Medicine
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This repository contains the published and unpublished research of the Faculty of Medicine by the staff members of the faculty
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Item Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-SR) Tamil Version(The Sri Lanka Medical Association, 2022) Hapangama, A.; Premaratne, I.; Thilaxshan, T.; Gadambanathan, T.; Wickremasinghe, R.Background: Despite being the third most prevalent psychiatric disorder, social anxiety disorder remains under-diagnosed due to multiple reasons. Although many screening instruments are available in the English language, to date no instrument has been translated into Tamil. Objective: To translate and validate the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-SR) into Tamil among a group of Sri Lankan university students whose mother tongue is Tamil. Method: The process of translation and validation involved standard procedures. DSM- 5 was used as the gold standard to diagnose social anxiety disorder. As part of the psychometric study, test-retest reliability and analysis of items for internal consistency of the instrument were assessed. Results: A cut off of55.5had the optimum sensitivity and specificity for the Tamil version of the LSAS-SR. The Cronbach’s alpha between the avoidance subscaletotal and the fear subscale total was 0.860 while the figures for Cronbach’s alpha between the total score and fear subscale total score and the avoidance subscale total score were 0.880 and 0.855, respectively. The test- retest reliability correlation coefficients for the fear subscale, avoidance subscale and the total score were 0.890, 0.925 and 0.918, respectively (p<0.001 for all). Conclusions: The cut off score of 55.5had the optimum sensitivity and specificity for the LSAS-SR Tamil version. It had good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Further studies will enable the assessment of the prevalence of social phobia and investigation of cultural and environmental factors associated with social phobia in Sri Lanka.Item Prevalence of hepatitis B and hepatitis C infections and their relationship to injectable drug use in a cohort of Sri Lankan prison inmates(Sri Lanka Medical Association, 2015) Niriella, M.A.; Hapangama, A.; Luke, H.P.D.P.; Pathmeswaran, A.; Kuruppuarachchi, K.A.L.A.; de Silva, H.J.INTRODUCTION: Prisoners are considered to be at high risk for Hepatitis B (HBV) and Hepatitis C (HCV) virus infections. This is attributed to intravenous drug use and high-risk sexual behaviour. There are no published studies on HBV and HCV among prison inmates or injecting drug users in Sri Lanka. OBJECTIVES: To determine prevalence of HBV and HCV infections, and their relationship to injectable drug use among Sri Lankan prisoners. METHODS: We investigated 393 (median age 42 years (range 16 to 93); 82% males) randomly selected inmates of Mahara and Welikada prisons. RESULTS: Though 167 (42.5%) admitted drug abuse, only 17 (4.3%) had ever used intravenous drugs. Twelve (70.6%) of them reported sharing needles. One inmate was positive for HBsAg but was negative for HBV-DNA. Twenty seven (6.9%) were positive for anti-HCV antibodies, of whom only 2 (0.5%) were positive for HCV-RNA. None of the injecting drug users were positive for HBV-DNA or HCV-RNA. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of HBV and HCV infections as well as injecting drug use was very low among this cohort of Sri Lankan prisoninmates