This study is conducted in chronic alcoholics to assess the association of an Individual’s level of serum homocysteine with
the success of achieving alcohol deaddiction in the patient. The patients’ nutrition status is also assessed. 50 chronic alcoholics
admitted to a deaddiction center were inducted into the study. Patients underwent an 8 weeks holistic program to promote rehabilitation
from alcoholism. All the patients were addicted to alcohol for 8 – 10 years. Of the 50 patients enrolled, 39 of them completed
the 8 weeks program including complete abstinence from alcohol during this period. Fasting blood samples were collected on
admission and again after 8 weeks of alcohol abstinence for analyses of serum homocysteine and serum prealbumin, transferrin,
total proteins and albumin, gammaglutamyl transferase (GGT) and alanine transaminase (ALT). Of the 50 patients enrolled in
the study, 39 completed the 8 weeks rehabilitation program. 11 patients discontinued within 2 weeks of admission. During the
8 weeks of complete alcohol abstinence, patients were given a balanced diet and multivitamin supplements. A significant improvement
in their nutritional status was noted by the elevation of serum levels of prealbumin, transferrin, total proteins and albumin.
Serum homocysteine levels decreased significantly (p<0.002) to normal levels from previous hyperhomocytenemia. This was accompanied
by decrease in serum GGT and ALT levels indicating improved liver functions. Serum estimation of homocysteine in chronic alcoholics
is important to assess whether the patient will have a successful rehabilitation. Normal homocysteine levels are achieved
after dietary changes and abstinence from alcohol. Timely correction of hyperhomocysteinemia also provides successful rehabilitation. 相似文献
The dramatic advancements in the field of vaccinology has led to the formulation of chemically well defined vaccines composed of synthetic peptides and recombinant proteins derived from the immunologically dominant regions of the pathogens. Though these subunit vaccines are safer compared to the traditional vaccines they are known to be poorly immunogenic. This necessitates the use of adjuvants to enhance the immunogenicity of these vaccine formulations. The most common adjuvant for human use is alum. Research in the past has focused on the development of systemic immunity using conventional immunization protocols. In the present are, the emphasis is on the development and formulation of alternative adjuvants and delivery systems in generating systemic as well as mucosal immunity. This review mainly focuses on a variety of adjuvants (particulate as well as non-particulate) used with protective antigens of HIV, malaria, plague, leprosy using modified delivery vehicles. The experience of our laboratory and other researchers in this field clearly proves that these new age adjuvants and delivery systems undoubtedly generate enhanced immune response-both humoral and cell mediated. The choice of antigens, the nature of adjuvant used and the mode of delivery employed have a profound effect on the type of immune response generated. Besides the quantity, the quality of the antibodies generated also play a vital role in protection against these diseases. Some of the adjuvants and delivery systems used promoted high titre and affinity antibodies, which were shown to be cytophilic in nature, an important criteria in providing protection to the host. Thus the studies on these adjuvants/delivery systems with respect to various infectious diseases indicate their active role in efficient modulation of immune response along with safety and permissibility. 相似文献
Serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP) (EC 3.1.3.1), 5′nucleotidase (5′NT) (EC 3.1.3.5), aldolase (ALD) (EC 4.1.2.13) and sorbitol
dehydrogenase (SDH) (EC 1.1.1.14) were estimated in infective hepatitis, alcoholic hepatitis, chronic active hepatitis, obstructive
jaundice, cirrhosis of liver and amoebic liver abscess. It was observed that serum ALP and 5′NT were significantly increased
in all cases of chronic active hepatitis and obstructive hepatic disease. However, the elevation observed in the latter was
much higher than the former. Serum SDH and ALD levels were elevated in all cases of infective hepatitis, studied though increase
in the former was much higher than the latter, suggesting its significance in the diagnostic confirmation of this disease.
Results presented suggest 5′NT and SDH as more reliable diagnostic test compared to ALP and ALD for obstructive jaundice and
infective hepatitis respectively. 相似文献
Finding useful information from large multimodal document collections such as the WWW without encountering numerous false positives poses a challenge to multimedia information retrieval systems (MMIR). This research addresses the problem of finding pictures. The fact that images do not appear in isolation, but rather with accompanying, collateral text is exploited. Taken independently, existing techniques for picture retrieval using (i) text-based and (ii) image-based methods have several limitations. This research presents a general model for multimodal information retrieval that addresses the following issues: (i) users' information need, (ii) expressing information need through composite, multimodal queries, and (iii) determining the most appropriate weighted combination of indexing techniques in order to best satisfy information need. A machine learning approach is proposed for the latter. The focus is on improving precision and recall in a MMIR system by optimally combining text and image similarity. Experiments are presented which demonstrate the utility of individual indexing systems in improving overall average precision. 相似文献
Background: One of the key questions of physical education teacher educators (PETE) programmes refers to whether future teachers are prepared to build knowledge and skills to feel self-efficacious in teaching physical education (PE). This issue concerns the instructional model of teaching used to help PE pre-service teachers to master both pedagogical knowledge and motor skills. According to this twofold challenge, the direct instruction (DI) is mainly used for pre-service teacher training. Beyond this traditional model, other instructional models as cooperative learning (CL) approach arise in the initial PE teacher education. Nevertheless, surrounding attempts at innovation, little information related to the instructor’s role. Under the social cognitive perspective of self-efficacy and instructional competency building, more information is currently expected with regard to the strategies the instructor uses to scaffold the mastery of skills for PE pre-service teachers’ effective teaching.
Purpose: The purpose of this article is to consider whether PE pre-service teachers are trained during short training sessions aimed to discover new physical activities. We examine the influence of a scaffolding procedure (CLS design) on PE pre-service teachers’ knowledge, skills and self-efficacy in comparison to a CL and a DI experience. This leads to consider to what extent this instructional support provided by the instructor would help pre-service teachers to perceive themselves as self-efficacious to teach contents in PE.
Participants and design: After a pre-test, sixty-nine PE pre-service teachers were randomly assigned to one of the three following conditions: CL (14 males and 7 females); CLS (20 males and 8 females) or direct instruction condition (DI; 12 males and 8 females). For the training session a selected CL procedure (Jigsaw) [Aronson, Elliot, and Shelley Patnoe. 1997. The Jigsaw Classroom: Building Cooperation in the Classroom. 2nd ed. Wokingham: Addison-Wesley Educational]) was used to split CL and CLS participants into mixed-sex teams, whereas DI participants practiced the same exercises in dyads. According to the training conditions, the same instructor provided different information to participants along the three 2-hour instructional sessions with regard to: (a) warm-up (DI), (b) CL organization (CL), and (c) scaffolding integrated into a CL implementation (CLS).
Data collection: A Pre-test/post-test design was used to consider PE pre-service teacher’s motor skill, knowledge for practice, and self-efficacy improvements. The post-test also examined participants’ pedagogical knowledge.
Findings: The results showed that the participants in the three conditions progressed on performance, knowledge for practice, knowledge for teaching, and self-efficacy. Although no difference was found in self-efficacy between the three training conditions over time, significant differences appeared on pedagogical knowledge or/and motor skills with an advantage for the CL and CLS participants, respectively.
Conclusion: Although short training sessions dedicated to discovering new sports stay problematic for teacher professional development, implementing CL pre-service teacher training designs would be a relevant alternative. Instructional knowledge would be developed mainly when they have explicitly access to information concerning the teacher intervention. Nevertheless, such a scaffolding procedure integrated into CL training designs would need to be applied repeatedly to various physical activities to have an impact on pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy. 相似文献