High Fat Diet Prevents Over-Crowding Induced Decrease of Sex Ratio in Mice

Adaptive theory predicts that mothers would be advantaged by adjusting the sex ratio of their offspring in relation to their offspring's future reproductive success. In the present study, we tested the effect of housing mice under crowded condition on the sex ratio and whether the fat content of the diet has any influence on the outcome of pregnancies. Three-week-old mice were placed on the control diet (NFD) for 3 weeks. Thereafter the mice were allotted randomly to two groups of 7 cages each with 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 mice in every cage to create increasing crowding gradient and fed either NFD or high fat diet (HFD). After 4 weeks, dams were bred and outcomes of pregnancy were analyzed. The average dam body weight (DBW) at conception, litter size (LS) and SR were significantly higher in HFD fed dams. Further, male biased litters declined with increasing crowding in NFD group but not in HFD. The LS and SR in NFD declined significantly with increasing crowding, whereas only LS was reduced in HFD group. We conclude that female mice housed under overcrowding conditions shift offspring SR in favor of daughters in consistent with the TW hypothesis and high fat diet reduces this influence of overcrowding

Agglomeration of ibuprofen with talc by novel crystallo-co-agglomeration technique

The purpose of this research work was to obtain directly compressible agglomerates of ibuprofen with talc by a novel crystallo-co-agglomeration (CCA) technique, which is an extension of spherical crystallization. Ibuprofen-talc agglomerates were prepared using dichloromethane (DCM)-water as the crystallization system. DCM acted as a good solvent for ibuprofen as well as a bridging liquid for agglomeration of crystallized drug with talc. The agglomerates were characterized by differential scanning calorimetry, powder X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy and were evaluated for tableting properties and for drug release. The process yielded spherical agglomerates containing ∼95% to 96% wt/wt of ibuprofen. Agglomerates containing talc showed uniform distribution of hydroxypropylmethylcellulose and decreased crystallinity, and deformed under pressure. The miniscular form of ibuprofen and the hydrophobicity of talc governed the drug release rate. The batch containing a higher proportion of talc showed zeroorder kinetics and drug release was extended up to 13 hours. The CCA technique developed in this study is suitable for obtaining agglomerates of drug with talc as an excipient