Patterns of Deranged Lipid Profiles in Patients of Chronic Hepatitis C Deranged lipid profile in hepatitis C patients

Liver plays an important role in lipid metabolism and any acute or chronic malfunction of the liver due to viral hepatitis or liver cirrhosis may induce lipid derangements Objective: To determine the patterns of deranged lipid profiles in patients of chronic hepatitis C Methods: It is a prospective, observational study, conducted at Medicine Department, Mayo Hospital Lahore for 6 months i.e.1stJanuary to 30th June 2018. After the ethical approval, 160 diagnosed cases of chronic hepatitis C of ages 18-70 years of either gender were selected by non-probability purposive sampling. Informed written consent was taken. Demographic information such as name, age and gender were recorded. Venous blood samples from patients after 10 to 14 hours of fasting were drawn for lipid profiles and sent to pathology laboratory. All results were expressed as mg/dl. Data were analyzed in SPSS version 22 Results: Out of 160 patients in this study, there were 94 males and 66 females. Total cholesterol was lower in 62.5% patients, normal in 33.75% patients and higher in 3.75% patients. Triglycerides levels were low in 66.25%, normal in 33.125%, and high in 0.625% patients. Low density lipoprotein (LDL) levels were low in 82.5% patients, normal in 10% and raised in 7.5% patients. High density lipoprotein (HDL) levels were low in 95%, normal in 4.375% & high in 0.625% patients Conclusions: Low levels of serum lipids including total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL and HDL are seen in population suffering from chronic HCV infection.

Female Educational Attainment within Socio- Economic and Cultural Context

The role of females’ education in the social and economic growth of a country is well recognized. In Rural Pakistan, females are far behind in their education. The present study attempts to identify the community, household, parental and cultural determinants of the female educational attainment in the rural setting of Punjab, Pakistan. The households with at least one female child who had attained final educational level within the past five years in the rural areas of Jhang and Faisalabad constitute the population of the study. Triangulation approach consisting of quantitative and qualitative survey has been deployed for the study. For qualitative analysis, 50 information rich cases were selected from the population area using the snow-ball sampling technique. For quantitative analysis, a sample of 700 female children was selected from the rural areas of two districts (Faisalabad and Jhang) of central Punjab. Two towns (Lyallpur town and Chak Jhumra town) from district Faisalabad, while two tehsils (Jhang and Chiniot) were selected from district Jhang using the simple random sampling technique. The findings of qualitative approach reveal that distances of educational institutions for females, mothers’ illiteracy, poverty, child labour, unawareness of the heads of the households about the benefits of girls’ schooling and traditional attitude in terms of gender bias towards female schooling are the major hindrances in the educational attainment of rural females. The descriptive, inferential and qualitative analyses demonstrated that community, parental, economic and cultural factors are vitally important in explaining the female educational attainment in rural areas. The study found a negative effect of school distances on the educational attainment of the units of analysis. Higher Female Education Ratio (FER) of the village, better education of mother and father, higher income of the household, and innovative attitude and better awareness level of the Head Of the Household (HOH) emerged as significant predictors of the educational attainment of the units of analysis. A lower caste status of the family, child labour, higher chances of early marriage, and high gender bias level of the heads of the households had negative effect on the response variable.. Late age at enrolment of units of analysis caused their early dropout from schools. The results of the study are in close agreement with the theories of cultural reproduction (Bourdieu’s theory & Bernstein theory) and feministic approaches (radical, liberal and socialist feminisms). The research concluded that the trajectory of poverty, traditional thinking and low awareness viiiabout the benefits of females’ education are the close approximation of low educational attainment of rural females in the selected areas. Low education of parents, low social statuses of families and higher opportunity costs of girls also have a dampening effect on the females’ schooling in the study population. The qualitative descriptions of the key informants stressed establishing more secondary level schools for girls in rural areas. They also proposed introducing the ‘anjumans’ mean ‘local NGOs’ to increase the demand for female education among parents and to improve the situation of supply side factors in the community. The findings of the study suggest to plan programmes for poverty alleviation and to control the child labour in the rural areas. To change the perceptions of society about females and their education is the need of the hour. Government-private partnership campaign to increase the awareness about benefits of female education among male heads of the households and the families of low social status can increase the schooling participation of rural females.