Prevalence of Exclusive Breastfeeding Practices and associated factors among mothers in Bahir Dar city,Northwest Ethiopia: a community based cross-sectional study

Background

Breastfeeding is an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants. World Health Organization (WHO) recommend exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) for six months which has a great contribution in reducing under five mortality, which otherwise leads to death of 88/1000 live birth yearly in Ethiopia. Hence, this study aimed to assess prevalence of EBF and associated factors in mothers in the city of Bahir Dar, Northwest Ethiopia.

Methods

A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from 10 to 25 June 2012 among mothers who delivered 12 months earlier in Bahir Dar city, Northwest Ethiopia. A cluster sampling technique was used to select a sample of 819 participants. Data were collected using a structured and pre-tested questionnaire by face-to-face interview technique. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to check associations and control confounding.

Results

Of 819 mother-infant pairs sampled, the overall age appropriate rate of EBF practice was found to be 50.3%. Having a young infant aged 0-1 month (AOR = 3.77, 95% CI = 1.54, 9.24) and 2-3 months (AOR = 2.80, 95% CI = 1.71, 4.58), being a housewife (AOR = 2.16, 95% CI = 1.48, 3.16), having prenatal EBF plan (AOR = 3.75, 95% CI = 2.21, 6.37), delivering at a health facility (AOR = 3.02, 95% CI = 1.55, 5.89), giving birth vaginally (AOR = 2.33, 95% CI = 1.40, 3.87) and receiving infant feeding counseling/advice (AOR = 5.20, 95% CI = 2.13, 12.68) were found to be significantly associated with EBF practice.

Conclusion

Prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding was low in Bahir Dar. Strengthening infant feeding advice/counseling both at the community and institutional levels, promoting institutional delivery, providing adequate pain relief and early assistance for mothers who gave birth by caesarean section, and enabling every mother a prenatal EBF plan during antenatal care were recommended in order to increase the proportion of women practicing EBF.

     

A case of methotrexate embryopathy with holoprosencephaly, expanding the phenotype

BACKGROUND: Methotrexate (MTX) embryopathy was described nearly 50 years ago, when this agent began to be used as a cancer treatment and abortifacient. In this report we describe a case with typical features of MTX syndrome together with new features to expand the phenotype. CASE: A 29-year-old woman decided to terminate her unwanted pregnancy because of ill health, as she had conceived soon after her last delivery by cesarian section. At 6 weeks of gestation, she took 2.5 mg of MTX 3 times a day for 7 days. The pregnancy termination failed, and the pregnancy was carried to term. A female infant was delivered who was growth retarded and had characteristic features of MTX embryopathy in addition to holoprosencephaly and other brain malformations, facial hypertrichosis, and long eyelashes-features that have not hitherto been described. CONCLUSIONS: We report the first case of holoprosencephaly in association with MTX exposure during the first 6 weeks of gestation. Physicians and the public should be aware of the effects of MTX on the fetus during pregnancy.     

The approximate entropy of the electromyographic signals of tremor correlates with the osmotic fragility of human erythrocytes

Background  

The main problem of tremor is the damage caused to the quality of the life of patients, especially those at more advanced ages. There is not a consensus yet about the origins of this disorder, but it can be examined in the correlations between the biological signs of aging and the tremor characteristics.     

Heat-shock responsive genes identified and validated in Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) liver, head kidney and skeletal muscle using genomic techniques

Background

The Mongolian gerbils are a good model to mimic the Helicobacter pylori -associated pathogenesis of the human stomach. In the current study the gerbil-adapted strain B8 was completely sequenced, annotated and compared to previous genomes, including the 73 supercontigs of the parental strain B128.

Results

The complete genome of H. pylori B8 was manually curated gene by gene, to assign as much function as possible. It consists of a circular chromosome of 1,673,997 bp and of a small plasmid of 6,032 bp carrying nine putative genes. The chromosome contains 1,711 coding sequences, 293 of which are strain-specific, coding mainly for hypothetical proteins, and a large plasticity zone containing a putative type-IV-secretion system and coding sequences with unknown function. The cag -pathogenicity island is rearranged such that the cag A-gene is located 13,730 bp downstream of the inverted gene cluster cag B- cag 1. Directly adjacent to the cag A-gene, there are four hypothetical genes and one variable gene with a different codon usage compared to the rest of the H. pylori B8-genome. This indicates that these coding sequences might be acquired via horizontal gene transfer. The genome comparison of strain B8 to its parental strain B128 delivers 425 unique B8-proteins. Due to the fact that strain B128 was not fully sequenced and only automatically annotated, only 12 of these proteins are definitive singletons that might have been acquired during the gerbil-adaptation process of strain B128.

Conclusion

Our sequence data and its analysis provide new insight into the high genetic diversity of H. pylori -strains. We have shown that the gerbil-adapted strain B8 has the potential to build, possibly by a high rate of mutation and recombination, a dynamic pool of genetic variants (e.g. fragmented genes and repetitive regions) required for the adaptation-processes. We hypothesize that these variants are essential for the colonization and persistence of strain B8 in the gerbil stomach during inflammation.