Background and Objective: Orphaned children face an increased risk of being malnourished. This study was aimed to explore knowledge and attitudes towards nutrition as well as nutritional practices and Body Mass Index (BMI) of adolescent residents of orphanages. Methodology: Five orphanage institutions in Selangor and Malacca were chosen for this study and 85 adolescents aged 13-18 years old were enrolled. Questionnaires concerning nutritional knowledge were administered in face-to-face interviews to prevent bias and to ensure questionnaire completion. Results: The results showed that out of the 85 subjects, 80% were orphans and 20% non-orphans. The majority of respondents were of normal weight (61.2%), while 2.4 and 4.7% were thin and severely thin, respectively. Meanwhile, 16.5% of subjects were overweight and 15.3% were obese. Fewer than 20% of respondents (14/85) were scored as having a “good” level of nutritional knowledge score but more than half had nutrition attitude and practice scores within the “good” range. Although no significant correlation was found between nutrition knowledge and attitude (rp = -0.043, p = 0.694) or knowledge and practice (rp = -0.222, p = 0.148), there was significant correlation between nutrition attitude and practice (rp=0.295, p = 0.006). Conclusion: Less than half of the total respondents obtained a “good” score for nutritional knowledge but the majority of the participants scored at the “good” level for attitude and practice. Although most respondents scored at the “good” level for nutritional practice, this outcome was not reflective of the situation as a whole, particularly given the “poor” scores for exercise and breakfast practices.

Purpose: To compare access to medicines in children living in poor households (income of USD1/person/day) between urbanised Klang Valley and rural East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Methods: A semi-structured interview was conducted with caregivers to determine demographics, access to medicines, knowledge, attitude and practice of parents in obtaining medicines for children. Results: There was no significant difference socio-demographically between poor households in Klang Valley (N = 58) and East Coast (N = 40). The study found that access to medicine for children (N = 325) in the households was adequate, where all households that reported illness in the children over the last 1 month and the last 6 month periods, obtained medicines and 99 % of the children were fully immunized. Qualitative analysis showed that poor households face several barriers in accessing medicines for their children such as financial, transportation, physical and attitudinal. Conclusion: Access to medicines for children living in poor households in both areas were similar and adequate. However, barriers to access remain and further studies are required. � Pharmacotherapy Group, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Benin, Benin City, 300001 Nigeria. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is endemic especially in the under-developed and developing countries and is a major public health concern. Improving nutrition is one of the ways to alleviate this condition. Consumption of locally available and affordable food such as date palm and goat milk which are rich in iron is one of the ways to overcome IDA. This study is aimed at evaluating the effect of date palm and goat milk supplementation on haematological parameters and iron bioavailability in IDA rats. Methods: 24 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into normal control and IDA group. The normal control was fed with normal diet and water ad libitum while the IDA group were fed on iron-deficient diet for two weeks to induce iron deficiency. The IDA rats were further divided into subgroups; each being supplemented with date palm, goat milk, a combination of date palm and goat milk, and ferrous fumarate as positive control. Blood were collected after 28 days for haematological parameters and iron profile determination. Iron bioavailability was assessed using the haemoglobin regeneration efficiency (HRE) index. Data was analysed by Student T Test and ANOVA using SPSS 23.0 software with p value < 0.05 considered as statistically significant. Results: Supplementation of date palm and goat milk for 28 days significantly improved Hb, RBC, PCV, MCV, MCH, serum iron and transferrin saturation (p<0.05) in all treatment groups compared to normal control. The iron bioavailability of date palm and goat milk supplemented rats was similar to that of the positive control. Conclusion: Supplementation of date palm and goat milk in IDA rats improves haematological parameters and iron bioavailability. � 2020 UPM Press. All rights reserved.

Disturbance in brain oscillations is observed in many neuropsychiatric disorders. Any tool that has the potential to restore abnormal brain oscillations is therefore beneficial to patients with neuropsychiatric illnesses. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is one such tool. It is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, which is able to alter brain oscillations depending on its parameters of stimulation and is used in clinical setting because of its potential therapeutic effects on the brain. However, the optimum stimulation parameters to induce the therapeutic effect of rTMS remains elusive. Therefore, it is important to investigate the differential effects between high versus low frequency of magnetic stimulation on the mechanism of brain oscillations in human subjects. Here we show, using combined rTMS and surface electroencephalography (EEG) that low and high frequencies of magnetic stimulation would induce dichotomy effects in EEG brain oscillatory activity. In particular, high-frequency rTMS 10Hz induces a synchronised oscillations for theta brain rhythm. In contrast, low-frequency rTMS 1Hz desynchronises neural oscillations on the same brain rhythm. Taken together, our results show that the desynchronisation effect of low-frequency rTMS 1Hz may potentially reverse the interference of altered neural oscillations. More extensive basic and clinical research using combined rTMS and EEG are needed to determine the optimum parameters of rTMS stimulation to restore adequate neural oscillations. � 2016 Penerbit UTM Press. All rights reserved.

Background: Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML) is associated with the BCR-ABL1 gene, which plays a central role in the pathogenesis of CML. Thus, it is crucial to suppress the expression of BCR-ABL1 in the treatment of CML. MicroRNA is known to be a gene expression regulator and is thus a good candidate for molecularly targeted therapy for CML. Objective: This study aims to identify the microRNAs from edible plants targeting the 3’ Untranslated Region (3’UTR) of BCR-ABL1. Methods: In this in silico analysis, the sequence of 3’UTR of BCR-ABL1 was obtained from Ensembl Genome Browser. PsRNATarget Analysis Server and MicroRNA Target Prediction (miRTar) Server were used to identify miRNAs that have binding conformity with 3’UTR of BCR-ABL1. The MiRBase database was used to validate the species of plants expressing the miRNAs. The RNAfold web server and RNA COMPOSER were used for secondary and tertiary structure prediction, respectively. Results: In silico analyses revealed that cpa-miR8154, csi-miR3952, gma-miR4414-5p, mdm-miR482c, osa-miR1858a and osa-miR1858b show binding conformity with strong molecular interaction towards 3’UTR region of BCR-ABL1. However, only cpa-miR-8154, osa-miR-1858a and osa-miR-1858b showed good target site accessibility. Conclusion: It is predicted that these microRNAs post-transcriptionally inhibit the BCR-ABL1 gene and thus could be a potential molecular targeted therapy for CML. However, further studies involving in vitro, in vivo and functional analyses need to be carried out to determine the ability of these miRNAs to form the basis for targeted therapy for CML. © 2020 Bentham Science Publishers.

Phoenix dactylifera (date palm) produces edible, sweet fruits. The fruits has been mentioned multiple times in Quran as a super food, for its nutritious and numerous medicinal properties. Phoenix dactylifera fruit has been served as a staple food for millions of people around the world since ancient times. Despite the availability of reports on Phoenix dactylifera fruit, robust documentation regarding energy metabolism of dates is still inadequate. Consequently, date palm is hardly recognized as an energy rich food. This systematic review aims to study the beneficial effects of Phoenix dactylifera fruits and its components on energy metabolism in vivo. Published relevant articles were searched in four electronically indexed databases-Science Direct, Ebscohost, Biomed Central, and PubMed without any language or publication status restriction from January 1997 to 2015. Bibliographies of screened studies, relevant reviews and manuscripts were also searched using Google Scholar. Data were reported in the form of a descriptive summary followed by systematic reviews, according to the PRISMA guidelines. There were only three articles included in the qualitative synthesis and discussed the effects of Phoenix dactylifera on energy metabolism. All articles focused on animal studies. This systematic review identified several articles that reported the effect of Phoenix dactylifera on the energy content. Date palm pulp was reported to contain high valuable nutritive values and can be a potential animal feed. Phoenix dactylifera was also shown to have similar energy content compared to a standard animal feed (corn grain) therefore, it also can be an alternative energy source for livestock. The study reported on energy mechanism pathways of Phoenix dactylifera remained inconclusive. In addition, there are still gaps. Hence, further studies are required to provide a comprehensive understanding on this matter. � 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.

Background: Iron deficiency anaemia is one of the most prevalent nutritional deficiencies in the world which indicates poor nutrition and health. It is characterized by the reduction or absence of serum iron as well as iron stores in the body. Supplementation of calcium rich diet such as animals’ milk is known to have inhibitory effect on iron bioavailability. However, recent studies have found that goat’s milk does not only increase iron bioavailability in iron deficiency anaemia but also minimized the interference of iron absorption. This systematic review aims to evaluate the potential of goat’s milk as a treatment for iron deficiency anaemia. Methods: The search was conducted for relevant articles published in four electronic indexed databases namely Medline, Ovid, Scopus, and PubMed. Relevant reviews, manuscripts and bibliographies of screened studies were searched using Google search engine. Data reporting involved systematic reviews and report of the study according to PRISMA guidelines. Results: A total of eight articles were found to meet the inclusion criteria. It was reported that iron deficient rats treated with goat’s milk showed increased hemoglobin regeneration efficiencies. This was evidenced by increased serum haemoglobin, red blood cell count, packed cell volume, haematocrit and mean cell volume. The DMT-1 receptor in the small intestine was also up-regulated indicating induction of erythropoiesis. These findings were more significant with whole goat’s milk than skim powdered goat’s milk. In iron deficient subjects treated with iron therapy, iron bioavailability was not affected with goat’s milk supplementation whereas it was significantly low with cow’s milk. The serum iron, ferritin, hepcidin levels as well as iron stores in liver, spleen and bone marrow were improved when treated with goat’s milk. In normal rats, iron stores were reduced in the group treated with cow’s milk and high calcium diet but not in the group supplemented with goat’s milk and high calcium diet. Conclusion: This review identified several reports on the beneficial effect of goat milk in iron deficiency anaemia. The findings support the hypothesis that goat’s milk is beneficial in iron deficiency anaemia. The diet of iron deficient subjects is recommended to include goat’s milk as the hemoglobin regeneration efficiencies as well as the iron store are increased. It was also noted that goat’s milk did not interfere with iron absorption and it improves the metabolism and digestion of calcium.