South East Asia Journal of Medical Sciences

Triple co-infection involving Dengue Fever, Scrub Typhus and Acute Brucellosis - a rare and surprising entity

Naveen Rajput — 2023-04-27

We report a case of a 28 year old patient presenting with the chief complaints of fever attributed to multiple co-infections. Co-infections have been infrequently reported in literature, dual co-infections being the most common variety. Dengue Fever, Scrub typhus and Acute Brucellosis are commonly found in North India, however they have never been reported to occur simultaneously in the same patient. Cross-reactivity amongst the tests for these infections is unlikely as well. This highlights the possibility of the multiple co-infections in patients presenting with mixed or un-improving symptoms as well as those with laboratory values disproportionate to each tropical illness. Physicians should hold high index of suspicion for co-infections if the same is noted in patients with fever.

Keeping Up with the Times: The Importance of Staying Current in Scientific Publishing

Ambadasu Bharatha — 2023-01-01

Editorial

Back pain in an elderly patient - A case report

Zay Yar Aung — 2023-01-06

ABSTRACT

Low back pain (LBP) secondary to the degenerative spinal disorder is a very common medical condition that presents in elderly people and rarely indicates a serious illness. We would like to report a case of 83 years old gentleman with a history of chronic degenerative back pain with the change in the nature of back pain, which triggered us to arrange further investigations and diagnosed Psoas abscess(PA) secondary to septic vertebral arthritis. It was treated with CT-guided drainage and sensitive antibiotics. This case report highlights the atypical presentation of diseases in elderly patients, and the common pitfalls of missing serious pathologies, which increases morbidity and mortality.

Keywords: low back pain, septic arthritis, Psoas abscess

Immunogenicity of a single dose mRNA vaccine in SARS-CoV-2 exposed subjects: A systematic review

Jagtar Singh — 2022-09-26

Background: The novel coronavirus is quickly spreading and mutating, putting the public health and lifestyle in shambles. The development and approval of mRNA vaccines came up as a breakthrough. The breadth of immune response after a single-dose vaccination in the already infected population is discovered for understanding the hybrid immunity and side effects associated with second dose. Administering a single-dose vaccine to the seropositive population can spare the doses for the population at higher risk.

Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, Google scholar, medRxiv and Cochrane library were explored to extract the original data on the efficacy of single-dose mRNA vaccines in seropositive subjects. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess the risk of bias in the studies.

Results: 6 studies evaluating the immunogenicity of single-dose mRNA vaccine were incorporated along with some observational studies and literature. These studies present promising evidence for administering only single-dose mRNA vaccine in seropositive subjects, providing biphasic immune response of higher breadth and duration.

Limitations: Most studies had a small sample size, did not correlate the results with higher age groups, with potential risk factors and the percentage of individuals who contracted breakthrough infections.

Conclusions: Single-dose mRNA vaccine can be immunogenic and protective enough for already seropositive population by increasing the number of Spike protein-specific memory B-cells. Vaccination schedules based on existing anti-body titers in such individuals can spare doses for vulnerable groups, especially when there is limited production and supply of vaccines worldwide.

Panic buying research: A systematic review of systematic reviews

S. M. Yasir Arafat — 2022-03-17

Panic buying is an emerging and ever-evolving phenomenon during emergencies covering several perspectives of life and academic domains. However, it hasn’t got adequate attention reflected by a handfuls number of studies on it. We aimed to assess the systematic reviews that have been performed on panic buying. A search was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and Google Scholar on 30 June 2021, with the search terms “panic buying”, ”systematic review” using the Boolean function ‘AND’. The search was also supplemented by hand searching from the reference lists. We included only systematic reviews on panic buying. We identified and assessed five systematic reviews conducted on panic buying. A major focus in these reviews was psychological factors, precipitating reasons, and the inter-disciplinary nature of the phenomenon. The role of social media and social learning have been emphasized in the genesis of panic buying behavior. Panic buying has got recent attention as newer studies are coming out. However, further robust studies are warranted to understand this transdisciplinary construct and therefore, inter-sectoral collaboration in research is required to understand its genesis and prevention strategies.