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A new study from the Universities of Eastern Finland and Turku has improved understanding of an under-researched problem connected to sleep among older employees. The survey comprised 2,771 Finnish municipal workers who were nearing retirement.

The study looked at how mental and physical job circumstances, stressful life events, and work-life balance influenced sleep issues in older workers. Sleep issues are linked to both job and nonwork pressures.

In another demographic survey, over half of Finnish males aged 60-69 and nearly 70% of Finnish women had sleeplessness symptoms in the previous month.

“In our investigation, we discovered four distinct components connected with mental stress.”

Physical workload and shift work, psychological workload, social and environmental nonwork adversity, and life event- and health-related nonwork adversity are all examples.” Marianna Virtanen, Professor of Psychology at the University of Eastern Finland, states

Loneliness and limited engagement with one’s neighbours are examples of social and environmental nonwork difficulties. Nonwork adversity connected to life events and health refers to a stressful occurrence in one’s life or the provision of informal care.

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“The more job and nonwork pressures each employee faced, the more sleep issues they had.”

Flexibility is a key development goal.

Work-related stress was connected with present sleep issues, but loneliness and stress related to one’s living environment predicted growing sleep problems throughout the follow-up. Sleep quality was also linked to psychosocial working situations.

“Psychosocial working circumstances were defined in this study by the contents and arrangements of work, such as chances for influence and working hours, as well as competence development and fair management.”

The research, funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund, provides information on characteristics at which development measures and interventions for older employees might be focused.

“Flexible working hours are an essential aim for growth, especially when there are stress factors in private life, such as serious sickness or death in the family, or being an informal caretaker for someone,” Virtanen adds.

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As COVID instances increase across the country, particularly in the national capital, in the run-up to the festival season, specialists believe the infections are moderate but underreported.

According to Dr. S Chatterjee, Senior Consultant Internal Medicine at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, the coronavirus next wave has already begun, since a large number of cases are being recorded, with the majority of them being unreported. “The number of instances in the city is currently enormous. I believe it has been underreported since many individuals do not even get tested. Doctors are also not advising, and patients are not being tested ” Dr. Chatterjee.

He also stated that if testing is enhanced, the daily number of instances will climb.

“So, if we start testing more individuals, the number of cases will increase since I receive calls every other day from people who are suffering from fever, and most of them will say it’s just the flu. But, in my opinion, they should be tested for both COVID and swine flu at the same time. Because there has been a significant increase in the number of instances, “Dr. Chatterjee stated.

“The majority of folks are coming out to be positive. So we can observe that the number of instances is clearly increasing “he continued.

Also Read: India records 16,299 new COVID cases, positivity at 4.58%

Dr. Chatterjee stated that the severity of individuals who test positive for COVID-19 is low; nonetheless, he stated that hospital admissions have increased, although the severity is not that severe.

“The severity or hospital admissions have grown, but the severity is not that awful.” The majority of patients are surviving, and the sickness is not life-threatening. But we must be cautious because one of those people may become ill as a result of the vulnerability and comorbidity,” he warned.

Concerning the fourth wave, Dr. Chatterjee stated that the rate at which cases are being recorded in our nation appears to be increasing.

“The way the numbers have risen in the previous few days leads me to believe that the tsunami has already begun. Because practically everyone you meet with has a family member with COVID these days when they are tested. So I believe it is already the beginning because the numbers have climbed in this manner “He stated.

“But, while there is nothing to worry about, it is important to exercise caution. The good news is that the immunizations clearly worked. Perhaps the strain is also weaker at this time “Dr. Chatterjee noted.

He also stated that immunizations are effective and that there is no need to be concerned.

Dr. Chatterjee went on to say that children are becoming infected with COVID-19 because they attend schools that do not require admittance.

“Children are becoming ill as a result of their attendance at schools. People are attending college. They are also becoming sick, but as I already stated, none of them require hospitalisation “He stated.

When asked about the symptoms, he stated that the majority of patients will have a runny nose, sneezing, sore throat, cough, headache, and body ache, with a few people just presenting with headache and exhaustion in a similar spectrum of symptoms.

Covid cases in India

Meanwhile, India recorded 16,299 new COVID cases in the previous 24 hours, with a case positivity rate of 4.58 percent.

Yesterday, the country recorded 16,047 new infections, with a case positive rate of 4.94 percent. With this, the country’s active caseload has dropped to 1,25,076 from 1,28,261 yesterday.

According to the Ministry, 19,431 COVID patients have recovered in the previous 24 hours. So far, the total number of recoveries in the country is 4,35,55,041.

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In the midst of an increase in COVID-19 cases among children, a health expert stated that children who were infected with coronavirus in January or April are becoming infected again, although the cases are light and can be handled at home. Other seasonal infections, however, are infecting youngsters. Children with COVID-19 reinfection are being treated at Madhukar Rainbow Children’s Hospital, according to Dr. Nitin Verma, Director.

“I have a high number of patients who have already been afflicted with COVID and are now getting infected for the second time. So a child who had COVID in January had it again in April, and a youngster who had it in April got it again now.”

“Because the protection does not continue if the strain is different, many youngsters are having COVID for the second time, according to Dr. Verma.

He went on to say that children are also acquiring other infections “COVID has been going on for a while, and I still have four to five children a day who are down and have COVID.

Hand, foot, and mouth illness is common, especially among school-aged children. There are a number of viral fevers that are the first instances of Dengue, and we’ve lately begun seeing cases of swine flu as well “He said.

According to Dr. Verma, the majority of COVID cases are minor and may be treated at home.

“Fortunately, the majority of the instances are minor. Only adults are affected by the harshness. The benefit of adults is that they have also had their immunisation. So their symptoms are a little more severe, but the children have mild to moderate severity and are all being handled at home “He said.

“Youngsters are displaying fever, some of them have a sore throat,” he stated of the symptoms being found in children. Some children have rashes, while others have symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhoea.”

Also Read: Health experts believe Cases of COVID-19 are modest but underreported

“Vaccination assists in limiting illness severity and ensuring that you don’t end up in the hospital or ICU, and wearing a mask, hand washing, and social separation,” Dr. Verma added of precautions.

In most cases, children are infected with COVID through schools, according to Dr. Nitin, hence it is critical to focus on the educational environment.

“Obviously, we need to focus on the educational environment so that masks are made mandatory in the classrooms.” When youngsters eat their meals, they are scattered so that they are not in close proximity to one another. Then that’s one way we can avoid the proliferation of COVID in schools,” Dr. Verma explained.

He added there is no need to close schools to stop the spread of COVID until the instances become really high.

“So, if there is a quick increase in instances or we are seeing an increase in COVID patients with serious sickness, yeah, it is necessary to close schools.” But even at school, we may design methods such as a hybrid model in which half the number of people attend in order to preserve social distance. But, given the current circumstances and the fact that the instances are not very serious, I do not believe it is appropriate to close schools at this time,” he continued.

Covid cases in India

Meanwhile, India recorded 16,299 new COVID cases in the previous 24 hours, with a case positivity rate of 4.58 percent.

Yesterday, the country recorded 16,047 new infections, with a case positive rate of 4.94 percent. With this, the country’s active caseload has dropped to 1,25,076 from 1,28,261 yesterday.

According to the Ministry, 19,431 COVID patients have recovered in the previous 24 hours. So far, the total number of recoveries in the country is 4,35,55,041.

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According to the findings of a new study conducted by experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Next Generation Sequencing enables clinicians to rapidly and accurately identify a single pathogen from among hundreds of probable possibilities by continuously sequencing multiple DNA strands detected in patient samples.

The researchers compared the pathogen detecting ability of an NGS system — the Respiratory Pathogen Infectious Diseases/Antimicrobial Resistance Panel (RPIP) — with a previously studied NGS system and standard of care (SOC) diagnostic methods for samples obtained with bronchoalveolar lavage in a paper first published online on June 13, 2022, in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology of the American Society for Microbiology.

A bronchoscope is inserted through the mouth or nose into the lungs, and a fluid wash is collected for evaluation. According to the researchers, their investigation is one of the first to compare NGS and SOC diagnoses for respiratory infections.

“We evaluated two NGS diagnostic techniques, one of which was the RPIP, and found that in both cases, the ability of NGS to identify specific pathogens was nearly comparable to the battery of diagnostic tests clinicians have been using for decades,” says study senior author Patricia Simner, Ph.D., M.Sc., associate professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University.

“While this indicates tremendous potential for the RPIP and NGS diagnostics in general, we believe that additional work is required to develop the technology before NGS can be regarded equivalent to or superior than existing SOC approaches.”

Simner and colleagues initially assessed the diagnostic capability of metagenomic NGS, a previously described workflow procedure in which all DNA recovered from a bronchoalveolar lavage is sequenced – including genetic material specific to the patient (the “host read” or “human read”) and the desired pathogen (the “microbial read”). By removing the host DNA, physicians may focus their search on the remaining genetic information in the hopes of finding the microbial read and, eventually, determining the source of the patient’s disease.

The researchers used the RPIP system to test a different NGS method termed focused NGS in the second half of their experiment. As with metagenomic NGS, everything in the patient respiratory sample is sequenced, but capture probes — small segments of single-stranded DNA that correspond structurally to the DNA of certain diseases — are utilised to improve the searching ability.

“Using NGS to find pathogen genetic signatures is like searching for information on a specific topic in a library with a huge number of books,” says study lead author David Gaston, M.D., Ph.D., a former pathology fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who now works at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“When it comes to metagenomic NGS, you have to read through all of the literature to find the ones that mention the issue. However, with targeted NGS, you first ask the librarian to retrieve the volumes most likely to contain the topic, and then you do a more focused, promising search.”

The researchers discovered that the efficiency of both metagenomic and targeted NGS differed depending on the type of organism sought. Both NGS approaches effectively identified viruses, with herpes viruses being the most easily recognised. The results for bacteria and mycobacteria (which includes the organism that causes TB) neared the level of SOC diagnostics, but dropped down as the number of species reduced – even when the capture probes were used in targeted NGS. Fungi were not found using either NGS technique.

Overall, the RIPP targeted process agreed with standard diagnostics 66% of the time, according to the researchers. They discovered a 46% agreement for focused NGS to detect pathogens of clinical significance and an 86% agreement for demonstrating pathogen absence.

Along with the ability to correctly identify more than 300 pathogenic organisms from a bronchoalveolar lavage, the researchers believe that focused NGS has tremendous promise for one day revealing 1,200 genetic markers in pathogens that indicate which species are most likely to withstand antibiotics.

“Overall, the present accuracy of both metagenomic and targeted NGS approaches that of current diagnostic techniques, which is a big lesson from our work,” Gaston adds.

“We discovered that while NGS can detect many infections, it cannot detect all of them, and that in some situations, both NGS approaches might identify pathogens that conventional diagnostics would have missed.”

“There are now advantages and disadvantages to using NGS as a microbiological diagnostic tool,” Simner explains. “The RPIP targeted procedure, for example, necessitates more time and reagents but requires less bioinformatic analysis of the generated data. Metagenomic NGS, on the other hand, is less technically difficult but requires more complicated analysis.”

Based on their findings, the researchers believe that metagenomic and tailored NGS processes can be used in conjunction with, but not as a replacement for, SOC diagnostic approaches.

They predict that with further improvement, NGS systems will one day become the gold standard for respiratory pathogen detection.

Karen Carroll, John Fissel, Ethan Gough, Emily Jacobs, Eili Klein, Heather Miller, and Jaijun Wu are part of the Johns Hopkins Medicine study team, along with Gaston and Simner.

The study was funded by the Sherrilyn and Ken Fisher Center for Environmental Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases. The RPIP panel and the Explify automated system, which were utilised for bioinformatic analysis of RPIP targeted NGS data, were given by their respective vendors, Illumina and IDbyDNA.

Also Read: Genetic testing appears to be ‘promising’ for detecting hundreds of disease agents: Research

The researchers, however, state that these entities had no involvement in the study’s design, data collecting and analysis, or the choice to submit the work for publication. The authors of the paper disclose no conflicts of interest.

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According to media sources quoting a recent World Health Organization (WHO) study, Afghanistan is dealing with various disease outbreaks, including Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD), measles, Congo fever, dengue fever, and Covid-19.

According to the WHO study, there has been a significant increase in acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) cases nationally, according to Afghanistan’s local media outlet Khaama Press. Almost 19,050 cases of AWD have been verified in several provinces across Afghanistan, particularly in Kabul, Paktia, Khost, Paktika, Jawzjan Ghazni, Kandahar, and Zabul.

Despite a decrease in frequency, all provinces continue to report measles cases. According to the data, there are a total of 64,654 cases of measles in Afghanistan.

Congo fever, also known as Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), has spread throughout Afghanistan, mainly in 13 provinces in the southern, south-eastern, eastern, and central areas, with 229 confirmed cases and six deaths.

In July 2022, new dengue fever cases in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar region skyrocketed.

In order to respond to the diseases, medical emergencies, and natural catastrophes that are expected to strike Afghanistan in July 2022, WHO is reaching out to the nation, giving resources, and strengthening its capacities.

Another disastrous incident occurred in Afghanistan on July 18, 2022, when a 5.1 aftershock devastated the south-eastern districts of Khost and Paktika.

This was on top of the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that happened on June 22, 2022, injuring over 361,000 people and killing 1036.

United Nations for Afghanistan

The United Nations has committed USD 10 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Funds (UNCERF) to assist Afghans devastated by the earthquake that rocked the country’s east.

The Bahrain-based Royal Humanitarian Foundation (RHF) has reached an agreement with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to send humanitarian assistance to those in Afghanistan impacted by the recent earthquake.

India has also delivered relief supplies to Afghan people who had been impacted by the earthquake.

The relief aid handed over by the Ministry of External Affairs Joint Secretary (PAI), JP Singh, included basic materials such as family ridge tents, sleeping bags, blankets, sleeping mats, and other items to help the people of Afghanistan in earthquake-affected areas.

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India has sent a technical team to the Embassy in Kabul to coordinate stakeholders’ efforts to provide humanitarian supplies.

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