Influence of the fruit and leaf extract of Psidium guajava linn. on wound healing in Wistar rats.

Abstract: Leaf extract of guava (Psidium guajava Linn.) has been reported to promote wound healing in traditional medicine but there is paucity of information in literature regarding similar activity of fruit extract. Therefore, the present study was planned to investigate the influence of leaf and fruit extract of Psidium guajava Linn. on re-sutured incision, excision, and dead space wounds in male Wistar rats. Wounds were inflicted under light ether anesthesia aseptically. Control animals received vehicle and other groups received aqueous extract of either leaf or fruit orally in the dose of 500mg/kg/day for a period of 10 days in the incision and dead space wounds, whereas treatment continued till complete wound closure in excision wound model. On the 10 th day after estimation of breaking strength of the resutured incision wounds, animals were sacrificed and granulation tissue from dead space wounds were used to estimate the breaking strength and hydroxyproline content. Quantification of granulation tissue and histopathological slides were also carried out. Wound closure rate, epithelization time and scar features were studied in the excision wounds from the day of extract administration till complete closure of wounds. Only aqueous fruit extract significantly (P<0.01) promoted the healing process in all three wound models studied. Histopathological slides revealed increased collagen content and granulation tissue in fruit extract treated group as compared to that of control. In contrast, the leaf extract delayed excision wound healing and had no effect on incision and dead space wounds. These findings merit, clinical evaluation of Psidium gaujava fruit

Sugar Ka Saathi – A Case Study Designing Digital Self-management Tools for People Living with Diabetes in Pakistan

This paper presents the results of an iterative participatory process to design a smart self-management tool for less-literate people living with diabetes in Pakistan. Initially, interviews and focus groups with sixty-nine people living with diabetes identified issues that they face when self-managing including un-controllable factors, lack of diabetes awareness, low-tech mobile phones, and poor internet availability. We developed personas grounded in the scoping results and adjusted our PD approach to focus on more tangible design artefacts before running narrative scoping PD sessions. Working from older, illiterate persona, we designed a phone-line delivered Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. We developed a functional IVR Prototype “Sugar ka Saathi” (Diabetes Companion) with input from a group of 4 Pakistan-based healthcare professionals, to act as a design probe in the PD process. We tested the IVR probe with fifty-seven of the original scoping participants which validated the knowledge transferred by the IVR and its acceptability. Invisible design videos were shown to elaborate the IVR and community concept to thirteen participants through two filmed videos using our existing persona characters from the scoping studies, these videos helped to engage older people with diabetes in PD sessions

Bioisomerization kinetics of gamma-HCH and biokinetics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa degrading technical HCH

Bioconversion kinetics of gamma-HCH and biological growth kinetics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa degrading technical HCH was investigated in flask experiments under aerobic condition. Degradation studies for various isomers of technical HCH were also performed. The biodegradation of the most persistent beta\-HCH and delta-HCH isomers was also observed. At lower technical HCH concentrations (1-10mg/l), above 99% of the degradation was observed whereas at higher concentration (20-50 mg/l), the degradation efficiency was dropped. This may be due to inhibitory effect of technical HCH at higher concentrations. The technical HCH inhibitory behavior and bacterial growth kinetics could be correlated well by simple Haldane's growth kinetic model. The value of decay and yield coefficient was also determined. Further experimental results also revealed that degradation of the gamma-HCH isomer is faster (after incubation of 5 days) in the presence of other isomers of technical HCH, whereas gamma-HCH alone does not degrade even after a long period of incubation (14 days), but isomerizes to alpha-HCH isomer by the P. aeruginosa. The rate constant for the bioisomerization was found to be 0.0474 day(-1). The above estimated parameters (maximum specific growth rate, half saturation coefficient, inhibition constant, decay coefficient, yield coefficient and bioisomerization rate) are invariably required for the design and simulation of batch and continuous bioreactors treating HCH containing wastewaters. (c) 200

pyridine biodegradation in a novel rotating rope bioreactor

A novel immobilised bioreactor has been developed especially for the treatment of pollutants characterized by high volatility alongwith high water solubility and low microbial yields. The new bioreactor referred to as the rotating rope bioreactor (RRB) provides higher interfacial area (per unit reactor liquid volume) along with high oxygen mass transfer rate, greater microbial culture stability; and consequently higher substrate loadings and removal rates in comparison to other conventional rectors for the treatment of volatile compounds. Pyridine was used as a model compound to demonstrate the enhanced performance with RRB, when compared to that reported with other conventional bioreactors. The experimental results indicate that the novel RRB system is able to degrade pyridine with removal efficiency of more than 85% at higher pyridine concentration (up to 1000 mg/l) and loading [up to 400 mg/m2/h (66.86 g/ m3/h)], with a shorter hydraulic retention time (9–18 h). The reactor has been in operation for the past 15 months and no loss of activity has been observed