VIROLOGY
The World health Organization (WHO) declares dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever to be endemic in South Asia. Despite the magnitude of problem, no documented evidence exists in Pakistan which reveals the awareness and practices of the country's adult population regarding dengue fever, its spread, symptoms, treatment and prevention. This study was conducted to assess the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding dengue fever in people visiting tertiary care hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan.
A cross-sectional pilot study was conducted among people visiting tertiary care hospitals in Karachi. Through convenience sampling, a pre-tested and structured questionnaire was administered through a face-to-face unprompted interview with 447 visitors. Knowledge was recorded on a scale of 1-3.
About 89.9% of individuals interviewed had heard of dengue fever. Sufficient knowledge about dengue was found to be in 38.5% of the sample, with 66% of these in Aga Khan University Hospital and 33% in Civil Hospital Karachi. Literate individuals were relatively more well-informed about dengue fever as compared to the illiterate people (p<0.001). Knowledge based upon preventive measures was found to be predominantly focused towards prevention of mosquito bites (78.3%) rather than eradication of mosquito population (17.3%). Use of anti- mosquito spray was the most prevalent (48.1%) preventive measure. Television was considered as the most important and useful source of information on the disease.
Adult population of Karachi has adequate knowledge related to the disease ‘dengue' on isolated aspects, but the overall prevalence of ‘sufficient knowledge' based on our criteria is poor. We demonstrated adequate prevalence of preventive practices against the disease. Further studies correlating the association between knowledge and its effectiveness against dengue will be helpful in demonstrating the implications of awareness campaigns.
- Itrat A, Khan A, Javaid S, Kamal M, Khan H, et al. (2008) Knowledge, Awareness and Practices Regarding Dengue Fever among the Adult Population of Dengue Hit Cosmopolitan. PLoS ONE 3(7): e2620. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002620
PSYCHIATRY
In many scientific disciplines the use of a metaphor as an heuristic aid is not uncommon. A well known example in somatic medicine is the ‘defense army metaphor' used to characterize the immune system. In fact, probably a large part of the everyday work of doctors consists of ‘translating' scientific and clinical information (i.e. causes of disease, percentage of succes versus risk of side-effects) into information tailored to the needs and capacities of the individual patient. The ability to do so in an effective way is at least partly what makes a clinician a good communicator. Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder which affects approximately 1% of the population. Over the last two decades a large amount of molecular-biological, imaging and genetic data have been accumulated regarding the biological underpinnings of schizophrenia. However, it remains difficult to understand how the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions are related to disturbances on the molecular-biological level. In general, psychiatry seems to lack a conceptual framework with sufficient explanatory power to link the mental- and molecular-biological domains.
Here, we present an essay-like study in which we propose to use visualized concepts stemming from the theory on dynamical complex systems as a ‘visual metaphor' to bridge the mental- and molecular-biological domains in schizophrenia. We first describe a computer model of neural information processing; we show how the information processing in this model can be visualized, using concepts from the theory on complex systems. We then describe two computer models which have been used to investigate the primary theory on schizophrenia, the neurodevelopmental model, and show how disturbed information processing in these two computer models can be presented in terms of the visual metaphor previously described. Finally, we describe the effects of dopamine neuromodulation, of which disturbances have been frequently described in schizophrenia, in terms of the same visualized metaphor.
The conceptual framework and metaphor described offers a heuristic tool to understand the relationship between the mental- and molecular-biological domains in an intuitive way. The concepts we present may serve to facilitate communication between researchers, clinicians and patients.
- van Beveren NJM, de Haan L (2008) A Visual Metaphor Describing Neural Dynamics in Schizophrenia. PLoS ONE 3(7): e2577. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002577
MICROBIOLOGY
Environments and their organic content are generally not static and isolated, but in a constant state of exchange and interaction with each other. Through physical or biological processes, organisms, especially microbes, may be transferred between environments whose characteristics may be quite different. The transferred microbes may not survive in their new environment, but their DNA will be deposited. In this study, we compare two environmental sequencing projects to find molecular evidence of transfer of microbes over vast geographical distances.
By studying synonymous nucleotide composition, oligomer frequency and orthology between predicted genes in metagenomics data from two environments, terrestrial and aquatic, and by correlating with phylogenetic mappings, we find that both environments are likely to contain trace amounts of microbes which have been far removed from their original habitat. We also suggest a bias in direction from soil to sea, which is consistent with the cycles of planetary wind and water.
Our findings support the Baas-Becking hypothesis formulated in 1934, which states that due to dispersion and population sizes, microbes are likely to be found in widely disparate environments. Furthermore, the availability of genetic material from distant environments is a possible font of novel gene functions for lateral gene transfer.
- Hooper SD, Raes J, Foerstner KU, Harrington ED, Dalevi D, et al. (2008) A Molecular Study of Microbe Transfer between Distant Environments. PLoS ONE 3(7): e2607. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002607
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002607
