Association of salivary pH in patients with dental caries and periodontal disease

Background: The aims of the study was to find out the prevalence of dental caries in healthy and periodontal disease and its association with salivary pH.Methods: A total of 80 healthy subjects reporting to the department of periodontology were selected. They were divided into four groups (clinically healthy gingival, chronic generalized gingivitis, chronic generalized periodontitis, and aggressive periodontitis) with 20 subjects in each. Periodontal parameters; decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT) index and salivary pH were recorded. Unstimulated whole saliva was collected according to Navazesh method. The pH of saliva was immediately measrued using a single electrode digital pH meter.Results: Based on statistical test it was seen that caries prevalence and DMFT was found out to be least in aggressive periodontitis group, along with least mean pH value, as compared to the other 3 groups, p<0.05.Conclusions: The low prevalence of caries in aggressive periodontitis can be attributed to the low pH of saliva. Salivary pH plays a vital role in the formation of microbial film, which in turn has a significant role in the pathogenesis of both dental caries and periodontitis

ANTIOXIDANT AND ANTIINFLAMMATORY EFFECTS OF VITEX NEGUNDO ON FREUND'S COMPLETE ADJUVANT INDUCED ARTHRITIS

Objective: Vitex negundo, commonly known as nirgundi†is widely used in traditional as well as in folk medicines to cure many ailments such as fever, rheumatism, gum and skin diseases and liver disorders, etc. The present study evaluated the antioxidant potency of hydroethanolic extract of Vitex negundo leaves (VNE) in Freund's complete adjuvant (FCA) induced arthritis.Methods: Acute oral toxicity test of VNE at various increasing doses and its effect on biochemical markers of hepatotoxicity and renal toxicity along with histopathology were studied. The experimental arthritis was induced by subcutaneous injection of FCA at the right hind paw of male albino rats. Treatment with indomethacin (10 mg/kg body weight) and VNE (200 mg/kg body weight) was given to arthritic rats to study the effects on liver and erythrocytes malondialdehyde (MDA) and antioxidant status. Anti-inflammatory activities were studied by inhibition in paw edema.Results: The results showed that the use of VNE, up to the dose of 5 g/kg body weight was nontoxic. Oral administration of VNE significantly modulated antioxidant status and reduced MDA content. VNE also exhibited anti-inflammatory activity shown by inhibition in paw edema of arthritic rats.Conclusion: Vitex negundo leaves possess potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity by modulating the oxidant/antioxidant in favor of reducing oxidative stress and thereby; the inflammation in FCA induced RA.Â

Aftermath of pulmonary tuberculosis : computed tomography assessment

Purpose: Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) has clinically significant sequelae, even after recommended treatment completion. It is important to recognise these sequelae for accurate assessment of severity and treatment planning, if indicated. Material and methods: We retrospectively analysed contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) scans of chest of 100 patients with previous history of treated pulmonary tuberculosis, excluding those with active pulmonary disease. CT findings were analysed based on parenchymal, airway, pleural, mediastinal, and vascular sequelae of PTB. Results: Parenchymal sequelae included fibrosis with architectural distortion and volume loss (90%), cavities (21%) (with aspergillomas noted in 19% of these cases), and tuberculomas (54%). Airway involvement was noted as bronchiectasis (77%) and bronchial stenosis (4%) but none with broncholithiasis. Mediastinal sequelae included lymph node calcification (74%), fibrosing mediastinitis (1%), and pericardial tuberculosis (2%). Pleural sequelae included pleural thickening (22%), with 40.9% of these patients showing calcifications, and one patient with chronic chylous pleural effusion. Vascular sequelae included Rasmussen aneurysms (4%), enlarged bronchial arteries (3%), and systemic bronchial collaterals in 1% of our patients. Conclusions: PTB has multiple appalling sequelae, which require due attention and appropriate treatment in symptomatic cases. Radiological evaluation forms an integral part in patient assessment and decision making

ANTI-OXIDATIVE, ANTI-INFLAMMATORY AND ANTI-ATHEROSCLEROTIC EFFECT OF TAURINE ON HYPERCHOLESTEROLEMIA INDUCED ATHEROSCLEROTIC RATS

Objective: The present study evaluates the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-atherosclerotic potency of taurine (2-amino ethane sulfonic acid) when administered orally to hypercholesterolemia induced atherosclerotic rats.Methods: The experimental atherosclerosis was induced by feeding rats with an atherogenic diet comprising of the normal rat chow supplemented with 4 % cholesterol, 1 % cholic acid and 0.5 % thiouracil (CCT diet) for 20 d. Treatment with atorvastatin (10 mg/kg body weight) and taurine (2 % in drinking water) was given to atherosclerotic rats to study antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione-S-transferase), lipid peroxidation in liver, glutathione reductase and protein carbonyl content, extent of DNA damage using the alkaline comet assay, assaying pro-inflammatory cytokines and quantifying atherosclerotic lesions.Results: Oral supplementation of 2 % taurine to hypercholesterolemic rats modulated antioxidant status and significantly reduced malondialdehyde (MDA) content (P&lt;0.05). The extent of DNA damage was also significantly reduced as observed by a reduction in the comet tail index (P&lt;0.05). Taurine exhibited anti-inflammatory activity by significantly inhibiting TNF-α (tumor necrosis factor) and IL-1α (inter leukine) and also inhibited atherosclerotic lesions by clearing lipid deposits on the intimal surface of the rat aorta.Conclusion: Oral administration of taurine to rats showed antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity by modulating oxidants in favor of reducing oxidative stress and also showed anti-atherosclerotic activity in hypercholesterolemia-induced atherosclerosis

Molecular cloning, expression and Insilco analysis of drought stress inducible MYB transcription factor encoding gene from C4 plant Eleusine coracana

Drought is one of the key abiotic stresses that critically influences the crops by restraining their growth and yield potential. Being sessile, plant tackle the detrimental effects of drought stress by modulating the cellular state by changing the gene expression. The transcriptional syndicate essentially drives such alteration of gene expression. Transcription factors (TF) are the key regulatory protein that controls the expression of their target gene by binding to the cis-regulatory elements present in the promoter region. Myb-TF, ubiquitously present in all eukaryotes belong to one of the largest TF family, and play a wide array of biological functions in plants, including anthocyanin biosynthesis, vasculature system, cell signalling, seed maturation and abiotc stress responses. The present performed isolation and molecular cloning of full length Myb TF from Eleusine corocana. The isolated full-length coding sequence has 1053 bp and 350 aa was submitted to NCBI (Accession number MT312253). The transcript level of EcMYB increases under different abiotic stress treatments including dehydration, salinity, and high-temperature stress. The promoter region of EcMyb1 was found to be enriched in stress-responsive cis-regulatory elements such as DRE, HSE, ABRE etc. In phylogenetic analysis, EcMyb1 appeared to have high homology with its monocot orthologs particularly Sateria italica, Hordeum vulgare, Saccharum barberi and Oryza sativa. The three-dimension protein structure was generated based on homology modeling and structural aspects were discussed. Further, Insilco analysis was conducted to explore the physiological properties, subcellular localization, potential posttranslational modification sites (phosphorylation and glycosylation sites), and molecular and biological function of the full-length protein. Overall, the expression profiling and Insilco analysis of EcMyb1 strongly indicated its potential role in abiotic stress response in Eleusine corocana.

Full Length Research Paper Phytochemical Analysis and Cytotoxicity Studies of Curcuma amada rhizomes in BHK-21 Cells

Abstract. Curcuma amada is medicinal plant which is used in several traditional medicines to cure various diseases. Curcuma amada has been shown to possess anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antitumor properties. In this investigation, it had been planned to study its anticancer properties in BHK-21 cells. Acetone, Methanol, Ethanol and aqueous extracts of the rhizomes of Curcuma amada were screened for their anticancer properties. The cells were seeded with all the extracts separately and then allowed to grow for 24hrs; the cell growth was inhibited within 24hrs. The cytopathology observed were included rounding and clumping of cells, detachment of cells, flagging of cells and apoptosis. Methanolic and ethanolic extracts showed better response than that of its aqueous and acetone extract. The concentration of 10 mg/ml of ethanolic extract inhibited the cancerous cell growth

Production of Amylase by Bacillus polymyxa NCIM No. 2539 from Agroindustrial Wastes

Background and Objective: In the present study, Bacillus polymyxa NCIM No. 2539 was selected to utilize agro-industrial byproduct (orange peel) for amylase production under submergedfermentation conditions.Material and Methods: Different agro-industrial byproducts like cane molasses, wheat bran, rice bran and orange peel were screened for maximum amylase production. Amylase activitiy of Bacillus polymyxa was studied using starch-agar plate method. MINITAB software Version 17 and central composite design were applied to evaluate effect of supplementation of substrate with different sulphur containing amino acids (cysteine, methionine and cystine) and vitamin thiamine on enzyme activity. Further optimization of the parameters viz. amount of substrate, concentration of amino acid and vitamin for maximum amylase production was studied by central composite rotatable design.Results and Conclusion: Among 4 different agro-industrial substrates applied, orange peel showed maximum enzyme production (activity: 492.31 IU g-1 sample). Supplementation of the production media with cysteine showed maximum amylaseproduction (515.38 IU g-1 sample) among all three amino acids and control. Supplementation with thiamine also showed more amylase production (469.23 IU g-1 sample) as compared to control (415.38 IU g-1). Cysteine and thiamine proved to increaseamylase production significantly. Maximum amylase production was obtained at 7.7 g orange peel, 37.29 mg cysteine and 34.23 mg per 10 ml thiamine.Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest

CLASSICAL SIGNIFICANCE AND VARIOUS ASPECTS OF BHOJANA (MEAL) AND BHĀJANA (UTENSIL) AS PER ĀYURVEDA- A CLASSICAL ANALYSIS

Food is considered to be the path of health and salvation. Desire of food, easy digestion of ingested food, proper excretion of feces, urine and flatus, lightness of body, longevity and happiness are known to be features of health. Health is dependent upon food and the food looks for proper method. In the present era, everyone wants to know only about tasty food, but people are not much aware of the rules of food preparation, rules of proper intake, and proper utensils for food intake, etc. Practicing appropriate diet-regimen, pertinent demeanor, appropriate sleep and wake up makes a person devoid of distress. In this way a vast description of salutary diet regimen is available in the treatise of Āyurveda. This paper deals with the use of utensils and methodology of food intake mentioned in Kaśyapa Saṃhitā and other Ayurvedic scriptures

Evaluating Robustness of Dialogue Summarization Models in the Presence of Naturally Occurring Variations

Dialogue summarization task involves summarizing long conversations while preserving the most salient information. Real-life dialogues often involve naturally occurring variations (e.g., repetitions, hesitations) and existing dialogue summarization models suffer from performance drop on such conversations. In this study, we systematically investigate the impact of such variations on state-of-the-art dialogue summarization models using publicly available datasets. To simulate real-life variations, we introduce two types of perturbations: utterance-level perturbations that modify individual utterances with errors and language variations, and dialogue-level perturbations that add non-informative exchanges (e.g., repetitions, greetings). We conduct our analysis along three dimensions of robustness: consistency, saliency, and faithfulness, which capture different aspects of the summarization model's performance. We find that both fine-tuned and instruction-tuned models are affected by input variations, with the latter being more susceptible, particularly to dialogue-level perturbations. We also validate our findings via human evaluation. Finally, we investigate if the robustness of fine-tuned models can be improved by training them with a fraction of perturbed data and observe that this approach is insufficient to address robustness challenges with current models and thus warrants a more thorough investigation to identify better solutions. Overall, our work highlights robustness challenges in dialogue summarization and provides insights for future research