SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THIOLATED JACKFRUIT SEED STARCH AS A COLONIC DRUG DELIVERY CARRIER

Objective: Site-specific drug delivery into the colonic region is extremely fascinating for local treatment of various colonic diseases like ulcerative colitis, colon cancer but it should be capable of saving the drug from hydrolysis and degradation. The present study reports the application of jackfruit seed starch and its thiol derivative as a drug delivery carrier for the colon. Methods: The starch was extracted from the jackfruit seeds by water extraction method and modified by the esterification reaction with thioglycolic acid. The thiolated starch was characterized for morphology, functional and flow properties. The safety profile of the thiolated starch was confirmed by acute toxicity study in a mice model as per OECD guidelines 423. The microspheres based on thiolated starch were prepared by ionic gelation method incorporating Ibuprofen as a model drug. The prepared microspheres were characterized for particle size, drug entrapment efficiency, drug loading, compatibility study, surface morphology, in vitro drug release and release kinetics. Results: The result attributed that starch was successfully modified by the thiolation with a degree of substitution of 3.30. The size of prepared microspheres ranges from 825.5±4.58 to 857±6.24 µm, the entrapment efficiencies ranges from 69.23±1.19 to 76.15±0.83 % and the drug loading capacity ranges from 17.75±0.30 to 46.05±0.49 %. The FT-IR, DSC and XRD studies confirmed that there is no interaction within drug and excipients. The thiolated starch microspheres show the maximum release of drug at pH 7.4 in the presence of rat caecal content as compared to pH 1.2 and pH 6.8 for up to 24 h and are following first order release kinetics. Conclusion: These results suggest the application of thiolated jackfruit seed starch could be promising as a long-term drug delivery carrier for the colon

BOOSTING THE SKIN DELIVERY OF CURCUMIN THROUGH STEARIC ACID-ETHYL CELLULOSE BLEND HYBRID NANOCARRIERS-BASED APPROACH FOR MITIGATING PSORIASIS

Objective: Curcumin presents poor topical bioavailability when administered orally, which poses a major hurdle in its use as an effective therapy for the management of psoriasis. The present study reports the utilization of lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles (LPHNPs) for the topical delivery of curcumin which can be a potential approach for mitigating psoriasis. Methods: Curcumin-loaded LPHNPs were prepared by the emulsification solvent evaporation method and characterized. The optimized Curcumin-loaded LPHNPs (DLN-3) were further incorporated into 2% Carbopol 940 gels and evaluated for its therapeutic efficacy in the Imiquimod (IMQ)-induced psoriasis rat model. Results: The average particle size, polydispersity index, zeta potential, drug entrapment and loading efficiency for DLN-3 were found to be 200.9 nm, 0.342,-28.3 mV, 87.40±0.99% and 4.57±0.04%, respectively. FT-IR, DSC and XRD studies confirmed that all the components used for the formulation are compatible with each other, whereas SEM and TEM analysis affirmed the spherical shape of LPHNPs with a smooth surface. The in vitro drug release studies suggest that curcumin was released from the LPHNPs in a sustained manner over a period of 24 h via super case II transport mechanism. Results of in vitro skin permeation study revealed that 38.39±2.67% of curcumin permeated at 12 h across excised pig ear skin with a permeation flux of 18.74±3.59 µg/cm2/h. Further, in vivo evaluation and histopathological studies demonstrated that NLHG-1 hydrogels showed better therapeutic efficacy against the psoriatic skin lesions than the standard marketed gels. Conclusion: These results suggest that the developed LPHNPs have a superior ability to improve the skin penetration or accumulation of DLN-3 within psoriatic skin and offer a potential delivery system for the management of psoriasis

Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine XXX (2013) XXX‐XXX 1 Effective Management of Medical Information through ROI-Lossless Fragile Image Watermarking Technique

In this article, we have proposed a blind, fragile and Region of Interest (ROI) lossless medical image watermarking (MIW) technique, providing an all-in-one solution tool to various medical data distribution and management issues like security, content authentication, safe archiving, controlled access retrieval and captioning etc. The proposed scheme combines lossless data compression and encryption technique to embed electronic health record (EHR)/DICOM metadata, image hash, indexing keyword, doctor identification code and tamper localization information in the medical images. Extensive experiments (both subjective and objective) were carried out to evaluate performance of the proposed MIW technique. The findings offer suggestive evidence that the proposed MIW scheme is an effective all-in-one solution tool to various issues of medical information management domain. Moreover, given its relative simplicity, the proposed scheme can be applied to the medical images to serve in many medical applications concerned with privacy protection, safety, and management etc. Keywords

An observational study to evaluate and compare the role of bilateral internal iliac artery ligation with uterine compression sutures for arresting postpartum haemorrhage in a tertiary care hospital in West Bengal

Background: Postpartum haemorrhage is the most important cause of maternal mortality which is near about 13% in developed countries and 34% in developing countries. When postpartum haemorrhage is not controlled even after aggressive medical management, immediate surgical intervention is needed which includes bilateral internal iliac artery ligation, B-Lynch compression sutures, hysterectomy as a last resort. Bilateral internal iliac artery ligation is much quicker and having lesser risk of uterine necrosis as compare to B-Lynch suture. That’s why a study was conducted to evaluate and compare the role of bilateral internal iliac artery ligation with B-Lynch compression sutures.Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology in Burdwan medical college and hospital for a period of 3 years from 1st July 2019 to 30th June 2022. Out of total 62 cases of intractable postpartum haemorrhage, 31 cases underwent bilateral internal iliac artery ligation (group A) and another 31 cases underwent B-Lynch compression sutures (group B).Results: In this study, most of the women were in the age group of 21-30 years. both in group A and group B. Risk factors for postpartum haemorrhage in both groups were pre-eclampsia, abruption, placenta previa, nonprogress of labour, multiple pregnancy. Blood products requirements were much more in group B than group A. Hysterectomy needed in 12.9% cases of group A and 29.03% cases of group B. In terms of maternal outcome, out of total maternal death, 37.5% cases were under group A, 62.5% cases were under group B.Conclusions: In our study, need for hysterectomy was less in cases of bilateral internal iliac artery ligation compared with B-Lynch compression sutures. So, bilateral internal iliac artery ligation should be early resort to prevent hysterectomy in cases of atonic postpartum haemorrhage with low parity. As bilateral internal iliac artery ligation is a life saving procedure, every obstetrician must be able to perform it and should have proper knowledge of retroperitoneal anatomy to avoid injury of iliac veins and ureter

Novel CBIR System Based on Ripplet Transform Using Interactive Neuro-Fuzzy Technique

Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system is an emerging research area in effective digital data management and retrieval paradigm. In this article, a novel CBIR system based on a new Multiscale Geometric Analysis (MGA)-tool, called Ripplet Transform Type-I (RT) is presented. To improve the retrieval result and to reduce the computational complexity, the proposed scheme utilizes a Neural Network (NN) based classifier for image pre-classification, similarity matching using Manhattan distance measure and relevance feedback mechanism (RFM) using fuzzy entropy based feature evaluation technique. Extensive experiments were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed technique. The performance of the proposed CBIR system is evaluated using a 2 £ 5-fold cross validation followed by a statistical analysis. The experimental results suggest that the proposed system based on RT, performs better than many existing CBIR schemes based on other transforms, and the difference is statistically significant

BOX-BEHNKEN DESIGN APPROACH TO DEVELOP NANO-VESICULAR HERBAL GEL FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF SKIN CANCER IN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMAL MODEL

Objective: To manage the increasing burden of skin cancer cases globally and to replace conventional invasive treatments and their side effects, the present study is aimed to develop a transfersomal herbal gel of Green Tea Catechins (GTC) extracted from indigenous green tea and evaluate it for in vivo management of skin cancer in an experimental animal model. Methods: GTC-loaded transfersomes (GTCTF) were prepared by the thin-film hydration method. After optimizing the GTCTFs using the Box-Behnken design, they were characterized for zeta potential, structure, in vitro drug release, and in vitro skin permeation. Carbopol 940 gel was developed for the topical delivery of GTCTF and characterized for pH, viscosity, spreadability and in vitro skin permeation. In vitro MTT assay and in vivo chemopreventive and anticancer efficacy of the GTCTF gel were evaluated in mice. Results: The GTCTF has shown a particle size of 151.4±1.9 nm, entrapment efficiency of 68.25±0.06 %, and drug loading of 10.41±0.02 %. The in vitro MTT assay in B16F10 melanoma cell lines showed promising anticancer efficacy of the GTCTF. GTCTF gel was found suitable for topical delivery with favorable pH, viscosity, spreadability, and permeability and effective in preventing and curing skin cancer in mice, with a significant reduction of tissue biochemical parameters like TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6. Conclusion: Collectively, successful prevention and curing of the induced skin cancer in the experimental animal model by the GTCTF gel have established a novel herbal nanomedicine approach for the management of skin cancer

Relaparotomy after caesarean section: a retrospective observational study in a tertiary medical college

Background: Relaparotomy is the term which defines operations performed within 60days after the initial surgery. Ralaparotomy following caesarean section may happen and that’s why a study was done to evaluate the risk factors, indications, procedures done during relaparotomy after caesarean section.Methods: A retrospective observational study was conducted in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology in burdwan medical college and hospital for a period of 3years from 1June 2019 to 31 May 2022. Total 32 cases required relaparotomy following caesarean section.Results: In this study, there were 25,527 caesarean deliveries out of 56,145 total deliveries over 3years time period. Among caesarean deliveries 32 cases underwent relaparotomy (0.12%). In most of the cases relaparotomies were due to intraperitoneal haemorrhage, rectus sheath hematoma, postpartum haemorrhage. Indications of cesarean section were severe preeclampsia, non-progress of labour, abruption, post cesarean section with scar tenderness, meconium-stained liquor with fetal distress. Most of the women were in the age group of 20-30 years. Resuturing of the bleeding points were done in most of the cases.Conclusions: As a lifesaving procedure, decision of relaparotomy should be taken as soon as possible. Proper hemostasis need to be ensured before closure of abdomen, as intraperitoneal haemorrhage is the most common indications for relaparotomy