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Cataract is a common problem in tropical areas and countries like India. In cataract, there is opacity in the lens, causing progressive diminishing in vision and troubling day-to-day life. Cataract is the leading cause of blindness worldwide. The minor surgery, known as extraction, is beneficial. Here is a case of mature bilateral cataract. A 75-year-old woman came to the outpatient department of Mahatma Gandhi Ayurved College Hospital and Research Centre, Salod (H), Wardha, Maharashtra, India. She had blurred vision, which was diminishing day by day. The cataracts were mature enough that they could be seen with the naked eye without the assistance of a torch. Along with this finding, there were senile rings surrounding both corneas, which is known as corneal arcus senilis. The patient was referred to an ophthalmologist for further procedure.

Background Paronychia, a bacterial or fungal infection affecting the area where the nail meets the skin, often impacts individuals engaged in frequent water-related work. Typically resolving within a week, the condition can persist and worsen with exposure to water, chemicals, or unclean substances, leading to chronic infection and significant cosmetic concerns. In Ayurveda, this condition is referred to as Kunakha , a term originating from “Ku” (bad) and “Nakha” (nail) in Hindi. Kunakha , associated with Asthi dushti (Bone tissue) and characterized by nail discoloration, pain, and chronicity, corresponds to Kshudraroga in Ayurvedic texts, particularly the 13th chapter of Nidana Sthana by Acharya Susruta. The condition results from vitiated Tridosha with Pitta preponderance, leading to Vata and Pitta Prakopa (vitiation) upon nail damage, thus causing pain and discomfort. Kunakha is also known as Chippa or Anguliveshtaka in ancient Ayurvedic literature, with Acharya Charaka referring to it as Aksata . This case report demonstrates significant relief from paronychia through comprehensive Ayurvedic treatment, including Shaman Chikitsa (pacifying treatment). Case presentation A south 63-year-old Asian male patient came to Mahatma Gandhi Ayurved College Hospital and Research Center Salod (Hirapur), Wardha, Maharashtra, India. Patient had symptoms of pain and blackish discoloration in index finger nail and thumb finger nail of right hand since 3 months. Associated with pain patient has swelling and tenderness along with pus discharge which was on and off in origin. Conclusion The findings highlight the potential efficacy of Ayurvedic interventions in managing chronic and recurrent nail infections, offering a promising alternative for conditions that are otherwise challenging to treat with modern medicine. Despite being resistant to conventional modern therapies, the patient experienced substantial improvement, with no recurrence observed even after 1 year post-treatment.

A 25-year-old male presented with a congenital pterygium involving the nasal aspect of the right eye. The lesion appears as a fibrovascular fold of conjunctival tissue extending from the nasal canthus onto the peripheral cornea. The surface is smooth and non-inflamed, with no evidence of active vascular congestion or scarring. The corneal involvement is limited, and the visual axis remains clear. Congenital pterygium is an exceptionally rare ocular anomaly, distinct from the more common acquired form typically associated with chronic ultraviolet exposure. The patient had no history of ocular trauma, irritation, surgery, or systemic abnormalities. Visual acuity was preserved, and the remainder of the ocular examination was unremarkable. Given the absence of symptoms and lack of progression, conservative management with periodic observation was recommended. This image highlights the characteristic appearance of a rare congenital pterygium.

A 7-year-old male child presented to the dermatology clinic with no significant past medical history. There was no history of systemic illness, drug intake, or similar complaints among family members. The child complained of generalized itching for the past 9 months, with a noticeable increase in severity over the last month. Cutaneous examination revealed multiple ill-defined hypopigmented to light-brown macules and patches predominantly involving the back and anterior trunk. The lesions were irregular, coalescent, and formed a characteristic map-like pattern. Mild pruritus was present, while erythema and scaling were minimal. Diagnostic approach: the diagnosis was primarily clinical, based on the characteristic morphology, color variation, and truncal distribution of the lesions. The chronic course, minimal inflammation, and absence of systemic symptoms supported a superficial fungal etiology. The clinical presentation was consistent with pityriasis versicolor, commonly seen in children in warm and humid climates. The condition was managed as pityriasis versicolor, a superficial fungal infection caused by Malassezia species. Standard antifungal therapy (topical antifungals) was advised along with patient and caregiver counseling regarding the benign nature of the disease and the possibility of recurrence.

Background Generalized joint hypermobility (GJH) is often challenging to assess, but its presence could suggest a syndromic diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS). Objective An automated and objective method for estimating joint hypermobility with Beighton score using short video clips is proposed. Method A total of 225 adults (91.8% female, median age 32.0, range 18–64) referred to a specialized EDS clinic were recruited for this study. A video-based method relying on pose-estimation libraries was developed to predict per-joint hypermobility of both elbows, knees, fifth fingers, thumbs, and spine; as well as the overall Beighton score. The system was developed on the first 100 individuals (training set), and validated on the remaining 125 individuals (test set). Results The system screened out 31.9% of the training set and 32.0% of the test set as not having GJH, while recalling 89.1% and 91.9% of the true positives on the train and test set, respectively. The consistency of the system between the training and test sets suggests that it generalizes well to unseen individuals. The system was tuned to be with a focus on sensitivity to avoid screening out individuals with GJH. As such, the specificity of the system is 52.1% on the training set and 42.4% on the test set. Conclusion The proposed system can objectively screen individuals for possible GJH and also screen out those without GJH during the referral process, reducing the burden on specialized EDS clinics while providing early diagnostic triage. Future research will focus on deploying the tool as a mobile application.

SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus, initially appeared in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019 and has infected more than 31 million people worldwide. Infection can range from asymptomatic to multiorgan failure requiring prompt treatment. Overall, 80% of patients with SARS-CoV-2 experienced mild to moderate illness, while 5% developed serious illness. Physicians can evaluate a patient's digestive system (Koshtha), digestive capacity (Agni), strength (Bala), and longevity (Ayu) using the body constitution (Deha Prakriti). It also helps doctors estimate a patient's illness risk, severity, disease activity scores, and hematological, pathological, and biochemical changes. The study investigated the association between body composition (Deha Prakriti) and severity, as shown by structural lung abnormalities in patients with SARS-CoV-2. This study aims to study the correlation between the severity of Prakriti and structural alterations in the lungs of patients with SARS-CoV-2. This is a retrospective cross-sectional study of patients with SARS-CoV-2. The research data will be retrospectively collected from hospital records between September 1, 2020, and May 11, 2021, a period during which India experienced the second wave of the pandemic. The data will come from the Acharya Vinoba Bhave Rural Hospital in Sawangi (Meghe), Wardha, Maharashtra, India. Patients will be contacted via telephone and encouraged to visit the outpatient department and inpatient department at these institutions or in rural and urban areas of Wardha city. A structured case pro forma and a Prakriti assessment questionnaire will be used to evaluate lung structural changes during the COVID-19-positive period. The study is not funded by any organization. The study was initiated on March 4, 2023, and as of July 1, 2024, a total of 265 patients have been recruited. Results will be recorded from the observations of subjective and objective parameters. The study's primary outcome is to establish a relationship between abnormalities in the structure of the lungs in patients with COVID-19 and body constitution (Prakriti). The study's secondary outcome will help identify which body constitution is most susceptible to structural changes and disease severity in patients with COVID-19 and will also offer insights into preventive medicine. Statistical investigation will lead to the conclusion that there is a specific association between structural abnormalities in the lungs of patients with COVID-19 and their body constitution. We hypothesize that Prakriti will be identified as being more prone to structural changes and severity in patients with COVID-19, offering insights into preventive therapy.

There is an increasing interest in executing complex analyses over large graphs, many of which require processing a large number of multi-hop neighborhoods or subgraphs. Examples include ego network analysis, motif counting, finding social circles, personalized recommendations, link prediction, anomaly detection, analyzing influence cascades, and others. These tasks are not well served by existing vertex-centric graph processing frameworks, where user programs are only able to directly access the state of a single vertex at a time, resulting in high communication, scheduling, and memory overheads in executing such tasks. Further, most existing graph processing frameworks ignore the challenges in extracting the relevant portions of the graph that an analysis task is interested in, and loading those onto distributed memory. This paper introduces NScale, a novel end-to-end graph processing framework that enables the distributed execution of complex subgraph-centric analytics over large-scale graphs in the cloud. NScale enables users to write programs at the level of subgraphs rather than at the level of vertices. Unlike most previous graph processing frameworks, which apply the user program to the entire graph, NScale allows users to declaratively specify subgraphs of interest. Our framework includes a novel graph extraction and packing (GEP) module that utilizes a cost-based optimizer to partition and pack the subgraphs of interest into memory on as few machines as possible. The distributed execution engine then takes over and runs the user program in parallel on those subgraphs, restricting the scope of the execution appropriately, and utilizes novel techniques to minimize memory consumption by exploiting overlaps among the subgraphs. We present a comprehensive empirical evaluation comparing against three state-of-the-art systems, namely Giraph, GraphLab, and GraphX, on several real-world datasets and a variety of analysis tasks. Our experimental results show orders-of-magnitude improvements in performance and drastic reductions in the cost of analytics compared to vertex-centric approaches.

IntroductionEhlers-Danlos syndromes (EDS)/generalised hypermobility spectrum disorders (G-HSD) affect the connective tissue of the body and present with a heterogeneous set of symptoms that pose a challenge for diagnosis. One of the main diagnostic criteria of EDS/G-HSD is generalised joint hypermobility, which is currently assessed by clinicians during a physical exam. However, the practice for measuring joint hypermobility is inconsistent between clinicians, leading to high inter-rater variability. Often patients are misdiagnosed with EDS/G-HSD based on an incorrect hypermobility assessment, leading to increased referral rates and resource utilisation at specialised EDS clinics that results in unnecessary emotional distress for patients. An objective, validated and scalable method for assessing hypermobility might mitigate these issues and result in improved EDS/G-HSD patient care.Methods and analysisThis study will examine the use of videos obtained using a smartphone camera to assess the range of motion (ROM) and hypermobility of the joints assessed in Beighton score and more (spine, shoulders, elbows, knees, ankles, thumbs and fifth fingers) in individuals with suspected EDS/G-HSD. Short videos of participants will be captured as they undergo a formal assessment of joint hypermobility at the GoodHope EDS Clinic at Toronto General Hospital. Clinicians will measure the ROM at each joint using a clinical-grade goniometer to establish ground truth measurements. Open-source human pose-estimation libraries will be used to extract the locations of key joints from the videos. Deterministic and machine learning systems will be developed and evaluated for estimating the ROM at each joint. Results will be analysed separately for each joint and human pose-estimation library.Ethics and disseminationThis study was approved by the Research Ethics Board of the University Health Network in Toronto on 26 April 2022. Participants will provide written informed consent. Findings from this study will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at conferences.Trial registration numberNCT05366114.