EVALUATION OF ANTIMICROBIAL POTENTIALS OF Cardiospermum halicacabum Linn.

Antimicrobial activity of Cardiospermum halicacabum shoot extracts were studied on gram-positive bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus substilis, and gram-negative bacteria such as E.coli, Proteus vulgaris, and fungus Candida albicans. Disc diffusion method was used to study the antimicrobial activity of aqueous, ethanol, chloroform and ether extracts of C. halicacabum. Ampicillin was used as reference standard at 10 mg/disc concentration. Extracts of C. halicacabum exhibited a significant antibacterial activity except the aqueous extract. Ethanolic extract was found to be very effective with maximum activity index (0.84). The ethanolic extract exhibited minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC of 0.25 mg/mL against Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus substilis, E. coli and Proteus vulgaris and 0.125 mg/mL against Candida albicans. The MIC of chloroform and ether extracts ranged between 0.25 and 1.0 mg/ml against the test organisms. All the extracts showed antifungal activity against Candida albicans. Key words: antimicrobial activity, Cardiospermum halicacabum shoot system, solvent extraction,

Effects of weaning biscuits on the nutritional profile and the cognitive development in preschool children

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>To study the effect of weaning biscuits supplementation of the nutritional parameters and cognitive performance of the selected children.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Three primary schools situated in Salem District, Tamilnadu, India were selected. A total number of 150 school children, 61 from primary school I, 46 from primary school II and 43 from primary school III comprised the study sample. About 80 primary school children with Grade II malnutrition were selected for the experimental study. Home diet without any supplementation was followed by Group I (n = 20, control group), potato flour biscuit was supplemented to Group II (n = 20), wheat biscuits was given to Group III (n = 20) and ragi biscuits were given to Group IV (n = 20) for the period of 3 months. Parameters like anthropometric measurements, hemoglobin content clinical picture and cognitive performance were analyzed before and after supplementation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Results about Group I (control group) showed no significant difference in height, weight and clinical picture and cognitive performance after three months on their home diet. In Group II, III and IV significant increase in all the above parameters was noticed. More increase was found in Group II children supplemented with potato flour biscuits for a period of 3 months. About cognitive performance better results was obtained in Group II followed by Group III (supplemented with wheat biscuits) and Group IV (supplemented with ragi biscuits). Least was obtained by control group children who are in their home diet.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>All these observations evident that if such weaning biscuits made with potato flour, wheat and Ragi can form a daily ingredient in their diets, it will bring out better all round development of the children.</p

In silico Prediction of MicroRNAs in Plant Mitochondria

MicroRNAs are endogenous, short (ca. 21 base), non-coding, post transcriptional, regulatory RNA molecules. These microRNAs (miRNAs) are complementary to their target messenger RNAs, and bind principally to its 3' UTR. The conserved nature of miRNAs, and their high sequence complementarities of miRNA and its targets in plants, provides the basis for the easy identification of miRNA and its targets. Presence of miRNA in plant mitochondria is scantily studied. Identification of miRNA targets in plant mitochondria might indicate the involvement of miRNA in mitochondrial gene regulation and nuclear mitochondrial interactions. In this study, we used a computational approach to predict miRNA targets in plant mitochondria. The mitochondrial gene targets identified for miRNAs are located both in mitochondrial and nuclear compartments. This observation points to a fairly early origin of miRNAs. Besides, most of the targets identified can have copies in two compartments and suggest the possibility of miRNA mediated regulation. This study unfurls the possibility of regulating the plant mitochondrial genes by amending the miRNA genes in the nuclear compartment

Comparison of Postoperative Analgesic Efficacy of Epidural Ropivacaine and Ropivacaine with Tramadol in Adults Undergoing Abdominal Surgeries under General Anaesthesia.

BACKGROUND : Epidural analgesia provides adequate pain relief for the patients undergoing abdominal surgeries thereby preventing the adverse effects of acute postoperative pain. Tramadol as an adjuvant to epidural local anaesthetic agents improves the analgesic efficacy. METHODS : A prospective, non –randomized, double arm, single-blind, controlled study was conducted to compare the postoperative analgesic efficacy of Epidural 0.2% Ropivacaine and 0.2% Ropivacaine with 1mg/kg of Tramadol in patients undergoing abdominal surgeries under general anaesthesia. 60 patients in the age group of 30 to 60 years who were divided into two groups as Group R and Group RT. In Group R, 30 patients received 10 ml of 0.2 % Ropivacaine epidurally. In Group RT, 30 patients received 10ml solution containing 0.2% Ropivacaine and 1mg/kg of Tramadol. Epidural drug administration was done at the time of incisional wound closure. The duration of analgesia, Ramsay sedation score, nausea and vomiting, pruritus, hemodynamic parameters like heart rate, blood pressure, peripheral capillary oxygen saturartion and respiratory rate in the postoperative period were observed and analysed. RESULTS : The mean duration of analgesia was found to be significantly longer in Group RT (309.9 minutes) than patients who received epidural 0.2% Ropivacaine alone(220.57 minutes). Better Ramsay sedation scores were observed in Group RT and Group R. There were no significant difference in nausea, vomiting, pruritus and hemodynamic variables. CONCLUSION : This study concludes that the addition of 1 mg/kg of Tramadol improves the postoperative analgesic efficacy of epidural 0.2% Ropivacaine by prolonging the duration of analgesia and providing good sedation with no significant hemodynamic alterations, nausea, vomiting and pruritus

EVALUATION OF ANTIMICROBIAL POTENTIALS OF Cardiospermum halicacabum Linn.

Antimicrobial activity of Cardiospermum halicacabum shoot extracts were studied on gram-positive bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus substilis, and gram-negative bacteria such as E.coli, Proteus vulgaris, and fungus Candida albicans. Disc diffusion method was used to study the antimicrobial activity of aqueous, ethanol, chloroform and ether extracts of C. halicacabum. Ampicillin was used as reference standard at 10 mg/disc concentration. Extracts of C. halicacabum exhibited a significant antibacterial activity except the aqueous extract. Ethanolic extract was found to be very effective with maximum activity index (0.84). The ethanolic extract exhibited minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC of 0.25 mg/mL against Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus substilis, E. coli and Proteus vulgaris and 0.125 mg/mL against Candida albicans. The MIC of chloroform and ether extracts ranged between 0.25 and 1.0 mg/ml against the test organisms. All the extracts showed antifungal activity against Candida albicans

Transcriptome Profiling Reveals Higher Vertebrate Orthologous of Intra-Cytoplasmic Pattern Recognition Receptors in Grey Bamboo Shark

<div><p>From an immunologist perspective, sharks are an important group of jawed cartilaginous fishes and survey of the public database revealed a great gap in availability of large-scale sequence data for the group of Chondrichthyans the elasmobranchs. In an attempt to bridge this deficit we generated the transcriptome from the spleen and kidney tissues (a total of 1,606,172 transcripts) of the shark, <i>Chiloscyllium griseum</i> using the Illumina HiSeq2000 platform. With a cut off of > = 300 bp and an expression value of >1RPKM we used 43,385 transcripts for BLASTX analysis which revealed 17,548 transcripts matching to the NCBI nr database with an E-value of < = 10⁻⁵ and similarity score of 40%. The longest transcript was 16,974 bases with matched to HECT domain containing E3 ubiqutin protein ligase. MEGAN4 annotation pipeline revealed immune and signalling pathways including cell adhesion molecules, cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, T-cell receptor signalling pathway and chemokine signaling pathway to be highly expressed in spleen, while different metabolism pathways such as amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, lipid metabolism and xenobiotic biodegradation were highly expressed in kidney. Few of the candidate genes were selected to analyze their expression levels in various tissues by real-time PCR and also localization of a receptor by <i>in-situ</i> PCR to validate the prediction. We also predicted the domains structures of some of the identified pattern recognition receptors, their phylogenetic relationship with lower and higher vertebrates and the complete downstream signaling mediators of classical dsRNA signaling pathway. The generated transcriptome will be a valuable resource to further genetic and genomic research in elasmobranchs.</p></div