Development, implementation, and analysis of adverse drug reaction monitoring system in a rural tertiary care teaching hospital in Narketpally, Telangana

Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADR) are the fourth leading cause of mortality and a great concern in therapeutics. Pharmacovigilance is more important in India as the health care system is inadequate with poor doctor-patient ratio, high incidence of self-medication, and presence of counterfeit drugs. The present study was conducted with the aim of analyzing the pattern of ADR occurring in a rural tertiary care hospital with a newly established pharmacovigilance center and to identify the most frequent ADRs, common drugs implicated and severity of reactions.Methods: A non-interventional observational prospective study was conducted over a year. The red boxes for dropping the filled yellow ADR forms were installed in all the wards and outpatient departments. Additional information and missing data were obtained personally by either consulting the physician or through case sheets.Results: The most common class of drugs implicated in the causation of ADRs was antimicrobials (52%), followed by drugs acting on the central nervous system. The most commonly observed ADRs were dermatological Type B reactions. The majority of the reactions belonged to possible or probable category, but no reaction was categorized as definite.Conclusion: Dermatological reactions are the most common ADR occurring in our hospital and antimicrobials are the most common causative drugs. The reporting rate was adequate, and there is still a need for increasing the awareness and knowledge about ADR reporting system and pharmacovigilance for promoting the safe use of drugs

Comparative evaluation of H1 receptor blocking activity and safety of newer H1antagonist mizolastine with loratadine and placebo: a randomized double blind three way crossover study

Background: Histamine is a naturally occurring body constituent synthesized from L-histidine by histidine decarboxylase enzyme that is expressed throughout the body including central nervous system neurons, gastric mucosa, mast cells and basophils. The objective of this study was to compare the pharmacological activity and safety of 10 mg mizolastine, 10 mg loratadine and placebo in healthy human volunteers.Methods: After randomly allocating the 3 drugs, a battery of psychometric tests was done. Histamine prick test for wheal and flare reaction, VAS for sedation and itch followed by salivary flow test were done. Vitals were recorded. The subjects were randomized to receive either of the treatment in a cross-over manner with washout period of 7 days. The wheal and flare areas were recorded before and after 1,2,4,8, and 24 hours.Results: Mean inhibition on histamine induced wheal and flare response with mizolastine was highly significant as compared to placebo from 1 hour onwards (p<0.001) with maximum inhibition of 98.1±1.8% at 4 hours and of 85.1±24.8percent at 8 hours, for wheal and flare, respectively. The mean inhibition on histamine induced response with loratadine was significant from 2 hours (p<0.05) for wheal area and 1 hour onwards up to 24 hours (P<0.01) for flare area with the maximum inhibition of 56.2±31.6 percent and 60.1±14.2percent at 8hours, respectively. Mean inhibition on histamine induced itch with mizolastine was also significant from 4 hours onwards and persisted up to 24 hours (p<0.05) with maximum inhibition of 58.6±54.2% at 8 hours for the itch response, unlike loratidine. There was no significant change in mean effect on sedation assessed on a VAS of 0-100 mm. There was no significant change in psychomotor functions, salivary flow or vital parameters. All were well tolerated.Conclusions: Mizolastine has good antihistaminic activity than loratadine. Neither drug causes any psychomotor impairment or has anti-cholinergic action

Affine equation of state from quintessence and k-essence fields

We explore the possibility that a scalar field with appropriate Lagrangian can mimic a perfect fluid with an affine barotropic equation of state. The latter can be thought of as a generic cosmological dark component evolving as an effective cosmological constant plus a generalized dark matter. As such, it can be used as a simple, phenomenological model for either dark energy or unified dark matter. Furthermore, it can approximate (up to first order in the energy density) any barotropic dark fluid with arbitrary equation of state. We find that two kinds of Lagrangian for the scalar field can reproduce the desired behaviour: a quintessence-like with a hyperbolic potential, or a purely kinetic k-essence one. We discuss the behaviour of these two classes of models from the point of view of the cosmological background, and we give some hints on their possible clustering properties.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Minor updates, accepted by CQ

Two Loop Scalar Self-Mass during Inflation

We work in the locally de Sitter background of an inflating universe and consider a massless, minimally coupled scalar with a quartic self-interaction. We use dimensional regularization to compute the fully renormalized scalar self-mass-squared at one and two loop order for a state which is released in Bunch-Davies vacuum at t=0. Although the field strength and coupling constant renormalizations are identical to those of lfat space, the geometry induces a non-zero mass renormalization. The finite part also shows a sort of growing mass that competes with the classical force in eventually turning off this system's super-acceleration.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures, revtex4, revised for publication with extended list of reference

CHIME/FRB Detection of Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources

We report on the discovery of eight repeating fast radio burst (FRB) sources found using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope. These sources span a dispersion measure (DM) range of 103.5 to 1281 pc cm$^{-3}$. They display varying degrees of activity: six sources were detected twice, another three times, and one ten times. These eight repeating FRBs likely represent the bright and/or high-rate end of a distribution of infrequently repeating sources. For all sources, we determine sky coordinates with uncertainties of $\sim$10$^\prime$. FRB 180916.J0158+65 has a burst-averaged DM = $349.2 \pm 0.3$ pc cm$^{-3}$ and a low DM excess over the modelled Galactic maximum (as low as $\sim$20 pc cm$^{-3}$); this source also has a Faraday rotation measure (RM) of $-114.6 \pm 0.6$ rad m$^{-2}$, much lower than the RM measured for FRB 121102. FRB 181030.J1054+73 has the lowest DM for a repeater, $103.5 \pm 0.3$ pc cm$^{-3}$, with a DM excess of $\sim$ 70 pc cm$^{-3}$. Both sources are interesting targets for multi-wavelength follow-up due to their apparent proximity. The DM distribution of our repeater sample is statistically indistinguishable from that of the first 12 CHIME/FRB sources that have not repeated. We find, with 4$\sigma$ significance, that repeater bursts are generally wider than those of CHIME/FRB bursts that have not repeated, suggesting different emission mechanisms. Our repeater events show complex morphologies that are reminiscent of the first two discovered repeating FRBs. The repetitive behavior of these sources will enable interferometric localizations and subsequent host galaxy identifications.Comment: 40 pages, 11 figures; accepted by ApJL on 28 September 2019; added analysis of correlation between width and max. flux densit

A web-accessible computer program for calculating electrical potentials and ion activities at cell-membrane surfaces

Increasing evidence indicates that plant responses to ions (uptake/transport, inhibition, and alleviation of inhibition) are dependent upon ion activities at the outer surface of root-cell plasma membranes (PMs) rather than activities in the bulk-phase rooting medium

Essential function for ErbB3 in breast cancer proliferation

The overexpression of the ErbB family of tyrosine kinase receptors is thought to be important in the development of many breast tumours. To date, most attention has focused on the ErbB2 receptor. Now, in a recent report, it has been shown that ErbB3 is a critical partner for the transforming activity of ErbB2 in breast cancer cells. Importantly, the proliferative signals from this transforming complex appear to act via the PI-3 kinase pathway

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives