Prevalence and predictors of medication non-adherence in some common non-communicable chronic diseases and cancers: a comparative study

Background: Adherence is a key factor in the success of all pharmacological therapies. Medication non-adherence is an extremely common barrier to achieve positive health outcomes. The present study aims to compare medication non-adherence in some common chronic diseases and cancers and also to assess various factors influencing it.Methods: Pre-validated questionnaires based on general medication adherence scale (GMAS) were equally distributed among 300 patients suffering from chronic illnesses and cancers. 270 patients returned completely filled questionnaires.Results: The study population consists of 53.33% men and 46.66% women.55.55% patients were literate. 70.37% of patients were from rural areas. 61.48% were taking 2-4 drugs. As compared to 14.81% males 18.51% of females had poor or low adherence. Only 0.74% of young patients (<30 years) had poor/low adherence as compared to 16.29% each in other age groups. Rural patients had poor adherence as compared to patients from urban areas. As compared to 31.85% illiterate patients, only 16.29% of literate patients had poor or low adherence. Adherence was better in patients taking more than one drug. Statistically, a significant correlation was found between gender, age, level of education, and area of residence. Duration of treatment, the number of drugs, and the frequency of dosage were not found significantly correlated with adherence. Patients suffering from malignancies had higher medication adherence as compared to chronic illnesses.Conclusions: Medication non-adherence is common in patients with chronic diseases and cancers that are treated with unsupervised oral antineoplastic drugs. The complex problem of non-adherence calls for interventions at various levels

Eco-friendly dyeing of wool and pashmina fabric using Quercus robur L. (fruit cups) dye and Salix alba L. (wood extract) mordant

Study was conducted to investigate the dyeing potential of Quercus robur L. (fruit cups) dye and Salix alba L. (wood extract) mordant on wool and pashmina fabrics. The experiment was conducted keeping in view the environmental safety by using unutilized plant materials and excluding the usage of chemical agents. The dyeing was carried out individually including and excluding mordant adopting different mordanting methods. The parameters like percent absorption, colour coordinates, colour strength (K/S), relative colour strength and colour fastness with regard to washing, light and rubbing were investigated. The results revealed higher percent absorption of mordanted samples than unmordanted samples. Colour coordinates (L*a*b*, Chroma, hue and ?E) of dyed wool and pashmina fabric exhibited satisfactory results. The colour strength (K/S) and relative colour strength of pashmina fabric recorded higher than wool fabric. The fastness properties to washing, light and rubbing showed satisfactory grades including and excluding natural mordant. However, the grades of mordanted samples were found better than unmordanted samples. The dye and mordant in isolation and in combination showed beautiful colours and shades on selected fabrics with satisfactory retention properties, hence can be utilized commercially for coloration of wool and pashmina fabrics

The construction and analysis of repeated measurement designs (RMD) using the trial and error method

Repeated measurement designs prove broadly applicable in almost all branches of biosciences, including agriculture, animal husbandry, botany, zoology. Unbiased estimators for elementary contrasts among direct and residual effects are obtainable in this class of designs, which is considered their important property. In this paper, an attempt was made to provide a new method of overcoming a drawback in the construction method developed by Afsarinejad (1983), where one or more treatments may occur more than once in certain sequences causing the constructed designs to no longer remain uniform in the examined periods. Nine designs were constructed and presented jointly with their corresponding mathematical analyses

Prospects of biodiesel production from microalgae in India

Energy is essential and vital for development, and the global economy literally runs on energy. The use of fossil fuels as energy is now widely accepted as unsustainable due to depleting resources and also due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the environment. Renewable and carbon neutral biodiesel are necessary for environmental and economic sustainability. Biodiesel demand is constantly increasing as the reservoir of fossil fuel are depleting. Unfortunately biodiesel produced from oil crop, waste cooking oil and animal fats are not able to replace fossil fuel. The viability of the first generation biofuels production is however questionable because of the conflict with food supply. Production of biodiesel using microalgae biomass appears to be a viable alternative. The oil productivity of many microalgae exceeds the best producing oil crops. Microalgae are photosynthetic microorganisms which convert sunlight, water and CO2 to sugars, from which macromolecules, such as lipids and triacylglycerols (TAGs) can be obtained. These TAGs are the promising and sustainable feedstock for biodiesel production. Microalgal biorefinery approach can be used to reduce the cost of making microalgal biodiesel. Microalgal-based carbon sequestration technologies cover the cost of carbon capture and sequestration. The present paper is an attempt to review the potential of microalgal biodiesel in comparison to the agricultural crops and its prospects in India.Biodiesel Microalgae Triacylglycerol Algal reactors Biorefinery

Irigenin – an isoflavone: a brief study on structural and optical properties

Irigenin, an isoflavone (mol. formula = C18H16O8), was isolated from the plant Iris hookeriana using dichloromethane as solvent. The compound was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV-visible spectroscopy measurements. Structural analysis of XRD data confirmed the orthorhombic structure for the compound. The microstructure of the compound is an aggregate of microcrystals with an irregular morphology. From the UV-visible spectroscopy, the present compound shows indirect allowed transition with an optical band gap (Eg) of around 3.25 eV. The present optical properties of the compound can be utilized in flexible organic electronics applications

MODELIMG CROP PATTEN SYSTEM USING LINEAR PROGRAMMING

<p>In agricultural situations, farmers usually faced with the problem of how to allocate their<br>limited production resources among cropping and livestock activities. Farmer's planners can offer<br>effective techniques, such as linear programming (lp) to address the problem and produce optimal<br>solution. In this paper we have demonstrated that how a farmer who has limited resources such as farmers<br>availability ,storage capacity and availability of land can be formulated as a linear programming having<br>linear objective function with three constraints</p> <p> </p

Improved diagnosis of central nervous system tuberculosis by MPB64-Target PCR Diagnóstico da tuberculose do sistema nervoso central por MPB64-Target PCR

Central nervous system (CNS) tuberculosis is a serious clinical problem, the treatment of which is sometimes hampered by delayed diagnosis. Clearly, prompt laboratory diagnosis is of vital importance as the spectrum of disease is wideand abnormalities of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) are incredibly variable. Since delayed hypersensitivity is the underlying immune response, bacterial load is very low. The conventional bacteriological methods rarely detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in CSF and are of limited use in diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis (TBM). This double blind study was, therefore, directed to the molecular analysis of CNS tuberculosis by an in-house-developed PCR targeted for amplification of a 240bp nucleotidesequence coding for MPB64 protein specific for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Based on the clinical criteria, 47 patients with CNS tuberculosis and a control group of 10 patients having non-tubercular lesions of the CNS were included in the study. Analyses were done in three groups; one group consisting of 27 patients of TBM, a second group of 20 patients with intracranial tuberculomas and a third group of 10 patients having non-tubercular lesions of the CNS acted as control. There were no false positive results by PCR and the specificity worked out to be 100%. In the three study groups, routine CSF analysis (cells and chemistry), CSF for AFB smear and culture were negative in all cases. PCR was positive for 21/27 patients (77.7% sensitivity) of the first group of TBM patients, 6/20 patients (30% sensitivity) of the second group with intracranial tuberculomas were positive by PCR and none was PCR-positive (100% specificity) in the third group. Thus, PCR was found to be more sensitive than any other conventional method in the diagnosis of clinically suspected tubercular meningitis.<br>A tuberculose do sistema nervoso central (CNS) é um problema clínico sério, cujo tratamento é dificultado pelo diagnóstico tardio. O diagnóstico laboratorial rápido é de importância vital considerando que o espectro da doença é amplo e as anormalidades do liquor são muito variáveis. Considerando que a hipersensibilidade tardia é a resposta imune fundamental, a carga bacteriana é muito baixa. Os métodos bacteriológicos convencionais raramente detectam Mycobacterium tuberculosis no liquor e são de uso limitado para diagnóstico da meningite tuberculosa (TBM). O presente estudo duplo-cego objetivou a análise molecular da tuberculose do CNS através de um PCR desenvolvido in-house direcionado para a amplificação de uma seqüência de nucleotídios de 240pb que codificam a proteína MPB64 especifica de Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Baseando-se em critérios clínicos, selecionou-se 47 pacientes com tuberculose do CNS e um grupo controle de 10 pacientes com lesões não-tuberculosas no CNS. As análises foram divididas em três grupos: um grupo de 27 pacientes com TBM, um segundo grupo com 20 pacientes com tuberculomas intracraniais e um terceiro grupo de 10 pacientes com lesões não-tuberculosas no CNS (controles). O PCR não forneceu nenhum resultado falso-positivo, com 100% de especificidade. Em todos os três grupos de estudo, os resultados das análises de rotina do liquor por histologia, química e baciloscopia e também cultura foram negativos em todos os casos. No primeiro grupo de pacientes com TBM, PCR foi positivo em 21/27 pacientes (sensibilidade de 77,7%). No segundo grupo de pacientes com tuberculomas intracraniais, 6/20 foram positivos (sensibilidade de 30%). Nenhum dos pacientes do grupo controle foi positivo (100% de especificidade). Dessa forma, o PCR mostrou-se mais sensível que os métodos convencionais no diagnóstico de casos suspeitos de meningite tuberculosa

Influence of Anticaking Agents and Storage Conditions on Quality Characteristics of Spray Dried Apricot Powder: Shelf Life Prediction Studies Using Guggenheim-Anderson-de Boer (GAB) Model

Apricot powder was developed through spray drying using gum arabic as an encapsulating material at a concentration of 19%. Inlet air temperature, feed total soluble solids (TSS), feed flow rate, and atomization speed were 190 °C, 23.0 °C, 300.05 mL/h, and 17,433 rpm, respectively. This study was therefore conducted to investigate the influence of anticaking agents (tricalcium phosphate and silicon dioxide) and storage conditions (ambient and accelerated) on physicochemical, micrometric, and thermal characteristics of spray-dried apricot powder (SDAP) packaged in aluminum laminates. Both tricalcium phosphate (TCP) and silicon dioxide (SiO2) improved the shelf life and quality of SDAP, with TCP being more effective, since a lower increase in water activity (aw), moisture content, degree of caking, hygroscopicity, and rehydration time was observed in TCP-treated samples followed by SiO2-treated samples than the control. Furthermore, flowability, glass transition temperature (Tg), and sticky-point temperature (Ts) of SDAP tended to decrease in a significant manner (p 2-treated samples under ambient and accelerated storage was 137 and 39 days, respectively, whereas the experimental values were 148 and 47 days, respectively. In conclusion, TCP proved more effective than SiO2 at preserving shelf life by preventing moisture ingress

Irigenin – an isoflavone: a brief study on structural and optical properties

Irigenin, an isoflavone (mol. formula = C18H16O8), was isolated from the plant Iris hookeriana using dichloromethane as solvent. The compound was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV-visible spectroscopy measurements. Structural analysis of XRD data confirmed the orthorhombic structure for the compound. The microstructure of the compound is an aggregate of microcrystals with an irregular morphology. From the UV-visible spectroscopy, the present compound shows indirect allowed transition with an optical band gap (Eg) of around 3.25 eV. The present optical properties of the compound can be utilized in flexible organic electronics applications

Upregulation of Nox4 induces a pro-survival Nrf2 response in cancer-associated fibroblasts that promotes tumorigenesis and metastasis, in part via Birc5 induction

Abstract Background A pro-oxidant enzyme, NADPH oxidase 4 (Nox4) has been reported to be a critical downstream effector of TGFβ-induced myofibroblast transformation during fibrosis. While there are a small number of studies suggesting an oncogenic role of Nox4 derived from activated fibroblasts, direct evidence linking this pro-oxidant to the tumor-supporting CAF phenotype and the mechanisms involved are lacking, particularly in breast cancer. Methods We targeted Nox4 in breast patient-derived CAFs via siRNA-mediated knockdown or administration of a pharmaceutical inhibitor (GKT137831). We also determine primary tumor growth and metastasis of implanted tumor cells using a stable Nox4-/- syngeneic mouse model. Autophagic flux of CAFs was assessed using a tandem fluorescent-tagged ptfl-LC3 plasmid via confocal microscopy analysis and determination of the expression level of autophagy markers (beclin-1 and LC3B). Nox4 overexpressing CAFs depend on the Nrf2 (nuclear factor-erythroid factor 2-related factor 2) pathway for survival. We then determined the dependency of Nox4-overexpressing CAFs on the Nrf2-mediated adaptive stress response pathway for survival. Furthermore, we investigated the involvement of Birc5 on CAF phenotype (viability and collagen contraction activity) as well as the expression level of CAF markers, FAP and αSMA. Conclusions We found that deletion of stroma Nox4 and pharmaceutically targeting its activity with GKT137831 significantly inhibited orthotopic tumor growth and metastasis of implanted E0771 and 4T1 murine mammary carcinoma cell lines in mice. More importantly, we found a significant upregulation of Nox4 expression in CAFs isolated from human breast tumors versus normal mammary fibroblasts (RMFs). Our in situ RNA hybridization analysis for Nox4 transcription on a human breast tumor microarray further support a role of this pro-oxidant in the stroma of breast carcinomas. In addition, we found that Nox4 promotes autophagy in CAFs. Moreover, we found that Nox4 promoted survival of CAFs via activation of Nrf2, a master regulator of oxidative stress response. We have further shown Birc5 is involved as a downstream modulator of Nrf2-mediated pro-survival phenotype. Together these studies indicate a role of redox signaling via the Nox4-Nrf2 pathway in tumorigenesis and metastasis of breast cancer cells by promoting autophagy and survival of CAFs