The era of personalized medicine has already begun and now it is time to initiate personalized prevention strategies against diseases. Infectious diseases have a higher mortality than any other illness, especially in developing countries. Among newborns and young children the situation is even worse. The microorganisms are becoming resistant to almost all known antibiotics. Hence, it is imperative to improve the preventive strategies against infections. 'Pathogens are everywhere, but not every individual is getting diseased,' - this basic logical thinking needs to look into the genetic predisposition/host susceptibility to sepsis. Interestingly, genetic studies have shown that the type of infecting organism, outcome of infections, and mortality can be predetermined by analyzing an individual's genome. Exploration of inter-individual genetic variations and their association with sepsis will help in the development of new prognostic markers to provide novel personalized therapeutics and predict the outcome. In this review article, we discuss the genetic variations and their association with sepsis, studied by various researchers in different regions.

Background: Conventionally, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is considered to be more common in western countries. Nevertheless, it is relatively rare in most developing countries. Aim: The purpose of this study is to determine the frequency and morphological patterns of IBD in Benin City, Nigeria, and to compare our findings with the reports from other centers. Materials and Methods: The study is a four-year analysis of 32 histologically confirmed cases of IBD, presenting at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) and a private specialist gastroenterology hospital, based in Benin City, Southern Nigeria. Both centers serve as referral centers to most hospitals in South-Southern Nigeria. All suspected patients were examined with rectosigmoidoscopy and colonoscopy after obtaining consent. These specimens were formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded, sectioned at 3-5 microns, and stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H and E). Results: In this four-year study, there were a total of 78 suspected cases, of which 32 were histologically confirmed IBD cases. Among the 32 patients, 14 (43.8%) were cases of Crohn's disease (CD), while 12 (37.5%) were cases of ulcerative colitis (UC). The remaining six patients (18.7%) were with indeterminate colitis (IC). A total of 21 males and 11 females presented, giving a ratio of 1.9:1, with a mean age of 51.1 years ± 7.2 standard deviation (SD). In CD, seven cases constituting 53.9%, had ileocolonic involvement. In UC, six cases involved left-sided colitis, accounting for 50%. Conclusion: IBD was twice more common in males than females, with majority of involvement in both the colonic and ileo-colonic anatomic sites. However, there is a slight higher preponderance of CD than UC in this environment.

Background: More than 100 million women in less developed countries or about 17% of all married women would prefer to avoid pregnancy, but are not using any form of family planning. Despite the government's many efforts, the unmet need for family planning in India is still 12.8%. The present study is aimed to assess prevalence of the unmet need for family planning, its determinants, and the reasons for the unmet need for family planning. Materials and Methods: A sample size of 500 was divided equally among the rural and urban areas. A simple random technique was used to select the first household for the survey. A predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used to record the information. Data was entered on Microsoft Access and analyzed using the statistical software SPSS version 11.5 for Windows Vista. The chi square test was used for finding the association and trends. Results: In the present study, 35% of the population had an unmet need, of which 58.28% belonged to rural area, while 41.71% belonged to the urban area. The significant determinants associated with the unmet need for family planning were religion, type of family, husband's education and occupation, socioeconomic class, women's age, women's education and occupation, exposure to mass media, and healthcare facility where services were provided. Overall, lack of motivation and obstacles were the major reasons for the unmet need. Conclusion: Improved access to family planning services, better education, improved standard of living, and higher exposure to mass media can significantly decrease the unmet need of family planning.