Iron deficiency and risk of oral squamous cell carcinoma Iron expression in oral carcinoma

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a subset of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma caused by excessive substance abuse like alcohol, tobacco etc.  Objectives: Aim of the present study was to evaluate the iron expression in different grades of OSCC and potential of iron staining as a prognostic marker and its importance as an essential nutrient in diet. Methods and Patients: It was a cross sectional study.A total of 40 oral biopsies were evaluated and the mean age of patients was 53.5 years with age range 23-80 years. 14 cases were well differentiated, 14 moderately differentiated and there were 12 poorly differentiated case. Iron staining was performed for all these cases. Results: Iron positivity was observed in 11 (27.5%) of OSCC patients with maximum iron positivity in well differentiated group (64.28%) of age range 20-40 years (70%). More patients had tongue as site of cancer. There was no genderwise difference in iron expression. Iron deficiency was associated with poor prognosis indicating iron as an important nutrient which can prevent OSCC if adequately present in our routine diet. Conclusions: Prevalence of iron positivity in young patients and initial stage of OSCC, indicates the protective effect of iron against oral squamous cell carcinoma

Mediation of Perceived Organizational Support in the Relationship of Hrm-Practices and Organizational Commitment of Bankers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan

This study aims to investigate the mediating role of perceived organizational support between HRM practices (recruitment & selection, training & development, performance appraisal, career planning and compensation), and organizational commitment. The topic was selected after preliminary study of the existing literature with a view to extract the broader theoretical model of issue. From this mini-research, a conceptual model was initially extracted to represent the issue with leading variables of human resource management practices, perceived organizational support and organizational commitment. Both secondary and primary data was used to explore the topic and examine the relationships between different research variables. The secondary data was collected from the existing research on the issue while field survey using questionnaire was applied to collect primary data for the testing of research model. The data were collected from employees of the selected six public/private sector banks in southern region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. In total 225 questionnaires were distributed into the respondents and 218 questionnaires were returned. The study has used a number of different statistical techniques such as factor analysis, correlation analysis, mediation regression analysis, one way ANOVA and t-test for analyzing the data. The results show that all human resource management practices and perceived organizational support were positively and significantly correlated with organizational commitment. Both of these variables also predict the organizational commitment verifying the cause and effect relationship between independent and dependent variables. In addition, perceived organizational support when treated as mediator showed partial mediation between (recruitment & selection, training & development, career planning, compensation) and organizational commitment. Full mediation has been established between performance appraisal and organizational commitment. The demographic variables, designation, qualification, experience, gender and marital status were also tested for examining mean differences among the groups. The findings of this study have multiple implications for the banks, policy makers and future researchers based on the results.