Efficacy and safety of itopride SR for upper gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with diabetic gastroparesis: real-world evidence from Pakistan.

Background: Gastroparesis is a serious condition that can be caused by diabetes, surgery or infection, or can be idiopathic. When there is no mechanical obstruction, gastroparesis is characterized by delayed stomach emptying. Itopride, a prokinetic drug, inhibits acetylcholinesterase activity in addition to antagonizing dopamine D2 receptors. Methods: This prospective, multicentre study is based on real-world data from 988 patients with a diagnosis of diabetic gastroparesis for index (PAGI-SYM2) evaluation at baseline and week 4 of treatment for upper gastrointestinal disorder symptoms. Results: Upper gastrointestinal symptom severity scores improved significantly after 4 weeks of treatment (p<0.001), with significant improvement across all categories of gastroparesis (very mild (37-58.6%), mild degree (24.6-31.6%), moderate (29.3-7.3%) and severe (8.8-2.6%). Conclusion: Itopride SR (Nogerd SR) in a 150 mg once-daily dose showed promising results in reducing the severity of upper gastrointestinal disorder symptoms associated with diabetic gastroparesis. Both statistical and clinical effectiveness were observed. Moreover, the treatment demonstrated a favourable tolerability profile, with a low incidence of adverse effects.

Salicylic acid protects gentamicin-induced hepatotoxicity: Study in rabbits.

Gentamicin (GM) is a broadly used antibiotic against severe and life-threatening infections, but its efficacy is restricted by the development of liver toxicity. The present study was designed to evaluate the protective effect of salicylic acid (SA) in gentamicin-induced hepatotoxicity in rabbits. Gentamicin and salicylic acid were given at a dose of 80 mg/kg i.p for twenty days. For this purpose, 24 male albino rabbits were randomly divided into four groups. Group I remained untreated and served as control. Group II was given gentamicin, group III was given gentamicin along with Salicylic acid (SA) and group IV was given only salicylic acid. The degree of hepatoprotection was measured by assessment of body weight, liver weight, absolute liver weight and estimations of plasma aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), total and direct bilirubin, tissue malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities. Significant reduction in the elevated liver weight, plasma levels of AST, ALT, bilirubin and tissue MDA and significant elevation in reduced body weight, SOD and CAT activities were found that confirms the protective role of salicylic acid in gentamicin induced hepatotoxicity.

Ultra-Low-Power Wide Range Backscatter Communication Using Cellular Generated Carrier.

With the popularization of Internet-of-things (IoT) and wireless communication systems, a diverse set of applications in smart cities are emerging to improve the city-life. These applications usually require a large coverage area and minimal operation and maintenance cost. To this end, the recently emerging backscatter communication (BC) is gaining interest in both industry and academia as a new communication paradigm that provides high energy efficient communications that may even work in a battery-less mode and, thus, it is well suited for smart city applications. However, the coverage of BC in urban area deployments is not available, and the feasibility of its utilization for smart city applications is not known. In this article, we present a comprehensive coverage study of a practical cellular carrier-based BC system for indoor and outdoor scenarios in a downtown area of a Helsinki city. In particular, we evaluate the coverage outage performance of different low-power and wide area technologies, i.e., long range (LoRa) backscatter, arrow band-Internet of Things (NB-IoT), and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) based BC at different frequencies of operation. To do so, we carry out a comprehensive campaign of simulations while using a sophisticated three-dimensional (3D) ray tracing (RT) tool, ITU outdoor model, and 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) indoor hotspot model. This study also covers the energy harvesting aspects of backscatter device, and it highlights the importance of future backscatter devices with high energy harvesting efficiency. The simulation results and discussion provided in this article will be helpful in understanding the coverage aspects of practical backscatter communication system in a smart city environment.

Chest computed tomography findings in hospitalized COVID-19 patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Most studies evaluating chest computed tomography (CT) features in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been small-sized and have presented varied findings. We aim to systematically review these studies and to conduct a meta-analysis of their results to provide a well-powered assessment of chest CT findings in patients with COVID-19. PubMed and EMBASE databases were systematically searched to identify published studies that evaluated chest CT findings in COVID-19 patients. Data regarding study characteristics and CT findings, including distribution of lesions, the lobe of lung involved, lesion densities, and radiological patterns, were extracted. Arcsine transformed proportions from individual studies were pooled using a random-effects model to derive pooled proportions (PPs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). A total of fifty-four studies (n=2693 confirmed COVID-19 patients) were included in the final review. Prevalence of different CT findings varied across studies; however, the most common findings were bilateral pulmonary involvement (PP: 74.1% [68.4%, 79.5%]; I2 = 85.76%), ground glass opacification (PP: 64.6% [57.6%, 71.4%]; I2 = 91.52%), involvement of the left lower lobe (PP: 71.2% [58.9%, 82.1%]; I2 = 90.91%), and subpleural distribution of lesions (PP: 57.2% [39.0%, 74.3%]; I2 = 93.08%). Multivariate meta-regression revealed a positive association between prevalence of air bronchograms and average age of the population (p=0.013). Bilateral ground glass opacification, a subpleural distribution of lesions, and involvement of the left lower lobe were the most notable chest CT findings in COVID-19 patients.