Outcome of posterior cruciate ligament-retaining primary total knee arthroplasty in arthritic patients

Background: The incidence of arthritis is rising in India due to increase in the proportion of ageing population and obesity. Cruciate retaining total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a promising mode of treatment for end stage arthritis, with excellent functional outcome. Hence, we have evaluated the functional outcome of posterior cruciate ligament retaining TKA and the problems related to the procedure at our institute.Methods: This prospective study was conducted on 30 patients who underwent posterior cruciate ligament retaining primary TKA at a tertiary health care centre between December 2012 and May 2014. Patients were evaluated using Knee society score (knee score and function score) at regular follow up visits.Results: The study included TKA for 42 knees in 30 patients. Indications for TKA were osteoarthritis in 37 knees and rheumatoid arthritis in 5 knees. The average follow-up period was 24 weeks. All the 42 knees had poor knee score (<60) and poor functional score (<60) preoperatively. Postoperatively 37 knees had excellent (80-100) and 5 knees had good knee score (70-79) whereas 22 patients had excellent (80-100), 5 patients had good (70-79), 2 patients had fair (60-69) and 1 patient had poor functional score (<60). Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that posterior cruciate retaining TKA is a reliable procedure with excellent functional outcome, pain relief and early return of patients to their daily activities. Posterior cruciate retaining TKA provided excellent knee society score and functional score in majority of patients

Synthesis, Spectral Characterization and Antimicrobial Studies of Co(II) Complexes with Tetradentate Schiff bases Derived from Ortho-Phthalaldehyde

A series of cobalt (II) complexes have been synthesized with Schiff bases derived from ortho-phthalaldehyde and various amines in aqueous methanol solution. The newly synthesized Schiff bases and their Co (II) complexes have been characterized  by elemental analysis, magnetic susceptibility, thermal, conductance measurements, mass, IR, electronic, 1H,13C-NMR spectral techniques. These ligands act as tetradentate species and coordinate to the metal center through the different potential donor atoms such as N, O and S. The probable octahedral structures have been assigned to these complexes. All the synthesized Schiff base ligands and Co(II) metal complexes have also been screened for their antimicrobial activities and metal complexes found to be more active than respective Schiff-base ligands

Seamless Bead to Microarray Screening: Rapid Identification of the Highest Affinity Protein Ligands from Large Combinatorial Libraries

SummarySeveral approaches have been developed for screening combinatorial libraries or collections of synthetic molecules for agonists or antagonists of protein function, each with its own advantages and limitations. In this report, we describe an experimental platform that seamlessly couples massively parallel bead-based screening of one-bead one-compound combinatorial libraries with microarray-based quantitative comparisons of the binding affinities of the many hits isolated from the bead library. Combined with other technical improvements, this technique allows the rapid identification of the best protein ligands in combinatorial libraries containing millions of compounds without the need for labor-intensive resynthesis of the hits

Opposing Regulation of PROX1 by Interleukin-3 Receptor and NOTCH Directs Differential Host Cell Fate Reprogramming by Kaposi Sarcoma Herpes Virus

Lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) are differentiated from blood vascular endothelial cells (BECs) during embryogenesis and this physiological cell fate specification is controlled by PROX1, the master regulator for lymphatic development. When Kaposi sarcoma herpes virus (KSHV) infects host cells, it activates the otherwise silenced embryonic endothelial differentiation program and reprograms their cell fates. Interestingly, previous studies demonstrated that KSHV drives BECs to acquire a partial lymphatic phenotype by upregulating PROX1 (forward reprogramming), but stimulates LECs to regain some BEC-signature genes by downregulating PROX1 (reverse reprogramming). Despite the significance of this KSHV-induced bidirectional cell fate reprogramming in KS pathogenesis, its underlying molecular mechanism remains undefined. Here, we report that IL3 receptor alpha (IL3Rα) and NOTCH play integral roles in the host cell type-specific regulation of PROX1 by KSHV. In BECs, KSHV upregulates IL3Rα and phosphorylates STAT5, which binds and activates the PROX1 promoter. In LECs, however, PROX1 was rather downregulated by KSHV-induced NOTCH signal via HEY1, which binds and represses the PROX1 promoter. Moreover, PROX1 was found to be required to maintain HEY1 expression in LECs, establishing a reciprocal regulation between PROX1 and HEY1. Upon co-activation of IL3Rα and NOTCH, PROX1 was upregulated in BECs, but downregulated in LECs. Together, our study provides the molecular mechanism underlying the cell type-specific endothelial fate reprogramming by KSHV

Requirement of argininosuccinate lyase for systemic nitric oxide production

Nitric oxide (NO) is crucial in diverse physiological and pathological processes. We show that a hypomorphic mouse model of argininosuccinate lyase (encoded by Asl) deficiency has a distinct phenotype of multiorgan dysfunction and NO deficiency. Loss of Asl in both humans and mice leads to reduced NO synthesis, owing to both decreased endogenous arginine synthesis and an impaired ability to use extracellular arginine for NO production. Administration of nitrite, which can be converted into NO in vivo, rescued the manifestations of NO deficiency in hypomorphic Asl mice, and a nitric oxide synthase (NOS)-independent NO donor restored NO-dependent vascular reactivity in humans with ASL deficiency. Mechanistic studies showed that ASL has a structural function in addition to its catalytic activity, by which it contributes to the formation of a multiprotein complex required for NO production. Our data demonstrate a previously unappreciated role for ASL in NOS function and NO homeostasis. Hence, ASL may serve as a target for manipulating NO production in experimental models, as well as for the treatment of NO-related diseases

REMOVAL OF ELECTRODE MOTION ARTIFACT IN ECG SIGNALS USING WAVELET BASED THRESHOLD METHODS WITH GREY INCIDENCE DEGREE

Cardiovascular diseases are one of the most frequent and dangerous problems in modern society in nowadays. Unfortunately electrocardiograms (ECG) signals, during their acquisition process, are affected by various types of noise and artifacts due to the movement, or breathing of the patient, electrode contact, power-line interferences, etc. The aim of this study was to develop an algorithm to remove electrode motion artifact in ECG signals. Donoho and Johnstone proposed Wavelet thresholding de-noising method based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is suitable for non-stationary signals. The wavelet transform coefficient is processed by using grey relation analysis of the grey theory, and a new wavelet threshold method namely wavelet threshold method with grey incidence degree (GID) (or the GID threshold method) based is introduced. It shows that the signal smoothness and similarity of the two signal criteria have been greatly improved by the GID threshold method compared with existing threshold methods. According to the characteristics of different ECG signals, GID threshold method gets better results than it can adaptively deal with noise separation and details remaining of the two opposing signal problems, so as to provide a better choice for wavelet threshold methods of signal processing. Performance analysis was performed by evaluating Mean Square Error (MSE), Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and visual inspection over the denoised signal from each algorithm. The experimental result shows that GID hard shrinkage method with sub-band or level dependent thresholding gives the best denoising performance on ECG signal. The result shows that soft threshold not always gives better denoising performance; it depends on which wavelet thresholding algorithm was chosen

Indium-mediated deoxygenation of amine-N-oxides in aqueous media

Several aromatic and aliphatic amine-N-oxides were deoxygenated to the corresponding amines in good to quantitative yield using indium metal in neutral aqueous media. Other functional groups such as alkenes, halides, esters, ethers, nitriles, amides and sulfones are unaffected under the present reaction conditions

Regioselective reactions of phenacyl bromide with active methylene compounds

1519-1522The reactivity of phenacyl bromide with active methylene compounds in the presence of alcoholic KOH, BTEAC (PTC) , NaOEt and K2CO3 has been studied

Zinc mediated facile amide formation: application to alkyl, aryl, heterocycle, carbohydrate and amino acids

Synthesis of alkyl, aryl, heterocyclic, carbohydrate and amino acid amides using activated zinc is described. The recovery and reuse of the zinc makes the procedure more economic