A cross sectional study of sociodemographic profile, disability and family burden in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder

Background: Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by the presence of obsessions (intrusive and unwanted repetitive thoughts, urges, or impulses that often lead to a marked increase in anxiety or distress) and/ or compulsions (repeated behaviours or mental acts that are done in response to obsessions). OCD patients report general impairment in their functioning and family burden. They also suffer from disability in several areas of daily life.Methods: This study has a cross-sectional design, and author included total 200 consecutive selected OCD patients diagnosed according to International Classification of Disease (ICD)-10.Results: Most of respondent included in this study were married male (74%), belonged to Hindu religion and urban background (68%) with mean age of 33 year (SD=9.91), 88% subjects were found to be employed in this study, educated middle standard and above. In this study, maximum disability was noted in domains of work (mean score 1.10) and communication and understanding (mean score 0.70), the impairment in interpersonal activity was lesser (mean score 0.34). The domain in which the maximum burden was found among family members is disruption of routine/ family activities overall (52%).Conclusions: The study aimed at assessing the burden in families and disability in subjects having OCD. Subjects were of either sex having age 16 and above. All subjects were assessed using following structured clinical instruments, Yale-brown symptom check list, Yale-brown obsessive-compulsive symptom severity scale, family burden interview, and Indian disability evaluation and assessment scale.

Lamotrigine therapeutic thresholds

SummaryPurposeTo evaluate therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of lamotrigine (LTG) with establishment of individual therapeutic thresholds (TT) in outpatients of a tertiary epilepsy centre on monotherapy.MethodsIn the outpatient clinic of the Danish Epilepsy Centre, Dianalund, all patients treated in 2004 with LTG monotherapy were identified. Patients who had not reported seizures or adverse reactions in the last 6 months were considered seizure free and well-medicated on LTG monotherapy, and were further evaluated. Plasma levels from routine LTG TDM obtained by reversed-phase high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) during up-titration were used to calculate the TT for each patient as the mean of the highest subtherapeutic and the lowest therapeutic level.ResultsEighty-two patients undergoing LTG monotherapy were reported seizure free as defined above. In 34 the TT could not be calculated because they became seizure free on the first chosen dose. TTs of the remaining 48 patients ranged from 4.0 to 42.0μmol/l. There were no differences between children and adults, and between generalized and localization-related epilepsies. The therapeutic levels of patients with undefined TT tended to be lower. The level–dose ratio in both groups varied only moderately indicating absence of major exogenous influences.ConclusionEven in patients of a tertiary referral centre only a minority had high TTs and needed therapeutic levels in a range where toxicity is increasingly observed. TDM appears useful in LTG treatment both for the establishment of individual reference ranges and for the identification of the individual level-to-dose ratio

Seasonal variation in phytoplankton of Tadoba lake, Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR), Distt. Chandrapur (MS), India

Tadoba lake is the major lake in Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reservoir (TATR) in the Chandrapur district, in eastern Maharashtra which represent a unique habitat for wildlife in central India and oldest National Park of the state. The lake is free from human activities. The present investigation was carried out to evaluate the population of planktonic algae of the lake from June-2006 to May-2007. The study of phytoplanktonic diversity revealed the presence of 35 species belonging to four major groups, Chlorophyceae, Bacillariophyceae, Myxophyceae and Euglenophyceae among which Bacillariophyceae was dominant. The rich floral diversity indicates high productive nature of pond

Formulation and evaluation of insitu mucoadhesive nasal gels of metoclopramide hydrochloride

The prolonged residence of drug formulation in the nasal cavity is of utmost importance for intranasal drug delivery. The objective of the present investigation was to develop a mucoadhesive in situ gel with reduced nasal mucocilliary clearance in order to improve the bioavailability of the antiemetic drug, Metoclopramide Hydrochloride. The in situ gelation upon contact with nasal mucosa was conferred via the use of the thermogelling Methyl cellulose whereas mucoadhesion and drug release enhancement were modulated via the use of sodium alginate and polyethylene glycol polymers respectively. The results revealed that the mucoadhesive polymer increased the gel viscosity but reduced its sol gel transition temperatures and the drug release. The inclusion of polyethylene glycol polymer counteracted the effect of mucoadhesive polymer where by it decreased the gel consistency and increased the sol gel transition as well as in vitro drug diffusion. The in vitro tests performed for mucoadhesive strength and drug diffusion showed that nasal in situ gelling formulations prepared are having good mucoadhesive strength with nearly100% drug diffusion within four hours. So this study points to the potential of mucoadhesive in situ nasal gel in terms of ease of administration, accuracy of dosing, prolonged nasal residence and improved nasal bioavailability

RESEARCH ON FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF INSITU MUCOADHESIVE NASAL GELS OF METOCLOPRAMIDE HYDROCHLORIDE

ABSTRACT The prolonged residence of drug formulation in the nasal cavity is of utmost importance for intranasal drug delivery. The objective of the present investigation was to develop a mucoadhesive in situ gel with reduced nasal mucocilliary clearance in order to improve the bioavailability of the antiemetic drug, Metoclopramide Hydrochloride. The in situ gelation upon contact with nasal mucosa was conferred via the use of the thermogelling Methyl cellulose whereas mucoadhesion and drug release enhancement were modulated via the use of sodium alginate and polyethylene glycol polymers respectively. The results revealed that the mucoadhesive polymer increased the gel viscosity but reduced its sol gel transition temperatures and the drug release. The inclusion of polyethylene glycol polymer counteracted the effect of mucoadhesive polymer where by it decreased the gel consistency and increased the sol gel transition as well as in vitro drug diffusion. The in vitro tests performed for mucoadhesive strength and drug diffusion showed that nasal in situ gelling formulations prepared are having good mucoadhesive strength with nearly100percente drug diffusion within four hours. So this study points to the potential of mucoadhesive in situ nasal gel in terms of ease of administration, accuracy of dosing, prolonged nasal residence and improved nasal bioavailability.  Keywords: Nasal Gel, Metoclopramide Hydrochloride, Methyl Cellulose, Mucocilliary Clearance

Evaluating various transaction processing characteristics of permissioned blockchain networks

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that completely removes the requirement of third parties like banks in exchanging assets and performing business transactions and every participant maintains a local copy of the data. In permissionless blockchains like Ethereum or Bitcoin, any entity can participate in submitting and validating a transaction as the entire blockchain network is public. On the other hand, permissioned blockchains only allow certain entities that have the right permission to be included in the blockchain network and to participate in transaction execution and validation. Hyperledger Fabric is one such example of a permissioned blockchain system that provides privacy and confidentiality by using smaller private networks characterized by channels. Thus, Hyperledger Fabric can be used to study the business transactions. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the transactional properties of permissioned blockchain networks like Hyperledger Fabric and evaluate them by comparing them to the ACID properties of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). A supply chain application has been developed that demonstrates the various business transactions like getting product details, creating a new product and updating a product. Hyperledger Fabric performs business transactions with the help of chaincodes that are deployed on peers and channels are introduced to provide privacy. A web front-end has been created that serves as a 2-PC transaction monitor for writing data to different channels within a single transaction. Business transactions are mostly characterized by many nested sub-transactions and hence, an equivalent system that fulfills this requirement with blockchain is developed. An Android application has also been developed that provides the same functions with a focus on end user. Also the immutability of blockchain involving number of peers is studied and it is found that the blockchain itself is immutable but the state database on a single peer can be modified in absence of efficient endorsement policy

“CLINICAL TRIALS IN INDIA”

The larger context of clinical trials in India is poverty and the absence of affordable healthcare. For more than a decade, government policy has been to reduce public support for healthcare services, and these services are under-resourced. Health economists have pointed out that only 15 per cent of the Rs 1,500 billion spent in the health sector in India comes from the government. Clinical trials (also called medical research studies) are used to determine whether new drugs or treatments are both safe and effective. Carefully conducted clinical trials are the fastest and safest way to find treatments that work in people. If the drug successfully passes through Phases I, II, and III, it will usually be approved by the national regulatory authority for use in the general population. Phase IV are 'post-approval' studies. The level of concern about the impact of the CTD on clinical research activities is intense and widespread overall stakeholder groups. Opinions and quantitative survey results draw a picture of increased bureaucracy and costs, reduction of important research without creating benefits for patients. However, concrete, comprehensive figures about the clinical trial activities are only available from competent authorities. Figures on the CTD’s impact on organisation, staffing, costs and processes of the different stakeholders are missing.These trials violated the the Indian Council of Medical Research’s Ethical guidelines for biomedical research on human subjects and the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. The trial designs do not seem to have violated regulations for the conduct of clinical research in India. The existing regulatory apparatus therefore permits unethical trials of no benefit to Indians. Clearly, trials are being conducted in India that could not be conducted in developed countries, taking advantage of people’s lack of access to affordable, good quality care. The benefits of research do not reach the community as drugs found effective following these trials may not be affordable to the community in which they were tested. Such practices are in violation of the Declaration of Helsinki as well as the general principles laid down in the Indian Council of Medical Research’s ethical guidelines for biomedical research.The infrastructure for regulation, ethics review and monitoring is insufficient. The government’s priority seems to be ensuring that clinical research in India produces good quality data according to Good Clinical Practice standards. Ethical guidelines – including its own ethical guidelines – seem to be of secondary importance. The ethical concerns raised by these clinical trials; the weak regulatory apparatus to protect trial participants, government policy to encourage international clinical trials without taking active steps to put in place a system to protect participants from harm; people’s desperation for affordable health care – all this will only worsen the harm being done to trial participants in India.tum since the dis &nbsp