Traditional medicinal plant knowledge and use by local healers in Sekoru District, Jimma Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia

The knowledge and use of medicinal plant species by traditional healers was investigated in Sekoru District, Jimma Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia from December 2005 to November 2006. Traditional healers of the study area were selected randomly and interviewed with the help of translators to gather information on the knowledge and use of medicinal plants used as a remedy for human ailments in the study area. In the current study, it was reported that 27 plant species belonging to 27 genera and 18 families were commonly used to treat various human ailments. Most of these species (85.71%) were wild and harvested mainly for their leaves (64.52%). The most cited ethnomedicinal plant species was Alysicarpus quartinianus A. Rich., whose roots and leaves were reported by traditional healers to be crushed in fresh and applied as a lotion on the lesions of patients of Abiato (Shererit). No significant correlation was observed between the age of traditional healers and the number of species reported and the indigenous knowledge transfer was found to be similar. More than one medicinal plant species were used more frequently than the use of a single species for remedy preparations. Plant parts used for remedy preparations showed significant difference with medicinal plant species abundance in the study area

Recent advances in Pichia pastoris as host for heterologous expression system for lipases : a review

The production of heterologous lipases is one of the most promising strategies to increase the productivity of the bioprocesses and to reduce costs, with the final objective that more industrial lipase applications could be implemented. In this chapter, an overview of the new success in synthetic biology, with traditional molecular genetic techniques and bioprocess engineering in the last 5 years in the cell factory Pichia pastoris, the most promising host system for heterologous lipase production, is presented. The goals get on heterologous Candida antarctica, Rhizopus oryzae, and Candida rugosa lipases, three of the most common lipases used in biocatalysis, are showed. Finally, new cell factories producing heterologous lipases are presented

Biological activities of plant extracts from Ficus elastica and Selaginella vogelli: an antimalarial, antitrypanosomal and cytotoxity evaluation

The cytotoxic, antiplasmodial, and antitrypanosomal activities of two medicinal plants traditionally used in Cameroon were evaluated. Wood of Ficus elastica Roxb. ex Hornem. aerial roots (Moraceae) and Selaginella vogelii Spring (Selaginellaceae) leaves were collected from two different sites in Cameroon. In vitro cell-growth inhibition activities were assessed on methanol extract of plant materials against Plasmodium falciparum strain 3D7 and Trypanosoma brucei brucei, as well as against HeLa human cervical carcinoma cells. Criteria for activity were an IC50 value 10 μg/mL. The extract of S. vogelii did not significantly reduce the viability of P. falciparum at a concentration of 25 μg/mL but dramatically affected the trypanosome growth with an IC50 of 2.4 μg/mL. In contrast, at the same concentration, the extract of F. elastica exhibited plasmodiacidal activity (IC50 value of 9.5 μg/mL) and trypanocidal (IC50 value of 0.9 μg/mL) activity. Both extracts presented low cytotoxic effects on HeLa cancer cell line. These results indicate that the selected medicinal plants could be further investigated for identifying compounds that may be responsible for the observed activities and that may represent new leads in parasitical drug discovery

Global overview of the management of acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic (CHOLECOVID study)

Background: This study provides a global overview of the management of patients with acute cholecystitis during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: CHOLECOVID is an international, multicentre, observational comparative study of patients admitted to hospital with acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on management were collected for a 2-month study interval coincident with the WHO declaration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and compared with an equivalent pre-pandemic time interval. Mediation analysis examined the influence of SARS-COV-2 infection on 30-day mortality. Results: This study collected data on 9783 patients with acute cholecystitis admitted to 247 hospitals across the world. The pandemic was associated with reduced availability of surgical workforce and operating facilities globally, a significant shift to worse severity of disease, and increased use of conservative management. There was a reduction (both absolute and proportionate) in the number of patients undergoing cholecystectomy from 3095 patients (56.2 per cent) pre-pandemic to 1998 patients (46.2 per cent) during the pandemic but there was no difference in 30-day all-cause mortality after cholecystectomy comparing the pre-pandemic interval with the pandemic (13 patients (0.4 per cent) pre-pandemic to 13 patients (0.6 per cent) pandemic; P = 0.355). In mediation analysis, an admission with acute cholecystitis during the pandemic was associated with a non-significant increased risk of death (OR 1.29, 95 per cent c.i. 0.93 to 1.79, P = 0.121). Conclusion: CHOLECOVID provides a unique overview of the treatment of patients with cholecystitis across the globe during the first months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The study highlights the need for system resilience in retention of elective surgical activity. Cholecystectomy was associated with a low risk of mortality and deferral of treatment results in an increase in avoidable morbidity that represents the non-COVID cost of this pandemic

The LHCb upgrade I

The LHCb upgrade represents a major change of the experiment. The detectors have been almost completely renewed to allow running at an instantaneous luminosity five times larger than that of the previous running periods. Readout of all detectors into an all-software trigger is central to the new design, facilitating the reconstruction of events at the maximum LHC interaction rate, and their selection in real time. The experiment's tracking system has been completely upgraded with a new pixel vertex detector, a silicon tracker upstream of the dipole magnet and three scintillating fibre tracking stations downstream of the magnet. The whole photon detection system of the RICH detectors has been renewed and the readout electronics of the calorimeter and muon systems have been fully overhauled. The first stage of the all-software trigger is implemented on a GPU farm. The output of the trigger provides a combination of totally reconstructed physics objects, such as tracks and vertices, ready for final analysis, and of entire events which need further offline reprocessing. This scheme required a complete revision of the computing model and rewriting of the experiment's software

Involvement of Bax Protein in the Prevention of Glucocorticoid-Induced Thymocytes Apoptosis by Melatonin

The antiapoptotic effect of melatonin has been described in several systems. In this study, the antagonistic effect of the methoxyindole on dexamethasone-induced apoptosis in mouse thymocytes was examined. Melatonin decreased both DNA fragmentation, and the number of annexin V-positive cells incubated in the presence of dexamethasone. Analysis of the expression of the members of the Bcl-2 family indicated that the synthetic glucocorticoid increased Bax protein levels without affecting the levels of Bcl-2, Bcl-X L, Bcl-X S, or Bak. This effect correlated with an increase in thymocytes bax mRNA levels. Dexamethasone also increased the release of cytochrome C from mitochondria. All of these effects were reduced in the presence of melatonin, which was ineffective per se on these parameters. In addition, the involvement of cAMP on glucocorticoid/melatonin antagonism was examined. Both melatonin and dexamethasone decreased the levels of this nucleotide in mouse thymocytes, indicating that the antagonistic action between both hormones involves a cAMP-independent pathway. In summary, the present results suggest that the antiapoptotic effect of melatonin on glucocorticoid-treated thymocytes would be a consequence of an inhibition of the mitochondrial pathway, presumably through the regulation of Bax protein levels.Fil:Hoijman, E. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil:Rocha Viegas, L. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil:Rosenstein, R.E. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil:Pecci, A. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina