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Background: The global incidence of dengue, a mosquito-borne viral infection, has grown dramatically in recent decades with about half of the world's population is now at risk. Its clinical manifestations include headache, fever, skin rashes, leukopenia and arthralgia. Local data evaluating age and gender based differences in clinical signs and symptoms of dengue are scarce at best. Objective: To compare the clinical signs and symptoms of dengue across gender and age based groups. Methods: A secondary data analysis of a randomized controlled trial on the effects of silymarin on hepatic enzymes and clinical manifestation of dengue was conducted. The clinical signs and symptoms of the dengue patients were recorded at the baseline before giving trial intervention. Chisquare test was used to make desired comparisons across gender and age based groups whereas the significance level was set at 0.05. Results: The study results showed that rash (p=0.047) and infected conjunctiva (p=0.013) were significantly associated with gender of the patients whereas nausea and vomiting (p=0.01), headache (p=0.016), retro-orbital pain (p=0.049) and infected conjunctiva (p=0.032) were significantly associated with age of the patients. Conclusion: A significant association of rash and injected conjunctiva with gender of dengue patients and of nausea and vomiting, headache, retro-orbital pain and injected conjunctiva with age of dengue patients was found. Further evaluation of study findings because of their potential implications for the symptomatic management of dengue patients is recommended.

Objective To determine the frequency of people at risk of developing diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2) and their risk of developing the disease over the next five years, using the Australian type 2 diabetes risk assessment (AUSDRISK) tool. Methods A cross-sectional study was done involving 152 adults; both males and females were randomly selected from city populations in Rawalakot and Muzaffarabad of the Azad Kashmir, irrespective of weight, family history and dietary habits. Patients with the apparent clinical features of DMT2 were excluded from the study. Data were collected over a nine-month period from April 2017 using an interviewer-administered questionnaire based on the AUSDRISK tool. Results Statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 23.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). Descriptive statistics were used to calculate the frequencies and percentages. Fifty-four (35.5%) participants had a low risk, 88 (57.9%) had an intermediate risk, and 10 (6.6%) had a high risk of developing DMT2 over the next five years. Conclusion Most of the city occupants had an intermediate-to-high risk of developing DMT2 (64.5%) over the next five years.

Background: Dengue fever annually affects almost 100 million people globally with 2.5 billion people at risk of developing dengue fever. The symptoms of dengue fever begins with flu like illness and may lead to severe manifestations such as bleeding, sudden loss of consciousness and even loss of life. The treatment of the infection is decided on the basis of severity of clinical features and level of fluids in the body. Objective: To assess the correlation of temperature with platelet count and total leukocyte count in patients of dengue fever. Methods: A secondary data analysis of a randomized controlled trial on the effects of silymarin on hepatic enzymes and clinical manifestation of dengue fever was carried out including only the patients in the placebo group of the trial. The correlation of temperature with platelet count and total leukocyte count was assessed using Spearman's correlation coefficient. The significance level was set at 0.05. Results: The study results revealed that the temperature was significantly negatively correlated with total leukocyte count on day 3 only (p=0.026). Furthermore, in patients with fever duration of 5 to 7 days it was significantly negatively correlated with platelet count on day 3 only (p=0.002) whereas in patients aged 40 years or above it was significantly negatively correlated with total leukocyte count on day 3 only (p=0.025). Conclusion: Raised temperature was found to be significantly negatively correlated with total leukocyte count on day 3 only. Moreover, stratified analysis showed it to be significantly negatively correlated with platelet count on day 3 in patients with longer duration of fever and with total leukocyte count on day 3 in patients aged 40 years or above. Further evaluation of the study findings with a larger sample size is recommended.

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