A blog for Biomedical Laboratory Science, Clinical Laboratory Medicine, Medical Laboratory Technology with relevant news, abstracts, articles, publications and pictures for lab medicine professionals, students and others
First Microfinance Development Bank Ltd. (FMDBL) is again the first among the publishing companies to publish its provisional financial statement from the (Q1) of the fiscal year (FY) 2074/075, with an impressive profit growth of 60.44%.
According to the unaudited financial report for Q1 published yesterday, the microfinance has stated that its net profit surged to Rs. 24.13 million in Q1 as compared to Rs. 15 million in the corresponding Q1 of the last FY 2073/074.
The borrowing of the microfinance has increased from Rs 32.2 billion in the corresponding Q1 of the previous year to Rs. 35.2 billion in the Q1 of the current FY 2074/075.
Its net interest income has also increased to Rs. 40.8 million in the Q1 up from Rs. 26.5 million compared to the corresponding Q1 of the last fiscal year. The microfinance company has an operating profit of Rs. 37.9 million in Q1 of the ongoing FY.
The paid up capital of the company stands at Rs. 456.2 million in Q1 of FY 2074/075. Its reserve and surplus surges to Rs. 96 million in Q1 from Rs. 56.9 million in the corresponding Q1 of last FY.
It’s earnings per share (EPS) stands at Rs. 25.15; net worth per share at Rs. 121.05 and price to earnings (P/E) ratio at Rs. 39.75 times.
Check the LINK below to see current Financial Report, Company Analysis and Progress Details of this Microfinance:
Be it encapsulated, blended in a smoothie, or even roasted with vegetables, there are many ways that a woman can choose to consume her placenta after childbirth. With this vital pregnancy organ gaining traction as a "superfood," more new mothers are considering the practice. But is eating placenta really beneficial?
The practice of eating placenta, or "placentophagy," is common in the animal kingdom.
It is believed that most non-human mammals with a placenta consume their "afterbirth" — as the placenta is otherwise known — as a way of eradicating the scent of their newborn and protecting them against predators.
Other literature suggests that animals eat their placenta as a way of regaining nutrients that might have been lost during delivery, and to encourage mother-child bonding.
It is the latter hypotheses that have made placentophagy attractive to human mothers, and with celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and January Jones advocating the practice, it is more popular than ever.
While many new mothers hail the health benefits of eating the afterbirth, critics say that the practice could be more harmful than helpful. We take a look at the evidence for both sides of the argument.
The purpose of the placenta
The placenta is an organ that forms on the wall of the uterus during pregnancy, and it is connected to the fetus by the umbilical cord.
Placentophagy is increasing in popularity, but does it offer health benefits? The placenta is crucial for a healthy pregnancy. Encapsulation is the most common method of placentophagy. Placentophagy advocates claim that the practice increases breast milk supply. The CDC report how a mother who ate placenta pills became infected with group B Streptococcus and passed it to her child.
Damage to the surface of the cornea causes pain and loss of vision, but regenerative therapies are providing a clearer, brighter future.
If the eyes are the window to the soul, then it is the cornea that lets the light enter.
For more than 200 years, physicians have been preoccupied with keeping this dome-shaped, transparent surface in front of the iris and pupil clear. German surgeon Franz Reisinger was the first to attempt a corneal transplant in animals in 1818. And in 1838, US ophthalmologist Richard Kissam tried to replace the opaque cornea of a young patient with the healthy cornea of a pig, but the procedure failed when the transplant was rejected. The first successful transplant in humans was in 1905, but outcomes remained poor until the mid-twentieth century, when developments in infection control, anaesthesiology, surgical techniques and immunology vastly improved the success rate of corneal transplantation. In the twenty-first century, advances in cell-culture techniques and bioengineering have opened the door to regenerative treatments for people with damage to one or both corneas.
Unclouded vision requires a clear cornea. Its epithelial surface constantly renews itself to maintain an unblemished, uniformly refractive surface. Cells that are shed from the surface are replaced by new ones that emanate from a small population of stem cells located at the edge, or limbus, of the cornea.
If the stem cells at the limbus are damaged, the renewal process is interrupted. The complete or partial loss of these stem cells — limbal stem-cell deficiency (LSCD) — allows the opaque conjunctiva to grow over the cornea. This can lead to intense pain and, in the most-severe cases, blindness.
Androgen-deprivation therapy, which is a common treatment for prostate cancer, has been tentatively linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. A new study solidifies these concerns.
Prostate cancer needs testosterone to grow and thrive, so androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) is designed to reduce the amount of testosterone in the body to close to zero, thereby helping to slow cancer's growth.
Although the findings are controversial, some studies have shown that ADT combined with radiation therapy is more successful at treating prostate cancer than just radiation alone.
Currently, ADT is recommended for advanced prostate cancer. But it is increasingly being used to treat localized prostate cancer, despite minimal evidence for its efficacy.
At the same time, the number of localized prostate cancer cases has increased dramatically over recent years, due in part to the more widespread use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing.
Side effects of ADT — including erectile dysfunction, diabetes, bone loss, and swollen breast tissue, or gynecomastia — can be fairly substantial. Added to this, there is growing evidence to suggest that low testosterone levels might increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
A common prostate cancer treatment comes under scrutiny in a new study.
Nepal Grameen Bikas Bank Ltd. (NGBBL) has allocated its Further Public Offering (FPO) on Tuesday. According to Prabhu Capital Ltd., the issue manager of the bank, out of 250,524 applicants 97,500 applicants were provided 10 units of mandatory shares through the lottery system.
Of the total 250,524 applications, 3,791 were canceled. The bank issued 975,000 units of FPO shares from 12th to 15th September 2017. The issuance was oversubscribed by 27.69 times.
After the FPO issuance, the paid-up capital of the bank is raised to Rs. 655.5 million. The bank earned a net profit of Rs. 161.4 million in the last Fiscal Year.
Check the link below to see the result at MeroLagani Site:
The prostate-specific antigen test is a blood test that measures levels of a protein the prostate gland produces. Men with prostate cancer usually have elevated levels of this protein, but heightened levels do not always mean cancer.
Other health conditions may also cause prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels to rise. In some cases, an elevated PSA is temporary and not a sign of a health problem at all.
Cells in the prostate gland produce PSA and levels typically remain below 4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL).
Most men with prostate cancer have PSA levels above 4 ng/mL, but about 15 percent of men with a PSA level below 4 ng/mL are also diagnosed with prostate cancer. This means that a PSA test alone cannot rule out or diagnose prostate cancer but can identify whether a man is at higher risk of having or developing the disease.
Initial testing may include both a PSA test and a digital rectal exam (DRE). During this examination, a doctor inserts a finger into the rectum to check the prostate for abnormalities. Together, if these two tests suggest prostate cancer, then the doctor will arrange for a biopsy to confirm the diagnosis.
False positives - a high PSA level, but no cancer - on the PSA test are common. PSA levels rise with age and other factors. Men with high PSA levels should follow up with a doctor, but should not assume they have cancer.
A high PSA level may not always indicate prostate cancer.
Can tissue engineering provide a cheap and convenient alternative to surgery for eardrum repair?
In the most severe cases, a ruptured eardrum can require surgery to put it right, but tissue-engineering techniques might provide a much simpler solution.
The eardrum, or tympanic membrane, forms the interface between the outside world and the delicate bony structures of the middle ear — the ossicles — that conduct sound vibrations to the inner ear. At just a fraction of a millimetre thick and held under tension, the membrane is perfectly adapted to transmit even the faintest of vibrations. But the qualities that make the eardrum such a good conductor of sound come at a price: fragility. Burst eardrums are a major cause of conductive hearing loss — when sounds can't pass from the outer to the inner ear.
Most burst eardrums are caused by infections or trauma. The vast majority heal on their own in about ten days, but for a small proportion of people the perforation fails to heal naturally. These chronic ruptures cause conductive hearing loss and increase the risk of middle ear infections, which can have serious complications.
Hepatitis C (HCV) is a viral infection that affects the liver and an estimated 3.2 million people in the USA are infected with HCV, and most do not feel ill or know that they are infected. Since 2010, acute cases of HCV have more than doubled, with new cases predominantly among young, white individuals with a history of injection drug use.
The current recommendations are that doctors screen patients at high-risk for contracting HCV, which include but are not limited to people born between 1945 and 1965, those diagnosed with HIV, children born to HCV-positive women and individuals who engage in injection drug use (PWID), among other select populations at high risk. This strategy is called "targeted" screening. "Routine" screening, as defined in the study, tests all individuals in a community with a high prevalence of HCV.
Video: One step Hepatitis C Virus Test Cassette, Raecho International
There are two ways to perform these screenings. Rapid testing is when results are given on the same day that the sample is drawn. Standard testing requires patients to return for a second appointment to get the results. Scientists at Boston Medical Center (Boston, MA, USA) and their colleagues evaluated the clinical benefits and cost-effectiveness of testing strategies among 15 to 30-year-olds at urban community health centers. They developed a decision analytic model to project quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), lifetime costs (2016 USDs) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) associated with nine strategies for one-time testing. The strategies differed in three ways: targeted versus routine testing; rapid finger stick versus standard venipuncture; and ordered by physician versus counselor/tester using standing orders.
Illustration of the Hepatitis C Virus
The team found that compared to targeted risk-based testing (current standard of care), routine testing increased lifetime medical cost by USD 80 and discounted QALYs by 0.0013 per person. Across all strategies rapid testing provided higher QALYs at a lower cost per QALY gained, and was always preferred. Counselor-initiated routine rapid testing was associated with an ICER of USD 71,000/QALY gained. Results were sensitive to offer and result receipt rates. Counselor-initiated routine rapid testing was cost-effective (ICER greater than USD 100,000/QALY) unless the prevalence of PWID was greater than 0.59%, HCV prevalence among PWID less than 16%, reinfection rate greater than 26 cases per 100 person-years, or reflex confirmatory testing followed all reactive venipuncture diagnostics.
Sabrina A. Assoumou, MD, MPH, an infectious disease physician and lead author of the study, said, “When standard testing was applied, patients were less likely to come back for that second appointment to get their results, which in turn meant more people weren't getting the treatment they so desperately needed. Our results indicate that we must initiate rapid testing strategies so that more people will know their status and get treatment more quickly.” The study was published on September 9, 2017, in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
