Adverse reactions are the recognized hazards of drug therapy and they can occur with any class of drugs and many studies revealed that the incidence is more in case of antibiotics. The main aim of this study was to detect and analyze Adverse Drug Reactions of antibiotics in inpatients of a tertiary care hospital. A prospective spontaneous reporting study by active and passive methods was carried out for a period of six months. A total of 49 ADRs were reported during the study period with male predominance (53.06%) and geriatric age group. More number of ADRs was from General Medicine and Pediatric departments in which the most affected organ systems were the GIT (38.77%) and the skin (30.61%). The antibiotic classes mostly accounted were cephalosporins (34.69%) followed by fluoroquinolones and others in which type A reactions were more compared to type B and 59.18% of them were predictable. The severity assessment revealed that most of them were moderate (63.26%) followed by mild and severe reactions. Of the reported reactions, 55.10% were definitely preventable and causality assessment was done which showed that 71.42% of the reactions were probable, possible (18.36%), definite (10.20%) and no reactions were unlikely. The study concluded that Adverse Drug Reactions to antibiotics are common and some of them resulted in increased healthcare cost due to the need of some interventions and increased length of hospital stay. The health system should promote the spontaneous reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions to antibiotics, proper documentation and periodic reporting to regional pharmacovigilance centers to ensure drug safety.

BackgroundAn appropriate diet is critical for the growth and development of infants, especially in the first two years of life. Despite considerable efforts made by government and local authorities to raise awareness, mothers still lack basic knowledge of weaning practices; as a result, infants face a growing number of health problems in their later years of life. This research aims to investigate the association between malnutrition and knowledge of different weaning practices among mothers and to study the factors influencing it.

Loss of organ and tissue due to injuries or diseases led to the development of regenerative therapies to decrease reliance on organ transplantations. It deals with employing the self-renewal ability of stem cells to differentiate into numerous lineages to assist in providing effective treatment for a range of various injuries and diseases. Regenerative engineering of organs or tissues represents an ever-expanding field that is aimed at developing biological replacements for dysfunctional organs or injured tissues. The critical issue, however, with the engineering of organs outside the human body is the insufficient availability of human cells, the absence of a suitable matrix with the same architecture and composition as the target tissue, and the maintenance of organ viability in the absence of the blood supply. The issue regarding the maintenance of the engineered organ viability can be solved using bioreactors consisting of mediums with defined chemical composition, i.e., nutrients, cofactors, and growth factors that can successively sustain the target cell's viability. Engineered extracellular matrices and stem cells to regenerate organs outside the human body are also being used. Clinically, various adult stem cell therapies are readily under practice. This review will focus on the regeneration of organs through various types of stem cells and tissue engineering techniques.

Sewage water contains toxic heavy metals which can be translocated and accumulated in plants and subsequently transferred to human body through the food chain, yet it has become the most commonly used water source for irrigating vegetable crops in peri-urban or urban areas of several countries including in Pakistan. Karachi, the metropolitan city of Pakistan, is the largest industrial and financial hub of the country with an estimated 16 Million population of multilingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious peoples. The current study was conducted to examine the accumulation of six heavy metals (Cr, Ni, Cd, Pb, As and Hg) in cabbage, radish, turnip, cauliflower, and carrot crops, irrigated with sewage water (SW) of peri-urban area of the Karachi. Four treatments were designed, the fresh water (FW) was used as the control (T 0 ), whereas T 1 , T 2 T 3 and T 4 contained 25, 50, 75 and 100% of SW respectively. The samples analyzed through atomic absorption spectrophotometer using flame atomic absorption techniques revealed that among the five treatments, accumulation of the six metals was found higher with 100% SW, which was decreased with decrease in SW concentration up to 25% SW. The minimum accumulation of the metal was noted with 100% FW (control). Among the five types of vegetables, cabbage and cauliflower revealed a high tendency of accumulating the metals. Hence, in order to avoid exposure of excess heavy metals to human health through vegetables, the cabbage and cauliflower crops may not be grown in the vicinity of Karachi city where the source of irrigation water is only sewage water.

Blastomycosis is a systemic mycosis endemic to the Midwestern and South Central United States. Infection is caused by inhaling spores of Blastomyces dermatitidis (B. dermatitidis) that inhabit soil. Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a rare complication of pulmonary blastomycosis with a significantly high mortality rate. We present a case of blastomycosis associated with severe ARDS treated with traditional prone position ventilation (PPV) and neurally adjusted ventilator assist (NAVA) along with antifungal therapy, steroids, and supportive care in a rural setting with no access to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). This case demonstrates that traditional therapies such as prone position ventilation can help patients with blastomycosis-associated ARDS especially in rural settings where advanced therapies such as ECMO are lacking. The use of NAVA in blastomycosis-associated ARDS needs further research.