Role of Ultrasound-Guided Hemidiaphragm Sparing Brachial Plexus Block in the Morbidly Obese Patient

Patients with Grade III obesity pose unique challenges to the treating anesthesiologists. The challenges range from difficulty in intravenous cannulation to airway management. Regional anesthesia is advantageous over general anesthesia as it avoids airway manipulation, prevents reduction in functional residual capacity, and provides good postoperative analgesia. Regional anesthesia has its pitfalls like identifying the landmarks accurately and hemi diaphragmatic palsy following brachial plexus block. Hemi diaphragmatic palsy is poorly tolerated in grade III obese patients leading to increased peri-operative morbidity which undermines the advantages of regional over general anesthesia. Ultrasound-guided costoclavicular brachial plexus block(CCBPB) has the benefit of reduced hemi diaphragmatic palsy, avoiding pleural injury, and wider distribution of sensory blockade. Costoclavicular block has been administered to obese patients in the past with great success. We are reporting a successful case of ultrasound-guided costoclavicular brachial plexus block performed in an obese patient with a BMI of 51.56Kg/m2

Pharmacological Properties of Banana Stem: An Updated Review

Musaceae is a perennial tree-like plant that is cultivated all over the world in various tropical and subtropical regions. The fruit, peel, leaves, pseudo-stem, stalk, and inflorescence (flower) of this plant, among other parts, are utilized in traditional medicine to treat several health problems. The banana stem juice has potential biological effects, including anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-helminthic, wound-healing, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, and anti-urolithic activities. Consequently, it can be said that banana stem juice contains adequate levels of healthy secondary metabolites that are essential for maintaining good health. To find novel approaches for treating and preventing a wide range of medical diseases, more studies into the medicinal potential of banana stem juice can be done. Hence, this review emphasizes Musaceae stem juice's medicinal and nutritional benefits as review

Discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis CYP121 new inhibitor via structure-based drug repurposing

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious threat to human health with the advent of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). The urge to find novel drugs to deal with the appearance of drug-resistant TB and its variants is highly needed. This study aims to find new CYP121 inhibitors by screening 8,773 compounds from the drug repositioning database RepoDB. The selection of CYP121 potential inhibitors was based on two criteria: the new inhibitor should bind to CYP121 with higher affinity than its original ligand and interact with catalytically important residues for the function of CYP121. The ligands were docked onto CYP121 using AutoDock Vina, and the molecular dynamics simulation of the selected ligand was conducted using YASARA Structure. We found that antrafenine, an anti-inflammatory and analgesic agent with high CYP inhibitory promiscuity, was bound to CYP121 with a binding affinity of -12.6 kcal/mol and interacted with important residues at the CYP121 binding site. Molecular dynamics analysis of CYP121 bound to the original ligand and antrafenine showed that both ligands affected the dynamics of residues located distantly from the active site. Antrafenine caused more structural changes to CYP121 than the original ligand, as indicated by a significantly higher number of affected residues and rigid body movements caused by the binding of antrafenine to CYP121

Impact of dengue virus (serotype DENV-2) infection on liver of BALB/c mice: a histopathological analysis

In this research, we characterized the histopathological impact of dengue virus (serotype DENV-2) infection in livers of BALB/c mice. The mice were infected with different doses of DENV-2 via intraperitoneal injection and liver tissues were processed for histological analyses and variation was documented. In the BALB/c mouse model, typical liver tissues showed regular hepatocyte architecture, with normal endothelial cells surrounding sinusoid capillary. Based on histopathological observations, the liver sections of BALB/c mice infected by DENV-2 exhibited a loss of cell integrity, with a widening of the sinusoidal spaces. There were marked increases in the infiltration of mononuclear cells. The areas of hemorrhage and micro- and macrovesicular steatosis were noted. Necrosis and apoptosis were abundantly present. The hallmark of viral infection, i.e., cytopathic effects, included intracellular edema and vacuole formation, cumulatively led to sinusoidal and lobular collapse in the liver. The histopathological studies on autopsy specimens of fatal human DENV cases are important to shed light on tissue damage for preventive and treatment modalities, in order to manage future DENV infections. In this framework, the method present here on BALB/c mouse model may be used to study not only the effects of infections by other DENV serotypes, but also to investigate the effects of novel drugs, such as recently developed nano-formulations, and the relative recovery ability with intact immune functions of host

Pharmacological Assessment of the Medicinal Potential of Acacia mearnsii De Wild.: Antimicrobial and Toxicity Activities

Acacia mearnsii De Wild. (Fabaceae) is a medicinal plant used in the treatment of microbial infections in South Africa without scientific validation of its bioactivity and toxicity. The antimicrobial activity of the crude acetone extract was evaluated by both agar diffusion and macrobroth dilution methods while its cytotoxicity effect was assessed with brine shrimp lethality assay. The study showed that both bacterial and fungal isolates were highly inhibited by the crude extract. The MIC values for the gram-positive bacteria (78.1–312.5) μg/mL, gram-negative bacteria (39.1–625) μg/mL and fungal isolates (625–5000) μg/mL differ significantly. The bacteria were more susceptible than the fungal strains tested. The antibiosis determination showed that the extract was more (75%) bactericidal than bacteriostatic (25%) and more fungicidal (66.67%) than fungistatic (33.33%). The cytotoxic activity of the extract was observed between 31.25 μg/mL and 500 μg/mL and the LC50 value (112.36 μg/mL) indicates that the extract was nontoxic in the brine shrimp lethality assay (LC50 > 100 μg/mL). These results support the use of A. mearnsii in traditional medicine for treatment of microbial infections. The extract exhibiting significant broad spectrum antimicrobial activity and nontoxic effects has potential to yield active antimicrobial compounds

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

A case report of extramedullary plasmacytoma - Presenting as a chest wall tumour

Plasmacytoma refers to a malignant plasma cell tumor growing within soft tissue or within the axial skeleton. Plasmacytoma accounts for six percent of all primary chest wall tumours. A solitary extramedullary plasmacytoma is reported three percent of plasma cell disorders. A 65 year male patient presented with complaint of swelling in the back of right side of the chest noticed for one month, pain over the swelling and dry cough for two weeks. Physical examination revealed a diffuse, lobulated swelling in the back of right side of chest which is firm to hard in consistency. The chest radiograph showed a large extra-pulmonary opacity with well-defined medial margin and lateral margin merging with chest wall on right side and blunting of the right costophrenic angle. The histopathological examination of tru-cut biopsy section showed fragments of fibrocartilagenous stroma infiltrated by mononuclear cells with round to oval nucleus and eosinophilic cytoplasm and some foci showed plasmocytoid features with the intervening stroma shows proliferating capillaries thereby features suggestive of plasmacytoma. The specimen is positive for CD 138 by the immunohistochemistry analysis which is the hallmark for diagnosing plasmacytoma

FPGA implementation of hardware architecture with AES encryptor using sub-pipelined S-box techniques for compact applications

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a thriving cryptographic algorithm that can be utilized to guarantee security in electronic information. It remains to uphold to be resistive from most of the attacks. In this work, AES-128 encryption iterative architecture is designed to achieve minimum area and less hardware utilization. Reduced area is attained by introducing a renovated S-box structure into the AES algorithm. Furthermore, hardware utilization is minimized by incorporating the Vedic multiplier in the Mix column transformation of the AES Encryption process. The proposed encryption architecture is of 128-bit size and was executed on the Xilinx Spartan FPGA series, namely, Spartan 3, Virtex-4 and Virtex-5 devices. The optimization result exhibits that the proposed S-box technique has a smaller area than other existing conventional works

Chemical complexity of protein determines optimal E. coli expression host; A comparative study using Erythropoietin, Streptokinase and Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor

High throughput expression of proteins is often hampered by the failure of certain proteins to express in the particular E. coli host strain used for the study. The identification of a host strain compatible for a wide variety of proteins is desirable. In this study, the recombinant expression of therapeutic proteins Erythropoietin (EPO), Streptokinase (SK) and Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor Extra cellular domain (TNFR ED) that vary widely in their chemical nature was studied in four different strains of E. coli namely BL21 (DE3), BL21 (DE3) pLys S, BL21 (DE3) Rosetta pLys S and GJ1158. Since there are no previous report for the analysis of expression and solubility of the above mentioned proteins we studied the same in various E. coli stains. Here we report that E. coli strain GJ1158 which uses salt induction was found to be the most suitable for overexpression of all the three proteins. Interestingly rare codons were found not to play any significant role in the expression. Protein toxicity and aggregation propensity were also studied. One of the major factors influencing expression was the tendency of the protein to aggregate which in turn influences folding and toxicity levels. The solubility of the proteins was inversely proportional to aggregation. Expression levels were in the order of TNFR ED < EPO < SK. In conclusion, it was observed that E. coli GJ1158, a strain known to decrease aggregation of proteins was found to be more suited for expression. This is the first time GJ1158 has been included in this kind of analysis for comparison of protein expression in various E. coli hosts

Stem cells therapy for treatment of ocular disorders

Sustenance of visual function is the ultimate focus of ophthalmologists. Failure of complete recovery of visual function and complications that follow conventional treatments have shifted search to a new form of therapy using stem cells. Stem cell progenitors play a major role in replenishing degenerated cells despite being present in low quantity and quiescence in our body. Unlike other tissues and cells, regeneration of new optic cells responsible for visual function is rarely observed. Understanding the transcription factors and genes responsible for optic cells development will assist scientists in formulating a strategy to activate and direct stem cells renewal and differentiation. We review the processes of human eye development and address the strategies that have been exploited in an effort to regain visual function in the preclinical and clinical state. The update of clinical findings of patients receiving stem cell treatment is also presented