Clinico-etiological profile of acute kidney injury in children admitted to paediatric intensive care unit of a tertiary care centre

Background: Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) refers to a reversible accumulation of urea, creatinine and nitrogenous waste products and disturbances in maintenance of fluid and electrolyte homeostasis. The incidence of AKI continues to increase in the Paediatric age group particularly in critically ill children with the etiology shifting from primary renal disorders to multifactorial cause. The objective of the study to determine the incidence, clinical profile and outcome of AKI in critically ill children using p-RIFLE criteria.Methods: A prospective observational study was done with 342 children aged between 1-12 years, admitted in Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of Institute of Child Health and Research Centre, Madurai Medical College, Madurai during July 2015 to June 2016.Results: The overall incidence of AKI among critically ill children was 30.1%. The mortality rate was 43.7% and 20.7% patients with AKI had partial renal recovery at the time of discharge. 27.2% patients required renal replacement therapy (RRT). Infectious causes 57.3% (Sepsis, Meningoencephalitis, Bronchopneumonia) dominated the etiological profile.Conclusions: Incidence of AKI is high in critically-ill children. AKI continues to be associated with adverse outcomes, including high mortality and partial renal recovery

Owls of the forest’s edge

It looked like just a few random vertical poles stuck in between carefully-planted paddy fields adjoining the Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve. The poles were crudely fashioned and topped with flattened pads of hay, stuffed into polythene or white cloth bags

A Study of Thought, Language, Communication disorder in Schizophrenia

INTRODUCTION: Schizophrenia is a chronic severe psychiatric disorder. The life time prevalence ranges from 0.3 – 0.6 %. It manifests as form and content of thought disorder. It has different language behavior, conceptually divergent. These are assessed by naturalistic observation of language behavior. In western countries, more studies are done on thought, language, communication disorder, but rare in our population. We conducted a study of thought, language, communication disorder in institute of mental health, Chennai, Tamilnadu. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To examine type, severity, prevalence of thought, language, communication disorder in schizophrenia and difference between acute episode of schizophrenia and chronic institutionalized schizophrenia and also examine correlation between thought, language, communication disorder with socio demographic variables. METHODOLOGY: The study was conducted in Institute of Mental health, Madras Medical College, Chennai, a tertiary care centre for Tamil Nadu after approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee. Acute episode of schizophrenia patients are those who are admitted as inpatients, within first week of admission. Chronic institutionalized patients are those who are as in-patients for more than 2 years time period. A total of 100 sample size with 50 acute episode of schizophrenia patients and 50 chronic institutionalised (in-patients > 2 years duration) schizophrenia patients. Andreasen scale is used. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: We find significant difference in type, severity, prevalence of thought language communication disorder variables in our population.Significant correlation of thought language communication variables with socio demographic variables. We find there is no signicant difference in variables with length of stayal in chronic institutionalized patients

Conservation of a fragmented population of blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra)

The Vallanadu Blackbuck Sanctuary (VBS), Tamil Nadu, India is a small protected area (PA) designated to conserve blackbuck. We did a study on habitat use and suitability in the PA that has come under various management interventions. The occupancy of blackbuck was positively correlated with areas lying within the PA, but the encounter rate of blackbuck was significantly higher in areas outside the PA. Being small in size, VBS may not hold a large population of blackbucks, but may help in saving the species which once widely occurred in the southernmost parts of India

Formulation and Evaluation of hydrodynamically balanced system of Baclofen

Spasticity is a feature of altered skeletal muscle performance in muscle tone involving hypertonia; it is also referred to as an unusual "tightness", stiffness, or "pull" of muscles palsy and spinal. Spasticity, a condition in which certain muscles are continuously contracted, affects over 12 million worldwide. Baclofen is the largest prescribed drug for this indication, worldwide. Even though once-daily extended release GRS is available in the market, it is very expensive as it is a coated multi-layer gas generating floating tablet. The main objective is to develop once-daily sustained release gastro-retentive floating system of Baclofen in an economical way by using HPMC and natural gums. Fourteen formulations of floating matrix tablets of Baclofen (F1 – F14) were prepared by using different polymers and additives (HPMC K100M, HPMC K15M, HPMC K4M, Guar gum Xanthan gum PEO WSR301,- 303, sodium bicarbonate, Avicel PH-102, Talc, Magnesium stearate) at different concentrations by direct compression method. The formula 11 was found to be optimum and released 98.47% of Baclofen in 24hrs. Hence, it was selected as the optimized formulation. Marketed formulation exhibited FLT of 63.67±4.01 seconds, TFT of 24 hours and released 95.07±0.41% drug in 24 hours. Finally, once-daily sustained release gastro-retentive floating tablets of Baclofen were successfully formulated in a relatively economical way when compared to the marketed formulation and found to be superior when compared to the marketed formulation

Partial Purification of Extracellular Amylase From Halotolerant Actinomycetes Streptomyces brasiliensis MML2028

Amylase is considered as an industrially important enzyme as it occupies the most important function in the food, paper, and pharmaceutical industries. The present study is concerned with the optimization, production and partial purification of halotolerant amylase from newly isolated Streptomyces brasiliensis MML2028, from Kelambakkam salt pan, Tamil Nadu, India. The primary screening was carried out by well diffusion assay to find the zone of lysis. The assay was observed for each media optimization by measuring the release of reducing sugar (RS) by the 3,5 dinitro salicylic acid (DNS) method and expressed in the international unit (UI). Ammonium sulphate precipitation was used to partially purify the enzyme and then lyophilized. SDS-PAGE was performed to identify the molecular weight. The production medium was optimized with 1% of the starch substrate, 3% of NaCl at 24˚C and pH 9, and incubation of 9 days. The total activity of the partially purified α-amylase was observed to be 1806.9U/mL. The partially purified enzyme was more active with 3% NaCl, pH 8, and 24˚C which is known to be a halotolerant alkaline α-amylase. The enzyme showed tolerance towards magnesium, manganese ions, Triton x-100, and urea. De-inking of α-amylase showed good results proving that the enzyme activity is more efficient. Hence, the alkaliphilic amylase from Halotolerant actinomycetes S. Brasiliensis MML2028 could be a better microbial source that can be used in many industries, especially in paper and textiles

Microparticle-mediated transfer of the viral receptors CAR and CD46, and the CFTR channel in a CHO cell model confers new functions to target cells

Cell microparticles (MPs) released in the extracellular milieu can embark plasma membrane and intracellular components which are specific of their cellular origin, and transfer them to target cells. The MP-mediated, cell-to-cell transfer of three human membrane glycoproteins of different degrees of complexity was investigated in the present study, using a CHO cell model system. We first tested the delivery of CAR and CD46, two monospanins which act as adenovirus receptors, to target CHO cells. CHO cells lack CAR and CD46, high affinity receptors for human adenovirus serotype 5 (HAdV5), and serotype 35 (HAdV35), respectively. We found that MPs derived from CHO cells (MP-donor cells) constitutively expressing CAR (MP-CAR) or CD46 (MP-CD46) were able to transfer CAR and CD46 to target CHO cells, and conferred selective permissiveness to HAdV5 and HAdV35. In addition, target CHO cells incubated with MP-CD46 acquired the CD46-associated function in complement regulation. We also explored the MP-mediated delivery of a dodecaspanin membrane glycoprotein, the CFTR to target CHO cells. CFTR functions as a chloride channel in human cells and is implicated in the genetic disease cystic fibrosis. Target CHO cells incubated with MPs produced by CHO cells constitutively expressing GFP-tagged CFTR (MP-GFP-CFTR) were found to gain a new cellular function, the chloride channel activity associated to CFTR. Time-course analysis of the appearance of GFP-CFTR in target cells suggested that MPs could achieve the delivery of CFTR to target cells via two mechanisms: the transfer of mature, membrane-inserted CFTR glycoprotein, and the transfer of CFTR-encoding mRNA. These results confirmed that cell-derived MPs represent a new class of promising therapeutic vehicles for the delivery of bioactive macromolecules, proteins or mRNAs, the latter exerting the desired therapeutic effect in target cells via de novo synthesis of their encoded proteins

Large oncosomes contain distinct protein cargo and represent a separate functional class of tumor-derived extracellular vesicles

Large oncosomes (LO) are atypically large (1-10 mu m diameter) cancer-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs), originating from the shedding of membrane blebs and associated with advanced disease. We report that 25% of the proteins, identified by a quantitative proteomics analysis, are differentially represented in large and nano-sized EVs from prostate cancer cells. Proteins enriched in large EVs included enzymes involved in glucose, glutamine and amino acid metabolism, all metabolic processes relevant to cancer. Glutamine metabolism was altered in cancer cells exposed to large EVs, an effect that was not observed upon treatment with exosomes. Large EVs exhibited discrete buoyant densities in iodixanol (OptiPrep (TM)) gradients. Fluorescent microscopy of large EVs revealed an appearance consistent with LO morphology, indicating that these structures can be categorized as LO. Among the proteins enriched in LO, cytokeratin 18 (CK18) was one of the most abundant (within the top 5th percentile) and was used to develop an assay to detect LO in the circulation and tissues of mice and patients with prostate cancer. These observations indicate that LO represent a discrete EV type that may play a distinct role in tumor progression and that may be a source of cancer-specific markers.1182Ysciescopu

Microguards and micromessengers of the genome

The regulation of gene expression is of fundamental importance to maintain organismal function and integrity and requires a multifaceted and highly ordered sequence of events. The cyclic nature of gene expression is known as ‘transcription dynamics’. Disruption or perturbation of these dynamics can result in significant fitness costs arising from genome instability, accelerated ageing and disease. We review recent research that supports the idea that an important new role for small RNAs, particularly microRNAs (miRNAs), is in protecting the genome against short-term transcriptional fluctuations, in a process we term ‘microguarding’. An additional emerging role for miRNAs is as ‘micromessengers’—through alteration of gene expression in target cells to which they are trafficked within microvesicles. We describe the scant but emerging evidence that miRNAs can be moved between different cells, individuals and even species, to exert biologically significant responses. With these two new roles, miRNAs have the potential to protect against deleterious gene expression variation from perturbation and to themselves perturb the expression of genes in target cells. These interactions between cells will frequently be subject to conflicts of interest when they occur between unrelated cells that lack a coincidence of fitness interests. Hence, there is the potential for miRNAs to represent both a means to resolve conflicts of interest, as well as instigate them. We conclude by exploring this conflict hypothesis, by describing some of the initial evidence consistent with it and proposing new ideas for future research into this exciting topic