Antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of genital Mycoplasmas among a group of pregnant women

AbstractMycoplasma hominis (MH) and Ureaplasma urealyticum (UU) are important members of genital Mycoplasmas. They are implicated in urogenital infections and complicated pregnancy (chorioamnionitis, preterm delivery, abortion, and preterm birth) as well as bacterial vaginosis and cervicitis. The administration of antimicrobial agents to pregnant women with preterm rupture of the membranes (PROM) may extend the gestation period and decrease the risks of associated complications and neonatal infections. Despite empirical therapy is the rule in cases suspected to have genital infection in Egypt, the surveillance of the susceptibilities of used antibiotics is mandatory to ensure treatment efficacy and good prevention of any possible complications. This study aimed to assess the infection rate of genital Mycoplasmas (MH and UU) among pregnant females and their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern to provide a provisional idea about the effectiveness of antibiotics used empirically to treat cases of genital infections in pregnant women. High vaginal swabs of 50 pregnant females were examined using Mycoplasma IES kit, for identification of UU and MH. The kit also provides the antimicrobial susceptibility results for 12 antimicrobials of five different classes. UU and MH were detected in 26/50 (52%), and 7/50 (14%) of cases respectively, of which 5 cases showed mixed infection with both organisms. UU was most sensitive to quinolones (90–95%), followed by tetracyclines (80–85%). The least sensitivity was detected with chloramphenicol and clindamycin (40% and 30% respectively). The two MH isolates (100%) were sensitive to the three tested quinolones in addition to clindamycin and thiamphenicol. MH showed 100% sensitivity to clindamycin and 75% of UU isolates were sensitive to azithromycin. Further studies are needed to detect any future changes in the susceptibility pattern for these drugs or other antibiotics

Optical properties and efficiency studies for Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla dye sensitized solar cell

The sun light, that gives the clean, fleckless and cheap energy which is an environmental friend; becomes the demand and on-call of the researchers in the last century.  In this paper, the three natural dyes, namely; (Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla) were successfully and swimmingly synthesized by dissolved in acetone solvent. The optical properties; absorbance, transmission, reflection, absorption coefficient and energy band gap were carefully and solicitously studied using ultra violet visible spectrometer UV.vis. The vibration modes for the three samples were also determined and delimited using Fourier Transform Infra-red spectroscopy FTIR. The efficiency of dye sensitized solar cell DSSC was studied using and utilisation IV characteristic for three natural dyes  (Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla), where the cell was fabricated and processed by coating a conducting proceeding substrate of (FTO) using titanium dioxide TiO2.  The power conversion efficiency was calculated and reckoned, which found to be [0.583, 0.539 and 0.285], respectively. The highest efficiency obtained from this DSSC sensitized by Beta Vulgarize which was 0.583%, and thus might be due to its concentrated, focussed dye and colour.&nbsp

Optical properties and efficiency studies for Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla dye sensitized solar cell

The sun light, that gives the clean, fleckless and cheap energy which is an environmental friend; becomes the demand and on-call of the researchers in the last century.  In this paper, the three natural dyes, namely; (Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla) were successfully and swimmingly synthesized by dissolved in acetone solvent. The optical properties; absorbance, transmission, reflection, absorption coefficient and energy band gap were carefully and solicitously studied using ultra violet visible spectrometer UV.vis. The vibration modes for the three samples were also determined and delimited using Fourier Transform Infra-red spectroscopy FTIR. The efficiency of dye sensitized solar cell DSSC was studied using and utilisation IV characteristic for three natural dyes  (Beta Vulgarize, Curcuma Longa and Vulgaris var. cicla), where the cell was fabricated and processed by coating a conducting proceeding substrate of (FTO) using titanium dioxide TiO2.  The power conversion efficiency was calculated and reckoned, which found to be [0.583, 0.539 and 0.285], respectively. The highest efficiency obtained from this DSSC sensitized by Beta Vulgarize which was 0.583%, and thus might be due to its concentrated, focussed dye and colour.&nbsp

Influence of microclimatic ammonia levels on productive performance of different broilers' breeds estimated with univariate and multivariate approaches

Background and Aim: Birds litter contains unutilized nitrogen in the form of uric acid that is converted into ammonia; a fact that does not only affect poultry performance but also has a negative effect on people's health around the farm and contributes in the environmental degradation. The influence of microclimatic ammonia emissions on Ross and Hubbard broilers reared in different housing systems at two consecutive seasons (fall and winter) was evaluated using a discriminant function analysis to differentiate between Ross and Hubbard breeds. Materials and Methods: A total number of 400 air samples were collected and analyzed for ammonia levels during the experimental period. Data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate statistical methods. Results: Ammonia levels were significantly higher (p0.05) were found between the two farms in body weight, body weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, and performance index (PI) of broilers. Body weight; weight gain and PI had increased values (p0.05). Test of significance of discriminant function analysis did not show a classification based on the studied traits suggesting that they cannot been used as predictor variables. The percentage of correct classification was 52% and it was improved after deletion of highly correlated traits to 57%. Conclusion: The study revealed that broiler's growth was negatively affected by increased microclimatic ammonia concentrations and recommended the analysis of broilers' growth performance parameters data using multivariate discriminant function analysis

Anti-Annexin V Antibodies: Association with Vascular Involvement and Disease Outcome in Patients with Systemic Sclerosis

Background: Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) is characterized by skin thickening, fibrosis and vascular obliteration. The onset and course are heterogeneous. Prominent features include autoimmunity, inflammation and vascular damage. Aim of study: To measure the level of serum Anti-Annexin V antibodies in SSc patients and to study its significance in relation to vascular damage in these patients. Patients and methods: Twenty patients with SSc (12 with diffuse SSc and 8 with the limited form) and 10 healthy age and sex matched volunteers as controls were all subjected to routine laboratory testing and immunological profiling including antinuclear, anti-Scl-70, anticentomere, anticardiolipin antibodies and anti-annexin V antibodies titres. Vascular damage was assessed by clinical examination and assessment of the disease activity score, nailfold capillaroscopy and colour flow Doppler of the renal arteries; Doppler echocardiography was used for assessing pulmonary hypertension. Results: Anti-annexin V antibodies were detected in 75% of patients. Comparisons between anti-annexin V in diffuse and limited subgroups showed no significance; however a statistically significant positive correlation was found between Anti-annexin V titre and the degree of vascular damage in SSc patients. Anti-annexin V increased significantly in patients with severe vascular damage in comparison with those less affected (15.3 ± 6.6 vs. 11.25 ± 3.6, P , 0.05). A significant positive correlation was found between Anti-annexin V titre and both the ACL titre (r = 0.79, P , 0.001) and the resistive index of the main renal artery (r = 0.42, P , 0.05). Conclusion: Anti-annexin V antibodies were significantly present in sera of patients with SSc. Patients with more severe forms of vascular damage had higher titres of these antibodies. Anti-annexin V antibodies are a sensitive predictor of vascular damage in SSc and could serve as a useful parameter in discriminating patients with a higher risk of vascular affection from those without

New Spectrophotometric and Conductometric Methods for Macrolide Antibiotics Determination in Pure and Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms Using Rose Bengal

Two Simple, accurate, precise, and rapid spectrophotometric and conductometric methods were developed for the estimation of erythromycin thiocyanate (I), clarithromycin (II), and azithromycin dihydrate (III) in both pure and pharmaceutical dosage forms. The spectrophotometric procedure depends on the reaction of rose bengal and copper with the cited drugs to form stable ternary complexes which are extractable with methylene chloride, and the absorbances were measured at 558, 557, and 560 nm for (I), (II), and (III), respectively. The conductometric method depends on the formation of an ion-pair complex between the studied drug and rose bengal. For the spectrophotometric method, Beer's law was obeyed. The correlation coefficient () for the studied drugs was found to be 0.9999. The molar absorptivity (), Sandell’s sensitivity, limit of detection (LOD), and limit of quantification (LOQ) were also calculated. The proposed methods were successfully applied for the determination of certain pharmaceutical dosage forms containing the studied drug

Performance evaluation of uplink shared channel for cooperative relay based narrow band internet of things network

– Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) is one of the fastest growing network techniques provides efficient communciations for smart cities, e-Health, industry 4.0 and other applications. LPWAN enables long-rang communcaitons for M2M and cellular IoT networks. Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) is a type of LPWAN developed by 3GPP to connect a wide stream of IoT services and devices. NB-IoT systems rely on the mechanism of repeating the same signal every specified period of time in order to improve radio coverage better than it is in LTE systems. Repetition process is used to enhance the coverage of NB-IoT and for upgrade throughput as well. However, increasing the repetition of the signal significantly may give a negative result relative to the bandwidth limits. A cooperative relay (CoR) can be used beside repetition mechanism to helps reduce bandwidth stress. Moreover, the use of CoR for NB-IoT in physical uplink shared channel with repetitions will enhance the throughput. This paper will evaluate the performance of the CoR to enhance physical uplink shared channel in NB-IoT. The NB-IoT system model is simulated bu MATLAB to demonstrate the use of Cooperative relay (CoR) scheme in NPUSCH for NB-IoT for performance evaluation and comparison of using CoR scheme by considering metrics like data rate, throughput, and delay. The results conclude that in using CoR in NB-IoT gives high performance in overall NoT network throughput

Ethylene responsive transcription factor ERF109 retards PCD and improves salt tolerance in plant

Semi-quantitative RT-PCR for tobacco VIGS lines of 13 knocked down TFs induced 2 h post oxalic acid treatment (20 mM) as compared to their WT and VIGS line with empty pTRV2 (V2) plants. Amplicon sizes of different genes and primers used are shown in Additional file 5: Table S3. The Nbactin gene was used as the house-keeping control. Gene codes refer to those indicated in Additional file 3: Table S2. (DOCX 684 kb

Signaling mechanisms of a water soluble curcumin derivative in experimental type 1 diabetes with cardiomyopathy

BACKGROUND: Curcumin exhibits anti-diabetic activities, induces heme-oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and is an inhibitor of transcriptional co-activator p300. A novel water soluble curcumin derivative (NCD) has been developed to overcome low invivo bioavailability of curcumin. We evaluated the effect of the NCD on signaling mechanisms involved in cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and studied whether its action is mediated via inducible HO-1. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Rats were divided into controls, controls receiving NCD, diabetic, diabetic receiving NCD, diabetic receiving pure curcumin, diabetic receiving HO inhibitor, zinc protoporphyrin IX (ZnPP IX) and diabetic receiving NCD and ZnPP IX. NCD and curcumin were given orally. After 45 days, cardiac physiologic parameters, plasma glucose, insulin, glycated hemoglobin (GHb), HO-1 gene expression and HO activity in pancreas and cardiac tissues were assessed. Gene expression of p300, atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) and myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2A and MEF2C) were studied. RESULTS: NCD and curcumin decreased plasma glucose, GHb and increased insulin levels significantly in diabetic rats. This action may be partially mediated by induction of HO-1 gene. HO-1 gene expression and HO activity were significantly increased in diabetic heart and pancreas. Diabetes upregulated the expression of ANP, MEF2A, MEF2C and p300. NCD and curcumin prevented diabetes-induced upregulation of these parameters and improved left ventricular function. The effect of the NCD was better than the same dose of curcumin