The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Patient Admissions to the Developmental Pediatrics Unit: An Outpatient Clinic in Eastern Turkey.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic on the number and diagnosis of patients admitted to the Developmental Pediatrics Unit. Materilas and Methods: We compared the number and the diagnosis of patients admitted to the Developmental Pediatrics Unit by using International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th revision (ICD-10) codes of our institution's electronic health data before and after 18 months from March 16 2020, when coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic was declared in Turkey. Statistical analyses were performed by using International Business Machines Statistical Package for Social Sciences for windows version 22.0 (Armonk, NY) program. RESULTS: We found that the number of patients admitted to the Developmental Pediatrics Unit decreased during the pandemic period (pre-coronavirus disease 2019 n = 1107, during coronavirus disease 2019 n = 761). There was no significant difference between the ratio of the most common diagnosis (prematurity) before and during the pandemic period (32% and 30.6% respectively). It was observed that the ratio of children with speech delay (17.4%-23%, P = .003) increased during the pandemic, while there was a significant decrease in the ratio of admissions with Down syndrome (11.6%-6.6%, P < .001). CONCLUSION: We found that the number of admissions to the Developmental Pediatrics Unit with developmental difficulties decreased significantly during the pandemic. The ratio of admissions of speech delay increased during the same period, while admissions with Down syndrome decreased. This increase may be due to lockdown, increase in electronic screen exposure, and lack of stimuli and the decrease may be due to the risk of severe illness from coronavirus disease 2019. The decrease in admissions of patients who require developmental follow-up reveals the need for additional efforts such as implementing tele-health to our daily practice.

Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in human mobility patterns in Holocene Southwest Asia and the East Mediterranean.

We present a spatiotemporal picture of human genetic diversity in Anatolia, Iran, Levant, South Caucasus, and the Aegean, a broad region that experienced the earliest Neolithic transition and the emergence of complex hierarchical societies. Combining 35 new ancient shotgun genomes with 382 ancient and 23 present-day published genomes, we found that genetic diversity within each region steadily increased through the Holocene. We further observed that the inferred sources of gene flow shifted in time. In the first half of the Holocene, Southwest Asian and the East Mediterranean populations homogenized among themselves. Starting with the Bronze Age, however, regional populations diverged from each other, most likely driven by gene flow from external sources, which we term "the expanding mobility model." Interestingly, this increase in inter-regional divergence can be captured by outgroup-f3-based genetic distances, but not by the commonly used FST statistic, due to the sensitivity of FST, but not outgroup-f3, to within-population diversity. Finally, we report a temporal trend of increasing male bias in admixture events through the Holocene.

[THE BELIEF OF SACRIFICE AS A VOTIVE OFFERING IN THE CONTEXT OF HEALTH AT THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANATOLIA AND MESOPOTAMIA IN THE LIGHT OF ARCHEOLOGICAL FINDS].

The human beings lived with hope and fears since the very first day of existence. The most instinctive fear, on the other hand, is the death, extinction, and slipping into eternity. Such fears of the human beings further brought along the concerns on life and, at this point, the human beings tended towards supernatural powers in accordance with matters such as overcoming death and manage to survive, which underlies his fears, in all cases that affects his health. As the medical facts with no describable reasons are mingled with remedies that predicate on belief during the times when no modem medicine was availab- le, the votive offerings on human life and the tributes and sacrifices offered to the divine powers worshipped represented an essential aspect of the life at that time. The fact that there is no study conducted up to the present on votive and sacrificial offerings, which are considered to be extremely substantial during the times when religion and medicine was co-practiced and generally treated as a part of worship elicited to establish the subject matter of this article study to be evaluation of sacrificial practices offered as votive offe- rings in the context of health with regard to the history of medicine. Therefore, our objective in this study is to evaluate the belief of votive and sacrificial offering with regard to history of medicine within the Phehistoric, Mesopotamia, Anatolia-Hittite and Ancient Greek cultures and to analyze and propound the evidences on the fact that the sacrifices offered on behalf of the people are actually practices in the context of health by employing the archeological and the scientific datas that also incorporates ancient references.