Drug utilization study of patients with dermatophytosis attending dermatology outpatient department in tertiary care teaching hospital in Central India

Background: Dermatophytosis is a common fungal infection in India, with prevalence ranging from 36.6% to 78.4%. Treatment options include topical and systemic antifungal agents such as amphotericin B, clotrimazole, miconazole, luliconazole, itraconazole, and terbinafine. With the availability of newer antifungal drugs, a drug utilization study is necessary to understand prescription patterns and promote rational use. Methods: This is a retrospective observational study conducted among the patients attending outpatient department of dermatology of Indira Gandhi Government Medical College and Mayo Hospital. Prescription of patients with diagnosis of tinea were collected using efficient digital database. These prescriptions were then analysed depending on their demographic profile, treatment and then results were evaluated with the help of MS Excel and results presented as percentage and proportion. Results: Total 3701 patients had tinea with 1658 females and 2043 males with majority of patients from 16 to 30 years of age. 81% medicine were prescribed using brand names with prescription containing maximum antifungal drugs followed by antihistaminic drugs. Most common drug prescribed was terbinafine (29%), followed by luliconazole (27.46%) and itraconazole (17%). Most commonly topical antifungal agents were prescribed as cream (35.80%) followed by as lotion (26.26%). Conclusions: Drug utilisation pattern study like this is very important for studying the varying prescription pattern in treatment of dermatophytosis and to make a first step towards uniform and rational drug prescription

Parthenogenesis and Somatic cell nuclear transfer in sheep oocytes using Polscope

550-558Parthenogenesis and Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) techniques, offer a unique approach to manipulate the genetic composition of derived human embryonic stem cells – an essential step if the full opportunities for disease modeling, drug discovery or individualized stem cell therapy are to be realized. The present study describes the use of sheep oocytes to acquire expertise and establish methods to reconstruct embryos for obtaining blastocysts before venturing into human SCNT where the oocytes are a very precious starting material. Maturation of sheep eggs in vitro for 20-24 hr resulted in 65% metaphase II (MII) eggs which were either parthenogenetically activated using calcium ionomycin or ethanol or subjected to SCNT using cumulus cell as somatic cell. Sixteen blastocysts were produced by parthenogenetic activation of 350 eggs whereas reconstructed embryos, after SCNT carried out in 139 eggs, progressed only up to morula stage. The procedure of parthenogenesis and SCNT will be useful to generate autologous ES cells using human eggs

A Snapshot of the Emerging Tomato Genome Sequence

The genome of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is being sequenced by an international consortium of 10 countries (Korea, China, the United Kingdom, India, the Netherlands, France, Japan, Spain, Italy, and the United States) as part of the larger \u201cInternational Solanaceae Genome Project (SOL): Systems Approach to Diversity and Adaptation\u201d initiative. The tomato genome sequencing project uses an ordered bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) approach to generate a high-quality tomato euchromatic genome sequence for use as a reference genome for the Solanaceae and euasterids. Sequence is deposited at GenBank and at the SOL Genomics Network (SGN). Currently, there are around 1000 BACs finished or in progress, representing more than a third of the projected euchromatic portion of the genome. An annotation effort is also underway by the International Tomato Annotation Group. The expected number of genes in the euchromatin is 3c40,000, based on an estimate from a preliminary annotation of 11% of finished sequence. Here, we present this first snapshot of the emerging tomato genome and its annotation, a short comparison with potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) sequence data, and the tools available for the researchers to exploit this new resource are also presented. In the future, whole-genome shotgun techniques will be combined with the BAC-by-BAC approach to cover the entire tomato genome. The high-quality reference euchromatic tomato sequence is expected to be near completion by 2010

The tomato genome sequence provides insights into fleshy fruit evolution

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a major crop plant and a model system for fruit development. Solanum is one of the largest angiosperm genera1 and includes annual and perennial plants from diverse habitats. Here we present a high-quality genome sequence of domesticated tomato, a draft sequence of its closest wild relative, Solanum pimpinellifolium2, and compare them to each other and to the potato genome (Solanum tuberosum). The two tomato genomes show only 0.6% nucleotide divergence and signs of recent admixture, but show more than 8% divergence from potato, with nine large and several smaller inversions. In contrast to Arabidopsis, but similar to soybean, tomato and potato small RNAs map predominantly to gene-rich chromosomal regions, including gene promoters. The Solanum lineage has experienced two consecutive genome triplications: one that is ancient and shared with rosids, and a more recent one. These triplications set the stage for the neofunctionalization of genes controlling fruit characteristics, such as colour and fleshiness