Utility of serum lactate dehydrogenase in the diagnosis of megaloblastic anemia

Background: Megaloblastc anemia corresponds to severe macrocytic anemia with hypersegmented neutrophils and very high serum Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH). The present study was undertaken to evaluate the utility of serum LDH and chloroform inhibited serum LDH in the diagnosis of megaloblastic anemia and to observe if this can be used to differentiate megaloblastic anemia from iron deficiency anemia and hemolytic anemia.Methods: The present study was carried out on 75 patients of anemia categorised on bone marrow examination (into megaloblastic and non-megaloblastic anaemia) to evaluate the efficacy of total serum LDH levels and LDH isoenzyme pattern in the diagnosis of megaloblastic anemia. About 25 healthy adults were taken as controls.Results: In megaloblastic anemia, total serum LDH level was found to be increased to about nineteen folds and in hemolytic anemia it was found to increased four folds as compared to normal. On statistical analysis this increased total serum LDH level in megaloblastic anemia and hemolytic anemia as compared to control group was found to be significant.In the present study serum LDH level above 3000IU/L was associated with megaloblastic anemia and serum LDH level below 900IU/L was suggestive of iron deficiency anemia. The chloroform inhibition test was less than 25% in megaloblastic anemia and more than 25% in hemolytic anemia and these differences were found to be statistically significant (t=9.62, df=49, pLDH2) by chloroform inhibition test is an adjuvant in the diagnosis where total serum LDH levels are between 451-3000IU/L and can also differentiate megaloblastic anemia from hemolytic anemia

Evaluation of anticonvulsant activity of angiotensin receptor antagonists in an animal model

Background: Epilepsy is common chronic disorder in clinical practice and there was some studies which shows brain renin angiotensin system may be involved in upregulation of seizures hence present study was planned to investigate whether angiotensin II AT1 receptor antagonists possess anticonvulsant activity in experimental animals.Methods: The anticonvulsant activity of angiotensin receptor antagonists, losartan (50 mg/kg), telmisartan (30 mg/kg) and candesartan (20 mg/kg), were administered intraperitoneally to the mice and evaluated by using maximum electroshock (MES) and pentylenetetrazol induced seizures (PTZ) seizure methods. The standard was taken as phenytoin for MES and diazepam for PTZ method. Motor impairment of performance was assessed by the inverted screen test and spontaneous motor activity with digital actophotometer.Results: Losartan demonstrated the anticonvulsant efficacy in MES and PTZ models. Telmisartan and candesartan have anticonvulsant activity in MES induced seizures, but did not show protection against pentylenetetrazol induced seizures. Losartan at dose 50 mg/kg prolonged the mean latency to convulsion (p<0.01) and mean number of convulsions also significantly reduced (p<0.05) convulsions in the mice. Telmisartan and candesartan at dose 30 mg/kg and 20 mg/kg respectively showed significant prolongation in mean latency to convulsion (p<0.05). None of the test drugs i.e. angiotensin receptor antagonists showed significant motor impairment.Conclusions: Angiotensin receptor antagonists: losartan, telmisartan and candesartan had showed anticonvulsant activity in PTZ and MES seizure methods. The exact mechanism of action of their anticonvulsant action not precisely known and hence there is more studies need to test it in various other animal anticonvulsant models

Drug utilization pattern in geriatric out patient in tertiary care hospital

Background: Inappropriate drug prescribing is a global problem affecting the healthcare system. Aim and objective of the study was to study the drug utilization pattern in geriatric patient at rural tertiary care hospital.Methods: This was a cross- sectional observational study involving 600 geriatric outpatient. This study was carried out from Nov 2015 to May 2016. The data were collected using predesigned proforma specially designed for this purpose. Relevant information was obtained by analyzing prescription for World Health Organization (WHO) core drug indicators.Results: Total number 600 prescriptions analyzed at the end of six months were from general medicine department. The mean age of the patients was 63.9 years in which male (61.33%) outnumber the female. Total number 2598 drugs were prescribed to 600 patients for different diseases. The mean number of drugs per prescription were 4.33, drugs were prescribed by generic name 26.42%. drugs were prescribed from WHO essential drug list86.33. The type of formulations used were tablets and capsules in 88.5%, syrups in 5%, injections 3.5 % and inhalers 2%. Drug for Cardiovascular diseases were the most common (29.66) followed gastrointestinal (16.67), vitamins and minerals (14.66). Analgesic and NSAIDS (14.13) also prescribed commonly. Antimicrobial drugs prescribed in (7.46%) and common antibiotic prescribed were Amoxicillin ciprofloxacin and metronidazole.Conclusions: This study also effectively provides very useful baseline data also demonstrates the prescribing patterns of drugs in the geriatric patients

Editorial: Leading People - Managing Organizations: Contemporary Public Health Leadership

Effectively leading people engaged in the practice of public health has never been more critical than in the early years of the twenty-first century. Likewise, effectively managing the organizations in which these individuals practice the various professional disciplines of public health has become increasing important and difficult. Taken together, leading the people and managing public health organizations requires well educated and appropriately trained public health leaders and managers. Although leadership is often viewed as one of the key attributes of management, not every great manager will be a great leader and vice versa. While some leaders may be born with the inherent skills to lead, most effective leaders develop the requisite skills through education, additional training, and practice. Our aim is to focus the attention of public health practitioners on the importance of effectively leading public health organizations. Public health managers should recognize that their most valuable resource is the people they lead. The articles comprising the eBook on Leading People – Managing Organizations is composed of articles expressing the opinion of their authors of the need for effective public health leaders; perspective articles establishing their authors’ understanding of how leadership may be applied in various situations; methods articles that demonstrate how public health leadership may be applied, and original research articles that establish the role of public health leadership research studies

Overview of Auditing Cloud Consistency

Cloud storage services have become very popular due to their infinite advantages. To provide always-on access, a cloud service provider (CSP) maintains multiple copies for each piece of data on geographically distributed servers. A major disadvantage of using this technique in clouds is that it is very expensive to achieve strong consistency on a worldwide scale. In this system, a novel consistency as a service (CaaS) model is presented, which involves a large data cloud and many small audit clouds. In the CaaS model we are presented in our system, a data cloud is maintained by a CSP. A group of users that participate an audit cloud can verify whether the data cloud provides the promised level of consistency or not. The system proposes a two level auditing architecture, which need a loosely synchronize clock in the audit cloud. Then design algorithms to measure the severity of violations with two metrics: the commonality of violations, and the oldness value of read. Finally, heuristic auditing strategy (HAS) is devised to find out as many violations as possible. Many experiments were performed using a combination of simulations and a real cloud deployment to validate HAS. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15011

Analytical Method Development of Saxagliptin HCl by RP-HPLC

Reversed-phase chromatography is the mainly used in chromatographic mode, it is used to separate neutral molecules in solution based on their hydrophobicity. This technique is the reverse of normal-phase chromatography in the intelligence that it involves the employ of a polar mobile phase and a non-polar stationary phase. A sensitive, accurate, rapid, cost effective and robust HPLC method was developed for the quantification of Saxagliptin Hydrochloride (SGH) with UV detector. In this method, a reversed-phase Grace C18 (250mm x 4.6ID, Particle size: 5 micron) column with a mobile phase of methanol: water (80:20; v/v) at 0.8ml/min flow rate was used to separate SGH with a detection of 212nm.The volume injected was 20 µL. The retention time of SGH was obtained as 4.196 min. Hence it can be applied for routine analysis of Saxagliptin Hydrochloride (SGH) in bulk drug. Keywords: Saxagliptin Hydrochloride (SGH), RP-HPLC, Assay, Method validation

TIRSPEC : TIFR Near Infrared Spectrometer and Imager

We describe the TIFR Near Infrared Spectrometer and Imager (TIRSPEC) designed and built in collaboration with M/s. Mauna Kea Infrared LLC, Hawaii, USA, now in operation on the side port of the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT), Hanle (Ladakh), India at an altitude of 4500 meters above mean sea level. The TIRSPEC provides for various modes of operation which include photometry with broad and narrow band filters, spectrometry in single order mode with long slits of 300" length and different widths, with order sorter filters in the Y, J, H and K bands and a grism as the dispersing element as well as a cross dispersed mode to give a coverage of 1.0 to 2.5 microns at a resolving power R of ~1200. The TIRSPEC uses a Teledyne 1024 x 1024 pixel Hawaii-1 PACE array detector with a cutoff wavelength of 2.5 microns and on HCT, provides a field of view of 307" x 307" with a plate scale of 0.3"/pixel. The TIRSPEC was successfully commissioned in June 2013 and the subsequent characterization and astronomical observations are presented here. The TIRSPEC has been made available to the worldwide astronomical community for science observations from May 2014.Comment: 20 pages, 21 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Journal of Astronomical Instrumentatio

Determinants on lens spaces and cyclotomic units

The Laplacian functional determinants for conformal scalars and coexact one-forms are evaluated in closed form on inhomogeneous lens spaces of certain orders, including all odd primes when the essential part of the expression is given, formally as a cyclotomic unitComment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Perspectives of family members participating in cultural assessment of psychiatric disorders: Findings from the DSM-5 International Field Trial

Despite the important roles families play in the lives of many individuals with mental illness across cultures, there is a dearth of data worldwide on how family members perceive the process of cultural assessment as well as to how to best include them. This study addresses this gap in our knowledge through analysis of data collected across six countries as part of a DSM-5 Field Trial of the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI). At clinician discretion, individuals who accompanied patients to the clinic visit (i.e. patient companions) at the time the CFI was conducted were invited to participate in the cultural assessment and answer questions about their experience. The specific aims of this paper are (1) to describe patterns of participation of patient companions in the CFI across the six countries, and (2) to examine the comparative feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility of the CFI from companion perspectives through analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. Among the 321 patient interviews, only 86 (at four of 12 sites) included companions, all of whom were family members or other relatives. The utility, feasibility and acceptability of the CFI were rated favourably by relatives, supported by qualitative analyses of debriefing interviews. Cross-site differences in frequency of accompaniment merit further study