BACKGROUND: Cases of undernutrition, such as stunting and wasting, in Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB), Indonesia, was found to be relatively high. Therefore, local government launched a golden generation program called GEN NTB to improve the quality of human resources by achieving a healthy, intelligent, devout, and productive generation in 2045. One of the genes known to be related with prosocial behavior is the oxytocin transferase (OXTR) gene. This study was conducted to determine the association between OXTR gene mRNA expression and prosocial behavior of the GEN NTB children.METHODS: This was an analytical observational case-control study involving 25 children as GEN NTB samples and 26 children as controls. Blood samples were tested for OXTR protein level with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and OXTR mRNA expression with real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Prosocial behavior was characterized and determined by using a rating method, which valued from 1 to 4 for poor to very good behavior.RESULTS: The average OXTR protein levels of the GEN NTB group was 88.28 ng/mL, which were higher than the average OXTR protein levels of control group (2.41 ng/mL). According to fold change analysis, the OXTR mRNA expression in GEN NTB group was also higher than the control group (10.91 vs. 6.40). Interestingly, observations on the prosocial behavior of the GEN NTB group showed significantly higher rate values compared to the control group (17.3 vs. 8.0, p=0.034). Hence, these findings showed that the OXTR protein level and OXTR mRNA expression was correlated with the better prosocial behavior.CONCLUSION: Higher rating of prosocial behavior of the GEN NTB children is related to the higher OXTR mRNA expression levels. This might be attributed to the interventions of GEN NTB program that may elevate children's quality of life since early childhood.KEYWORDS: GEN NTB, OXTR protein, mRNA expression, prosocial behavior, children

Earthquakes often caused severe fatalities to human beings, as the case of Aceh earthquake 2004, and Lombok earthquake 2018. For the case of Lombok shallow earthquakes 2018, the earthquakes of a magnitude 7.0 have destroyed almost 800 thousand homes, and caused the death of more than 500 people. The main problem of such a case is that the time occurrence of an earthquake cannot be predicted. However, the risk due to earthquake should theoretically be able to predict, when parameters can be calculated in the quantitative risk index of R = H x V/ C. Particularly in this paper, health capacity is introduced using a rating system in order to measure the resistance of people occupying disastrous area to overcome difficulties during hard time emergency shelter and disaster relief. Two study cases were conducted which show that the capacity index, particularly people health index, could differentiate between low and medium-high casualties among cities ruined by Lombok earthquake 2018. The development of a quantitative risk index, particularly health risk indexes, is therefore important in hazard mitigation due to earthquakes, that it provides a simple quick apparatus of disaster assessment.