A REVIEW: LOVASTATIN PRODUCTION AND APPLICATIONS

Cholesterol is an organic compound, which is produced in humans by a complex metabolism. It acts as a precursor for the synthesis of many steroids, vitamin D and also helps in membrane transport. Increase of cholesterol in humans, leads to Cardio Vascular Disorders and finally death. This can be reduced by inhibiting the HMG-CoA reductase, which is an important precursor in formation of mevolanate from Acetyl CoA. Inhibition is done by statin drug, which is produced by many fungi through polyketide pathway. Many fungus produce lovastatin, while other statins like rosuvastatin, simvastatin, pravastatin, fluvastatin are synthesized from lovastatin and mevastatin. Other than reduction of cholesterol, lovastatin is shown to provide various medicinal properties like anti-cancer, bone maturation, multiple sclerosis. In this review, a detailed note on various organisms employed for the production of lovastatin and different fermentation techniques for the same was studied. This review also helps in understating the inhibition of HMG-CoA reducatse and various medicinal properties of lovastatin. Keywords: Lovastatin, Fungus, Submerged fermentation, Solid state fermentation, HMG-CoA reducatse

EQUILIBRIUM, ISOTHERM, KINETIC AND THERMODYNAMIC ADSORPTION STUDIES OF TETRACYCLINE HYDROCHLORIDE ONTO COMMERCIAL GRADE GRANULAR ACTIVATED CARBON

Objective: The work presented here reveals the adsorption pattern of Tetracycline Hydrochloride (TC-HCl) onto granular activated carbon (GAC) in a batch process.Methods: Initially the consequence of various factors such as initial concentrations at various time intervals, pH (1- 7) and temperature (15, 28, 50 °C) were carried out.Results: The removal efficiency increased with an increase in initial concentration from 200mg L-1to 800mg L-1and then decreased up to1000 mg L-1. The adsorption capacity was found to be maximum in the pH range of 6-7. The estimated enthalpy was -22.540 kJ mol-1. The initial and treated GAC were characterized by SEM that elucidated the surface pattern of TC-HCl onto GAC. The scrutinization of kinetic studies revealed that Pseudo first order and Pseudo second order model gave anexcellent fit with experimental data. Among the four equilibrium models,Freundlich and Temkin isotherm model gave a good fit and confirms that the adsorption behavior of TC-HCl onto GAC is controlled by chemisorption.Conclusion: Thus, batch adsorption of TC-HCl onto GAC was controlled by chemical reaction and an exothermic process

DEVELOPMENT OF SELF NANO-EMULSIFYING DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM FOR AN ANTI-HYPERTENSIVE AGENT FELODIPINE: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH FOR LIPID NANO-FORMULATION WITH IMPROVED ORAL BIOAVAILABILITY IN RATS

Objective: The present study involves the development of SNEDDS employing essential oils for enhancing biopharmaceutical performance. Methods: Preliminary investigations suggested the selection of cinnamon oil as an essential oil, tween 60 as a surfactant, while transcutol HP as a cosolvent for formulating SNEDDS. Formulations evaluated for stability, robustness to dilution, and emulsification time, droplet size, zeta potential (ζ), cloud point, in vitro drug release, drug excipient compatibility, TEM, stability assessment and in vivo pharmacokinetic performance in rats. Results: All formulations were robust, stable, and revealed excellent emulsification time<40 s, with fine droplet size (11.41±2.41 nm), lower PDI (0.028-0.277). Formulation F(FLD)6 exhibited a release of 97.7% within 4h, and TEM photograph confirmed spherical droplets. The bioavailability results revealed a higher rate and extent of absorption, AUC, and Cmax for the formulations found to be 1212.4 and 355.40±13.67 (p<0.05). The results recommend that the developed formulation approach offers bioavailability enhancement of FLD. Conclusion: The study concluded that SNEDDS would be an effective formulation system in increasing the aqueous solubility and potentially bioavailability. Furthermore, it can be applied for other therapeutic categories of drugs belonging to BCS class II and IV that show comparable biopharmaceutical challenges

BRIEF REVIEW OF SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHODS FOR THE DETECTION OF TETRACYCLINE ANTIBIOTICS

Antibiotics are one of the most common pharmaceutical products, used for the treatment of bacterial ,fungal and parasitic infections. Among antibiotics, tetracyclines are extensively used in both human and animal welfare. Hence the monitoring and estimation of the levels of tetracycline in pharmaceutical products and effluents have become a necessity for researchers and industries. Current methods for estimation are based on high-level technologies ,and suffer from several disadvantages such as being time consuming, expensive and require  extensive training to operate.Much focus has been made on the development of simple ,quick and inexpensive methods that can be used in a routine manner. Most methods use either redox reaction of the tetracycline using an oxidizing agent or the use of polyvalent cations for chelation and complexometric reactions. Spectrophotometric methods for detection of antibiotics are simple  but rare. The objective of this review article is to present an insight into the various spectrophotometric methods available for the detection of tetracycline, with data regarding the reagents, wavelength used for the measurement and optimum concentration range applicable for each method

Occurrence of linezolid induced thrombocytopenia and its association with the risk factors: a review article

Linezolid is the oxazolidinone group of antibiotic with wide range of activity against the gram positive bacteria including methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus and penicillin resistant pneumococci and vancomycin resistant enterococci. Patients who are on linezolid were reported to have reversible myelosuppression especially thrombocytopenia and anaemia. Since there are less number of studies regarding the occurrence of thrombocytopenia and the risk factors associated with it, this study was undertaken to evaluate the occurrence of linezolid induced thrombocytopenia and its association with risk factors. It was a systematic review with synthesis of available literature in English language. Articles were retrieved using search terms included “linezolid”, “and”, “or”, “thrombocytopenia” from Clinical key and PubMed, published during 2000 - 2017. Out of 16 studies retrieved, only 7 studies were analysed based on inclusion and exclusion criteria; of them, 3 were found to be prospective and retrospective cohort each and only one was retrospective cross-sectional study. The occurrence of linezolid induced thrombocytopenia range from 18-50% with normal renal function and 57% of incidence associated with renal insufficiency patients. The risk factors were found to be dose of linezolid >18-27mg/kg, body weight of subjects <55kg, creatinine clearance <88.39 to 60ml/min/1.73m2 and baseline platelet count <200*103/mm3, serum albumin concentration, serum creatinine, concomitant caspofungin therapy and duration of linezolid therapy

Review of Contemporary Literature on Machine Learning based Malware Analysis and Detection Strategies

Abstract: malicious software also known as malware are the critical security threat experienced by the current ear of internet and computer system users. The malwares can morph to access or control the system level operations in multiple dimensions. The traditional malware detection strategies detects by signatures, which are not capable to notify the unknown malwares. The machine learning models learns from the behavioral patterns of the existing malwares and attempts to notify the malwares with similar behavioral patterns, hence these strategies often succeeds to notify even about unknown malwares. This manuscript explored the detailed review of machine learning based malware detection strategies found in contemporary literature

Utility of opening rhythms in predicting time to return of spontaneous circulation in cardiac arrest victims in a resource constrained setting: a single centre prospective observational study

Background: Time to ROSC has been shown to be an important and independent predictor of mortality and adverse neurological outcome. In resource limited situations judicious deployment of resources is crucial. Prognostication of arrest victims may aid in better resource allocation. This study aimed to assess the time to Return of Spontaneous Circulation (ROSC) in cardiac arrest victims and its relationship with opening rhythms.Methods: Consecutive victims of cardiopulmonary arrest who presented to a single center were included in this study if they met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Time at which opening rhythm was analyzed and time at which ROSC was achieved was noted. This was done for all cases and mean time to ROSC was calculated for each opening rhythm. All those patients who achieved ROSC were followed up till hospital discharge or death.  Primary outcome measured was achievement of ROSC and the secondary outcome was the survival to hospital discharge.Results: A sample size of 100 was calculated to yield a significance criterion of 0.05 and a power of 0.80 based on prior studies. Out of 100 patients studied. 58% had shockable rhythms and 42% had non-shockable rhythms.  Mean time to ROSC for shockable rhythm was 5.55±3.51 minutes, and for non-shockable rhythm is 17.29±4.18 minutes.  There was a statistically significant difference between opening rhythms in terms of survival to hospital discharge (p=0.0329).Conclusions: Cardiac arrests with shockable rhythms attained ROSC faster when compared to nonshockable rhythms. Shockable rhythms have a better survival to hospital discharge when compared to shockable rhythms. Opening rhythms may aid the clinician in better utility of resources in a resource constrained setting

Optimized DWT Based Digital Image Watermarking and Extraction Using RNN-LSTM

The rapid growth of Internet and the fast emergence of multi-media applications over the past decades have led to new problems such as illegal copying, digital plagiarism, distribution and use of copyrighted digital data. Watermarking digital data for copyright protection is a current need of the community. For embedding watermarks, robust algorithms in die media will resolve copyright infringements. Therefore, to enhance the robustness, optimization techniques and deep neural network concepts are utilized. In this paper, the optimized Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is utilized for embedding the watermark. The optimization algorithm is a combination of Simulated Annealing (SA) and Tunicate Swarm Algorithm (TSA). After performing the embedding process, the extraction is processed by deep neural network concept of Recurrent Neural Network based Long Short-Term Memory (RNN-LSTM). From the extraction process, the original image is obtained by this RNN-LSTM method. The experimental set up is carried out in the MATLAB platform. The performance metrics of PSNR, NC and SSIM are determined and compared with existing optimization and machine learning approaches. The results are achieved under various attacks to show the robustness of the proposed work

FORMULATION DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF SUSTAINED RELEASE GASTRORETENTIVE TABLET OF EMTRICITABINE

Objective: The study aims for the design and evaluation of floating tablets of emtricitabine (EMT), post oral administration to sustain the release and enhance gastric residence time (GRT). Methods: EMT is a nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitor for the prevention and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The investigation was considered to formulate a floating tablet of EMT with various agents. The formulation included with various concentrations of hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) k4m, ethylcellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) by wet granulation method. Various parameters for the prepared formulations were evaluated for weight variation, thickness, hardness, friability, floating lag time (FLT), total floating time (TFT), swelling index, in vitro drug release, and fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) studies. Results: The best formulation F1 exhibited 88.28% release in 24 h duration, with a floating lag time of 7 min and swelling index of 52.1% and drug content was determined to be 98.27%. The release mechanism was determined to be first order with higuchi release kinetics displaying diffusion along with the dissolution of the EMT from the tablet by non fickian mechanism. Conclusion: EMT tablets showed an increased GRT with a sustained release for 24 h thereby allowing a better window for absorption consequently improve the therapeutic effect of the drug