A detailed observational study of maternal and neonatal variables affecting the thyroid-stimulating hormone levels in neonates

Background

Thyroid hormones are essential for fetal growth and the central nervous system development. Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) is the key regulatory hormone. Their levels are quite dynamic in the perinatal period and are influenced by multiple factors. These factors should be taken into consideration during newborn screening. This study aimed to observe the impact of maternal and neonatal factors on neonatal TSH status.

Results

Neonatal TSH (nTSH) depicted a positive correlation with parity (p = 0.066) while negative correlation recorded with maternal blood haemoglobin (p = 0.007) among maternal factors.

New-born length (p = 0.027) and birth weight (p < 0.001) exhibited a negative correlation with nTSH among neonatal factors.

Conclusions

This study concludes that among all the maternal and neonatal factors, birth weight shows the most influence on nTSH. However, the effect may be compounded by other factors. As these risk elements rarely occur singly, it is often difficult to find the exposure which confer the risk on children. These factors should be considered while interpreting the result of the screening program.

LSQA Scale: A Tool for Measuring Users’ Perceptions of Service Quality in Libraries

The main aim of the study is to develop library service quality assessment (LSQA) scale. Both qualitativeand quantitative procedures are used to confirm the reliability and validity of the LSQA scale. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with varimax rotation is employed to indentify underlying dimensions of service quality of library. The LSQA scale includes four dimensions: (a) library infrastructure/environment, (b) library collection, (c) library services, and (d) library staff, which contains a total of 44 items. The reliability score Cronbach’s alpha for the scale is found to be 0.969, which shows the excellent nature and a strong relationship of each item. The LSQA scale mean and standard deviation is found to be 162.61 and 35.077, respectively. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value of sampling adequacy of the scale is found to be 0.932. It is hoped that the LSQA scale could help library professionals and scholars better understand users’ needs, to significantly improve and enhance the service quality of libraries.

In silico expressed sequence tag analysis in identification of probable diabetic genes as virtual therapeutic targets

The expressed sequence tags (ESTs) are major entities for gene discovery, molecular transcripts, and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) analysis as well as functional annotation of putative gene products. In our quest for identification of novel diabetic genes as virtual targets for type II diabetes, we searched various publicly available databases and found 7 reported genes. The in silico EST analysis of these reported genes produced 6 consensus contigs which illustrated some good matches to a number of chromosomes of the human genome. Again the conceptual translation of these contigs produced 3 protein sequences. The functional and structural annotations of these proteins revealed some important features which may lead to the discovery of novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of diabetes.