A prospective study on placental migration in mid trimester low lying placenta

Background: Objectives of the study were: to assess migration of low-lying placenta diagnosed by ultrasound around 20 weeks of gestation and to evaluate the factors influencing placental migration as well as to reduce feto-maternal morbidity and or mortality by excluding placenta previa and placenta accreta early.Methods: All antenatal mothers undergoing routine transabdominal congenital anomaly scan around 20 weeks of gestation were subjected to transvaginal ultrasonography to confirm low lying placenta. Every 4 weekly transvaginal ultrasonography was repeated until the lower edge of placenta migrated beyond 3 cm of internal cervical os or the patient had delivered, which one was earlier.Results: Out of total 686 cases, only 56 (8.16%) mothers had low-lying placenta in mid trimester. Follow up of these 56 cases showed that 33 (58.93%) cases placenta had migrated at term and 23 (3.35%) cases persist as placenta previa. The rate of migration of placenta was 80.76%, 39.13% and 42.86% in mothers following previous vaginal delivery, caesarean section or prior history of MTP/suction and evacuation. Placental migration was 80% and 47.39% where the distance between the internal cervical os and lower edge of placenta was between 2.1-3 cm and between 1.5-2 cm respectively. No placental migration was noted where the initial distance was less than 1.5 cm. Placental migration was more common in anteriorly situated placenta (65.85%) than the posterior one (40%).Conclusions: The rate of placental migration at term was 58.93%. However, factors like previous caesarean section, previous history of MTP or suction and evacuation, posteriorly situated placenta and placenta lying 1.5 cm from the internal cervical os may interfere with placental migration

Ethanol Sensing Properties of Nanocrystalline alpha-MoO3

Ethanol sensors with effective and selective sensitivity are extensively used by traffic police to detect drunken drivers, in wine industries for controlling the fermentation process, food package testing, different medical applications etc. Orthorhombic phase pure alpha-MoO3 nanoparticles were synthesized via facile sol-gel technique to ethanol sensor. It was observed that the gas sensing response of the sample toward 100 ppm of ethanol vapor is 59% at 350 degrees C. The response and the recovery time of the gas sensor toward 100 ppm ethanol vapor are found to be 34 s and 70 s, respectively. The main obstacle for a gas sensor to be an excellent breath analyser is to remain insensitive toward the main interfering agent of exhaling human breath i.e. moisture. Prepared sensor is highly selective and shows almost no response toward saturated moisture

Effects of Ipomoea aquatica Forsk. in cyclophosphamide induced dyslipidaemia in albino rats

Background: Cyclophosphamide (CP) is commonly used as anticancer and immuno suppressant agent. It induces hyperlipidemia and myocardium damage. Ipomoea aquatic Forsk. is traditionally used for cardiovascular disease, paralysis and general debility. The present study was done to evaluate the protective effect of the plant against CP induced dyslipidaemia in albino rats.Methods: Twenty albino rats were divided into 4 groups of 5 animals each. Group I (normal group) received normal saline intraperitoneally. Groups II to IV received CP (200mg/kg body weight, intraperitoneally) single dose on day 1 of experimental period. Groups I and II (toxic group) animals were given 2% gum acacia per orally daily for 10 days. Groups III and IV received aqueous extract of stem and leaves of Ipomoea aquatica 200mg/kg and 400mg/kg per orally respectively daily for 10 days. On 11th day, blood samples were collected for estimation of triglycerides, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol and heart tissues were sent for histopathology examination (HPE).Results: CP administration significantly (P<0.05) increased the levels of triglyceride, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and decreased the level of HDL-cholesterol in toxic group compared to normal group. Treatment with aqueous extract of Ipomoea aquatica significantly (P<0.05) reversed the status of lipid profile compared to toxic group. HPE of myocardium showed reversal of the toxic effects of CP in the extract treated groups.Conclusions: Ipomoea aquatica showed protective effects against CP induced dyslipidaemia in albino rats

Genome Plasticity in Cultured Leishmania donovani: Comparison of Early and Late Passages

Leishmania donovani possesses a complex heteroxenic life cycle where infective metacyclic promastigotes are pre-adapted to infect their host and cope up with intracellular stress. Exploiting the similarities between cultured and sandfly derived promastigotes, we used early and late passage cultured promastigotes to show specific changes at genome level which compromise pathogen fitness reflected in gene expression and infection studies. The pathogen loses virulence mostly via transcriptional and translational regulations and long-time cultivation makes them struggle to convert to virulent metacyclics. At the genomic level very subtle plasticity was observed between the early and the late passages mostly in defense-related, nutrient acquisition and signal transduction genes. Chromosome Copy number variation is seen in the early and late passages involving several genes that may be playing a role in pathogenicity. Our study highlights the importance of ABC transporters and calpain like cysteine proteases in parasite virulence in cultured promastigotes. Interestingly, these proteins are emerging as important patho-adaptive factors in clinical isolates of Leishmania. We found that the currently available genome of Leishmania in the NCBI database are from late passages. Our early passage genome can act as a reference for future studies on virulent isolates of Leishmania. The annotated leads from this study can be used for virulence surveillance and therapeutic studies in the Indian subcontinent

Diversity among clients of female sex workers in India: comparing risk profiles and intervention impact by site of solicitation. implications for the vulnerability of less visible female sex workers.

BACKGROUND: It seems generally accepted that targeted interventions in India have been successful in raising condom use between female sex workers (FSWs) and their clients. Data from clients of FSWs have been under-utilised to analyse the risk environments and vulnerability of both partners. METHODS: The 2009 Integrated Biological and Behavioural Assessment survey sampled clients of FSWs at hotspots in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu (n=5040). The risk profile of clients in terms of sexual networking and condom use are compared across usual pick-up place. We used propensity score matching (PSM) to estimate the average treatment effect on treated (ATT) of intervention messages on clients' consistent condom use with FSW. RESULTS: Clients of the more hidden sex workers who solicit from home or via phone or agents had more extensive sexual networks, reporting casual female partners as well as anal intercourse with male partners and FSW. Clients of brothel-based sex workers, who were the least educated, reported the fewest number/categories of partners, least anal sex, and lowest condom use (41%). Consistent condom use varied widely by state: 65% in Andhra Pradesh, 36% in Maharashtra and 29% in Tamil Nadu. Exposure to intervention messages on sexually transmitted infections was lowest among men frequenting brothels (58%), and highest among men soliciting less visible sex workers (70%). Exposure had significant impact on consistent condom use, including among clients of home-based sex workers (ATT 21%; p=0.001) and among men soliciting other more hidden FSW (ATT 17%; p=0.001). In Tamil Nadu no impact could be demonstrated. CONCLUSION: Commercial sex happens between two partners and both need to be, and can be, reached by intervention messages. Commercial sex is still largely unprotected and as the sex industry gets more diffuse a greater focus on reaching clients of sex workers seems important given their extensive sexual networks

Classification of enhancer promoter interaction pairs based on expression patterns and distances involved in disease manifestation in human

Enhancers-the non-coding regions of genomes’ are responsible for regulation of transcription of interacting genes. In different cell lines different regions act as enhancers. Enhancer-promoter interaction (EPI) models suggest that enhancer helps in the assembly of transcription factors along with RNA polymerase II and interacts with promoters to increase the expression of corresponding genes. During transcription, enhancer itself undergoes transcription giving rise to small RNAs, known as enhancer RNA.  Presence of Transcription Start Sites (TSS) in annotated enhancer regions is also defined as active enhancers. Three different human cell-lines namely, Gm12878, K562 and H1-hesc which are normal, cancerous and stem cell-lines, respectively were studied. K-medoids algorithm was used to segregate EPI in all the cell-lines. Three clusters were derived on the basis of expression of enhancer, expression of their interacting promoters and distance between the two. Statistical t-test analysis showed that all clusters were different from each other. Cluster-1 (expression of enhancer Mean (eeMean) =59.12, Median (eeMedian) =12.09) and cluster-2 (eeMean=1799.9, eeMedian=1468) differ from each other on the basis of enhancer’s expression. Cluster-2 (distance mean=20521, eeMean=1799.9; distance median=7984, eeMedian=1468.5) was different from cluster-3 (distance mean=180798, distance median=162626) on the basis of distance and the expression of TSS at enhancer. Finally cluster-1 (distance mean=18030, distance median=6966) and cluster-3 (distance mean=180798, distance median=162626) differ from each other on the basis of distance. RNAseq analysis showed 7 upregulated genes in K562 compared to Gm12878. Further, EPI distributions of MYC, RAD23B and Insulin like growth factors showed similar pattern in K562 and H1hesc, and they were present in cluster-1.  Whereas EPI of MDN1, CDKN1C, and eukaryotic translation elongation factor2 in K562 were present in cluster-1 and EPI of H1hesc were present in cluster-1 and cluster-3. EPI of Erythrocyte membrane protein were segregated into cluster-1 and cluster-3 for both K562 and H1hesc, whereas all of these interactions were absent in Gm12878. Overall these results suggests that enhancer activities are mainly responsible for carcinogenesis in K562 cell-lines otherwise absent in normal cell-lines

sigFeature: an R-package for significant feature selection using SVM-RFE and t-statistic

Depending on the sub-site of the primary tumour, up to thirty percent of the patients with clinical and radiological node negative HNSCC may have occult metastases. Therefore, currently, up to seventy percent patients with node negative neck disease receive unnecessary therapy to ensure a minority who are truly at risk [1]. The treatment of HNSCC involves surgery, radiotherapy or multimodality therapy like surgery together with adjuvant radiotherapy or chemo radiotherapy. HNSCC is typically considered as a homogeneous tumour group, i.e., histopathologically identical, but they are often genetically disparate and exhibit variable biological behaviour and response to treatment between and within anatomical sub-sites [2]. Currently, treatment decisions for patients with HNSCC are still based on clinical, radiological and pathologic parameters. No molecular markers are used for treatment decision, except in ongoing research protocols. To identify those patients who are truly at risk, a novel feature selection method has been introduced based on expressional genomic data in this study. In data mining, feature selection is an extremely dynamic field of research for classification in the field of machine learning technology. The aim of feature selection is to select a small subset of a feature from a larger pool, rendering not only a good performance of classification but also biologically meaningful insights. Filter methods e.g. the support vector machine recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) is recognised as one of the most effective methods. The RFE-SVM algorithm is a greedy method that only hopes to find the best possible combination for classification without considering the differentially significant feature between the classes. To overcome this limitation of SVM-RFE, our proposed approach which is based on RFE-SVM and t-statistic is to find out differentially significant features along with the good performance of classification. The experimental results which we obtained after analysing six publicly available micro array datasets are very promising and show the contribution in feature selection in machine learning technology. The main conclusion is that the selected features are differentially significant between the classes and able to produce good classification accuracy which will help further downstream analysis for strengthening the biological aspect

Screening of a Lactobacillus species (LAB M8) as probiotic: In vivo and In vitro study

Background: Probiotics are defined as “living microorganisms, which upon ingestion in certain numbers exert health benefits on the host beyond inherent basic nutrition”. Because of many potential health-promoting benefits, there continues to be considerable interest in the use of probiotics as biotherapeutic agents. Materials &amp; Methods: For bacteria to exert any probiotic effect they have to be able to survive both in stomach acid (pH 1.5) and bile acids (pH 2.5).Growth of LAB M8 in presence of different concentration of bile salt was observed.  Bile Salt Hydrolase (BSH) activity of LAB M8 was checked. Test for cholesterol uptake by LAB M8 and antibiotic resistance was noticed. Results: LAB M8 was both acid tolerant and bile tolerant. In anaerobic condition LAB M8 can grow efficiently like aerobic condition. The bile salt deconjugation ability of LAB M8 was confirmed by observing the presence of zone of inhibition on plate assay. Conclusion: In conclusion, the probiotic strains isolated and characterized in this study have great potential as possible therapy for reducing cholesterol levels. The cholesterol-lowering effects of LAB M8 presented may be partially ascribed to BSH activity in vitro