reena singh

Cervical cancer global burden is highly skewed towards poor countries primarily due to lack of awareness, poor screening, and low uptake of prophylactic vaccines. The purpose of our study is to educate and raise awareness among young girls and women about the importance of cervical screening and HPV vaccination.

The present study, conducted from January 2023 to December 2023, focused on students, teachers, housewives, and healthcare professionals in the Jammu region to assess their awareness of cervical cancer and the HPV vac- cine. HPV DNA testing was carried out using the Truenat Real-Time PCR method at Swastik Diagnostic Laboratory, Jammu.

Knowledge of cervical cancer, awareness of the HPV virus, and the vaccination status of women were assessed in survey. In the HPV screening test, out of 2,400 women, 106 tested positive for HPV. Among these 106 women, 19% had a high viral load (Ct < 20), 11% had a low viral load (25 ≤ Ct < 30), indicating a low relative concentration of HPV viruses, 40% had a medium viral load (20 ≤ Ct < 25), and 30% had very low viral loads (Ct ≥ 30).

These findings highlight the importance of routine cervical screenings, such as Pap smears and HPV tests, for the early detection of cervical cancer. There is an urgent need to implement cervical cancer screening and vaccination pro- grams in the Jammu region.

Rinaie Marwah hot spring Kishtwar (RMHSK) is one of the geothermal springs located at 33°51′51′′N 75°32′07′′E with an elevation of 2134 meters above sea level in Jammu and Kashmir, India. We aimed to study the microbial diversity of this geothermal spring using metagenomics.

In the present study, physiochemical parameters including temperature (65-75oC), pH (6. 9-8. 8), hardness (250 ppm), and mineral content was measured along with the microbial diversity using Illumina MiSeq metage- nome-based 16s amplicon sequencing (V3-V4). The sequence reads were classified taxonomically into 31 phyla, 71 classes, 152 orders, 256 families, 410 genus, and 665 species. QIIME 2 (Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology), an extensible, powerful, and decentralized analytical tool, was used for taxonomic analysis.

Bacteroidota (32. 57%) was the dominant phylum, Bacteroidia (32. 51%) the dominant class, Bacteroidales (16. 6%) the dominant order, and Lentimicrobiaceae (14. 23%) was the dominant family per the abundance analysis. Shannon (2. 28) and Chao 1 (87. 0) diversity indices support the existence of higher microbial diversity in RMHSK (50717 OTUs).

The microbial diversity of RMHSK is reported for the first time through a metagenomic study. Identification of microorganisms with characteristics that are relevant to industries.