Demography and clinical profile of patients with chronic pancreatitis in a tertiary referral hospital in eastern India

Background: Chronic pancreatitis is defined as a pathological fibro-inflammatory syndrome of the pancreas in individuals with genetic, environmental and/or other risk factors who develop persistent pathological responses to parenchymal injury or stress. Potential causes can include toxic factors (such as alcohol or smoking), metabolic abnormalities, idiopathic mechanisms, genetics, autoimmune responses and obstructive mechanisms. We studied the epidemiological patterns in relation to age, sex and socioeconomic status, the etiological factors and pattern of clinical presentations. the different modes of management of chronic pancreatitis.Methods: This prospective study on chronic pancreatitis was conducted in 55 patients admitted in Srirama Chandra Bhanja Medical College and Hospital (SCB M. C. H.), Cuttack, general surgery and surgical gastroenterology department.Results: In the study sample 37 patients (68%) were male and 18 patients (32%) were female. the etiological distribution of the study sample is shown. 29 patients (53%) showed topical etiology, 21 patients (37%) showed alcoholic and 5 patients showed idiopathic. The sign and symptoms (clinical) of the study sample, 54 patients (98%) showed abdominal pain, 26 patients (47%) had diabetes (type 2), 1 patient showed steatorrhea, 2 patients (4%) had jaundice, 2 patients (4%) had pseudocyst and 1 patient (2%) had ascites. Surgical drainage procedure performed on the patients 23 patients (42%) underwent Pvestow lateral (longitudinal) pancreatic jejunostomy, 18 patients (33%) underwent frey, 7 patients (13%) had lateral pancreatic jejunostomy,1 patient (2%) had V section, 1 patient (2%) underwent whipple, 3 patients (5%) had cystogastrostomy and cystodudenostomy and 2 patients (3%) underwent cholecystojejunostomy.Conclusions: The study revealed Puestow’s procedure was the most commonly performed surgical drainage procedure with satisfactory results

Trehalose: effect on cryopreservation of umbilical cord blood-derived hematopoietic stem cells

Introduction: Concerns over dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) toxicity, related to adverse reactions after hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) therapy, warrant the development of an optimized DMSO-free or DMSO-reduced cryopreservation protocol for the quality and safety of HSCs. In this regard, the ideal concentration of trehalose, as a non-toxic natural cryoprotectant, is still an area of research. Based on the outcome of our previous study on lower concentrations of trehalose, the present study was focused on evaluating its cryoprotective efficacy at an increased concentration (0.5 M) on HSCs compared to 10% DMSO. This is a laboratory-based experimental study. Material and methods: The separated mononuclear cells collected from umbilical cord blood were set for culture up to two passages to get HSCs. The two different concentrations of trehalose, with and without 5% DMSO, were considered as freezing media for the preservation of the harvested HSCs in a slow freezing set up. Two sequential functional assays, viability followed by hematopoietic colony-forming unit assay, were performed with post-thawed cells of freezing media used in this study. Seventeen cord blood samples were selected. Results: Study results revealed 0.5 M trehalose and DMSO 5% showed the highest viability of 91.8 ±2.8% of HSCs. 5% DMSO inclusion to trehalose (0.5 M) ameliorated hematopoietic colonies such as erythroid and myeloid colonies with no significant difference from that of 10% DMSO. Conclusion: 0.5 M trehalose has proved to be a better concentration than 10% DMSO alone. This experimental study needs further transplantation-based clinical trials using post-thawed cells to ensure the safety of preserved HSCs from cord blood and other sources

Whole Genome Characterization of a Few EMS-Induced Mutants of Upland Rice Variety Nagina 22 Reveals a Staggeringly High Frequency of SNPs Which Show High Phenotypic Plasticity Towards the Wild-Type

The Indian initiative, in creating mutant resources for the functional genomics in rice, has been instrumental in the development of 87,000 ethylmethanesulfonate (EMS)-induced mutants, of which 7,000 are in advanced generations. The mutants have been created in the background of Nagina 22, a popular drought- and heat-tolerant upland cultivar. As it is a pregreen revolution cultivar, as many as 573 dwarf mutants identified from this resource could be useful as an alternate source of dwarfing. A total of 541 mutants, including the macromutants and the trait-specific ones, obtained after appropriate screening, are being maintained in the mutant garden. Here, we report on the detailed characterizations of the 541 mutants based on the distinctness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) descriptors at two different locations. About 90% of the mutants were found to be similar to the wild type (WT) with high similarity index (>0.6) at both the locations. All 541 mutants were characterized for chlorophyll and epicuticular wax contents, while a subset of 84 mutants were characterized for their ionomes, namely, phosphorous, silicon, and chloride contents. Genotyping of these mutants with 54 genomewide simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers revealed 93% of the mutants to be either completely identical to WT or nearly identical with just one polymorphic locus. Whole genome resequencing (WGS) of four mutants, which have minimal differences in the SSR fingerprint pattern and DUS characters from the WT, revealed a staggeringly high number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on an average (16,453 per mutant) in the genic sequences. Of these, nearly 50% of the SNPs led to non-synonymous codons, while 30% resulted in synonymous codons. The number of insertions and deletions (InDels) varied from 898 to 2,595, with more than 80% of them being 1–2 bp long. Such a high number of SNPs could pose a serious challenge in identifying gene(s) governing the mutant phenotype by next generation sequencing-based mapping approaches such as Mutmap. From the WGS data of the WT and the mutants, we developed a genic resource of the WT with a novel analysis pipeline. The entire information about this resource along with the panicle architecture of the 493 mutants is made available in a mutant database EMSgardeN22 (http://14.139.229.201/EMSgardeN22)