first beam tests, transmission efficiency of about 90% was measured at the QQ focus after the RFQ for O(5+) beam. In this article the design of the RFQ including the effect of vane modulation on the rf characteristics and results of beam tests will be presented.

Modified mandated choice for organ procurement.

Presumed consent to organ donation looks increasingly unlikely to be a palatable option for increasing organ procurement in the UK following the publication of the report into events at Alder Hey and elsewhere. Yet, given that the alternative to increasing the number of cadaveric organs available is either to accept a greater number of live donations, or accept that people will continue to die for the want of an organ, public policy makers remain obliged to consider other means of increasing the procurement rate. In this paper, we meet the main objections to mandated choice (namely that it undermines autonomy and that mandated donation is preferable). We have modified the traditional approach to mandated choice to take into account the force of the objection that mandated donation is preferable, by accepting that people can and do make bad decisions about organ donation and proposing that all accompanying public education and information about cadaveric donation should be directed in favour of donation.