A cross sectional study on the prescribing pattern, self medication and adverse reactions associated with topical corticosteroids

Background: Glucocorticosteroids, one of the common drugs used by the dermatologists brought a revolutionary change in their practice. Unfortunately steroids are misused in dermatological panacea due to dramatic relief in inflammatory and pruritic skin conditions but may lead to deleterious effects if irrationally used. Hence this study was planned to know the prescribing pattern of corticosteroids.Methods: It was a cross sectional observational study. The prescriptions of patient attending the dermatology OPD were screened for the usage of the corticosteroids. The demographic data, chief complaints, diagnosis and the details of the drugs was collected.Results: Out of 384 prescriptions screened, 14.06% were prescribed corticosteroids. Average number of drugs per prescription was 2.28±0.83. Polypharmacy (≥4 drugs) observed in 9.26% of prescriptions. Corticosteroids prescribed by generic name were 24.07% and brand name was 75.93%. Corticosteroids alone prescribed in 38.89% and along with antihistaminics/antibiotics/emollients in 61.11%. Topical corticosteroids prescribed in 79.6% and 20.4% by systemic route. Moderately potent steroids prescribed in 74.42% followed by potent (13.95%) and very potent steroids (11.63%). Patients on corticosteroid self-medication were 28%, among them 4 developed adverse reactions with severe acneiform eruptions over the face. No fixed dose combination drugs were prescribed.Conclusions: In this study we observed the rationale and safe prescribing pattern. However, the corticosteroids prescribed by brand names (75.93%) were more than generic names (24.07%), information about the strength of the steroid not mentioned and usage of emollients was less. This indicates the need for continuous medical education for the clinicians

Enhancing the ultrafast third order nonlinear optical response by charge transfer in VSe2-reduced graphene oxide hybrid

Nonlinear optical phenomena play a critical role in understanding microscopic light-matter interactions and have far-reaching applications across various fields, such as biosensing, quantum information, optical switching, and all-optical data processing. Most of these applications require materials with high third-order absorptive and refractive optical nonlinearities. However, most materials show weak nonlinear optical responses due to their perturbative nature and often need to be improved for practical applications. Here, we demonstrate that the charge donor-acceptor hybrid of VSe2-reduced graphene oxide (rGO) hybrid exhibits enhanced ultrafast third-order absorptive and refractive nonlinearities compared to the pristine systems, at least by one order of magnitude. Through density functional theory and Bader charge analysis, we elucidate the strong electronic coupling in the VSe2-rGO hybrid, involving the transfer of electrons from VSe2 to rGO. Steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) measurements confirm the electronic coupling and charge transfer. Furthermore, we fabricate an ultrafast optical limiter device with better performance parameters, such as an onset threshold of 2.5 mJ cm-2 and differential transmittance of 0.42

Effects of Vitamin-E, Morin, Rutin, Quercetin against Doxorubicin in Rabbits: A Hematological Study

ABSTRACT Vitamin-E and flavonoids are natural anti-oxidants present in the vegetable diet. The present study was conducted on New Zealand white rabbits aged between 3-6 months and averaging 1.5-3.0 kg in weight. Rabbits are divided into 5 groups of 6 in each; a 4-week feeding trail is used to evaluate the hematology of rabbits by feeding vitamin-E, flavonoids morin, rutin, and quercetin along with drug doxorubicin. Doxorubicin is a potential chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of a variety of human malignancies. In the present study, the development of cardio toxicity was prevented by reducing oxidative stress using natural antioxidant vitamin E (50 IU/kg body weight) and flavonoids morin, rutin and quercetin. The four weeks treatment of flavonoids (20mg/kg body weight) were affectively controlled the oxidative stress induced cardiomyopathy in rabbits by doxorubicin (10mg/kg body weight) treatment for two days. The flavonoids regulated the hematological parameters at optimum levels. The hematological components of study included red blood cells (RBC), white blood cells WBC, Hemoglobin (Hb), lymphocytes (LYM), platelets (PLT), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), basophiles (BAS), eosinophiles (EOI), monocytes (MON), and neutrophiles (NEU). Results showed that hematological parameters were affected (P<0.05) by experimental diets. The overall conclusion of this study is that the flavonoids can act as antioxidants and they can control the alteration in the hematological parameters. By this study, the authors suggests that the flavonoids are natural anti-oxidants, which can be used in the various treatments of cancers as supplement to reduce the oxidative stress produced by the drugs

Quasi-biweekly mode of the Asian summer monsoon revealed in Bay of Bengal surface observations

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 125(12),(2020): e2020JC016271, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JC016271.Asian summer monsoon has a planetary‐scale, westward propagating “quasi‐biweekly” mode of variability with a 10–25 day period. Six years of moored observations at 18°N, 89.5°E in the north Bay of Bengal (BoB) reveal distinct quasi‐biweekly variability in sea surface salinity (SSS) during summer and autumn, with peak‐to‐peak amplitude of 3–8 psu. This large‐amplitude SSS variability is not due to variations of surface freshwater flux or river runoff. We show from the moored data, satellite SSS, and reanalyses that surface winds associated with the quasi‐biweekly monsoon mode and embedded weather‐scale systems, drive SSS and coastal sea level variability in 2015 summer monsoon. When winds are calm, geostrophic currents associated with mesoscale ocean eddies transport Ganga‐Brahmaputra‐Meghna river water southward to the mooring, salinity falls, and the ocean mixed layer shallows to 1–10 m. During active (cloudy, windy) spells of quasi‐biweekly monsoon mode, directly wind‐forced surface currents carry river water away to the east and north, leading to increased salinity at the moorings, and rise of sea level by 0.1–0.5 m along the eastern and northern boundary of the bay. During July–August 2015, a shallow pool of low‐salinity river water lies in the northeastern bay. The amplitude of a 20‐day oscillation of sea surface temperature (SST) is two times larger within the fresh pool than in the saltier ocean to the west, although surface heat flux is nearly identical in the two regions. This is direct evidence that spatial‐temporal variations of BoB salinity influences sub‐seasonal SST variations, and possibly SST‐mediated monsoon air‐sea interaction.The authors thank the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) institutes NIOT and INCOIS, and the Upper Ocean Processes (UOP) group at WHOI for design, integration, and deployment of moorings in the BoB. The WHOI mooring was deployed from the ORV Sagar Nidhi and recovered from the ORV Sagar Kanya—we thank the officers, crew and science teams on the cruises for their support. Sengupta, Ravichandran and Sukhatme acknowledge MoES and the National Monsoon Mission, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, for support; Lucas and Farrar acknowledge the US Office of Naval Research for support of ASIRI through grants N00014‐13‐1‐0489, N0001413‐100453, N0001417‐12880. We thank S. Shivaprasad, Dipanjan Chaudhuri and Jared Buckley for discussion on ocean currents and Ekman flow, and Fabien Durand for discussion on sea level. JSL would like to thank the Divecha Center for Climate Change, IISc., for support. DS acknowledges support from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi, under the Indo‐Spanish Programme.2021-05-1

Simplifying the analysis of software design variants with a colorful alloy

Formal modeling and automatic analysis are essential to achieve a trustworthy software design prior to its implementation. Alloy and its Analyzer are a popular language and tool for this task. Frequently, rather than a single software artifact, the goal is to develop a full software product line (SPL) with many variants supporting different features. Ideally, software design languages and tools should provide support for analyzing all such variants (e.g., by helping pinpoint combinations of features that could break a property), but that is not currently the case. Even when developing a single artifact, support for multi-variant analysis is desirable to explore design alternatives. Several techniques have been proposed to simplify the implementation of SPLs. One such technique is to use background colors to identify the fragments of code associated with each feature. In this paper we propose to use that same technique for formal design, showing how to add support for features and background colors to Alloy and its Analyzer, thus easing the analysis of software design variants. Some illustrative examples and evaluation results are presented, showing the benefits and efficiency of the implemented technique.This work is financed by the ERDF - European Regional Development Fund - through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 - and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project POCI-01- 0145-FEDER-016826. The third author was also supported by the FCT sabbatical grant with reference SFRH/BSAB/143106/2018

ESTABLISHMENT OF VICARIOUS CALIBRATION/VALIDATION FACILITY FOR SPACE BORNE HIGH AND MID RESOLUTION OPTICAL SENSORS

Vicarious calibration refers to methods that make use of “invariant” natural targets of the Earth for the post-launch calibration of sensors. This process of calibration is useful for initial phase orbit operation of sensor and thereafter for validation during its operational span. This method of periodic evaluation of radiometric and geometric performance of the space-borne optical sensors and validation of derived radiance/reflectance is to ensure availability of consistent and accurate data products to the user community. This paper describes one such Cal/Val facility’s design, engineering aspects and realization at National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Shadnagar. The target materials used for filling the Cal/Val site are studied for its reflectance. These targets have reflectance ranging from 9% to 53%, in the VNIR (Visible and Near Infra-Red) region. This paper also describes instruments used for calibration and homogeneity studies of targets for its invariance since operationalisation (January 2016). The last section of this paper is about reflectance based absolute radiometric calibration of medium resolution Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) sensor (Resourcesat and Cartosat series) using RT model and edge based LSF/MTF estimation of high resolution sensor carried out using the Cal/Val facility

Experimental safety testing confirms that the NSAID nimesulide is toxic to Gyps vultures in India

DATA AVAILABILITY : Data will be made available on request.Population declines of Gyps vultures throughout South Asia were caused by unintentional poisoning by the NSAID diclofenac, which was subsequently banned. However, other vulture-toxic NSAIDs are available, including nimesulide, which, in experiments carried out in South Africa, was shown to be toxic to Gyps vultures. We report on safety-testing of nimesulide carried out on Himalayan Griffons G. himalayensis. We gave two vultures a dose of nimesulide by oral gavage at the maximum level of exposure, with two controls dosed with benzyl alcohol. In the two tested birds, plasma nimesulide concentrations peaked after six hours, while serum uric acid concentrations increased steadily up until 24 h post-treatment, after which both birds died, displaying severe visceral gout. The control birds showed no adverse clinical or biochemical signs. We confirm that nimesulide is toxic to Gyps vultures. Veterinary use of nimesulide should be banned in all Gyps vulture range countries in the region.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/etapam2024Paraclinical SciencesSDG-03:Good heatlh and well-bein