Plasma Malondialdehyde (MDA): an indication of liver damage in women with pre-eclamsia

Background: One of the features associated with pre-eclampsia is elevated liver transaminases. The reason this happens has not been fully described. However, the hepatocytes are not known to be spared by free radical injury. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between product of free radical injury (malondialdehyde) and transaminases in pre-eclamptic women.Patients and methods: A total of 98 and 115 pre-eclamptic and apparently normal pregnant women were selected from the booking clinic of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Teaching Hospital, Osogbo. Non-pregnant women were selected from volunteered members of staff. Malondialdehyde (MDA), aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) analyses were determined on collected venous blood sample. Statistical analyses of variables were done using SPSS 17 taking level of significance to be p<0.05.Results: Subjects with plasma AST between 10 and 20U/L had mean plasma MDA of 0.92μmol/l whereas those with plasma levels greater than 41U/L had mean plasma MDA of 4.72μmol/l. Similarly, Subjects with plasma ALT between 10 and 20U/L had mean plasma MDA of 0.86μmol/l, and subjects with plasma ALT greater than 51 U/L had mean plasma MDA of 4.71μmol/l. Positive correlation was observed between AST and ALT(r=0.79;p=0.047), between AST and MDA(r=0.690; p=0.061) as well as between ALT and MDA(r=0.571;p=0.049).Conclusion: The elevated liver enzymes seen in women with pre-eclampsia may be due to free radical injury to the liver. Pre-eclamptic women without free radical injury did not have elevated transaminasesKeywords: Pre-eclempsia, free radical, malondialdehyde, alanine and aspartate aminotransaminase

Indices of Kidney Damage and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in a Semiurban Community of Iloye, South-West Nigeria

Health screening exercises are important, as they enable early detection of diseases in individual subjects and also enable data collection, useful in estimating disease burden in the community. This paper describes the findings of a health screening exercise conducted in a semiurban population of Iloye, by the Rotary Club of Ota, Ogun State, Western Nigeria, as a part of its community-oriented services and projects. Three hundred and twenty six community members were screened during the exercise. There were 189 (57.97%) females and 137 (42.03%) males, with a mean age of 43.5 ± 14.88 yrs. Urinary abnormality and/or creatinine clearance less than 90 mls/min was detected in 147 (45.09%) participants. 99 (30.37%) participants had proteinuria, 16 (4.91%) had haematuria, and 5 (1.53%) participants had both haematuria and proteinuria. Eight (2.45%) participants had GFR less than 60 mls/min. Elevated blood pressure was found in 152 (46.63%), while 3 (0.9%) participants had diabetes, 71 (21.8%) were obese, 16 (4.9%) had hypercholesterolaemia, and 3 (0.9%) had hypertriglyceridaemia. Prevalence of both smoking and alcohol consumption was 6 (1.84%). It was concluded that the prevalence of indices of kidney damage and cardiovascular risk factors is high in Iloye community

Noxious effect of Moringa oleifera leave extract on the developing brain, morphology and behaviour of Wistar rat

The effects of Moringa oleifera leave extracts on the morphology and behaviour of the postnatal developing rat brain was studied. Twenty pregnant rats of Wistar strain weighing between 160 g and 180 g were used in the study. The pregnant rats were divided into two groups of ten animals per group. Group I animals received distilled water and served as control animals, while group II animals received 200 mg/kg body weight of Moringa oleifera leave extract orally. All the animals were provided with rat cubes and water ad libitum during pregnancy and lactation. After birth, five pups of day 21 were weighed and subjected to behavioural study. Animals of days 1, 7, 14, 21 and 28 of age were sacrificed by cervical dislocation, the brain dissected out, weighed and fixed in 10% formol-saline for microscopic studies. Some congenital malformations such as meromelia, phocomelia and amelia were observed in the Moringa oleifera group only. There was a significant increase in body weight of the Moringa oleifera animals on days 7, 14 and 21, in brain weight on days 1 and 7, and in cerebral weight on days 1, 7 and 21 (p<0.05). The behaviour of the rats was significantly worse in the Moringa oleifera group, especially in the area of motor function. Microscopically, there was significant reduction in the cerebral cortical thickness of Moringa oleifera group on days 21 and 28. Immunohistochemical studies revealed poor myelination in the Moringa oleifera group. The results indicate that maternal consumption of Moringa oleifera significantly affected the general morphology as well as behaviour of their pups, therefore it should be consumed with caution in pregnancy until better knowledge on humans is available

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) approach for the irreversibility analysis of a domestic refrigerator system using LPG/TiO2 nanolubricant

This work presents an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) artificial intelligence methodology of predicting the 2nd law efficiency and total irreversibility of a refrigeration system running on LPG/TiO2–nano-refrigerants. For this purpose, substractive clustering and grid partition approaches were utilized to train the ANFIS models required in estimating the 2nd law efficiency and total irreversibility using some experimental data. Furthermore, predictions of ANFIS models with subtractive clustering approach was found to be more accurate than ANFIS models predictions with grid partition approach. The predictions of ANFIS models with subtractive clustering approach were also compared with experimental results that were not included in the model training and predictions of already existing ANN models of authors previous publication. The comparison of variance, root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were 0.996–0.999, 0.0296–0.1726 W and 0.108–0.176 % marginal variability values. These results indicate that the ANFIS model with subtractive clustering approach having cluster radii 0.7 and 0.5 can predict the 2nd law efficiency and total irreversibility respectively, with higher accuracy than authors’ previous publication ANN model