• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제14권10호
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• pp.5625-5629
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• 2013

Occurrence of breast cancer is related to genetic as well as cultural, environmental and life-style factors. Variations in diversity of these factors among different ethnic groups and geographical areas emphasize the immense need for studies in all racial-ethnic populations. The incidence of breast cancer in Pakistan is highest in Asians after Jews in Israel and 2.5 times higher than that in neighboring countries like Iran and India, accounting for 34.6% of female cancers. The Pakistani population is deficient in information regarding breast cancer etiology and epidemiology, but efforts done so far had suggested consanguinity as a major risk factor for frequent mutations leading to breast cancer and has also shed light on genetic origins in different ethnic groups within Pakistan. World-wide research efforts on different ethnicities have enhanced our understanding of genetic predisposition to breast cancer but despite these discoveries, 75% of the familial risk of breast cancer remains unexplained, highlighting the fact that the majority of breast cancer susceptibility genes remain unidentified. For this purpose Pakistani population provides a strong genetic pool to elucidate the genetic etiology of breast cancer because of cousin marriages. In this review, we describe the known breast cancer predisposition factors found in the local Pakistani population and the epidemiological research work done to emphasize the importance of exploring factors/variants contributing to breast cance, in order to prevent, cure and decrease its incidence in our country.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.591-599
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• 2021

The increased risk in financial firms, due to Global Financial Crises and high international trade activities, has encouraged banks to use derivatives for both managing their financial risk and earning non-operating income simultaneously. The present study brings new evidence in the existing literature by determining the drivers behind financial derivative usage in Pakistani banks for 2011 till 2016. Moreover, the paper examines how risk plays a moderating role in determining the relationship between derivative usage and bank value. While assessing the determinants, a two-stage test has conducted, first, the logit regression was used to test the drivers behind the derivative usage in banks. Second, Tobit regression was run to analyze the factors leading to determine the extent of derivative usage. The findings demonstrate that Pakistani banks are using derivatives for both risk management and speculative motive as they are customers and users of derivatives at the same time. Empirical results, regarding moderating role of risk on the value implications of derivative usage, provide mixed findings as derivative usage gives value premium in case of non-systematic risk and foreign exchange risk. Whereas value discounts have been observed for cases where systematic risk is high and managers try to earn non-operating income from speculative activities.

• 융합경영연구
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.33-46
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• 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between characteristics of social media sites (SNS) and the intention of Pakistani tourists to visit South Korea while determining the role of usefulness, interestingness, and involvement of tourists. Research design, data and methodology: A research model was developed through the previous research, and the questioner-based survey was conducted on Pakistani tourists visiting Korea. The survey data was collected by following multiple hypotheses: the relationship between SNS tourism information and perception of SNS, the relationship between SNS perception and intention to visit, and adjustment of involvement in the relation between tourism information characteristics, and SNS perception. We used SPSS and AMOS24.0 statistical tools to analyze the hypothesis testing data. Results: Based on the data analysis, the study found that the characteristics of SNS have a positive effect on intention to visit via users' perception like usefulness and interestingness. The involvement has a moderating effect between SNS characteristics and users' perception. In the group with high involvement, the degree of influence of the quality factor of SNS on user perception was greater than in the group with low involvement. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that traveler's involvement has a moderating effect on the relationship between SNS characteristics and visit intention for Pakistani travelers visiting Korea. It shows that practitioners or researchers should establish and operate SNS strategies in consideration of user involvement.

• 비교문화연구
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• 제36권
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• pp.5-35
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• 2014

This study attempts to give a review of social media users' choice of a particular name for the sake of signaling identity cues and interaction with the others. The social media names could be classified into different categories such as traditional/cultural anthroponyms, nicknames and fictitious IDs etc. Out of these categories, it is the phenomenon of choice and construction of fictitious social media IDs by Pakistani social media users which has been reviewed and scrutinized in this particular article. This study examined fictitious IDs of Pakistani social media users from Critical Discourse Analysis and System Functional Linguistics perspectives and demonstrates how nationalistic, ethnic and religious identities are negotiated, constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed by the social media users through a particular ID choice.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.293-306
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• 2021

The news and views of Pakistani television channels are extensively shared on digital media for information or analysis where the general public discusses overt and covert agendas by mentioning their factual and presentational style. This study contributes to the contemporary studies of media perception through focus group interviews with 72 randomly selected master's and bachelor's students studying Media and Communication at the School of Media and Communication Studies, University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan to provide information about the feelings and observations of future journalists and media literates. In summary, the findings of our research exposed the negative perception of Pakistani electronic media among the participants due to what they perceived as biased, inaccurate, and unethical reporting.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제15권15호
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• pp.6339-6342
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• 2014

Background: The incidence of rectal cancer is increasing in younger age groups. Limited data is available regarding survival outcome in younger patients with conflicting results from western world. The goal of this study was to determine survival in patients with rectal cancer <30 years of age and compare it with their older counterparts in the Pakistani population. Materials and Methods: A retrospective chart review of patients operated for rectal adenocarcinoma between January 2005 and December 2010 was performed. Patients were divided into two groups, Group 1 aged ${\leq}30years$ and Group 2 aged >30years. Patient characteristics, surgical procedure, histopathological details and number of loco-regional and distant failures were compared. Expected 5 year survival was calculated using Kaplan Meier curves and significance was determined using the Log rank test. Results: There were 38 patients in group 1 and 144 in group 2. A significantly high number of younger patients presented with poorly differentiated histology (44.7% vs 9.7%) (p=0.0001) and advanced pathological stage (63.1% vs 38.1%) (p=0.04). Predicted overall 5 year survival was 38% versus 57% in groups I and II, respectively (p=0.05). Disease free survival was 37% versus 52% and was significantly different (p=0.007). Conclusions: Early onset rectal cancer is associated with poor pathological features and a worse outcome in Pakistani population.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제13권5호
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• pp.2299-2304
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• 2012

Since there is evidence that human papillomavirus (HPV) may play some role in oral carcinogenesis, we investigated the presence of HPV in a group of Pakistani subjects with normal oral cavity using real-time PCR analysis. Two-hundred patients attending the Dental Department, Sandaman Provincial Hospital, Balochistan, Pakistan, were recruited. After interview, oral epithelial cells were collected by scraping and subjected to DNA extraction. The HPV-positive DNA samples were further analyzed using primer sets specific for HPV-16 and -18. It was found that out of 200 DNA samples, 192 were PCR-positive for the ${\beta}$-globin gene and these were subsequently examined for the presence of HPV DNA. Among these, 47 (24.5%) were HPV-positive with the virus copy number ranged between 0.43-32 copies per 1 ${\mu}g$ of total DNA (9-99 copies per PCR reaction). There were 4 and 11 samples containing HPV-16 and -18, respectively. Additionally, one sample harbored both types of HPV. Among the investigated clinical parameters, smoking habit was associated with the presence of HPV (p = 0.001) while others indicated no significant association. The prevalence of HPV in normal oral cavity in our Pakistani subjects appears to be comparable to other studies. However, the association between the presence of HPV and smoking warrants further investigations whether both of these factors can cooperate in inducing oral cancer in this group of patients.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제15권9호
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• pp.3907-3909
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• 2014

Background: Cytogenetic abnormalities have important implications in diagnosis and prognosis of acute leukemia and are now considered an important part of the diagnostic workup at presentation. Karyotype, if known at the time of diagnosis, guides physicians to plan appropriate management strategies for their patients. Aim and Objectives: To determine the cytogenetic profile of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in Pakistani children in order to have insights regarding behavior of the disease. Materials and Methods: A retrospective analysis of all the cases of ALL (<15years old) diagnosed at Aga Khan University from January 2006 to June 2011 was performed. Cytogenetic analysis was made for all cases using the trypsin-Giemsa banding technique. Karyotypes were interpreted using the International System for Human Cytogenetic Nomenclature (ISCN) criteria. Results: A total of 153 patients were diagnosed as ALL during the study period, of which 127 samples successfully yielded metaphase chromosomes. The male to female ratio was 1.8:1. A normal karyotype was present in 51.2% (n=65) of the cases whereas 48.8% (n=62) had an abnormal karyotype. Most of the abnormal cases showed hyperdiploidy(13.4%) followed by t(9;22)(q34;q11.2) (7.08%). Conclusions: This study revealed a relative lack of good prognostic cytogenetic aberrations in Pakistani children with ALL.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.1599-1603
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• 2012

Objectives: Since methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) maintains the balance of circulating folate and methionine and blocks the formation of homocysteine, its regulation in relation to different cancers has extensively been studied in different populations. However, information on Pakistani breast cancer patients is lacking. The MTHFR gene has two most common mutations that are single nucleotide additions which result in change of amino acids C677T to Ala222val and A1298C to Glu429Ala. Methodology: 110 sporadic breast patients with no prior family history of cancer or any other type of genetic disorders along with 110 normal individuals were screened for mutations in exons 1 to exon 9 using single strand conformational polymorphism, RFLP and sequencing analyzer. Results: The p values for the 677CC, 677CT, and 677TT genotypes were 0.223, 0.006, and 0.077, respectively. Those for the 1298AA, 1298AC, and 1298CC genotypes were 0.555, 0.009, and 0.003, respectively. Conclusions: We found an overall a significant, weak inverse association between breast cancer risk and the 677TT genotype and an inverse association with the 1298C variant. These results for MTHFR polymorphism might be population specific in sporadic breast cancer affected patients but many other factors need to be excluded before making final conclusions including folate intake, population and disease heterogeneity.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권4호
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• pp.81-95
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• 2020

The main objective of this research is to investigate the impact of board size and board composition on financial performance of banks. The sample of this study consists on two countries listed bank sector Pakistan and China. The annul data is used from 2009-2018 to find the objective of this study. The Panel regression model is used to check the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Return on Asset and Return on Equity is used as performance checker dependent variables. The results of this study confirm board size coefficient value positive for ROA and negative for ROE but shows insignificant behavior for Pakistani banking sector while in Chinese banking sector the coefficient value of board size positively for ROA and ROE at 10% level. The board composition coefficient shows the negatively significant with ROA but insignificantly related to ROE for Pakistani banking sector. However, in Chinese banking sector the coefficient value of board composition is insignificant for both ROA and ROE. This study is helpful for banks, management of banks, policy makers, researcher as well as Government.