A COMPARISON OF THE VISUAL PERCEPTUAL SKILLS IN TYPICAL AND CEREBRAL PALSY CHILDREN

Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the difference at occupational performance skills related to visual perception among typical developing children and cerebral palsy children by using measuring test of MVPT-R. Design And Sampling Technique: Quantitative cross-sectional study, convenience sampling method. Study Setting And Participants: A total of 400 Cerebral palsy children (all types) and typical children each from different mainstream schools, rehab centers, pediatric occupational therapy departments, and special education centers located in Karachi. Interventions / Data Collection: Test of visual perception that is Motor Free visual perceptual test- Revised MVPT-R. Result: Result shows difference in perceptual ages (PA) between typical and cerebral palsy children. Perceptual age (PA) was greater than the chronological age (CA) in the typical group. Conversely, in the CP group the perceptual age (PA) was lesser than the chronological age (CA). Conclusion:  Visual perception skills play a key role in a child’s achievement at school and at home. Children require intact visual perception for the successful performance of their daily living as well as academic tasks like good eye-hand coordination, handwriting, reading, shape perception, play skills, and copying patterns, etc. This study is helpful to identify those children who have visual perception issues and sorting this problem will form the baseline for better evaluating and planning of useful visual perception activities for typical and cerebral palsy children.

Development and Optimization of Polymerase Chain Reaction for Screening of Burkholderia Mallei Infection Among Indiginous Working Equines

Economically, Pakistan is an agricultural country as the agriculture sector offers employment to 42.3% of the country?s citizens involved with any kind of labor for their livelihood, 19.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) comes from the agriculture sector apart from the raw materials for many other value-added sectors contributing to huge quantities of added indirect income; livestock sector as for instance, adding 58.33% to the worth of agriculture besides contributing 11.39% directly to GDP. Population of livestock are cattle 44.4, Buffalo 37.7, Sheep 30.1, goat 72.2, Camel 1.1, Horses 0.4, Asses 5.2, Mules 0.2 millions. Asses population increased from 4.9 to 5.2 million while population of Camel, Horses and mules remained unchanged since last year. Horses along with mules and donkeys facing many managerial, nutritional, noninfectious and infectious diseases which decreases production and performance, out of which infectious diseases such as Glanders is life threatening and pose zoonotic potential to human beings specially care takers, veterinarian and public health. To monitor threat due to these asymptomatic carriers to animals and human beings and from places having decreases frequency of disease Glanders in equines, it is unavoidable to develop and optimize a highly specific and sensitive molecular test such as PCR, required to decrease the number of results which are false negative and false positive findings besides being fast and accurate. 200 nasal and blood samples of working equines (horses, mules and donkeys) were collected from the Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Lahore and Multan at the sites of Brook hospital. All the samples were collected and transported to the WTO Quality Control Laboratory of UVAS, Lahore keeping in account the all microbiological hygienic and hazardous measures according to OIE protocols. All the animals were injected mallein PPD intra-dermally into the lower eyelid with the result noted after first and second day. Blood of animals were used for DNA extraction by commercially available DNA extraction kit. The extracted DNA were subjected to Gel Electrophoresis for integrity of the extracted DNA and then used further for amplification of target region of the DNA. The extracted DNA was used for the amplification of Flip IS407A gene region using the specific primers. Products of the PCR were visualized with UV light after electrophoresis of the gel and B. mallei was detected in only positive control. The study found high prevalence of the disease and existence of active nasal shedders in equines. The findings implicate importance of targeted surveillance in glanders suspected equines.