[Epidemiological and bacteriological features of surgical site infections (ISO) in the Division of Surgery at the Niamey National Hospital (HNN)]

LCASPMDA: a computational model for predicting potential microbe-drug associations based on learnable graph convolutional attention networks and self-paced iterative sampling ensemble

Introduction

Numerous studies show that microbes in the human body are very closely linked to the human host and can affect the human host by modulating the efficacy and toxicity of drugs. However, discovering potential microbe-drug associations through traditional wet labs is expensive and time-consuming, hence, it is important and necessary to develop effective computational models to detect possible microbe-drug associations.

Methods

In this manuscript, we proposed a new prediction model named LCASPMDA by combining the learnable graph convolutional attention network and the self-paced iterative sampling ensemble strategy to infer latent microbe-drug associations. In LCASPMDA, we first constructed a heterogeneous network based on newly downloaded known microbe-drug associations. Then, we adopted the learnable graph convolutional attention network to learn the hidden features of nodes in the heterogeneous network. After that, we utilized the self-paced iterative sampling ensemble strategy to select the most informative negative samples to train the Multi-Layer Perceptron classifier and put the newly-extracted hidden features into the trained MLP classifier to infer possible microbe-drug associations.

Results and discussion

Intensive experimental results on two different public databases including the MDAD and the aBiofilm showed that LCASPMDA could achieve better performance than state-of-the-art baseline methods in microbe-drug association prediction.

Evaluation of the resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to rifampicin at the regional hospital center of Maradi, Niger Republic

Background

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) data, 600,000 cases of rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (TB) have been reported worldwide, including 490,000 cases of multidrug-resistant TB. Thus, through the present study, we proposed to evaluate the resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to rifampicin in the regional hospital of Maradi.

Methods

Our study involved 887 sputum samples that were GeneXpert tested from January 2016 to December 2020. These data were collected from the laboratory records of the Maradi Regional Hospital and analyzed with SPSS and Excel 2013 software.

Results

In total, more than half of the patients were male, i.e., a sex ratio of 3.03. The average age was 41 years. The rate of detection of M. tuberculosis by GeneXpert was 42% and the frequency of resistance to rifampicin was 20%. However, treatment failure and relapse were associated with this monoresistance in 53.95% and 30.26% of cases, respectively.

Conclusion

The present study shows a fairly high prevalence of rifampicin resistance in the Maradi region, corresponding to twice the WHO threshold. The vast majority of these cases presented either a therapeutic failure or a relapse. Urgent and effective actions must be taken to significantly reduce the rates of treatment failure and relapse to decrease the rate of monoresistance and thus avoid the emergence of multidrug-resistant strains.

Analysis of the Effect of Laparoscopic and Open Surgical Treatment in Children with Congenital Megacolon

In this paper, we have compared and analyzed the effect of laparoscopic and open surgical treatments in children with congenital megacolon. To address this, a total of 64 children with congenital megacolon who underwent surgery in the hospital, particularly from April 2014 to December 2020, were selected as the research objects. They were divided into control and observation groups by the random number table method, with 32 cases in each group. The control and observation groups were treated with open surgical and laparoscopic treatments, respectively. The treatment effects of the two groups were compared. The enema time, operation time, blood loss, anal defecation time, and duration of postoperative hospital stay of the observation group were lower than those of the control group. The comparison between the two groups was statistically significant (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in CRP and WBC between the two groups before surgery (P > 0.05). The CRP level and WBC of the two groups were both increased after operation, the CRP level of the observation group was lower than that of the control group, the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05), the WBC of the two groups was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). The rate of excellent and good defecation in the observation group on the 7th day after surgery was higher than that in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in Krickenbeck scores between the two groups before surgery (P > 0.05); 6 months after the surgery, the score of Krickenbeck in both groups increased, and that of the observation group was higher than that of the control group, indicating a difference in the overall score (P < 0.05). The total complication rate within 7 days after surgery in the observation group was lower than that in the control group, and the difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Laparoscopic treatment of congenital megacolon could improve surgical indicators and reduce stress response in children, improve defecation and anal function, reduce the risk of complications, and promote recovery.