MCSF drives regulatory DC development in stromal co-cultures supporting hematopoiesis

Background: Splenic stroma overlaid with hematopoietic progenitors supports in vitro hematopoiesis with production of dendritic-like cells. Co-cultures of murine lineage-depleted bone marrow over the 5G3 stromal line produce two populations of cells, characterised as CD11b+CD11c+MHC-II− dendritic-like ‘L-DC’, and CD11b+CD11c+ MHC-II+ cells, resembling conventional dendritic cells (cDC). To date, the functional capacity of these two subsets has not been clearly distinguished. Results: Here we show both the L-DC and cDC-like subsets can be activated and induce proliferation of OT-I CD8+ T cells, being strong inducers of IL-2 and IFN-γ production. Both subsets lack ability to induce proliferation of OT-II CD4+ T cells. The cDC-like population is shown here to resemble regulatory DC in that they induce FoxP3 expression and IL10 production in OT-II CD4+ T cells, in line with their function as regulatory DC. L-DC did not activate or induce the proliferation of CD4+ T cells and did not induce FoxP3 expression in CD4+ T cells. L-DC can be distinguished from cDClike cells through their superior endocytic capacity and expression of 4-1BBL, F4/80 and Sirp-α. A comparison of gene expression by the two subsets was consistent with L-DC having an activated or immunostimulatory DC phenotype, while cDC-like cells reflect myeloid dendritic cells with inflammatory and suppressive properties, also consistent with functional characteristics as regulatory DC. When a Transwell membrane was used to prevent hematopoietic cell contact with stroma, only cDC-like cells and not L-DC were produced, and cell production was dependent on M-CSF production by stroma. Conclusion: Co-cultures of hematopoietic progenitors over splenic stroma produce two distinct subsets of dendritic-like cells. These are here distinguished phenotypically and through gene expression differences. While both resemble DC, there are functionally distinct. L-DC activate CD8+ but not CD4+ T cells, while the cDC-like population induce regulatory T cells, so reflecting regulatory DC. The latter can be enriched through Transwell co-cultures with cell production dependent on M-CSF. Keywords: Hematopoiesis, Dendritic cell, Regulatory dendritic cells, Regulatory T cellsThis work was supported by project grant #585443 to HO from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. SP was supported by a graduate scholarship from the Royal Thai Government. PP was supported by an Australian National University Graduate Scholarship

Electronic Travel Aid for Visually Impaired People Along with a Panic Alert System

There are many issues over which humans have no control. Blindness is one of such issues. It snatches the vivid visual beauty of the world from an individual’s life.But missing the beauty of nature becomes one of the last worries of such people as they have to face numerous difficulties in order to perform even the most basics of tasks in their day to day life. One of their most important problems is of transport, such as crossing roads, traveling in trains, or in any other public places. A visually impaired person to survive the fittest in this world, the person must go through all the obstacles without the guidance of others. One of the most important measures to avoid the obstacle by the blind is to provide an assistive implementation, which can help to wander on their own. The main aim of this project is to provide an assistive technology used for the purpose of enhancing the mobility of the blind pedestrian which is commonly referred to as Electronic Travel Aid (ETA) and to motivate the blind without having the inferior feeling of their problem and pay away the blind to move on their own . In this project, a smart guiding ETA is used to guide the user to sense the obstacle before them. This device eliminates the requirement of human assistance for blind while traveling outside. It will identify all obstacles in the path with the help of various sensors installed in it. The microcontroller will retrieve data and pass it on as vibrations which will notify the user about hurdles

Patient Monitoring and Abnormality Detection Along with an Android Application

The health related problems are becoming more and more critical. This necessitates the need for continuous monitoring of health parameters of the patient. The health monitoring electronic equipment’s are not able to maintain health logs, analyzing the biomedical data obtained and assisting the patient and caregivers depending on the analysis. This project is intended to monitor the patient’s bio-signals like Electro Cardio Gram (ECG), pulse rate, respiration rate and temperature. Suitable algorithms can be used to find out the abnormalities in these bio-signals. Today Electronic Patient Records (EPR) are confined to the hospital database and are available within the hospital information system. This project also aims to a modification of Electronic Patient Records depending on the real-time vital parameter feed. These updated EPR information instead of storing in the hospital database are uploaded through the internet and stored in a cloud system. The patient need not have to carry the medical records in the form of papers, films or Compact Disc (CD) while moving from hospital to hospital. The patient needs to carry only an android mobile phone. Using the android application, the medical records stored in the cloud can be retrieved. The physician can analyze the medical records of the patient either through personal computers or through the mobile phones with the help of android application

An Immuno-Epidemiological study on the Effect of Neonatal BCG Vaccination on Intracellular Killing of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis by Human Macrophages

An Immuno-epidemiological study was performed to study the effect of neonatal BCG vaccination and tuberculin response on macrophage killing profile. In epidemiological field work part, the study subjects were drawn from three different study areas; urban, sub-urban and rural in and around Chennai city. The descriptive epidemiological pattern of neonatal BCG vaccination, its impact on tuberculin skin test and certain common risk factors associated with the tuberculin skin test reactivity were studied. Finally the study subjects for the immunological laboratory experiments were recruited and were grouped in to four natural study groups as; Study Group 1 Vaccinated reactors, Study Group 2 Vaccinated non-reactors, Study Group 3 Non-vaccinated reactors, Study Group 4 Non-vaccinated non-reactors. In Immunological laboratory work part, the elucidation of macrophage killing profile was studied for all the four groups. The parameters used for the macrophage killing profile were; (i) Measurement of phagocytosis, (ii) Superoxide dismutase assay, (iii) Glutathione assay, (iv) Tumour necrosis factor-α assay, (v) Interferon-γ assay and (vi) Intracellular growth kinetics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv. This study is the first to investigate and to compare the influence of neonatal BCG vaccination and the effect of tuberculin responses on macrophage killing mechanisms of adolescents from the four natural study groups. CONCLUSION: • The proportion of tuberculin response with BCG vaccination has revealed a statistical significance in Sub-urban Pallavaram and rural Tirupandiyur. No significance found in urban Chennai. • The distributions of tuberculin reaction sizes were almost similar between vaccinated and non-vaccinated subjects. • The detection level of PPD-10 TU was not superior when compared to PPD-1 TU. • This risk factor of ‘Family member (or close contact) with TB’ was significantly associated (P=0.05) with the tuberculin reactivity. • BCG vaccination did not appear to result in a significant increase of the so called protective responses such as phagocytic index, SOD, Glutathione, TNF-α and IFN-γ when compared between vaccinated and non-vaccinated reactors • Among the BCG vaccinated tuberculin reactors, the macrophage responses were significantly higher than the BCG vaccinated tuberculin non-reactors. • There was no significant difference in the responses among the BCG vaccinated tuberculin reactors when compared to the unvaccinated tuberculin reactors. So, tuberculin reactivity may be an indication of new infection and not a marker of BCG

Enhancement of Power Output by using Alginate Immobilized Algae in Biophotovoltaic Devices.

We report for the first time a photosynthetically active algae immobilized in alginate gel within a fuel cell design for generation of bioelectricity. The algal-alginate biofilm was utilized within a biophotovoltaics (BPV) device developed for direct bioelectricity generation from photosynthesis. A peak power output of 0.289 mWm-2 with an increase of 18% in power output compared to conventional suspension culture BPV device was observed. The increase in maximum power density was correlated to the maximum relative electron transport rate (rETRm). The semi-dry type of photosynthetically active biofilm proposed in this work may offer significantly improved performances in terms of fuel cell design, bioelectricity generation, oxygen production and CO2 reduction

Photoconduction in Alq3

Photoelectronic properties of Alq3 were studied by photoconductivity measurements in thin film, sandwich (ITO/Alq3/LiF/Al) devices. We find that the photocurrent is dominated by bulk generation of carriers for incident photon energies greater than 2.75 eV. The quantum efficiency of photocarrier generation has been measured from carrier collection measurements to be about 10%. The quantum efficiency is largely independent of electric field. This enables a direct measurement of the electric field dependence of mobility using photoconductivity measurements, which is used for quantitative analysis of the dark forward current in these devices. Photoconductivity measurements were also used to obtain (\mu_{0n} \tau_n) product which can be used as a measure of material quality. For Alq3, we find that the value of (\mu_{0n} \tau_n) product was between 3x10^{-15} cm^2/V to 8x10^{-15} cm^2/V for different samples. In forward bias, at high field the photocurrent shows saturation accompanied by a phase shift. These effects are attributed to space charge effects in the device.Comment: 12 figure

Assessment of drug utilization among geriatric patients based on defined daily dose concept in a rural tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: The objectives of the study were to use the anatomical therapeutic chemical classification (ATC) /defined daily dose (DDD) concept to study the drug utilization pattern in geriatric patients in a rural tertiary care teaching hospital.Methods: An observational study was conducted at Rajah Muthiah Medical College Hospital (OPD and IPD) over a period of six months from November 2018 to April 2019. The data was collected from 204 patients using specially designed data collection form. The patients were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: A total of 204 patients were included in this study. The study population consisting of males 130 (63.7%) and females 74 (36.2%). Diseases related to the cardiovascular system 67 (32.84%) were the most common cause for the geriatric patients to attend the hospital, followed by surgical diseases 47 (23.03%), Oncological diseases 2 (0.98%) were the least frequency encountered. The average number of drugs prescribed per prescription was 8.79. Out of 1795 drugs prescribed, 60.86% of drugs were prescribed in generic form, and 39.14% were prescribed in brand name. The study analysed that 71.25% of drugs prescribed were from essential drug list (EDL) 2016-2018. Number of prescriptions with an injection was 74.04%. Paracetamol (N02B01) was the most frequently prescribed drug, followed by Amlodipine (C08CA01), Dexamethasone (H02AB02), Clopidogrel (B01AC04), Ferrous sulfate (B03AA07), Acetylsalicylic acid (B01AC06), Hydrocortisone (H02AB09), Tamsulosin (G04CA02), Atorvastatin (C10AA05), Furosemide (C03CA01).Conclusions: Drug utilization study can help in evaluating the quality of care given to the geriatric patients and promote rational use of medicines

Study on antibiotic use among geriatric patients based on anatomical therapeutic classification or defined daily dose methodology and world health organization-essential medicine list access, watch and reserve concept in tertiary care hospital of South India

Background: Geriatric patients are more vulnerable to infections and need special consideration on antibiotic use. Resistance to antibiotics among infectious bacteria has developed within a short span. There is a direct correlation between the consumption of antibiotics and the development of resistance. And surprisingly very few literatures were available on antibiotic consumption in geriatric population using defined daily dose (DDD) concept which paved the idea to conduct this study.Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out from November 2018 to April 2019. A total of 206 prescriptions of elderly patients were included in the study. The antibiotics were categorized by anatomical therapeutic classification (ATC) and DDD indicator/1000 inhabitants/day (DID) was used to figure out antibiotic consumption.Results: About 25.2% of patients were treated with antibiotics for respiratory tract infections. The patients received antibiotics empirically (53.8%) and without bacteriological investigation (58.73%). The overall consumption of antibiotics was 20.47 DID in which oral antibiotics was (8.5 DID) 42% and parenteral antibiotics (11.8 DID) 58%. Cephalosporins was observed to be the most consumed antibiotics (33.2%), specifically cefotaxime (14.6%) and ceftriaxone (12.6%). Moreover, 54.4% of antibiotics consumed from watch category of World Health Organisation (WHO) essential medicines list (EML) which was completely against WHO standard proportion.Conclusions: Higher consumption of cephalosporins, which falls into watch category was analysed in geriatric patients. These broad-spectrum antibiotics have high potential to develop antimicrobial resistance. A strict antibiotic policy is needed to be framed that enhance rational prescribing practices in geriatrics

Spleen as a Site for Hematopoiesis of a Distinct Antigen Presenting Cell Type

While spleen and other secondary tissue sites contribute to hematopoiesis, the nature of cells produced and the environment under which this happens are not fully defined. Evidence is reviewed here for hematopoiesis occurring in the spleen microenvironment leading to the production of tissue-specific antigen presenting cells. The novel dendritic-like cell identified in spleen is phenotypically and functionally distinct from other described antigen presenting cells. In order to identify these cells as distinct, it has been necessary to show that their lineage origin and progenitors differ from that of other known dendritic and myeloid cell types. The spleen therefore represents a distinct microenvironment for hematopoiesis of a novel myeloid cell arising from self-renewing hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) or progenitors endogenous to spleen