Pan masala advertisements are surrogate for tobacco products

BACKGROUND: Pan masala is a comparatively recent habit in India and is marketed with and without tobacco. Advertisements of tobacco products have been banned in India since 1st May 2004. The advertisements of plain pan masala, which continue in Indian media, have been suspected to be surrogate for tobacco products bearing the same name. The study was carried out to assess whether these advertisements were for the intended product, or for tobacco products with same brand name. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The programme of a popular television Hindi news channel was watched for a 24-h period. Programmes on the same channel and its English counterpart were watched on different days to assess whether the advertisements were repeated. The total duration of telecast of a popular brand of plain pan masala (Pan Parag) was multiplied by the rate charged by the channel to provide the cost of advertisement of this product. The total sale value of the company was multiplied by the proportion of usage of plain pan masala out of gutka plus pan masala habit as observed from a different study, to provide the annual sale value of plain pan masala product under reference. RESULTS: The annual sale value of plain Pan Parag was estimated to be Rs. 67.1 million. The annual cost of the advertisement of the same product on two television channels was estimated at Rs. 244.6 million. CONCLUSION: The advertisements of plain pan masala seen on Indian television are a surrogate for the tobacco products bearing the same name

Stronger inflammatory/cytotoxic T cell response in women identified by microarray analysis

Women develop chronic inflammatory autoimmune diseases like lupus more often than men. The mechanisms causing the increased susceptibility are incompletely understood, although estrogen is believed to contribute. Chronic immune stimulation characterizes many autoimmune disorders. We hypothesized that repeated stimulation may cause a different T cell immune response in women than men. Microarray approaches were used to compare gene expression in T cells from healthy men and women with and without repeated stimulation. Four days following a single stimulation only 25% of the differentially expressed, gender-biased genes were expressed at higher levels in the women. In contrast, following restimulation 72% were more highly expressed in women. Immune response genes were significantly over-represented among the genes upregulated in women, and among the immune response genes, the inflammatory/cytotoxic effector genes interferon gamma (IFNG), lymphotoxin beta (LTB), granzyme A (GZMA), interleukin-12 receptor beta2 (IL12RB2), and granulysin (GNLY) were among those overexpressed to the greatest degree. In contrast, IL17A was the only effector gene more highly expressed in men. Estrogen response elements were identified in the promoters of half of the overexpressed immune genes in women, and in <10% of the male biased genes. The differential expression of inflammatory/cytotoxic effector molecules in restimulated female T cells may contribute to the differences in autoimmune diseases between women and men

Cervical ectopic pregnancy: 10 year experience at tertiary care hospital and current literature review

Background: Objective of the study was to critically analyze the clinical experience and literature on cervical pregnancy.Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of cervical ectopic pregnancies (CEP) diagnosed in our tertiary care institute from 2005 to 2015 and literature search.Results: In this study period the total numbers of births in our institute were 1, 32, 752, ectopic pregnancies were 307 and three cases of cervical ectopic pregnancies were diagnosed. Incidence of CEP at our institute is 0.9% of all ectopic pregnancies and 0.002% or 1 in 44,250 of livebirths which matches the available literature. The first two cases developed torrential haemorrhage which ended in hysterectomy and the third case was managed conservatively with methotrexate (MTX) and mefiprestone.Conclusions: The early detection of cervical pregnancy in asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic patients increases use of more conservative approaches which aim to preserve the uterus and the patient's reproductive potential. We suggest that systemic administration of low dose MTX is ideal for patients who are stable and if live embryo is detected, to reduce MTX failure rate concomitant feticide must be done, for which mefiprestone seems to be easy safe alternative to local chemotherapy

Advancement in Research Techniques on Medical Imaging Processing for Breast Cancer Detection

With the advancement of medical image processing, the area of the healthcare sector has started receiving the benefits of the modern arena of diagnostic tools to identify the diseases effectively. Cancer is one of the dreaded diseases, where success factor of treatment offered by medical sector is still an unsolved problem. Hence, the success factor of the treatment lies in early stage of the disease or timely detection of the disease. This paper discusses about the advancement being made in the medical image processing towards an effective diagnosis of the breast cancer from the mammogram image in radiology. There has been enough research activity with various sorts of advances techniques being implemented in the past decade. The prime contribution of this manuscript is to showcase the advancement of the technology along with illustration of the effectiveness of the existing literatures with respect to research gap

Aortocaval Fistula

[West J Emerg Med. 2012;13(1):90–91.

A novel approach to jointly address localization and classification of breast cancer using bio-inspired approach

Localization of the cancerous region as well as classification of the type of the cancer is highly inter-linked with each other. However, investigation towards existing approaches depicts that these problems are always iindividually solved where there is still a big research gap for a generalized solution towards addressing both the problems. Therefore, the proposed manuscript presents a simple, novel, and less-iterative computational model that jointly address the localization-classification problems taking the case study of early diagnosis of breast cancer. The proposed study harnesses the potential of simple bio-inspired optimization technique in order to obtained better local and global best outcome to confirm the accuracy of the outcome. The study outcome of the proposed system exhibits that proposed system offers higher accuracy and lower response time in contrast with other existing classifiers that are freqently witnessed in existing approaches of classification in medical image process

Profile of serious adverse drug events in a tertiary care hospital of South India - a five years experience

Background: Adverse drug event (ADE) is said to be serious, when it is life-threatening, leads to hospitalization, disability, congenital anomaly, death or requires intervention to prevent permanent impairment or damage. The present study aimed to determine the pattern, causality, preventability of serious ADEs.Methods: This retrospective study was carried out to profile serious ADEs reported from Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute to Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) Monitoring Centre, under Pharmacovigilance Programme of India from 2012 to 2016. Patient demographics, clinical and drug data, details of the ADE, onset time, causal drug details, outcome and severity were collected as per CDSCO form. Causality was assessed by WHO-ADR probability scale, preventability by modified Schumock and Thornton scale.Results: A total of 809 ADEs were reported, of which 50 (6.18%) were serious in nature. Male preponderance (74%) was observed, with 42% among patients aged 20-40 years. 56% of serious ADEs were reported from department of Dermatology. Steven Johnson Syndrome (SJS) (20%) contributed for most of the ADEs. Antiepileptics caused maximum number of serious ADEs (32%). 76% of the ADEs were found to be ‘probable’ and 4% were definitely preventable. 56% of them was life threatening and 86% required intensive interventions. 16% patients experienced serious ADEs during hospital stay.Conclusions: Serious ADEs constituted 6.18% of all ADEs reported. SJS was commonly seen with antimicrobials and hepatotoxicity with ATT. Antiepileptics and ATT contributed for majority of them. This study highlights the importance of monitoring and timely management of serious ADEs to commonly prescribed medications

Pan masala advertisements are surrogate for tobacco products

BACKGROUND: Pan masala is a comparatively recent habit in India and is marketed with and without tobacco. Advertisements of tobacco products have been banned in India since 1st May 2004. The advertisements of plain pan masala, which continue in Indian media, have been suspected to be surrogate for tobacco products bearing the same name. The study was carried out to assess whether these advertisements were for the intended product, or for tobacco products with same brand name. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The programme of a popular television Hindi news channel was watched for a 24-h period. Programmes on the same channel and its English counterpart were watched on different days to assess whether the advertisements were repeated. The total duration of telecast of a popular brand of plain pan masala (Pan Parag) was multiplied by the rate charged by the channel to provide the cost of advertisement of this product. The total sale value of the company was multiplied by the proportion of usage of plain pan masala out of gutka plus pan masala habit as observed from a different study, to provide the annual sale value of plain pan masala product under reference. RESULTS: The annual sale value of plain Pan Parag was estimated to be Rs. 67.1 million. The annual cost of the advertisement of the same product on two television channels was estimated at Rs. 244.6 million. CONCLUSION: The advertisements of plain pan masala seen on Indian television are a surrogate for the tobacco products bearing the same name

A comparative study of probiotic, prokinetic based triple therapy with USFDA regimen in the eradication of Helicobacter pylori in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Helicobacter pylori infection has been associated with peptic ulcer disease, gastric carcinoma and gastric mucosa associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma. Its eradication is important and current regimens are associated with antibiotic resistance, side effects and poor patient compliance. Probiotics supplementation can overcome the above problem and additions of prokinetics improve dyspepsia symptoms and thereby improve patient compliance. So the aim of the study was to compare efficacy and safety of standard United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) regimen with probiotic, prokinetic based novel regimen.Methods: 100 patients diagnosed with H. pylori infection were randomly assigned into two eradication regimen groups viz., group A and group B. Group A received standard USFDA regimen, amoxicillin 1 gm, lansoprazole 30 mg and clarithromycin 500 mg twice a day for 2 weeks and group B received a probiotic and prokinetic itopride 50 mg thrice daily, pantoprazole 40 mg, amoxicillin 1 gm and clarithromycin 500 mg twice daily for 2 weeks. Patients with Rapid Urease Test (RUT) and histopathology reports negative for H. pylori were considered as eradicated and then the percentage of eradication rate in both groups was compared.Results: H. pylori eradication rates were more in group B compared to group A (84% vs 70%, p =0.096 at 95% CI). The occurrence of side effects was less in group B compared to group A (30% vs 46%, p= 0.099). Diarrhoea was statistically less in group B compared to group A (p< 0.05).Conclusions: Probiotics supplementation increases eradication rates of anti H. pylori therapy and improves tolerability by reducing side effects especially diarrhoea. Prokinetics and probiotic based novel regimen improved dyspepsia symptoms and patient compliance