A Toxicological study on Thurusu Parpam (துருசு பற்பம்)

INTRODUCTON: Copper and its derivatives had been firmly established as an important drug in Roman physician Cornelius Celsu‟s pharmacopoeia for treatment of venereal diseases and non-healing chronic ulcers. Copper was also employed in ancient India and Persia to treat lung diseases. The tenth century book, Liber Fundamentorum Pharmacologiae describes the use of copper compounds for medicinal purposes in ancient Persia. Powdered malachite was sprinkled on boils, copper acetate as well as and copper oxide were used for diseases of the eye and for the elimination of "yellow bile." Nomadic Mongolian tribes treated and healed ulcers of venereal origin with orally administered copper sulfate. Copper is known to be an essential element in human metabolism. However, copper does not exist in the body in measurable amounts in ionic form. All measurable amounts of copper in the body exist in tissues as complexes with the organic compounds of proteins and enzymes. Some copper complexes serve to store copper, others to transport it, and yet others play important roles in key cellular and metabolic processes. Therefore, it has been concluded that copper becomes and remains intimately involved in body processes. AIM AND OBJECTIVES: AIM: To purify Thurusu (Copper Sulphate) and prepare Thurusu Parpam using traditional siddha methods with detailed study on acute and long term toxicity of “THURUSU PARPAM” in animal model (Wister albino rats) OBJECTIVE: 1. Purification of THURUSU using siddha literature, 2. Preparation of THURUSU PARPAM using siddha literature, 3. Chemical analysis of THURUSU PARPAM, 4. Toxicity study on “THURUSU PARPAM” using animal models; a. Acute Toxicity, b. Chronic Toxicity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: MATERIALS REQUIRED: Purification: 1. Raw Copper Sulphate 2. Cow’s Urine Drug preparation: 1. Purified copper sulphate, 2 .Leaf extract of Datura metel, 3. Leaf extract of Trichodesma indicum. TOXICOLOGICAL STUDY: Animals Wistar albino rats (200 ± 25 g) bred in the animal house of GSMC, palayamkottai, were used. The animals were housed in wire-bottomed cages under a uniform condition of temperature and humidity and fed with normal food and tap water. CHEMICAL ANALYSIS: 1. Ammonium Oxalate, 2. Barium Chloride, 3. Silver Nitrate, 4. Conc. Hydrochloric Acid, 5. Iodine Solution, 6. Glacial Acetic Acid, 7. Potassium Ferro Cyanide, 8. Conc. Nitric Acid, 9. Ammonium Thiocyanate, 10. Ammonium Molybdate, 11. Esbatch‟S Reagent, 12. Ferric Chloride, 13. Potassium Permanganate, 14. Ninhydrin , 15. Potassium Ferrocyanide. METHODS: PURIFICATION: 35gm of copper sulphate is taken in a vessel containing cow‟s urine and is heated till the cow‟s urine gets dried. This process should be repeated thrice. SUMMARY: Toxicological effect of Thurusu Parpam, a known drug used in treatment Respiratory and G-I tract disorders is evaluated in this research work. Various quantitative and qualitative analysis has shown the presence of sulphate, calcium and chloride and copper in the drug. An acute and chronic study was performed in wister albino rats for a period of 24hours and 90days respectively. In acute study, all the animals fed with the drug doesn‟t showed any toxicological symptoms with normal hematological reports But in case of chronic toxicity studies, though animals didn‟t show any toxic symptoms at higher dosage levels (80mg/100gm), histopathology studies revealed the presence of focal interstitial edema with inflammatory cell infiltration in kidney and focal necrosis and mild sinusoidal dilatation in liver. These data‟s indicate that though the drug is toxic at higher levels, but very safe at therapeutic dosage prescribed by siddha medical practitioners. So over consumption due to improper medication/self-medication may lead to significant toxic effects. Although most of the siddha medicinal preparations have metal contents far greater than the WHO limits, the toxicity of a preparation need not directly correlate with the metal content in the sample. The chemical nature of the metal, route of administration, dosage, residence time within the body, pharmacokinetics and dynamics, bioavailability, metabolic transformations of the preparation, age, gender, physiology, nature and stage of disease, and diet can influence the toxic manifestations of the Thurusu Parpam. Therefore, a careful analysis of all these parameters is required in order to establish the risk involved in Thurusu Parpam. CONCLUSION: Even though the metals are purified and believed to be non-toxic according to Siddha system, this only refers to the clinical or therapeutic dose, which is minimal. So over consumption due to improper medication/self-medication may lead to significant toxic effects. Although most of the siddha medicinal preparations have metal contents far greater than the WHO limits, the toxicity of a preparation need not directly correlate with the metal content in the sample. The chemical nature of the metal, route of administration, dosage, residence time within the body, pharmacokinetics and dynamics, bioavailability, metabolic transformations of the preparation, age, gender, physiology, nature and stage of disease, and diet can influence the toxic manifestations of the Thurusu Parpam. Therefore, a careful analysis of all these parameters is required in order to establish the risk involved in a given Thurusu Parpam. Variations in therapeutic doses are recommended by practitioners for different ailments. Practioners in siddha medicines adopt a holistic approach to treatment and consider the physiological aspects of an individual along with the type of disease and stage of presentation. Diet restrictions also contribute to alterations in the pharmacokinetics, and thus labeling a traditional medicine preparation as toxicity based only on the metal content seems inappropriate. However, in-depth and systematic investigations are not available for these preparations. Pre-clinical studies are needed after conversion of the human therapeutic dose to an animal dose, and both short-term and long-term toxicity have to be evaluated. Significant and substantial amount of data through these studies can provide a platform for designing human clinical trials. Even though cinnabar has been used for centuries in traditional medicine, pharmaco-vigilance never existed then and does not even prevail in the modern era. The need for patient follow-up after counseling and drug therapy was rare in earlier times, and even now it is not followed stringently. Hence, scientific evidence is lacking to confirm the safety and efficacy of these drugs. No pharmco-therapeutic studies exist to analyze the benefits of these drugs. Shortcomings in choice of animal models and proper design of experiments to assess toxicity have hampered the risk assessment of these traditional preparations, and hence there is a requirement for more comprehensive studies to understand the ramifications of these therapeutic processes

Biodiversity of Medicinal Plants in Thudaripettai Village, Nagapattinam District, Tamil Nadu, India

The medicinal plants have received more attention among researchers to treat various diseases and disorders. This study was aimed to record the various medicinal plants present in Thudaripettai Village situated in Tharangambadi Taluk, Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu. A total of 60 plant species belonging to 35 families were reported with their medicinal values. These results will provide information about medicinal plants and methods of utilization of these plants to cure various diseases of mankind. Survey of the information of medicinal plants used by the villagers were collected and arranged alphabetically followed by common name, vernacular name, family name, parts of use, methods of uses, medicinal uses and their habit. The information is very much useful for further research which will lead to the discovery of new bioactive compounds from the above medicinal plants

Fabrication of drug eluting medical device for treating stenosis by 3D printing and dip coating using aspirin as a model drug

3D printing is a new innovative manufacturing method for fabrication of customized medical devices. The customized medical devices & long-lasting implantable devices.has increasing demand for addressing some critical cases in surgeries. The main aim of this work was to explore the potential of 3D printing in Fabrication of medical devices and prosthetics. The characters of the polymers, the features of softwares were studied. The study showed that drug loading into filament through hot melt extrusion and followed by 3D printing has many defects such as denaturing of drugs at higher printing temperatures. The invention discloses the dip coating process  after fabrication of a 3D printed polymer structure. The drug release depends up on the surface area of the device, coated polymer, concentration of drug and thickness of the coat. The method for preparing the personalized drug eluting coronary stent / Bone wedges / Braces comprises the step that according to image data of coronary angiogram or volume rendered data from CT scans. The designing was done by adopting a QCA technique for measuring the diameter of a diseased coronary artery and reconstructing in a three-dimensional manner. According to indexes such as lesion vascular diameter, lesion length and lesion vascular pattern, a personalized coronary stent can be made for each patient in a customized manner and a stent most suitable for the lesion state of a patient can be prepared. Keywords: 3D printing, manufacturing method, Fabrication of medical device

Temporary Redundant Transmission Mechanism for SCTP Multihomed Hosts

In SCTP’s Concurrent Multipath Transfer, if data is sent to the destined IP(s) without knowledge of the paths condition, packets may be lost or delayed. This is because of the bursty nature of IP traffic and physical damage to the network. To offset these problems, network path status is examined using our new mechanism Multipath State Aware Concurrent Multipath Transfer using redundant transmission (MSACMT-RTv2). Here the status of multiple paths is analyzed, initially and periodically thereafter transmitted. After examination, paths priority is assigned before transmission. One path is temporarily employed as redundant path for the failure-expected path (FEP); this redundant path is used for transmitting redundant data. At the end of predefined period, reliability of the FEP is confirmed. If FEP is ensured to be reliable, temporary path is transformed into normal CMT path. MSACMT-RTv2 algorithm is simulated using the Delaware University ns-2 SCTP/CMT module (ns-2; V2.29). We present and discuss MSACMT-RTv2 performance in asymmetric path delay and with finite receiver buffer (rbuf) size. We extended our experiment to test robustness of this algorithm and inferred exhaustive result. It is inferred that our algorithm outperforms better in terms of increasing the throughput and reducing the latency than existing system

Spurt in fish landings along north Tamil Nadu coast

In the sudden spurt of unusually heavy fish landings a movement of deep water fishes to the inshore areas were observed and of this unusual landings along the coast during this period are presented. The heavy fish landings were observed for 15 days in landing centres adjacent of Pondicherry whereas it for 2 days in Kovalam region and in Madras. A slight drop in surface water temperature with low oxygen concentration (1.10 to 1.37ml/L) and low temperature (26.2 to 27.2°C) during this period were examined. Analysis of plankton samples showed a a bloom of Chaetoceros sp.in this period

On the occurrence of Charybdis (Charybdis) hellerii (A. Milne Edwards) (Decapoda : Portunidae) along the west coast of India

The occurrence of Charybdis (Charybdis) hellerii (A. Milne Edwards) is reported for the first time from the west coast of India. A brief note on the morphological features of the species is given

Genetic analyses of casuarinas using ISSR and FISSR markers

Inter simple sequence repeat polymerase chain reaction (ISSR-PCR) was used for the genetic analysis of the six species of Allocasuarina, five species of Casuarina and 12 superior performing selections of C. equisetifolia L. We also fingerprinted C. equisetifolia L. selections using Fluorescent-ISSR-PCR (FISSR-PCR), an improvised ISSR-PCR assay. The ISSR analysis provided information on the frequency of various simple sequence repeats in the casuarina genome. The di-nucleotide repeats were more common, among which (CA)n and its complementary nucleotide (GT)n repeat motifs amplified relatively higher number of bands with an average of 6.0 ± 3.5 and 6.3 ± 1.8 respectively. Eleven species of casuarinas were amplified with 10 primers anchored either at 5' or 3' end. A total of 253 PCR products were obtained and all were polymorphic, out of which 48 were specific to Allocasuarina and 36 were specific to Casuarina genus. Genetic similarity among the species was 0.251. A UPGMA dendrogram grouped all the Casuarina species together. The 12 superior performing selections of C. equisetifolia L. produced 57 polymorphic ISSR markers while the FISSR assay revealed 105 polymorphic markers. The primer CRR(ATT)4 distinguished all the selections. DNA profiles obtained with ISSR and FISSR assays would serve as a reference library for the establishment of clonal identity in casuarinas

An instance of mass mortality in the Muttukadu farm near Madras during April 1983

An unusual mortality of fishes and other organisms was observed in the open site surrounding the farm at Mariculture Centre of CMFRI, Muttukadu.at 1983. During this season the prevailing high temperature and salinity and the enclosed nature of the water body, all resulted in an intense bloom of dinophytes. This led to oxygen depletion of the waters and then, very likely, of the mud. The regular operation of drag nets and gill nets has stirred up the mud and created large scale disturbance which, combined with the oxygen depletion, must have precipitated the crisis and led to the mortality of prawns and fishes

Design and Implementation of Improved Electronic Load Controller for Self-Excited Induction Generator for Rural Electrification

This paper offers an alternative technique, namely, Improved Electronic Load Controller (IELC), which is proposal to improve power quality, maintaining voltage at frequency desired level for rural electrification. The design and development of IELC are considered as microhydroenergy system. The proposed work aims to concentrate on the new schemes for rural electrification with the help of different kinds of hybrid energy systems. The objective of the proposed scheme is to maintain the speed of generation against fluctuating rural demand. The Electronic Load Controller (ELC) is used to connect and disconnect the dump load during the operation of the system, and which absorbs the load when consumer are not in active will enhance the lifestyle of the rural population and improve the living standards. Hydroelectricity is a promising option for electrification of remote villages in India. The conventional methods are not suitable to act as standalone system. Hence, the designing of a proper ELC is essential. The improved electronic load control performance tested with simulation at validated through hardware setup

An unusual bumber catch of white prawn, Penaeus indicus from Kovalam bay near Madras

In the history of the fishing village, namely, Kovalam (lat. 12°47'N long. 80°15'E), formerly known as Covelong, situated 35 km south of Madras City, heavy landings of the Indian white prawn, Penaeus indicus caught with gill net have occurred for the firsi time during 16th-20th December, 1984. Recent mark-recapture experiments on P. indicus have also established the fact that a longer migration of tagged white prawns took place from Cochin, (place of release) to Ovari - Manappad fishing villages on the southeast coast (Tinnaveli coast), covering a distance of 330-380 km in 68 to 103 days at a rate of 3.5 to 5.5 km/day. The southward migration of white prawns during the present study was in conjunction with the prevailing southerly current along the coast