Asha Kamath - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Asha Kamath

Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 2018

F1000Research

Background: Many randomized trials measure a continuous outcome simultaneously at baseline and af... more Background: Many randomized trials measure a continuous outcome simultaneously at baseline and after taking the drug. For a single continuous post-treatment outcome, the sample size calculation is simple, but if there are assessments at multiple time points post-treatment then this longitudinal data may give more insights by analyzing the data using the repeated measures method. Also, if the sample size is calculated using the single time-point method for longitudinal data, it may lead to a larger than required sample size, increasing the cost and time. Methods: In this research, an effort is made to determine the size of the sample for repeated measures case and then compared with the single post-baseline case. The sample sizes were examined under different scenarios for the continuous type of response variable. Under Mean contrast and Diff contrast the sample sizes were calculated with different correlations. These two scenarios were again examined under compound symmetry as well ...

South-East Asian Journal of Medical Education

Background: The development of a reliable and valid method to assess laboratory exercises in prec... more Background: The development of a reliable and valid method to assess laboratory exercises in preclinical sciences is a challenging task. The use of different assessment methods helps assess various aspects of clinical competence. Integrated Practical Examination (IPE) was thus incorporated as an assessment tool in physiology at Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Campus), India aiming to test a wide range of practical skills and to improve the validity of our practical examinations. Methods: Three batches of first year medical students were tested by IPE which included two components: objective structured practical examination (OSPE) and performance exercise (PE). Scores of each student of the study sample in PE and OSPE in the 4 th block were analysed. Results and conclusion: Analysis of student scores in the examinations revealed that student performance in PE was better than that in OSPE for all three batches. The correlation coefficients between the marks on OSPE and PE were found to be poor for all three batches. There was a significant difference in the mean scores on OSPE for all three batches (P value=0.014). There was also a significant difference in the mean scores on PE for all three batches (P value=0.013). Analysis of student scores also exposed some of the deficiencies of PE and OSPE. Students have differing strengths and weaknesses and each component of IPE thus tests different aspects of knowledge, understanding and abilities.

Annals of Operations Research

The analysis of large-scale data generated by humans, online activity in different web and social... more The analysis of large-scale data generated by humans, online activity in different web and social platforms is a challenging problem faced by researchers, practitioners, and academicians. It has a critical impact on decision making in every business, scientific discovery, social and environmental challenges. This special issue of the Annals of Operations Research contains selected and refereed papers on the topic of Business Analytics and Operations Research.

Unexplained pneumonia appeared in Wuhan was soon determined to be a novel coronavirus disease, re... more Unexplained pneumonia appeared in Wuhan was soon determined to be a novel coronavirus disease, referred to as COVID-19. On March 11, 2020, WHO characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic and the virus has been recognized as a global threat. A plethora of studies is being carried out using various statistical and mathematical models to predict the probable evolution of this pandemic. Though most of them are focusing on building predictive models to assess mortality rates and risk, concentrating on the length of hospital stay can improve decision making and treatment plans. While modeling the length of stay, possible outcomes observed are either discharge or mortality. Modeling the duration of recovery and death provides valuable information for health officials to design proper strategies to reduce the burden on the health system during the outbreak. In this study, we are exploring this competing event aspect of the survival data obtained from COVID-19 patients using the state-of-the-art mo...

Annals of Operations Research, 2020

The repeated occurrence of the same event in a process is commonly observed in many domains. Such... more The repeated occurrence of the same event in a process is commonly observed in many domains. Such events are referred to as recurrent events. The time to occurrence of these repeated events varies from unit to unit with a possibility of events not occurring among some of the units. Invariably such data are dealt with using some of the techniques in survival analysis called recurrent event models, which are commonly encountered in epidemiological studies and clinical trials. However, it applies to other domains in science and technology. We illustrate the usefulness of recurrent event models in the context of defect proneness analysis in quality assessment of software. Some of the models in practice are introduced on data collected to study the impact of module size on defect proneness in the Mozilla product. Module size plays a significant role in defect proneness and each defect fix makes the class more susceptible to further defects. The risk estimates obtained from the different ...

Ghana Medical Journal, 2021

Objectives: The present study aimed at assessing high school teachers’ mental health literacy (MH... more Objectives: The present study aimed at assessing high school teachers’ mental health literacy (MHL) and predictors related to study outcomes.Design: Cross-sectional studyMethods: We employed 460 high school teachers who engaged with adolescents for at least six hours per week with a minimum of five years of teaching experience in southern India. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to assess their MHL. Descriptive analysis and backward logistic regression analysis were performed. A p-value < 0.05 was set as significant.Results: Teachers’ MHL on depression was less than desirable; however, they identified 288 (62.6%) adolescents with mental health problems during their career, and 172(59.72%) were referred to mental health professionals. On logistic regression analysis, teachers’ educational status, their marital status, teaching a class with an average strength of 31-60 students per class, previous mental health training and having self-efficacy concerning seeking information...

JOURNAL OF CLINICAL AND DIAGNOSTIC RESEARCH, 2018

INTRODUCTION COPD is a progressive illness causing significant morbidity and mortality. COPD is a... more INTRODUCTION COPD is a progressive illness causing significant morbidity and mortality. COPD is associated with many comorbidities like cardiovascular, renal, psychiatric, musculoskeletal, and metabolic diseases [1]. COPD patients are reported to have low sex quality and sexual functioning which leads to sexual inactivity. ED is one of the causes for poor sexual life in COPD [2]. Chronic illnesses like COPD affect the marital quality [3]. Dyspnoea is the leading symptom that leads to poor sexual performance which in turn negatively affects the marital quality [4]. Wives of COPD patients are found to be stressed due to chronic illness of their partner. They take most of the family responsibilities, feels low health as well as marital quality [5]. It is evident that sexual dysfunction due to COPD may affect the marital quality [2,3]. The sexuality and relationship in patients of COPD is multifactorial. It is difficult to delineate the effect of respiratory disability from other factors that lead to poor marital quality and sexuality. In Indian practice, discussing the sexual problem is still a taboo and less time is spent, by the caregiver, in assessing the sexuality in patients with chronic illness. There are no Indian studies, to the best of our knowledge, on ED and marital quality in COPD patients. This study was an attempt to find out the association of ED and the marital quality in COPD patients. MATERIALs AND METHODs This cross sectional study included 87 stable COPD patients, aged more than 40, who were married and staying with their partners, and literate in English or local language. The subjects were recruited from the

The well-established correlation between global DNA hypomethylation and genomic instability offer... more The well-established correlation between global DNA hypomethylation and genomic instability offers one of the mechanistic explanations on how hypomethylation may contribute to carcinogenesis. In our study, levels of 5-methyl-2’-deoxycytidine in oral cancer tissues and microdissected DNA analysed by reverse phase – high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) revealed a generalized decrease in all oral cancer samples (1.63 ± 0.16) compared to its matched normal counterpart (3.67 ± 0.17; P < 0.001). Validation of global DNA methylation as analysed by immunohistochemistry (IHC) in successive stages of oral cancer progression in tissue sections using antibody to 5-methyl cytosine revealed reduced immunostaining in dysplasia and oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) compared to normal oral mucosal epithelium. Methylation sensitive arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (MS-AP-PCR) identified several non-canonical CpG rich fragments including promoter region of DOC2B (Double ...

Antecedentes: La evaluacion precisa de la profundidad de invasion tumoral (DI = depth of tumor in... more Antecedentes: La evaluacion precisa de la profundidad de invasion tumoral (DI = depth of tumor invasion) en el carcinoma microinvasivo de celulas escamosas (MISCC = microinvasive squamous cell carcinoma) de la lengua es fundamental para el pronostico. Se genero un modelo aritmetico para determinar un metodo fiable de medicion de la DI y correlacionar esta con la recidiva local. Material y Metodos: El grosor del tumor (TT = tumor thickness) y la DI fueron medidos en secciones de tejido de 14 casos de MISCC de la lengua, mediante un micrometro ocular manual y el analisis digital de la imagen en cuatro puntos de referencia (A,B,C, y D). La comparacion del TT y la DI con los parametros clinico-patologicos relevantes se evaluaron mediante la prueba U de Mann-Whitney. La fiabilidad de estos metodos y los valores obtenidos fueron comparados y correlacionados con la recidiva de tumores mediante la prueba de rangos con signo de Wilcoxon. La reconstruccion tridimensional (3D) de la lesion se ...

Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 2003

Research question: What is the fertility pattern among rural community and what are the factors i... more Research question: What is the fertility pattern among rural community and what are the factors influencing most common methods of contraception? Objective: To find out the distribution of family planning practices with respect to socio-demographic factors like religion income and Mother s literacy status. Study design: Cross-sectional. Setting: A rural community of Asaigoli village 20 kms. from Mangalore taluk of Dakshina Kannada. Study Population: Married women in the age group 15-49 years living with their spouses who were residents of Asaigoli. Study variables: Socio-demographic variables like religion income family type and mothers literacy number of living children and contraception use. Statistical analysis: Chi-square test. Results: Seventy one percent of women with 3 or more children were acceptors of permanent methods of contraception. Couple protection rate was 28%. Non-acceptors of family planning methods were higher among the Muslims. Education level of the respondents ...

Indian Journal of Community Health, 2020

Introduction Methodology Results Conclusion References Citation Tables / Figures Corresponding Au... more Introduction Methodology Results Conclusion References Citation Tables / Figures Corresponding Author Dr Lena Ashok, Associate Professor, Coordinator MSW, Prasanna School Of Public health, Manipal Academy Of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India E Mail ID: lena.ashok@manipal.edu

National journal of community medicine, 2016

Introduction: Tobacco consumption is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality all ove... more Introduction: Tobacco consumption is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality all over the world. This habit is increasingly being taken up at an early age. Various factors have been implicated for the uptake of the habit including inadequate knowledge and unfavorable attitude.Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted in urban schools in a town, located in South-west Karnataka. The students belonged to 8th and 9th grade and were aged between 13 to 15 years. A self-administered questionnaire adapted from Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) was used for the study..Result: A total of 1271 students participated in the study with equal participation from boys and girls. The mean knowledge score for the study participants was 14.57 ± 4.0. Approximately 36% of the students had poor knowledge and was significantly less in females compared to males. The knowledge score was significantly different with respect to parent’s occupation, their favorable or unfavorable attitude...

When handling missing data, a researcher should be aware of the mechanism underlying the missingn... more When handling missing data, a researcher should be aware of the mechanism underlying the missingness. In the presence of nonrandomly missing data, a model of the missing data mechanism should be included in the analyses to prevent the analyses based on the data from becoming biased. Modeling the missing data mechanism, however, is a difficult task. One way in which knowledge about the missing data mechanism may be obtained is by collecting additional data from non-respondents. In this paper the method of re-approaching the data which was found missing is described. As the case files were accessible it could be retrieved and the patterns of missingness were discerned. The additional data resulted in a larger sample, probing for the causes of missingness resulted in more knowledge about the nature of the missing data patterns. Findings are discussed focused on the report of missing data and identification of missing data mechanism and finally recommendations are presented

PloS one, 2021

BACKGROUND Exposure to tobacco imagery in films causes young people to start smoking. Popular Ind... more BACKGROUND Exposure to tobacco imagery in films causes young people to start smoking. Popular Indian films contain high levels of tobacco imagery, but those that do are required by law to display onscreen health warnings when smoking imagery occurs and to include other health promotion messaging before and during the film. We report a prospective cohort study of incident smoking in relation to exposure to film tobacco imagery and anti-tobacco messaging in a cohort of children in southern India. METHODS We carried out a one-year longitudinal follow up questionnaire survey in 2018 of a cohort of 39,282 students in grades 6, 7 and 8 (aged between 10 and 15 years) in schools in the Udupi district of Karnataka State in India who participated in a 2017 cross-sectional study of exposure to smoking in films and ever smoking status. RESULTS We obtained usable linked data in 2018 from 33,725 of the 39,282 (86%) participants with data from 2017. Incident smoking was reported by 382 (1.1%) part...

Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2020

Introduction In September 2014, the Government of India introduced legislation requiring all toba... more Introduction In September 2014, the Government of India introduced legislation requiring all tobacco packaging to display a health warning covering 85% (60% pictorial, 25% text) of the principal display area of the pack, of at least 4 cm in height and 3.5 cm width, with legible text in a white font on a black background and in English and/or the same Indian language as the language used on the pack. We evaluated compliance with this legislation in the Udupi district of Karnataka, India. Methods We procured one example of every tobacco pack of cigarettes, beedis, chewing tobacco, and snuff sold by a convenience sample of retailers in one urban and two rural areas in each of the five administrative blocks of the Udupi district between June and August 2018. For each pack we measured the size of the health warning, calculated the proportion of the pack covered, and assessed the legibility. Results A total of 365 packs were collected from retailers, with 357 of these branded and eight, a...

AIDS Research and Treatment, 2020

Longer survival due to use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has made human immunodeficiency virus-... more Longer survival due to use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has made human immunodeficiency virus- (HIV-) infected individuals prone to chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Metabolic syndrome (MS), a constellation of risk factors which increase chances of the cardiovascular disease and diabetes, can increase the morbidity and mortality among this population. Hence, the present study was conducted with the objectives of estimating the prevalence and determinants of MS among ART naïve and ART-treated patients and assess their 5-year CVD risk using the reduced version of Data Collection on Adverse Effects of Anti-HIV Drugs (D : A : D) risk prediction model (D : A : D(R)). This hospital-based cross-sectional study included 182 adults aged ≥ 18 years. MS was defined using the National Cholesterol Education Program-Adult Treatment Panel-3 (NCEP ATP-3) criteria. Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were done to identify the factors ...

Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2020

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

International Journal Of Community Medicine And Public Health, 2018

Background: Poor coverage of measles vaccine and shift in the age of incidence of rubella towards... more Background: Poor coverage of measles vaccine and shift in the age of incidence of rubella towards adolescents and young adults with low rubella vaccination coverage leads to outbreaks of congenital rubella syndrome and measles in India. Therefore the Government of India has decided to administer measles rubella vaccine to all children from 9 months to 15 years of age in campaign mode to eliminate measles and control rubella. The aims and objectives of the study were to assess the coverage of measles rubella vaccination among the slum children of Udupi Municipality area following the MR campaign.Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted for a period of one month among parents of beneficiary children in 312 households of the study population.Results: Study targeted 350 families in 14 localities of which 312 families were covered consisting 578 children. Amongst them 560 (97%) were immunized and 28 (5%) of them had minor side effects. Fever (89%) was the most commo...

Blood Coagulation & Fibrinolysis, 2019