CURRENT STATUS OF BUCCAL DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM: A REVIEW

Buccal mucosa is the preferred site for both systemic and local drug action. The mucosa has a rich blood supply and it relatively permeable. The buccal region of the oral cavity is an attractive target for administration of the drug of choice, particularly in overcoming deficiencies associated with the latter mode of administration. Problems such as first-pass metabolism and drug degradation in the gastrointestinal environment can be circumvented by administering the drug via the buccal route. Moreover, rapid onset of action can be achieved relative to the oral route and the formulation can be removed if therapy is required to be discontinued. It is also possible to administer drugs to patients who unconscious and less co-operative. In buccal drug delivery systems mucoadhesion is the key element so various mucoadhesive polymers have been utilized in different dosages form. Mucoadhesion may be defined as the process where polymers attach to biological substrate or a synthetic or natural macromolecule, to mucus or an epithelial surface. When the biological substrate is attached to a mucosal layer then this phenomenon is known as mucoadhesion. The substrate possessing bioadhesive polymer can help in drug delivery for a prolonged period of time at a specific delivery site.  Both natural and synthetic polymers are used for the preparation of mucoadhesive buccal patches.  However, this review article provides a current status of buccal drug delivery of patches (films) along with formulation development and characterization of mucoadhesive buccal patches. Keywords: Buccal, Mucoadhesive Polymer, Buccal formulations, Buccal patc

Sentiment Analysis Using Common-Sense and Context Information

Sentiment analysis research has been increasing tremendously in recent times due to the wide range of business and social applications. Sentiment analysis from unstructured natural language text has recently received considerable attention from the research community. In this paper, we propose a novel sentiment analysis model based on common-sense knowledge extracted from ConceptNet based ontology and context information. ConceptNet based ontology is used to determine the domain specific concepts which in turn produced the domain specific important features. Further, the polarities of the extracted concepts are determined using the contextual polarity lexicon which we developed by considering the context information of a word. Finally, semantic orientations of domain specific features of the review document are aggregated based on the importance of a feature with respect to the domain. The importance of the feature is determined by the depth of the feature in the ontology. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods

Use for newer Imaging Modalities for Airway Management

Airway management has made many advances in recent years. However, an unanticipated difficult airway can turn out to be a nightmare for anaesthesiologist. The various predictors include clinical assessment predictors, X-ray neck, conventional helical computed tomographic (CT) scan, indirect laryngoscopy, pulmonary function tests and fiberoptic bronchoscopy had been successfully used for delineation of airway anatomy [1]. The shortcomings of aforementioned techniques except for fiberoptic bronchoscopy are that they tell about static component without giving much information about dynamic component of airway. Fiberoptic bronchoscopy is invasive and could not be performed without prior anaesthetic preparation. However newer modalities like ultrasonography, multidetector CT (MDCT) scan with virtual 3D&nbsp; bronchoscopic image (VB) reconstruction are upcoming imaging modality which provides both static and dynamic or virtual airway information. Precisely they allow non-invasive intraluminal as well as extraluminal evaluation of the airway.</p

Study of beta-cell function (by HOMA model) in metabolic syndrome

Introduction: The clustering of cardiovascular risk factors is termed the metabolic syndrome (MS), which strongly predict risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Many studies implicate insulin resistance (IR) in the development of diabetes, but ignore the contribution of beta-cell dysfunction. Hence, we studied beta-cell function, as assessed by HOMA model, in subjects with MS. Materials and Methods: We studied 50 subjects with MS diagnosed by IDF criteria and 24 healthy age- and sex-matched controls. Clinical evaluation included anthropometry, body fat analysis by bioimpedance, biochemical, and insulin measurement. IR and secretion were calculated by HOMA model. Results: Subjects with MS had more IR (HOMA-IR) than controls (3.35 ± 3.14 vs. 1.76 ± 0.53, P = 0.029) and secreted less insulin (HOMA-S) than controls (66.80 ± 69.66 vs. 144.27 ± 101.61, P = 0.0003), although plasma insulin levels were comparable in both groups (10.7 ± 10.2 vs. 8.2 ± 2.38, P = 0.44). HOMA-IR and HOMA-S were related with number of metabolic abnormalities. HOMA-IR was positively associated with body mass index, waist hip ratio, body fat mass, and percent body fat. HOMA-S was negatively associated with waist hip ratio, fasting plasma glucose and total cholesterol and positively with basal metabolic rate. Percent body fat was an independent predictor of HOMA-IR and waist hip ratio of HOMA-S in multiple regression analysis. Conclusions: Subjects with MS have increased IR and decreased insulin secretion compared with healthy controls. Lifestyle measures have been shown to improve IR, insulin secretion, and various components and effects of MS. Hence, there is an urgent need for public health measures to prevent ongoing epidemic of diabetes and cardiovascular disease

Laboratory evaluation of thyroid function: Dilemmas and pitfalls

Among all endocrine disorders, thyroid dysfunction is possibly most common endocrine disorder barring obesity. This implies that thyroid function tests (TFT) are routinely ordered for laboratory test for its evaluation. Furthermore, recently laboratory values of thyroid function, thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (FT4), and free triiodothyronine (FT3), have gathered importance in view of rapidly changing cut-offs for treatment of thyroid disorders during pregnancy. Most of the times, interpretation of TFT is easy, indicating euthyroidism (normal FT4 and TSH), hypothyroidism (low FT4 or FT3 with high TSH), or thyrotoxicosis (high FT4 or FT3 with low TSH). However, the normal ranges reflect two standard deviations around the mean. Hence, 2.5% of the population may show minor abnormalities on both side of normal range in spite of being euthyroid. Sometimes interpretation becomes difficult when there is an alteration in relation between thyroid hormones and TSH. These pitfalls in investigations will cause dilemma in physicians and patients mind alike. Problems in hormonal evaluation can be preanalytical, analytical, and postanalytical. In an ambulatory patient, TFTs have limited preanalytical interferences such as age, pregnancy, medications, genetic mutations, systemic diseases, and critical illnesses. Analytical errors occur due to heterophile antibodies and macro-TSH. Postanalytical errors include wrong entry of the result, mistakes in the units of the parameter checked and failure to identify the normal data