Bangladesh is experiencing an increasing prevalence of diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Considering daily total requirement of 5 servings as minimum recommended amount, 95.7% of people do not consume adequate fruit or vegetables on an average day in the country. Imposition of lockdown during COVID-19 created disturbance in fresh fruits and vegetable production and their retailing. This incident can make these dietary products less affordable by stimulating price and trigger NCDs. However, little is known about the supply chain actors of healthy foods such as vegetables and fruits in urban areas, and how they were affected due to pandemic. Aiming toward the impact of COVID–19 on the business practices and outcomes for the vegetables and fruits retailers in Bangladesh, a survey of 1,319 retailers was conducted in two urban areas, namely Dhaka and Manikganj from September 2021 to October 2021. To comprehend the impact of COVID-19 on the profit margin of the retailers and on the percentage change in sales, a logistic and an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression were estimated. Significant difference in the weekly business days and daily business operations was observed. The average daily sales were estimated to have a 42% reduction in comparison to pre-COVID level. The daily average profit margin on sales was reportedly reduced to 17% from an average level of 21% in the normal period. Nevertheless, this impact is estimated to be disproportionate to the product type and subject to business location. The probability of facing a reduction in profit margin is higher for the fruit sellers than the vegetable sellers. Contemplating the business location, the retailers in Manikganj (a small city) faced an average of 19 percentage points less reduction in their sales than those in Dhaka (a large city). Area-specific and product-specific intervention are required for minimizing the vulnerability of retailers of vegetables and fruits and ensuring smooth supply of fruits and vegetables and increasing their uptake to combat diet related NCD.

Background: HER-2 overexpression is associated with clinical outcomes in patient with breast carcinoma. Particularly this is important for target therapies with the monoclonal antibody (Trastuzumab). With aspirated materials from breast carcinoma more information may be retrieved by making cell blocks like immunohistochemistry in the inoperable breast cancer patient. Materials and methods: This study was carried out on 102 female patients with palpable breast lump, among them 33 malignant cases were found and cell blocks were made from the aspirated materials. HER- 2 statuses were estimated in both the cell block preparation and histopathological blocks separately. Results: Among the 33 cases of duct cell carcinoma, cell blocks of 32 cases were found to be adequate but one of them died before the surgery. HER-2 expression score of 0, 1+, 2+ and 3+ were foundin 14, 7, 5 and 5 cases respectively. All the 14 cell block scored as ‘0’ also showed similar ‘0’ score in their corresponding histologic block. Among the seven cell blocks scored as ‘1+’, 5 cases showed ‘1+’ staining and 2 case showed ‘2+’ staining in their corresponding histologic blocks. Of the ‘2+’ cases in cell block, 2 cases failed to correspond as they scored ‘1+’. Finally 5 cell blocks with ‘3+’ scorecorresponded with that of the histologic blocks.In cell block immunohistochemistry, the sensitivity was 71.43%, specificity 91.67%,positive predictive value of 71.43% and a negative predictive value of 91.67% with an accuracy rate of 87.71% with a highly significant p value (<.001). Cohen’s Kappa test of agreement was 0.814 which means there was a good agreement and Spearman’s rank-correlation analysis found to 0.984 with a p value of < .001 which was highly significant. Conclusion: This study found overexpression of HER-2 can be determined with confidence in the cell block preparation, particularly in the negative cases. JCMCTA 2017 ; 28 (2) : 88-93

The main target of this current research work was intended to construct and make affirmation of a facile, economical, very sensitive with high precision and accuracy, reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method for simultaneous estimation of two drugs Ramipril and Carvedilol. The validation parameters were verified based on the standard requirements of International Council for Harmonization (ICH), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) by the determination of linearity, accuracy and precision. To develop the method, a C18 column (with a dimension of 250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μ, SUFELCOSILTM LC-18) was used. The mobile phase was comprised of aqueous KH2PO4 buffer solution and acetonitrile at the ratio of 55:45 (V/V) and flow rate was 1 mL per minute. 220 nm wavelength in the ultra-violet region was used to monitor the effluents and the retention times were found at 5.1±0.1 and 8.1±0.1 minutes for Ramipril and Carvedilol, respectively. Percent recovery for both drugs was above 98%, which demonstrated that the accuracy protocol was maintained. The linearity responses of the method for both Ramipril and Carvedilol were higher than 0.995 and the percentage of Relative Standard Deviation (RSD) (precision) for both of these two drugs were lower than the highest permissible limit or less than 2% (according to FDA). Therefore, it is easily perceptible that the corresponding RP-HPLC method was highly accurate, effective, rapid and precise which can offer huge potential for the application of simultaneous assay of Ramipril and Carvedilol in pure forms. Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Journal 26(1): 15-19, 2023 (January)

Purpose: To observe the blood picture of patients with COVID 19 infections and to formulate future guidelines for management. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out among patients with COVID 19 infections who were admitted to one of the Covid-dedicated hospitals in Bangladesh from March-2020 to May-2020. Results: A total of 92 patients were included in this study. 53.3% were male and 46.7% were female. Most of the patient’s haemoglobin percentage was found below normal (53.3%), however, the total count of RBC, WBC and Platelet was found within the normal limits in most of the cases (64.1%,80.4% and 87% cases respectively). 75% of patients had high ESR levels. 50% of cases showed Neutrophilia and Lymphocytopenia in 43.5% cases. Although some cases show changes in Monocyte, Eosinophil and Basophil count they were not significant in number. Conclusions: A significant number of patient’s neutrophilia and lymphocytopenia. Blood parameter is an important tool for managing the COVID-19 patients. With or without co-morbidities maintaining normal blood levels is essential in COVID-19 patient management.