Linezolid induced thrombocytopenia

Linezolid, an oxazolidinone antibiotic active against gram-positive bacteria is used in the treatment of vancomycin resistant Enterococci and MRSA. It is generally tolerated except for the 32% chance of thrombocytopenia on long term usage of linezolid. A 25-year-old male after renal transplantation was administered linezolid for antibiotic prophylaxis. His platelet count dropped from 1,68,000 cells to 74,000 on day 2. The platelet counts further dropped to 58,000 on day 3, followed which linezolid was withdrawn. His platelet improved to 88,000 on day 5 following withdrawal of linezolid. Though we are vigilant about thrombocytopenia on long term usage of linezolid, here we report a rare case of linezolid induced thrombocytopenia within 2 days of starting the antibiotic. This necessitates the increased vigilance on linezolid usage. Platelet count needs to be monitored as early as the start of treatment with linezolid

Anthropometric Dimensions and Preferred Working Surface Heights for the Electronic Operators Workbench

The electronics industry in Malaysia is a leading contributor to the economy, and its contribution will undoubtedly rise in future. Currency it employs more than 168,000 workers and is expected to introduce more new jobs. Ergonomics studies have shown that workplace design greatly influences the performance of workers. Since workbenches are widely used in the electronics industry, design of workbenches with optimal assembly working surface heights for the workers must be considered. A study was conducted to gather data for recommendations for an optimal working surface height for female electronics operators in Malaysia. This paper presents the findings of the above study. Relevant anthropometric dimensions and work surface height preferences for 52 female adults in the Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Pertanian Malaysia, Serdang were recorded. The relationship between preferred work surface height and elbow height was analyse

A Randomised Comparative study to Compare the Antiproteinuric Effects of Benedipine with Amlodipine in Mild to Moderate Stage Chronic Kidney Disease Patients

BACK GROUND: Chronic kidney disease is one among the most prevalent diseases in the world. Diabetic nephropathy, Hypertensive nephropathy and chronic glomerular diseases are the leading causes of CKD. Raised renal parameters, proteinuria are the biochemical markers of chronic kidney disease. Proteinuria is a prognostic factor in assessing the progression of chronic kidney disease. Reducing the intraglomerular pressure can decrease protein excretion in urine. Even though ACEI/ARB’s can reduce the intra-glomerular pressure they cannot do so in the due course of CKD. They have to be combined with calcium channel blockers for effective reduction of BP and proteinuria. Newer calcium channel blockers like benedipine which inhibits both L & T type can dilate both afferent & efferent arteriole. Thus can reduce intra-glomerular pressure effectively than older calcium channel blockers like amlodipine. By reducing intra-glomerular pressure newer CCB’s like benedipine can have anti-proteinuric effect. METHODOLOGY: This was a eight month long study that was conducted in the out patient department of Nephrology, Coimbatore medical college, Coimbatore from the month of April 2018 to November 2018 after getting IHEC approval. According to inclusion and exclusion criteria and after receiving maximum dose of ARB losartan 50 mg BD for 8 weeks, mild to moderate stage CKD patients were recruited randomized into two groups to receive either benedipine 4 mg OD or amlodipine 2.5 mg OD for six months. Changes in the Blood pressure, urine protein creatinine ratio, serum urea, serum creatinine, serum electrolytes and serum lipids were monitored at baseline and 1, 3 and 6 months after treatment with Benedipine. Data collected and statistical analyses was done to evaluate the effect of benedipine and amlodipine on Blood pressure, urine protein creatinine ratio, serum urea, creatinine, uric acid, Lipids and electrolytes. RESULTS: The study included 32 patients, among which 62.5% males and 37.5% females. Both the groups were similar in baseline characteristics. There was a statistically significant reduction in systolic BP and diastolic BP within each group after six months of treatment with benedipine and amlodipine. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in reducing BP(SBP – 126 mm Hg vs 130 mm Hg, DBP – 80 vs 77 mm of Hg, Benedipine vs amlodipine respectively P < 0.05). Urine protein creatinine ratio was reduced significantly within each group. But urine protein creatinine ratio was reduced significantly greater by benedipine than amlodipine between the groups at the end of six months(urine PCR - 0.70 vs 1.33 benedipine vs amlodipine, P<0.05). Serum uric acid was reduced in both groups significantly. There were no significant changes in serum urea, creatinine, lipids and electrolytes after six months of treatment with benedipine. CONCLUSION: The study shows that Benedipine is better than amlodipine in reducing proteinuria in mild to moderate stage kidney patients

Disease Predictive Diagnostics Using Machine Learning

Big Data is collecting large amounts of data. That's big. What is Uncontrollable with the Conventional Method It is difficult to process this large amount of data in a conventional way. So there are many techniques to handle and analyze this huge amount of data. The challenge we face when storing this huge amount of data is analysis, sharing, storage, etc. Big data is difficult to master with the traditional approach, so there are different methods. Clustering and classification have played a significant role in countless applications such as cognitive services, image recognition and processing, business and law, text and speech, medicine, weather forecasting, genetics, bioinformatics and so on.    Some as of late settled machine learning approaches are introduced here, with the point of passing on vital ideas to order and grouping specialists.For this purpose, record the hospital data of a particular region. For missing data, use a latent factor model to obtain the incomplete data.The previous work on disease prediction uses the CNN-UDRP (Convolutional Neural Network Based Unimodel Disease Prediction) algorithm.The prediction of the CNN-MDRP algorithm is more accurate than in the previous prediction algorithm.

Synergistic Effect of Quinic Acid Derived From Syzygium cumini and Undecanoic Acid Against Candida spp. Biofilm and Virulence

In recent decades, fungal infections have incredibly increased with Candida genus as the major cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized and immunocompromised patients. Most of the Candida species are proficient in biofilm formation on implanted medical devices as well as human tissues. Biofilm related Candida infections are very difficult to treat using common antifungal agents owing to their increased drug resistance. To address these issues, the present study investigated the antibiofilm and antivirulent properties of Syzygium cumini derived quinic acid in combination with known antifungal compound undecanoic acid. Initially, antibiofilm potential of S. cumini leaf extract was assessed and the active principles were identified through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis. Among the compounds identified, quinic acid was one of the major compounds. The interaction between quinic acid and undecanoic acid was found to be synergistic in the Fractional inhibitory concentration index (≤0.5). Results of in vitro assays and gene expression analysis suggested that the synergistic combinations of quinic acid and undecanoic acid significantly inhibited virulence traits of Candida spp. such as the biofilm formation, yeast-to-hyphal transition, extracellular polymeric substances production, filamentation, secreted hydrolases production and ergosterol biosynthesis. In addition, result of in vivo studies using Caenorhabditis elegans demonstrated the non-toxic nature of QA-UDA combination and antivirulence effect against Candida spp. For the first time, synergistic antivirulence ability of quinic acid and undecanoic acid was explored against Candida spp. Thus, results obtained from the present study suggest that combination of phytochemicals might be used an alternate therapeutic strategy for the prevention and treatment of biofilm associated Candida infection

Design and development of three-row improved pull-type rice transplanter for small farmers

A pull-type transplanter was developed by improvising the functional components of existing six-row manual IRRI rice transplanter. The improved transplanter is capable of planting seedlings in three rows at 250 mm row spacing. Picker mechanism was designed in such a way to perform the planting operation simultaneously as the equipment is being pulled with handle. Thus the push-pull mechanism adopted in the existing transplanter has been eliminated in this improved model, reducing drudgery of operation. While evaluating the unit in different puddling conditions as well as textural conditions, the field capacity was observed as 0.058 ha/h with field efficiency of 85.4% at the draft of 261.7 N. Percentage of missing hills was found as 9.61 with the optimized growing density of seedling of 60 g/mat. The ground wheel diameter was optimized as 500 mm based on intra-row spacing as well as force requirement for pulling the unit. The picker-finger width of 3 mm was optimized as there was high mortality rate observed with other fingers. For the optimized picker-finger width, single seedling was observed in 12.1% hills, double seedlings in 30.4% hills, triple seedlings in 31.7% hills, and 25.8% hills are planted with more than three seedlings. By employing ergonomic consideration in seedling picking mechanism, the energy requirement with improved transplanter was reduced to 19.84 kJ/min from 26.41 as in existing transplanter, and hence there was 24.9% reduction in drudgery. Although energy cost with improved transplanter is graded as ‘heavy’, the unit can be operated effectively with the recommended rest-pause of 12.5 min for every 45 min. Cost of transplanting with the equipment worked out ` 1 150 per ha with a cost-saving of 80.8% in addition to time-saving of 91.3% compared to hand transplanting. The improved transplanter has good scope for introduction in marginal farms

Design and development of power-operated continuous-run potting machine for seedling-nursery

Potting is still a manual operation in plantation, forestry, and 11 other horticultural nurseries in India and the preparation of pot-mixture and filling in polybags are crucial tasks and are time consuming. Therefore, a poweroperated continuous-run machine was specially designed, fabricated, and tested to master seedling-nursery management capable of mixing, pulverizing, sieving, and filling of pot ingredients in polybags. The machine is a vertical freestanding unit mounted on four legs and consists of 3-hp motor, feed-hopper, pulverizing chamber with 8-numbers of paddles, sieving compartment operated by a slider-crank mechanism, vending instrumentation, and outlet. Ingredients like soil, sand, granite power, farmyard manure, and compost are fed from the top and the pot-mixture is collected at the bottom. Electronic vending is the novelty of the machine, which permits filling pot-mixture at set quantity at set time-gap. Aggregate analysis, degree of pulverization, and other physical parameters of machine-made mixture are at recommended level as well as on par with manually-made pot-mixture. More proportion (81.8%) of desirable level of aggregate was achieved with machine compared in manual method (79.5%) resulted in improved quality of the mixture for seedling establishment. Bagging through machine worked out 71.4% cost-saving and 80.2% time-saving. The machine is recommended for nursery-holders around the nation since the machine can provide pot-mixture for development of saplings of 30 000 numbers per month in a commercial nursery

Effect of turmeric and Spatoglossum asperum on shelf life extension of marine finfish Sillago sihama in chilled storage condition

829-838The effect of turmeric and seaweed powder (Spatoglossum asperum) on shelf life extension of Sillago sihama in chilled storage condition was determined by sensory, pH, biochemical and bacteriological analysis. The experimental setup was divided into six groups, undeveined, deveined, undeveined coated with 5 % S. asperum powder, deveined coated with 5 % S. asperum powder, undeveined coated with 5 % turmeric and deveined coated with 5 % turmeric, all the group of fishes were stored in chilled conditions with 1:1 (fish:ice) ratio. Deveined S. sihama coated with 5 % turmeric demonstrated a longer shelf life of 14 days and between the groups significant differences (P &lt; 0.05) were found in the sensorial, pH, biochemical and bacteriological values. Nevertheless, the validity of group one and two were found to be acceptable up to 8 and 10 days, respectively. In conclusion, deveined S. sihama coated with 5 % turmeric and stored in chilled conditions retain the shelf-life up to 14 days