PHARMACOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF ANTIANXIETY ACTIVITY OF DESMOSTACHYA BIPINNATA LEAVES IN ANIMAL MODELS

Objective: Anxiety is a widespread psychiatric disorder affecting around 5% of the population. Furthermore, it is difficult to predict patient's response to any given treatment. In the traditional systems of medicine, many plants have been used to treat anxiety and depression for thousands of years. Desmostachyabipinnata belongs to the family Poaceae, have pharmacological actions like dysentery and menorrhagia, and as a diuretic. The present study was designed to evaluate the antianxiety activity of the alcoholic and aqueous extracts of Desmostachyabipinnata leaves in rodents.Methods: Antianxiety activity was screened by different methods like elevated plus maze model and actophotometer.Results: The results infer that reduced aversion fear elicits anti-anxiety activity.Conclusion: It was concluded that alcoholic and aqueous extracts of Desmostachyabipinnata leaves are having anti-anxiety activity among which alcoholic extract of Desmostachyabipinnata leaves showing more significant activity over the aqueous extract.Â

Robotic versus total laparoscopic radical hysterectomy with pelvic lymphadenectomy for the treatment of early cervical cancer

Background: The aim of this study is to compare the safety, morbidity, intra operative, pathologic and postoperative outcomes of Robotic radical hysterectomy (RRH) to total laparoscopic radical hysterectomy (TLRH) in patients with early stage cervical cancer.Methods: All the women with newly diagnosed invasive cervical cancer (stage IB1to IIA), who underwent TLRH or RRH with pelvic lymph node dissection at Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences from September 2011 to August 2013 were analysed.Results: Twenty six patients underwent TLRH with pelvic lymphadenectomy and twenty six patients underwent RRH with pelvic lymphadenectomy. Age, tumor histology, stage, lymphovascular space involvement and nodal status are same for both the groups. No statistical differences were observed in operative time (174 vs. 158 min), estimated blood loss (160 vs. 110 ml), or hospital stay (3.1 vs. 2.8 days). Mean pelvic lymph node count was more in Robotic group. None of the robotic or laparoscopic procedures required conversion to laparotomy. All patients in both groups are alive and free of disease at the time of last follow up.Conclusions: According to our experience, robotic radical hysterectomy appears to be safe and effective therapeutic procedure for managing early-stage cervical cancer without significant differences when compared to TLRH, with respect to operative time, blood loss, hospital stay. Regarding the oncological outcome, Robotic radical hysterectomy is superior in terms of number of lymph nodes and parametrial bulk; although multicenter randomized clinical trials with longer follow-up are necessary to evaluate the overall oncologic outcome

Takayasu arteritis associated with tuberculosis: a case report

Takayasu arteritis, also called pulseless disease, is the chronic inflammation of the vessels, mainly the aorta and large vessels. It mainly affects females more than males with the ratio of 2.15:1 and in the second and third decade of life. Mechanism may be transmural fibrous thickening of the arterial walls. Takayasu’s is characterized by granulomatous inflammation of the vessel wall, leading to occlusion of the vessel wall. It is represented with claudication, fever, arthralgia. Clinical features are chest pain, vascular bruits, Hypertension. Investigation is based on angiography and CT scan. Medical treatment prednisolone is the first line agent 1mg/kg/day maximum dose is 60mg/day with gradual tapering as per European league against rheumatism guidelines, methotrexate and azathioprine are for inducing remission of arterial lesions, tumour necrosis factor-a antagonists, anti-IL-6 receptor monoclonal antibody like tocilizumab. Surgical treatment is angioplasty and stenting renal artery stenosis but less invasive and safest method is percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA). Takayasu arteritis might be associated with Tuberculosis, yet, the relationship and mechanism are not clearly understood. Here we report a case of Takayasu arteritis associated with tuberculosis

Isoform Specific Gene Auto-Regulation via miRNAs: A Case Study on miR-128b and ARPP-21

In this study, we investigate whether miRNAs located within “host” protein-coding genes may regulate the expression of their host genes. We find that 43 of 174 miRNAs encoded within RefSeq genes are predicted to target their host genes. Statistical analysis of this phenomenon suggests that gene auto-regulation via miRNAs may be under positive selective pressure. Our analysis also indicates that several of the 43 miRNAs have a much lower expectation of targeting their host genes by chance than others. Among these examples, we identify miR-128b:ARPP-21 (cyclic AMP-regulated phosphoprotein, 21 kD) as a case in which both the miRNA and the target site are also evolutionarily conserved. We provide experimental support for this miRNA:target interaction via reporter silencing assays, and present evidence that this isoform-specific gene auto-regulation has been preserved in vertebrate species in order to prevent detrimental consequences of ARPP-21 over-expression in brain

Cloud Host Selection using Iterative Particle-Swarm Optimization for Dynamic Container Consolidation

A significant portion of the energy consumption in cloud data centres can be attributed to the inefficient utilization of available resources due to the lack of dynamic resource allocation techniques such as virtual machine migration and workload consolidation strategies to better optimize the utilization of resources. We present a new method for optimizing cloud data centre management by combining virtual machine migration with workload consolidation. Our proposed Energy Efficient Particle Swarm Optimization (EE-PSO) algorithm to improve resource utilization and reduce energy consumption. We carried out experimental evaluations with the Container CloudSim toolkit to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed EE-PSO algorithm in terms of energy consumption, quality of service guarantees, the number of newly created VMs, and container migrations

ESTIMATION OF PAROXETINE HYDROCHLORIDE FROM ITS TABLET FORMULATION BY UV SPECTROPHOTOMETRY

A simple, precise and accurate UV Spectrophotometric method was developed for the estimation of Paroxetine hydrochloride. The developed method obeyed Beer-Lambert’s law in the concentration range of 5-30 µg/ml with a correlation coefficient of 0.995. The recovery study was carried out at three different levels and was found to be satisfactory. The percent amount of drug estimated by this method is 100%, found to be in good agreement with label claim of marketed tablet formulation. The validation parameters like linearity, precision, accuracy, robustness and ruggedness were studied and were found to be within limits. The proposed method can be adopted for routine quality control analysis of estimation of Paroxetine hydrochloride in pharmaceutical formulation

Prophylactic combined supplementation of choline and docosahexaenoic acid attenuates vascular cognitive impairment and preserves hippocampal cell viability in rat model of chronic cerebral hypoperfusion ischemic brain injury

Background: Stroke is the second cause of mortality in the world and third leading cause of disability in surviving victims. Cerebral ischemic cascade involves multiple pathways that can result in motor and cognitive deficits. The current treatment strategy focuses mainly on motor recovery, and the management of post-stroke cognitive impairment is largely neglected. Similarly, very few studies have explored the prophylactic combined synergetic treatment strategies that have the potential to target multiple pathways in the ischemic cascade to alleviate vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) in the event of an ischemic stroke. Choline and docosahexaenoic acid (Cho-DHA) are both essential neuronal membrane phospholipid precursors, known to be important in enhancing cognitive functions. The objective of present study was to explore the prophylactic efficacy of combined Cho-DHA supplementation (Cho-DHA suppl.) in attenuating VCI in a rodent model of ischemic brain injury.Methods: An 10-months-old male Wistar rats were subdivided into four groups (n=8/group); normal control (NC), bilateral common carotid artery occlusion (BCCAO) induced ischemic brain injury group, sham BCCAO (S-BCCAO) group, and prophylactic combined Cho-DHA suppl. BCCAO group. Subsequently, all groups of rats were tested for cognition and neuro-morphological changes in the hippocampus.Results: BCCAO rats showed significant learning and memory deficits (p<0.05) and neuronal injury compared to S-BCCAO and NC rats. These cognitive deficits and neuronal injury were significantly (p<0.01) attenuated in Cho-DHA suppl. BCCAO rats.Conclusion: Prophylactic combined Cho-DHA suppl. may be envisaged as an effective preventive strategy to attenuate VCI and neuronal injury in high-risk individuals susceptible for a future event of an ischemic stroke

Downregulation of uPAR and Cathepsin B Induces Apoptosis via Regulation of Bcl-2 and Bax and Inhibition of the PI3K/Akt Pathway in Gliomas

Glioma is the most commonly diagnosed primary brain tumor and is characterized by invasive and infiltrative behavior. uPAR and cathepsin B are known to be overexpressed in high-grade gliomas and are strongly correlated with invasive cancer phenotypes.In the present study, we observed that simultaneous downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B induces upregulation of some pro-apoptotic genes and suppression of anti-apoptotic genes in human glioma cells. uPAR and cathepsin B (pCU)-downregulated cells exhibited decreases in the Bcl-2/Bax ratio and initiated the collapse of mitochondrial membrane potential. We also observed that the broad caspase inhibitor, Z-Asp-2, 6-dichlorobenzoylmethylketone rescued pCU-induced apoptosis in U251 cells but not in 5310 cells. Immunoblot analysis of caspase-9 immunoprecipitates for Apaf-1 showed that uPAR and cathepsin B knockdown activated apoptosome complex formation in U251 cells. Downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B also retarded nuclear translocation and interfered with DNA binding activity of CREB in both U251 and 5310 cells. Further western blotting analysis demonstrated that downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B significantly decreased expression of the signaling molecules p-PDGFR-β, p-PI3K and p-Akt. An increase in the number of TUNEL-positive cells, increased Bax expression, and decreased Bcl-2 expression in nude mice brain tumor sections and brain tissue lysates confirm our in vitro results.In conclusion, RNAi-mediated downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B initiates caspase-dependent mitochondrial apoptosis in U251 cells and caspase-independent mitochondrial apoptosis in 5310 cells. Thus, targeting uPAR and cathepsin B-mediated signaling using siRNA may serve as a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of gliomas

An overview of Neem (Azadirachta indica) and its potential impact on health

Global health and medical practice seek to merge alternative medicine with evidence-based medicine for a better understanding of the metabolic process and its effects in the human body. An example is the use of complementary medicine like phytotherapy. Azadirachta indica (Neem), a tree originally from India and Myanmar, called by many “The village pharmacy” or “Divine tree” because of its many health properties. In recent times, Neem-derived extracts have been shown to work from anywhere from insect repellent, to supplements to lower inflammation, diabetic control, and even to combat cancer. Herein, we state the health benefits found in diverse compounds and extracts derived from Neem, highlighting the mechanisms and pathways in which Neem compounds produce their effects, while warning that the improper and unstandardized conditions to produce extracts can lead to health issues, particularly certain compounds might have damaging effects on the liver and kidneys