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Cancer is a major public health issue and the main cause of death worldwide. Despite improvements in diagnostic techniques and treatment methods, cancer still seriously affects the quality of life of patients, which cause serious social and economic burdens. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify potential biomarkers to improve diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of cancer. BTG2 is a cell proliferation suppressor gene that serves as a tumor suppressor gene in the occurrence and development of various tumors. Many studies have shown that BTG2 can serve as a prognostic marker in various tumors. So, fully tap the potentials of BTG2 as a tumor prognostic marker will bring more possibilities to provide a new method or new diagnostic and therapeutic tool for treating cancer.

Internet addiction is a growing addictive behavior and a major public health problem worldwide. Several psychological factors can contribute to the problematic use of the Internet. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of Internet Addiction (IA) in a sample of university students and to examine the relationship between IA, self-esteem, and attachment styles.The present study was a cross-sectional study, involving 135 students from the Faculty of Medicine of Monastir. The participants completed a questionnaire, which contained the socio-demographic data, the reasons for Internet use, the Young Cyberaddiction scale to seek IA, the Relationships-style-questionnaire-RSQ to assess attachment style, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES).The mean age of the students was 21.5 ± 1.9 years old. They were 112 (83%) females. The prevalence of Internet addiction was 23.7%. The average connection time was 3.5 ± 1.8 hours/day. The most frequent online activities were chat (online discussion, forums ...) in 94.8% of cases followed by download activities (78.5%), scientific research (75.6%), online games (23.7%), and online shopping (13.3%). IA was associated with school failure, alcohol use, online gaming, and low self-esteem. The majority of the participants (84.4%) in this study reported an insecure attachment style. Logistic regression analysis showed a strong association between IA and fearful attachment style.IA was frequent among students. Fearful attachment style was found to be a risk factor for IA. This study highlights the impact of relationships between child and their caregivers on the development of addiction.

Pregnancy complications present significant challenges, impacting maternal health and fetal development. Oxidative stress, a key contributor to various pregnancy-related disorders such as preeclampsia, gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), and preterm birth, has spurred interest in exploring antioxidant interventions. Antioxidants, known for their ability to counteract oxidative damage, have emerged as potential therapeutic agents to mitigate these complications. This paper synthesizes current knowledge on the role of antioxidants in pregnancy, elucidating their mechanisms of action, sources, and impact on oxidative stress-related complications. It examines diverse antioxidant compounds, including vitamins C and E, selenium, and natural phytochemicals, highlighting their potential to modulate oxidative stress pathways and promote maternal-fetal well-being. Furthermore, this paper critically analyzes clinical studies, meta-analyses, and preclinical research exploring the efficacy and safety of antioxidant supplementation during pregnancy. It discusses the complexities surrounding optimal dosages, timing, and formulations of antioxidants, aiming to delineate strategies for their integration into prenatal care. In conclusion, this review provides insights into the promising role of antioxidants as therapeutic strategies to alleviate pregnancy complications associated with oxidative stress. It highlights avenues for future research, advocating for a deeper understanding of antioxidant mechanisms and their optimal utilization in prenatal care to enhance maternal and fetal health outcomes.

We investigated the effect of exercise therapy by simultaneously using motor imagery of thumb or all finger extension on the affected side and thumb or all finger extension exercise on the unaffected side by using the F-wave, which is used to measure the excitability of anterior horn cells to devise an appropriate exercise therapy using motor imagery for patients with increased muscle tone of the thumb muscles on the affected side. Tasks 1, 2, 3, and 4 involved motor imagery of thumb extension on the affected side, motor imagery of finger extension on the affected side, motor imagery of thumb extension on the affected side based on thumb extension on the unaffected side, and finger extension on the affected side based on finger extension on the unaffected side, respectively; conducted in three trials, with one week or more between each trial. Each task was performed for one minute, with a five-minute interval between tasks. The F-waves from the thenar muscles were recorded with median nerve stimulation on the affected side before and during the tasks. The relative values of the F-wave data of the task and the F-wave data before (resting state) and during the tasks were calculated. In results, the relative data of the F/M amplitude ratio in task 4 was lower than that in the other tasks in three trials. In conclusion, motor imagery of finger extension on the affected side with finger extension movement on the unaffected side was effective for improving the muscle tone of the thenar muscles on the affected side.

The normal adult heart is a well maintained machine that has a mechanism for growth replacement of the sarcomere that is lost by natural degeneration. This process ensures the heart has the strength of contraction to function correctly giving blood supply to the whole body. Some of the force of contraction of the sarcomere is transmitted to its major protein titin where its strength results in unfolding of a flexible section and release of a growth stimulant. The origin of all the cardiomyopathies can be traced to errors in this system resulting from mutations in a wide variety of the sarcomeric proteins. Too much or chronic tension transfer to titin giving increased growth resulting in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and too little leading to muscle wastage, dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). HCM can ultimately lead to sudden cardiac death and DCM to heart failure. In this paper I show (1) a collection of the tension/ATPase calcium dependencies of cardiac myofibrils that define the mechanism of Ca2+ cooperativity. (2) I then reintroduce the stress/strain relationship to cardiomyopathies. (3) I then review the cardiomyopathy literature that contains similar Ca2+ dependency data to throw light on the mechanisms involved in generation of the types of myopathies from the mutations involved. In the review of cardiomyopathy there are two sections on mutations, the first dealing with those disrupting the Ca2+ cooperativity, i.e. the Hill coefficient of activation, leading to incomplete relaxation in diastole, chronic tension, and increased growth. Secondly dealing with those where the Ca2+ cooperativity is not affected giving either increased or decreased tension transfer to titin and changes in sarcomere growth. 

Introduction: Cancer treatment and prognosis depend heavily on early detection. Survival in the early stages is excellent for almost all types of cancer. Unfortunately, in Saudi Arabia, a large number of cancer patients present with advanced disease, resulting in a poor prognosis. There are three levels of delay in the management of cancer patients. The first level is the time between the first cancer-related symptoms and the presentation to the health facility, the second level is from the presentation to the diagnosis, and the third level is between the diagnosis and the treatment. This study aims to determine if there is a delay, at what level and to study the factors causing such delays.Materials and methods: Two hundred cancer patients who presented to the Armed Forces Hospital Southern Region, Oncology Department, were interviewed from January 1st to June 30th, 2018. The interviews were conducted by trained physicians familiar with the questionnaire’s contents. The questionnaire consisted of four sections: a demographic section and three more sections to identify factors causing the delay at the three levels from the patients’ perspectives. All data were analyzed using the SPSS version 20.0.Results: The mean patient age was 63 years. A total of 112 patients were female and 88 were male. The most common cancer type was breast cancer (27.5%). Among the patients, 61% were illiterate and 25.5% had elementary school degrees, 86% expressed little or no general medical knowledge about cancer. More women than men paid attention to cancer symptoms (70% vs. 54%). 75% of the patients presented to the first health facility after 2 months from the first appearance of symptoms (level 1 delay). Only 2% of the patients presented within one week. 50% of the patients received a diagnosis after visiting two health facilities. All patients were diagnosed at hospitals. 40% of patients used alternative medicines, 70% of whom thought this was the cause of their delayed presentations. 67% had their diagnosis confirmed within one month (level 2 delay), and 66% started their definitive treatment within one month (level 3 delay). 75% of the patients blame themselves for the delay. Educational level (p = 0.03), knowledge about cancer (p < 0.01), and the use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) (p = 0.01) were significantly associated with delayed presentation of patients to the health facility. Conclusion: There is a delay in the presentation of cancer patients (level 1) in the southern part of Saudi Arabia. Educational level, knowledge of cancer symptoms, and use of complementary and alternative medicines are the main causes. There were no delays in diagnosis and start of treatment (level 2,3).

Naturally, microorganisms decompose the organic material existing in nature, both in the presence or absence of oxygen. The majority of materials such as poisonous chemical compounds, heavy metals, would prevent the treatment process from taking place, lead to the entry of these contaminants into the environment results in the emergence of numerous diseases. In the present study, using the TOXChem4.1 simulation model, attempts were made to simulate a wastewater treatment plant and then assess the dispersions of contaminants including 1,2-Dimethylnaphthalene, 1,3-Dinitropyrene, 1,6-Dimethylnaphthalene, 1,6-Dinitropyrene, and 17a-ethinylestradiol (EE2) in concentrations of a common scenario. The results of computer simulations showed that the EE2 contaminant is of the highest percentage of decomposition among others, due to its wider chemical structure. Consequently, it is clear that such contaminant is of the highest mass in the sludge exiting the treatment plant. In addition, the results of the simulations demonstrated that the highest volumes of gaseous pollutants take place in the modulation and initial sedimentation units.

In the year 2020, COVID-19 spread globally. The increase in cases and deaths has created problems such as stress, anxiety, and depression in health workers.The health care workers (inclusive of students in professional practices are vulnerable to psychiatric pathology due to their exposure to the virus, their increased risk of contagion and even death, overload of functions, pressure for decision-making, the close experience of patients, relatives, and colleagues’ pain, and the requirement to function at the top of capacity.The objective of this research is to analyse the personal and academic factors of stress development in nursing students, during clinical practices in the COVID-19 context.It is a cases and controls study, with 154 students who attended clinical practices during the period of May-August 2020. High levels of stress were found in 61% of students, 34 of these had difficulties concentrating (OR: 3.08), 64 participants reported fear of contact with COVID-19 patients, (OR: 1.9) and 68 participants were identified with inadequate knowledge of COVID-19 transmission (OR: 1.5).The study found that the transition to virtual classes as a strategy to reduce contagion increases three times the possibilities of developing stress, another variable that doubles the risk of stress is the fear of caring for a patient with COVID-19 who has not been diagnosed.

Continuous noninvasive cuffless blood pressure (BP) monitoring is essential for early detection and treatment of hypertension. In this paper, we provide an overview of the recent advancements in cuffless BP sensors. These include contact wearable sensors such as electrocardiography (ECG), photoplethysmography (PPG), contact non-wearable sensors such as ballistocardiography (BCG), and contactless sensors such as video plethysmography (VPG). These sensors employ different measuring mechanisms such as pulse arrival time (PAT), pulse transit time (PTT), and pulse wave analysis (PWA) to estimate BP. However, challenges exist in the effective use and interpretation of signal features to obtain clinically reliable BP measurements. The correlations between signal features and BP are obtained by mechanism-driven models which use physiological principles to identify mathematical correlations, and data-driven models which use machine learning algorithms to analyze observational data to identify multidimensional correlations. On the one hand, applying mechanism-driven models to non-linear scenarios and incomplete or noisy data is challenging On the other hand, data-driven models require a large amount of data in order to prevent physically inconsistent predictions, resulting in poor generalization. From this perspective, this paper proposes to combine the strengths of mechanism-driven and data-driven approaches to obtain a more comprehensive approach, the physiology-informed machine-learning approach, with the goal of enhancing the accuracy, interpretability, and scalability of continuous cuffless BP monitoring. This holds promise for personalized clinical applications and the advancement of hypertension management.

Introduction: Hypertension is the strongest independent predictor of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) identified by Computed tomography of coronary arteries (CTCA). In this study, CTCA-assessed Coronary Calcium Scoring (CCS) was studied in hypertensive subjects referred for CTCA.Methods: After excluding TAVI and graft assessment patients, the individual electronic health records of 410 consecutive patients who underwent CTCA between July and November 2020, were reviewed with a mean age of 58.7 years. Risk factors were recorded including smoking (38%), hyperlipidaemia (33%), positive family history (22%), systemic hypertension (48%), diabetes mellitus (30%), and male gender (46%). Referral criteria, ethnicity, cardiac, and past medical history were recorded. Patients were stratified into four groups according to CAD severity: absent, mild, moderate, and severe disease, as seen on CTCA. The mean CCS for each CAD category was compared between hypertensive and non-hypertensive patients. Mean CCS were further compared according to the number of coronary arteries affected and the severity of CAD in each artery. Results: Out of all CTCA reports, 200 (48.8%) CCS were interpreted in the very low-risk category, 80 (19.5%) low risk, 58 (14.1%) moderate risk, 23 (5.6%) moderately high risk and 49 (12.0%) high risk. A significant difference in mean CCS and CAD severity was observed between mild, moderate, and severe CAD (p = 0.015 and p < 0.001). Comparison of CCS between hypertensives and non-hypertensives, across the four CAD severity categories, revealed a significant difference in mean CCS in the severe CAD category (p = 0.03). There was no significant difference in the CCS between hypertensives with chest pain and hypertensives without chest pain. A higher number of affected coronary arteries was associated with a higher mean CCS and a significant difference in CCS was observed between hypertensive and non-hypertensive subjects for the number of arteries affected. Similar results were observed when comparing mean CCS in moderate-severely affected coronary arteries.Conclusion: Hypertensive patients with a high CCS were associated with a higher incidence of severe CAD independent of the presence of chest pain. These results suggest that the incorporation of CCS in the investigation of CAD on CT angiography may pose a powerful adjunct in proposing an alternative paradigm for the assessment of patients with hypertension, in the progress of coronary artery disease.