CYTOTOXIC ACTIVITY OF ALKALOID EXTRACTS OF DIFFERENT PLANTS AGAINST BREAST CANCER CELL LINE

Objectives: To study in vitro cytotoxic activity of total alkaloid extracts of Pinus sabiniana L., Phoenix dactylifera L. and Ferocactus sp. L. against breast cancer cell line Michigan Cancer Foundation-7 (MCF-7) and non-tumorigenic fetal hepatic cell line (WRL-68). Methods: Plant powder of each P. sabiniana L. leaves, P. dactylifera L. pollen grains, and Ferocactus sp. L. The leaves were extracted separately with 80% methanol, chloroform at pH 2 and pH 10 and the chloroform portion was dried to obtain the total alkaloid extracts. The total alkaloids were detected qualitatively by Mayer's, Dragendorff's and Hager's reagents and estimated quantitatively by bromocresol green spectrophotometry depending on the atropine calibration curve. The cytotoxic activity was evaluated by 3-[4, 5-dimethylthiazoyl]-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay. Results: The extract of P. sabiniana L. had highest total alkaloid content (164.62±2.8 mg/100 g dry weight of plant) than the other plants (P. dactylifera l., Ferocactus sp. L.), the total alkaloids of Ferocactus sp. L. and P. dactylifera L., reduced the cell viability of both cell lines, the highest reduction occurred in the concentration 400 μg/ml was 46±2.20% (MCF-7) and 56.2±2.2% (WRL-68) for Ferocactus sp. L., followed by 56.2±2.2% (MCF-7) and 57.5±3.2% (WRL-68) for P. dactylifera L. The alkaloids of P. sabiniana was very lower effects on both cell lines MCF-7, and WRL-68 was 89.3±3.44% and 90.16±2.7%, respectively, at the same concentration. Conclusion: Plant alkaloids had variable effects against cancer and normal cell lines depending on the type of alkaloid compounds and their concentration in the extract

Hungry Bone Syndrome Associated with Transient Hypoparathyroidism

We report on an infant who presented at 50 days old of age with hypocalcemic seizure, who proved to have transient hypoparathyroidism, biochemically. During the course of his therapy, he developed severe hungry bone syndrome. Hungry bone syndrome and transient hypoparathyroidism is highlighted

Concise Review: Cell Therapy for Critical Limb Ischemia: An Integrated Review of Preclinical and Clinical Studies

Critical limb ischemia (CLI), the most severe form of peripheral artery disease, is characterized by pain at rest and non-healing ulcers in the lower extremities. For patients with CLI, where the extent of atherosclerotic artery occlusion is too severe for surgical bypass or percutaneous interventions, limb amputation remains the only treatment option. Thus, cell-based therapy to restore perfusion and promote wound healing in patients with CLI is under intense investigation. Despite promising preclinical studies in animal models, transplantation of bone marrow (BM)-derived cell populations in patients with CLI has shown limited benefit preventing limb amputation. Early trials injected heterogenous mononuclear cells containing a low frequency of cells with pro-vascular regenerative functions. Most trials transferred autologous cells damaged by chronic disease that demonstrated poor survival in the ischemic environment and impaired function conferred by atherosclerotic or diabetic co-morbidities. Finally, recent preclinical studies suggest optimized blood vessel formation may require paracrine and/or structural contributions from multiple progenitor cell lineages, angiocrine-secretory myeloid cells derived from hematopoietic progenitor cells, tubule-forming endothelial cells generated by circulating or vessel-resident endothelial precursors, and vessel-stabilizing perivascular cells derived from mesenchymal stem cells. Understanding how stem cells co-ordinate the myriad of cells and signals required for stable revascularization remains the key to translating the potential of stem cells into curative therapies for CLI. Thus, combination delivery of multiple cell types within supportive bioengineered matricies may represent a new direction to improve cell therapy strategies for CLI. Stem Cells 2018;36:161–171

A Comparative Study of the Effects of Age and Smoking on Nail Growth Rate in Healthy Individuals

Background: The nail organ has an important functional and aesthetic importance. Nail Growth Rate (NGR) has attracted the attention of many investigators not only due to the importance of the nail apparatus but also as a tool to reflect health. Objective: To study the effects of smoking and age on nail growth. Patients and methods:The study was conducted at the Department of Physiology and the Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine, University of Baghdad during the period from January 2011 to May 2011. Nail growth measurement was performed by etching a T – mark on the nail plate of the right and the left thumbs with a wide bore needle. The vertical distance between the point of meeting of the T and the proximal nail fold was measured using (vernier). A second measurement was performed one month later. The difference between the 2 readings was divided by the number of days between the readings to give the NGR. Results:The NGR was measured in a total of 106 subjects. The subjects were divided into 3 groups: Group1 (Smoker male subjects): 23 subjects were included in this group. Their ages ranged between 20 and 59 years with a mean of 35.87 +11.72 years. Group 2 (Non-smoker male subjects): 34 subjects were included. Their ages ranged between 13 and 52 years with a mean of 31.76 + 10.16 years.Group 3 (Non-smoker female subjects): 49 subjects were included. Their ages ranged between 8 and 58 years with a mean of 27.49 +11.66 years. NGR measurement in: Group 1:The mean growth rate in the right thumb was 95.4 + 28.8 microns/day, and for the left thumb was 96 + 34 microns/day. Group 2:The NGR was 105.6 + 34.35, and 103.4 + 34.24 microns /day, for the right thumb and the left thumb respectively. . Group 3: The NGR was 100 .5 + 33.52 microns/day for the right thumb and 101.6 + 31.77 microns /day for the left thumb. Conclusion: Age was inversely correlated with nail growth in right and left thumbs in all groups. The duration of smoking and number of cigarettes was inversely related to nail growth, but it did not reach statistical significance

Development of duststorm attenuation model for microwave links

Duststorms are significant meteorological phenomenon occur for a significant percentage of time in arid and semi arid areas especially at African Sahara and Middle East. Measurements at existing microwave links show that the duststorms can potentially result in serious attenuation in signal level especially at Ku band and higher frequencies with direct impact on telecommunications system performance. Very limited research has been done to predict the attenuation even the scarcity of measured data forces the researcher to work for the duststorm prediction modeling

Live Imaging of the Ependymal Cilia in the Lateral Ventricles of the Mouse Brain

Multiciliated ependymal cells line the ventricles in the adult brain. Abnormal function or structure of ependymal cilia is associated with various neurological deficits. The current ex vivo live imaging of motile ependymal cilia technique allows for a detailed study of ciliary dynamics following several steps. These steps include: mice euthanasia with carbon dioxide according to protocols of The University of Toledo’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC); craniectomy followed by brain removal and sagittal brain dissection with a vibratome or sharp blade to obtain very thin sections through the brain lateral ventricles, where the ependymal cilia can be visualized. Incubation of the brain’s slices in a customized glass-bottom plate containing Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle’s Medium (DMEM)/High-Glucose at 37 °C in the presence of 95%/5% O2/CO2 mixture is essential to keep the tissue alive during the experiment. A video of the cilia beating is then recorded using a high-resolution differential interference contrast microscope. The video is then analyzed frame by frame to calculate the ciliary beating frequency. This allows distinct classification of the ependymal cells into three categories or types based on their ciliary beating frequency and angle. Furthermore, this technique allows the use of high-speed fluorescence imaging analysis to characterize the unique intracellular calcium oscillation properties of ependymal cells as well as the effect of pharmacological agents on the calcium oscillations and the ciliary beating frequency. In addition, this technique is suitable for immunofluorescence imaging for ciliary structure and ciliary protein localization studies. This is particularly important in disease diagnosis and phenotype studies. The main limitation of the technique is attributed to the decrease in live motile cilia movement as the brain tissue starts to die

Design a new proposed route optimization scheme based NEMO-Centric MANEMO (NCM)

Route Optimization (RO) refers to any approach that optimizes the transmission of packets between a Mobile Network Node/Mobile Router and a Corresponding Node/Home Agent. RO would mean that a binding between the address of an MNN/MR and the location of the mobile network is registered at the CE/HA. Technically, route optimization mechanism comes up with a complementing solution for the pinball problem by avoiding the MRHA Bidirectional Tunnel(BT) that is to be used. This paper discusses the RO issues for NEMO and more specifically issues of Nested NEMO such astunneling redundant, HA dependency, processing delay, bottleneck, traffic congestion, ER selection, and scalability in the design consideration. In order to address NEMO ROsuboptimal, this work utilizes the NCM protocol plus to PHA. The proposed MANEMO RO scheme is a layer three solution to support RO for mobile networks. Additionally, the paper proposes the design to address Nested NEMO issues in a post disaster scenario by using Proxy Home Agent (PHA) in the infrastructure with using Neighbor Discovery protocol(TDP/NINA) for localizing communications. Thus, thesignaling message flow and the algorithm are written to give proposed scheme more flexibilit

Shunt Hybrid Active Power Filter Based on Two Compensation Strategies with PI and Fuzzy Logic Controllers

Industrial designs have tremendously changed within the last decade, with its time and nonlinear variation loads in power frameworks spectrum expanding widely. This revolution has resulted in increased quality control problems such as current unbalance, current and voltage harmonics, flicker and poor power factor in control frameworks. The aim of this paper is to address this problem through the development of Synchronous Reference Frame and Reactive Power (SRF and P-Q) control methods. The DC voltage was regulated to its set reference for providing the current reference using proportional-Integral (PI) and fuzzy logic controllers. From the results, Fuzzy logic control was shown to achieve an adequate DC capacitor energy storage optimization, the sinusoidal type of the current and the change of the power factor. A low Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) that met the suggestions of IEEE- 519 standard on symphonious levels was achieved with the proposed method

Quality of life of Sudanese Patients with Benigan Prostatic Hyperplasia. The Oblivious Problem

Background: Although the IPSS and QOL index are universally used, they can only quantify the severity of lower urinary tract symptoms suggestive of benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) and evaluate treatment efficacy, but cannot fully reflect the overall quality of life. Moreover, because QOL scale depends on the culture background, it is necessary to develop a Sudanese version of the scale. Objective: To evaluate the impact of BPH on the quality of life by assessing the physical, mental and stress states among patients of BPH. Methodology: This study was conducted on 424 patients with BPH in Gezira Hospital for Renal Disease and Surgery (GHRDS), Sudan. The study was cross-sectional, prospective small-scale hospital based study using simple random sampling technique. The subjects were limited to the Sudanese patients, who could hear and answer the questions of the questionnaire independently and that was done for accuracy and privacy. Taking the patient's educational level into account, all items were expressed in spoken language. The data collection tool was a questionnaire which was modified to twelve items from the BPH Quality of Life Index. Results: The majority 386 patients, 91% were physically fit. The pattern of urination was bothering to their daily life of around 320 patients/75.5%, 225 patients/53.1% of patients were worried about the outcome of the disease, 259 patients/61.1% were not concerned of having prostate cancer and 332 patients/78.2% were satisfied with their sleep. The sexual life had been affected in 201 patients/47.4%. The physical state was assessed by the ability of the patient to pray Friday Jomaa at the mosque which was 85.8% and also by attending important Sudanese obliging social activities like condolence which was (91.9%) of the patients. Conclusion: The impact of BPH on quality of life was obviously significant in the three domains; physical, mental and stress state among patients of BPH in GHRD&S.There should be a validated scale for the BPH Quality of Life Index addressing the traditional strata for Sudanese patients.           &nbsp