Gadau Journal of Pure and Allied Sciences

Cross-sectional study on prevalence of typhoid and health risk factors among pregnant women attending general hospital, Azare, Bauchi state, Nigeria

Ismail Hassan — 2024-06-30

Typhoid fever is among the major prevalent disease in Nigeria due to various interconnected factors such as scarce amenities for handling unwanted products and abuse of antibiotics; these among other factors are responsible for the widespread of typhoid fever affecting both underage children and young adults. This study was a descriptive cross-sectional conducted from September to November, 2023. The study population consisted of adults female age ranged from 18 years and above. A pilot study was conducted which tested the validity and reliability of the instruments. The response rate was 100% for there were no non-consenting respondents. The study variables were independent and dependent. Data was analyzed using SPSS Computer software version 11. The processed data was presented in Tables, Pie chart; and Chi-square test of independence (contingency tables) was used to determine if there was a relationship between control measures of typhoid and it’s occurrence in the study area. The study revealed that those with low level of education suffered from typhoid more than those who had attained a higher level of education and therefore education played a key role in the prevalence of typhoid among pregnant women based on the study. It has been shown that the higher the level of education the more the typhoid prevalence decreased among the adults as in primary, secondary and college levels respectively. The findings of this study also showed that 63% of the pregnant women had suffered from typhoid fever in one or more times in their life time, and only 37% had not. This is a clear indication that typhoid fever is prevalent among pregnant women attending General hospital in Azare. The results showed that those with low level of education were more than 50% and they suffered from typhoid episodes in their lifetime more than those with higher level of education. This study revealed that 63% did not have water storage facility while 37% provided water storage facilities within their households. The results of the study found that 80.2% of the residents had temporary houses, 14.4% had semi-permanent houses and 5.4% had permanent houses. These statistics reveal that most of the residents were poor and that they were vulnerable to poor housing which could promote poor state of sanitation. Poor sanitation practices are a cause of bacterial, viral, protozoa, and helminthic infections. Similarly, on waste collection 82.9% were dissatisfied about it, and 17.1% were satisfied. The main reason of dissatisfaction on waste collection was that it was done unprofessionally (52.9%) and irregularly (36.3%). The majority (47.1%) of the residents of the area under study felt that the drainage systems posed a problem of leaking, 36% felt the problem with drainage was smell and 16.9% felt that drainage system were contaminating their surface water sources.

PHARMACOLOGY OF SPONDIAS MOMBIN IN LIVER CANCER TREATMENT AND TOXICITY EVALUATION

Aminu Umar Kura — 2024-06-30

Cancer is among the major causes of death in the world. Spondias mombin is a natural product being accepted as medication for many diseases. This research aimed at evaluating the toxicity potential and pharmacology properties of Spondias mombin leaves in liver cancer treatment. Spondias mombin leaves were shade dried at room temperature and size reduced to powder and extracted using cold maceration. Phytochemical screening of the plant extract was conducted. Six weeks of healthy mice; weighing 22-25g were used. For acute toxicity studies, ten mice were grouped into a normal control group and another group received 2000mg/kg of the extract. The animals were observed closely for 14 days. Twenty-four mice were divided into 4 groups. One group served as control and received only saline at 10mls/kg and the other groups received one percent diethylnitrosamine (DEN) given via peritoneal injection to the mice weekly at a dose of 35mg/kg for six weeks. The remaining three groups received 250 mg/kg, 500 mg, and doxorubicin 2 mg/kg after four weeks of induction. The treatment commenced with the extract while still giving the DEN for cancer induction. The phytochemical analysis shows the presence of alkaloids, cardiac glycosides, saponins, tannins, phenolic compounds, steroids, flavonoids, and terpenoids, and the absence of carbohydrates anthraquinones. Animals exposed to the extract and observed for 14 days exhibited no obvious sign of toxicity with zero mortality during the period of observation. There is a slight weight change among the control group between 20.8±3.56 to 25.63 2.60.The creatinine, CL, and HCO3 of the control significantly (P˂0.005) differed from the study groups. There was a slight increase in weight after the first dose, though a steady decrease was noticed following the second, third, and fourth doses of DEN in the mice. ALT and AST were higher in the extract-treated groups compared to both Dox-treated and saline-treated groups. The extract was shown to have no obvious physical sign of toxicity and it doesn’t cause mortality in all the tested animals. Ethanol extract of the plant reversed the loss in weight, deterioration in liver enzymes, and protein production to an extent similar to that of standard anti-cancer agents.

Isolation, Screening and Biochemical Characterization of Used Engine Oil Degrading Bacillus Species and Pseudomonas Species

Abdullahi Aliyu Jibo — 2024-06-30

Extensive demand of natural resources has resulted in several large-scale unintentional hydrocarbon oil spills and environmental catastrophes due to the rising demand for fossil fuel energy. These hydrocarbon pollutants have effect on environment and human health. Spectrophotometric and Biochemical Methods are used for the research. Soil sample were collected from two different contaminated areas and used engine oil, the bacteria were isolated and tested for evaluation of bacterial growth and biodegradation by enrichment technique using Bushnell Hass broth with used engine oil as sole carbon source. The results show that Pseudomonas specie were capable of degrading used engine oil which remove 80% of the oil and Bacillus specie which remove 65% of the used engine oil. This illustrates that hydrocarbon biodegrading bacteria can be used for remediation of hydrocarbon contaminated soil.

Effect of Curcuma longa Supplement on Cognitive Performance in Swiss Albino Mice

Usman Garkuwa — 2024-06-30

Dementia is an age-related mental disorder and a characteristic symptom of various neurodegenerative disorders. Hyperglycemia affects areas of the brain crucial for learning and memory processes, potentially leading to cognitive impairments in individuals with diabetes. Curcuma longa (C. longa) contains many pharmacological and chemically important compounds with many beneficial effects. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of Curcuma longa on cognitive function in Swiss albino mice. A total of sixteen (16) mice of both sexes weighing between 24 – 30 grams were used for the study. The mice were divided into four groups of four mice each (N=4). Group I served as control and received 10 ml/kg distilled water; groups II, III and IV were given 5%, 10% and 20 % of Curcuma longa for 14 days respectively. Y maze and novel object recognition task were used to assess spatial working, long-term and recognition memories respectively. We observed that the 5% C. longa (77.60 ± 10.15%) group showed significant (p < 0.05) improvement in percentage alternation compared to the control group (64.40 ± 5.99%). We also found out that the 5% C. longa supplemented group showed a significant (p < 0.05) increase in both long-term memory (-14.08 ± 3.26) and discriminative index (-0.26 ± 0.07) when compared to control group (-31.55 ± 2.65) and (-0.33 ± 0.07) respectively. Thus, C. longa supplement at 5% improves spatial working memory, long-term memory and discriminative index of Swiss albino mice.

CSIT Analysis of Key Management Schemes for Centralized and Distributed Key Revocation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Taofeek Yusuf — 2024-06-01

Wireless sensor network (WSN) applications have been utilized for a variety of applications. Such as monitoring environments, military functions, and patient status monitoring. A major challenge in different applications of WSNs is security. This is because they are mostly deployed in a hostile environment, coupled with their constrained resources. Securing data and communication in WSNs requires appropriate cryptographic techniques. This is usually implemented through secure and efficient key management schemes. Research on key management in WSN is a work in progress. In this context, most research works focus on the key establishment and distribution aspect of the key management system. While less attention is devoted to key revocation and renewal techniques. For this reason, network and protocol designers encounter challenges in the design and implementation of the most appropriate schemes for WSN applications. This research work presents an exhaustive review of categories of key revocation schemes in existence. The study focuses on centralized and distributed categories only. A comparative analysis of the security and performance requirements of some selected candidates of centralized and distributed schemes was carried out. The results show that the KRRP scheme is the only solution among the selected candidates that can guarantee end-to-end data secrecy. This is because it merges the capability of private and public key cryptography in its implementation as shown in table 1. Also, the study observed most distributed schemes reviewed did not present energy overheads of process execution despite their complex nature. On the whole, this work outlines a much wider view of key management systems in terms of key revocation functionality and open research issues for the secure and efficient key management system.

Assessment of bacteriological quality of fruits and vegetables sold in Gombe metropolitan market

Lawal Garba — 2024-06-30

Fruits and vegetables are important components of human diet that could be contaminated by different kinds of microorganisms. Microbial contamination may occur during any steps of transportation or processing from farm-to-table due to many environmental, animal, and human sources as well as technological applications. This study aimed at assessing the bacteriological contaminants of fruits and vegetables sold in Gombe metropolitan. A total of 30 fruits and vegetables samples were purchased from different vendors and transported to the Microbiology Laboratory for processing. Ten-fold serial dilution was performed on each sample and aliquots of 10^-1-10^-3 dilutions were inoculated on Nutrient Agar and MacConkey Agar plates using pour-plate technique. The plates were incubated for 24 hours at 37^oC and then observed for aerobic mesophilic and faecal coliform counts. The bacterial loads of the samples ranged from 3.7x10⁴ to 2.7x10⁵ and 2.9x10⁴to 8.7x10⁴ for total mesophilic and faecal coliform counts, respectively. Subsequently, a total of eight bacteria were isolated and identified as Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Klebsiella spp., Enterobacter spp., Pseudomonas spp., Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, and Shigella spp. In conclusion, the fruits and vegetables were found to be contaminated with different bacterial species of public health concern.

Differential Game of Two Pursuers Chasing One Evader with Different Forms of Constraints in l_2- Space

Babani Abdullahi Umar — 2024-06-30

This paper addresses a pursuit differential game involving two Pursuers chasing one Evader within the l₂-space for an infinite system of first-order differential equations. The first Pursuer employs a strategy that satisfied integral constraint, while the second Pursuer uses a strategy governed by a geometric constraint. The goal of each pursuer is to force the state of the system to coincide with a predefined state within a finite time, counteracting the Evader's opposing actions. We construct an explicit strategy to determine the conditions necessary for successful pursuit. Moreover, we explore a control problem involving a single player.

The Effect of Bio-fortified Vitamin A Cassava on Poverty Status of Farming Households in Nigeria, Evidence from Oyo State.

Olakunle Ibitoye — 2024-06-30

ABSTRACT

Profitable farming is a prime target of all farmers regardless of the scale of production adopted and the veritable opportunity to attain the threshold of bumper harvest is not unconnected with the adoption of new technology. Bio-fortified vitamin A cassava remains the best option for farmers to experience improvement in cassava performance in both the quality and quantity terms and they are encouraged to adopt it in order to improve their households’ welfare. The survey was launched to investigate the effect of bio-fortified vitamin A cassava on the poverty status of the farming households in Nigeria using Oyo State as a case study. A Multistage sampling technique was used to sample a total of 186 cassava farmers comprising 92 adopters and 94 non-adopters of bio-fortified vitamin A cassava variety using copies of well-structured questionnaires. Parametric tools used were descriptive statistics and probit regression for socioeconomic characteristics and adoption status analysis. The socioeconomic results showed that both the adopters and non-adopters were in the productive ages of 42 years and 59 years respectively. The majorities of farmers in the two categories were married and had formal education. Years of experience possessed by them were 11 years and 18 years while both groups were members of associations. Poverty classification result showed 41.3% of adopters being poor while 83.0% of non-adopters were poor. Marital status (2.1271<p=0.05), education (1.1510; p<0.1), seasonal income (0.0757; p=0.05) and poverty status (I.6019; p<0.1) had influence on the farmers’ adoption status while lack of credit was voted highest among the factors militating against adoption of bio-fortified vitamin A cassava. It is therefore recommended that stakeholders in the crop enterprise should make frantic efforts in providing credit and other basic inputs that will enhance improved vitamin A adoption.

Assessment of Natural Radioactivity in Drinking Water from some Selected Districts of Michika, Adamawa State, Nigeria

Suleiman Saidu Zarma — 2024-03-07

Radionuclides are source of radiation that were recorded to have damaging health effects for people living in a community with high back-ground radiation. This study was carryout to assess natural radioactivity in drinking water sources at some districts of Michika, Adamawa State, Nigeria. Twenty-four (24) water Samples from three different sources (surface, borehole and well), were collected and analyzed using a thallium activated 3ʺ x 3ʺ sodium iodide [NaI (TI)] detector connected to ORTEC 456 amplifier available at Center of Energy Research and Training (CERT), Zaria. The results show that the mean activity concentration for ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K are 57.05, 40.31 and 193.6 Bql^-1 for borehole samples, 82.09, 23.0 and 199.4 for surface samples and 87.65, 38.82 and 215.7 for well samples. These values are higher than the control value of activity concentration set by UNSCEAR 200). The mean absorbed dose rate (D) for borehole, surface and well water samples were found to be 58.78, 60.1 and 72.94 nGy/h respectively. The mean values surface and well samples were higher than the maximum accepted value of 59nGy/h as recommended by (UNSCEAR, 2000) however, borehole is within the MCL. The mean values of total annual effective dose for borehole, surface and well water samples were 0.08, 0.08 and 0.09 respectively. These values are below 0.12, 0.1 and 1.0 mSvy^-1 as recommended by UNSCEAR, WHO and ICRP. Also, the mean values of Radium Equivalent Activity were 129.6, 130.4 and 159.8 Bql^-1 for borehole, surface and well water samples respectively. All the value of R_aeq were below the maximum recommended value of 370 Bql^-1. The mean value of total cancer risk is 3.18E-06, 3.25E-06 and 3.91E-06 for borehole, surface and well water samples respectively. All the mean values were above the acceptable range of 1E-06 to 1E-04. Based on our findings, the water sources in this area are not safe for domestic use. However continuous radiological monitoring of the water is recommended to safeguard the health of the populace.