Trend of HIV seroprevalence among antenatal women at tertiary care hospital in North India, eleven years retrospective study

Background: Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is spreading worldwide at an alarming rate and India has third largest number of estimated people living with HIV/AIDS in the world. Estimating the HIV seroprevalence in a low risk population such as pregnant women provide essential information for monitoring trend of HIV in general population and assist in prevention from mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV infection. Only few studies are available from this part of northern India. So we carried out this study to find out seroprevalence of HIV in pregnant women at tertiary care hospital of Uttar Pradesh, India.Methods: Blood samples were collected from pregnant women attending antenatal clinic of GSVM Medical college, Kanpur, U.P, India. after pretest counseling and inform consent from September 2005 to July 2016. The samples are tested as per National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) guidelines.Results: Among 38794 pregnant women counseled, 34924(90.02%) accepted HIV testing. 102 women out of 34924 were found HIV seropositive with prevalence rate of 0.3%. Among seropositive women, majority were Hindu (88.2%), housewife (89.2%), multigravida (62.7%), studied up to primary or secondary (78.4%), of low socio-economic status (74.5%) and belongs to rural area (67.6%). Majority of HIV seropositive (34.3%) women were in age group of 25-30 years followed by 21-25years (25.4%). HIV seroprevalence rates showed an increasing trend from 0.14% in 2006 to 0.49% in 2016 (till July).Conclusions: Seroprevalence of HIV infection amongst antenatal women was 0.3%in past 11 years which is in increasing trend in contrast to other studies and slightly higher than national projection (0.29%). It concludes that it is right time to strengthen prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services by joint efforts of the private and public sectors

HYBRID AC/MT-HVDC TRANSMISSION LINES AND ITS EFFECTIVE OPERATION USING ENHANCED-FISH SWARM OPTIMIZER

Multi-Terminal-High Voltage Direct Current (MT-HVDC) transmission lines are used to transmit electricity over long distances with lower losses compared to traditional Alternating Current (AC) transmission lines. However, HVDC transmission lines have limitations in terms of their ability to handle AC system faults and the need for expensive AC/DC converters at each end of the line. To address these limitations, a hybrid AC/MT-HVDC transmission line can be used. This type of transmission line combines the benefits of both AC and DC transmission, allowing for more efficient and reliable operation. In this article, an Enhanced-Fish Swarm Optimizer (E-FSO) is presented for the efficient maintenance of hybrid AC/MT-HVDC transmission lines. An external repository is included in the proposed E-FSO to preserve that is not dominant. Additionally, fuzzy decision-making is used to choose the hybrid AC/HVDC transmission lines' optimal compromise operating point. In these systems, in addition to the complete control of AC line through parameters for the dedicated generators and transformers connections, and Volt-Ampere Reactive (VAR) compensations, the Voltage Source Converters (VSCs) action and response controllable voltage is engaged. The outcomes of the experiment show the efficacy and dominance of the suggested algorithm, which has high stability indices compared to several competitive algorithms. Nevertheless, the suggested E-FSO is effective in producing a compromise operating point that satisfies the operator's needs while also obtaining well-diversified solutions

MtSNPscore: a combined evidence approach for assessing cumulative impact of mitochondrial variations in disease

Human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variations have been implicated in a broad spectrum of diseases. With over 3000 mtDNA variations reported across databases, establishing pathogenicity of variations in mtDNA is a major challenge. We have designed and developed a comprehensive weighted scoring system (MtSNPscore) for identification of mtDNA variations that can impact pathogenicity and would likely be associated with disease. The criteria for pathogenicity include information available in the literature, predictions made by various in silico tools and frequency of variation in normal and patient datasets. The scoring scheme also assigns scores to patients and normal individuals to estimate the cumulative impact of variations. The method has been implemented in an automated pipeline and has been tested on Indian ataxia dataset (92 individuals), sequenced in this study, and other publicly available mtSNP dataset comprising of 576 mitochondrial genomes of Japanese individuals from six different groups, namely, patients with Parkinson's disease, patients with Alzheimer's disease, young obese males, young non-obese males, and type-2 diabetes patients with or without severe vascular involvement. MtSNPscore, for analysis can extract information from variation data or from mitochondrial DNA sequences. It has a web-interface http://bioinformatics.ccmb.res.in/cgi-bin/snpscore/Mtsnpscore.pl webcite that provides flexibility to update/modify the parameters for estimating pathogenicity

Tight-Binding Investigation of Structural and Vibrational Properties of Graphene-Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Junctions

Hybrid carbon nanostructures based on single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) and single layer graphene (SLG) are drawing much attention lately for their applications in a range of efficient hybrid devices. Few recent studies, addressing the interaction behavior at the heterojunction, consider charge transfer between the constituents (SWNT and SLG) to be responsible for changes in the electronic and vibrational properties in their hybrid system. We report the effect of various factors, arising due to the interactions between atoms of SWNT and SLG, on the structural and vibrational roperties of hybrid nanostructures investigated computationally within the framework of tight-binding DFT. These factors such as the van der Waal’s (vdW) forces, structural deformation and the charge transfer, are seen to affect the Raman active phonon frequencies of SWNT and SLG in the hybrid nanostructure. These factors are already known to affect the vibrational properties on SWNT and SLG separately and in this work, we have explored their role and interplay between these factors in hybrid systems. The contribution of different factors to the total shift observed in phonon frequencies are estimated and it is perceived from our findings that not only the charge transfer but the structural deformations and the vdW forces also affect the vibrational properties of components within the hybrid, with structural deformation being the leading factor. With decreasing separation between SWNT and SLG, the charge transfer and the vdW forces, both increase. However, the increase in vdW forces is relatively much higher and likely to be the main cause for larger Raman shifts observed at smaller separations

Antibacterial and antioxidant strategies for acne treatment through plant extracts

Acne vulgaris is a chronic skin infection affecting the majority of Indian population. There are several internal and external factors responsible for this infection. The present study emphasizes on screening of medicinal plant extracts against acne causing bacteria and antioxidant activity of these plant extracts. Anti-bacterial activities of methanolic extracts of Rosmarinus officinalis, Pelargonium asperum, Ocimum tenuiflorum, Acacia nilotica, Azadirachta indica, Matricaria chamomilla and Calendula officinalis was carried out using agar well diffusion method against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Kocuria sp., Bacillus subtilis and Propionibacterium acnes. The results revealed that different plant extracts showed noticeable activity against different test organisms. The plant extracts of R. officinalis, M. chamomilla and A. nilotica showed significant activity against P. acnes with diameter of 8 mm, 6 mm and 4 mm inhibition zone respectively. The minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) was measured for these three potential plant extracts. The MIC values of extracts of R. officinalis, M. chamomilla were comparable to the standard reference drugs isotretinoin. Since antioxidants also play an important role in the pathophysiology of acne, anti-oxidant activity of plant extracts was also carried out using 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) method. Ascorbic acid was used as a standard in anti-oxidant activity assay. The extracts of R. officinalis, A. nilotica and A. indica also exhibited moderate antioxidant activity with IC50 value of 109.3, 136.9 and 108 μg/ml, respectively. The outcome of the study suggested that R. officinalis, M. chamomilla and A. nilotica plant extracts could be possible to use as the natural anti-acne formulations. Keywords: Acne, Antibacterial, Antioxidant, DPPH, MIC, Plant extracts, Propionibacterium acne

Influence of nebivolol on anticonvulsant effect of lamotrigine

Objective: The present study describes the effect of nebivolol (NBV) either alone or in combination with lamotrigine (LTG) using increasing current electroshock seizures (ICES) model in mice. Materials and Methods: Male albino mice of Swiss strain each weighing 18-30 g were used. Lamotrigine (Lamitor tablets, Torrent; 1.5 and 3.0 mg/kg) and NBV (Nebicard tablets, Torrent; 0.25 and 0.5 mg/kg) were suspended in 0.25% of carboxy methyl cellulose (CMC) in 0.9% saline and administered orally in volumes of 10 mg/kg. Control animals received an equivalent volume of 0.25% CMC in 0.9% saline suspension. The anticonvulsant effects of the drugs were measured using ICES model whereas cognitive behavior was measured by the spontaneous alternation behavior and grip-strength test. The biochemical estimation was done by measuring the lipid peroxidation and reduced glutathione (GSH). Results: Both NBV and LTG produced significantly enhanced seizure threshold (ST), decreased grip strength, inhibited lipid peroxidation, and increased brain GSH levels in acute and chronic dosages likened to control group, whereas there was no significant effect on alternation scores. The combination of NBV with LTG significantly potentiated the ST when compared to LTG. Conclusion: Nebivolol showed antiepileptic effects in addition to its reported antihypertensive effect, which could be attributed to action of the two drugs through different mechanisms or due to drug interaction that may be pharmacodynamic or pharmacokinetic needing elucidation