Evaluation of pharmacotherapy in neonatal and pediatric intensive care unit of a south Indian tertiary care hospital: a prospective observational study

Background: Evaluating the pharmacotherapy is essential at neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) to identify and understand pattern and variability in drug use in polypharmacy, also to promote interventions that will improve patient outcomes.Methods: In our study, we audited pharmacotherapy of 300 neonates and 100 pediatric patients admitted to NICU and PICU from November 2018 to February 2019. WHO-CORE prescribing indicators, WHO-ATC system and WHO-ICD 10th version was used to evaluate pharmacotherapy and to understand the pattern and extent of medication use and to systematically classify drugs and diseases respectively.Results: A total of 1207 medications containing 34 unique active ingredients were prescribed for 300 neonates with an average of 4.02 (±2.0) drugs per neonate admitted to NICU and the most prescribed drugs were anti-infectives for systemic use 799. A total of 976 medications containing 69 unique active ingredients were prescribed with an average of 9.76 (±3.81) per pediatric patients admitted to PICU with anti-infectives for systemic use 331 tops the list. More than 75% of drugs was prescribed in generic name with 98% constant availability of key drugs at intensive care unit.Conclusions: This study substantiates the need for reinforcement of institutional antibiotic policies as antibiotics are widely prescribed and there is an increase trend of antibiotic resistance at critical care unit, assessment of WHO core prescribing indicators are reflective of quality care revealing the awareness about strict monitoring of pharmacotherapy

Honey as a potent natural supplement for diverse human ailments

Abstract The use of natural honey (NH) as a medicinal agent is associated with a vast range of health benefits and therapeutic promises. The tradition of using honey as a potent food supplementation and medicinal component exist in several countries cutting across traditions and civilizations. This review revisits the wide spectrum of medicinal properties that are associated with honey in the light of modern research and attempts to impart the much needed data required to provide this natural food the status of evidence based medicine. Subjects as diverse as diabetes, cardiology and ophthalmology were covered where beneficial medical properties of honey has been demonstrated and the review was concluded by identifying few safety aspects that are required to be known while using natural, unprocessed honey

Additive Manufacturing and Performance of Architectured Cement-Based Materials

There is an increasing interest in hierarchical design and Additive Manufacturing (AM)of cement-based materials. However, the brittle behavior of these materials and the presence of interfaces from the additive manufacturing process represent the current major challenges. Our work focuses on harnessing the heterogeneous interfaces by employing clever designs from bio-inspired Bouligand architectured materials. In this paper, we aim to demonstrate some key mechanisms that can allow brittle hardened cement-based materials to gain flaw-tolerant properties. Mechanisms such as cracktwisting at the interfaces have been previously observed in naturally-occurring orsynthetic composite Bouligand architectures. In this paper, a heterogeneous interface with porous characteristics in 3D-printed solid hardened cement paste (hcp)architectures were characterized. We hypothesize that the presence of heterogeneous interface in 3D-printed hardened cement paste (hcp) elements, in conjunction with clever architectures, promote key damage mechanisms such as interfacial cracking and crack twisting that lead to damage delocalization. This delocalization can be energetically favorable and allow energy dissipation and promote toughening and flaw-tolerant properties. We found that these architectures can enhance the properties from the typical strength-porosity relationship, classically known for brittle hcp materials

Ballistic magnetoresistance in nickel single-atom conductors

Large ballistic magnetoresistance (BMR) has been measured in Ni single-atom conductors electrodeposited between microfabricated thin films. These measurements irrefutably eliminate any magnetostriction related artifacts in the BMR effect.Comment: 12 pages, 3 Figure

Microbial dysbiosis and the aging process: a review on the potential age-deceleration role of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum

Gut microbiota dysbiosis has been a serious risk factor for several gastric and systemic diseases. Recently, gut microbiota’s role in aging was discussed. Available preclinical evidence suggests that the probiotic bacteria Lactiplantibacillus plantarums (LP) may influence the aging process via modulation of the gut microbiota. The present review summarized compelling evidence of LP’s potential effect on aging hallmarks such as oxidative stress, inflammation, DNA methylation, and mitochondrial dysfunction. LP gavage modulates gut microbiota and improves overall endurance in aging animal models. LP cell constituents exert considerable antioxidant potential which may reduce ROS levels directly. In addition, restored gut microbiota facilitate a healthy intestinal milieu and accelerate multi-channel communication via signaling factors such as SCFA and GABA. Signaling factors further activate specific transcription factor Nrf2 in order to reduce oxidative damage. Nrf2 regulates cellular defense systems involving anti-inflammatory cytokines, MMPs, and protective enzymes against MAPKs. We concluded that LP supplementation may be an effective approach to managing aging and associated health risks

Identifiability of flow distributions from link measurements with applications to computer networks

We study the problem of identifiability of distributions of flows on a graph from aggregate measurements collected on its edges. This is a canonical example of a statistical inverse problem motivated by recent developments in computer networks. In this paper (i) we introduce a number of models for multi-modal data that capture their spatio-temporal correlation, (ii) provide sufficient conditions for the identifiability of nth order cumulants and also for a special class of heavy tailed distributions. Further, we investigate conditions on network routing for the flows that prove sufficient for identifiability of their distributions (up to mean). Finally, we extend our results to directed acyclic graphs and discuss some open problems.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58107/2/ip7_5_004.pd

Microfluidic affinity selection of active SARS-CoV-2 virus particles

We report a microfluidic assay to select active severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) viral particles (VPs), which were defined as intact particles with an accessible angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor binding domain (RBD) on the spike (S) protein, from clinical samples. Affinity selection of SARS-CoV-2 particles was carried out using injection molded microfluidic chips, which allow for high-scale production to accommodate large-scale screening. The microfluidic contained a surface-bound aptamer directed against the virus’s S protein RBD to affinity select SARS-CoV-2 VPs. Following selection (~94% recovery), the VPs were released from the chip’s surface using a blue light light-emitting diode (89% efficiency). Selected SARS-CoV-2 VP enumeration was carried out using reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The VP selection assay successfully identified healthy donors (clinical specificity = 100%) and 19 of 20 patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (95% sensitivity). In 15 patients with COVID-19, the presence of active SARS-CoV-2 VPs was found. The chip can be reprogrammed for any VP or exosomes by simply changing the affinity agent

Disaster Risks Research and Assessment to Promote Risk Reduction and Management

Natural hazard events lead to disasters when the events interact with exposed and vulnerable physical and social systems. Despite significant progress in scientific understanding of physical phenomena leading to natural hazards as well as of vulnerability and exposure, disaster losses due to natural events do not show a tendency to decrease. This tendency is associated with many factors including increase in populations and assets at risk as well as in frequency and/or magnitude of natural events, especially those related to hydro-meteorological and climatic hazards. But essentially disaster losses increase because some of the elements of the multidimensional dynamic disaster risk system are not accounted for risk assessments. A comprehensive integrated system analysis and periodic assessment of disaster risks at any scale, from local to global, based on knowledge and data/information accumulated so far, are essential scientific tools that can assist in recognition and reduction of disaster risks. This paper reviews and synthesizes the knowledge of natural hazards, vulnerabilities, and disaster risks and aims to highlight potential contributions of science to disaster risk reduction (DRR) in order to provide policy-makers with the knowledge necessary to assist disaster risk mitigation and disaster risk management (DRM)

Interaction of enamel matrix proteins with human periodontal ligament cells

Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award for research studies (jointly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK, and by Institut Straumann) and the Research Discretionary Funds of the Periodontology Unit, UCL Eastman Dental Institute. Financial support was also provided by the NIHR Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre and by the WCU Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (No. R31-10069)