A prospective observational study to evaluate prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnancy

Background: Asymptomatic bacteriuria is under-diagnosed condition in pregnancy. Prompt recognition of asymptomatic bacteriuria and its treatment is necessary as this condition can be associated with adverse maternal and foetal complications. Screening of asymptomatic bacteriuria is easy and replicable and goes a long way in promoting safer maternal and foetal outcomes. The aim of the study was to determine (a) prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnant women attending antenatal care and determine its association with age, parity and socio-economic status, and (b) microbiological patterns of the causative organism.Methods: This was a prospective, observational study that evaluated 200 pregnant women visiting antenatal care in tertiary care hospital, SS Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Davangere, India. A study was conducted in Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Subjects having fever, symptoms of urinary tract infection, underlying co-morbid conditions were excluded from the study. Those willing to give a valid consent with no signs of urinary tract infection were included in the study.Results: The prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria was noted to be 19% in our study. The most common organism noted to cause asymptomatic bacteriuria was noted to be E. coli followed by Staphylococcus aureus. The prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria was noted to be highest in the second trimester followed by those in first trimester.Conclusions: Asymptomatic bacteriuria is widely prevalent in pregnancy. Pregnant women should be screened every trimester for presence of asymptomatic bacteriuria.

Knowledge and practice about contraception among married women in reproductive age group in a rural area of Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, India: a cross-sectional study

Background: Unmet need for contraception is still high in developing countries because of various reasons and poses a great challenge to the success of family welfare programme Assessing the knowledge and filling the gap is essential for successful functioning of the programme and for reducing the unmet need.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the knowledge and practices on contraception among 100 married women in reproductive age group (15-49 years) residing in a Rural Health centre area of Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, South India.Results: Among the 100 participants, common known methods of contraception were IUD (56%), permanent sterilization (38%), Pills (21%) and Condoms (14%). Out of 100 participants, only 38 were using contraception. Among the 62 who are not using any method of contraception, 30 are willing to practice contraception after motivation and among them 27 prefer to use temporary methods. Fear of side effects was most common reason stated for not using contraception.Conclusions: Knowledge and practice related to contraception among the participants were observed to be less. Health education campaigns emphasizing the need of family planning and about the services available in the government health facilities has to be organized regularly

Methods for the estimation of pyrazinamide and pyrazinoic acid in body fluids

zinoic acid in urine using an anion-exchange resin (Dowex-1) have been described. Recoveries were quantitative, and the sensitivity was 5 μg/ml for ail 3 estimations. In serum, pyrazinoic acid at a concentration of 50 μg/ml did not interfere with the estimation of pyrazinamide. In urine, pyrazinamide and pyrazinoic acid could be separated from each other and estimated even when the 2 compounds were present together at concentrations of 2000 μg/ml each

Sediment and water characteristics of selected prawn farming sites at Cochin during premonsoon months

This paper deals with the studies on sediment and water characteristics of selected shrimp farming ponds located at Puthuvyppu and Valappu villages of Vypeen in the vicinity of Cochin carried out during premonsoon period (March-May 2001). Areawise distribution of sediment and water characteristics revealed that smaller and medium sized ponds were relatively more fertile than the larger sized ponds. Overall mean values of nutrients in sediment and water indicated that ponds at Puthuvyppu village (with high tidal influence) were relatively more fertile than those ponds at Valappu. TSS and primary productivity values also showed the same trend. Highly significant positive correlation was observed between clay and silt, organic carbon and available potassium, nitrite-N in sediment and water, salinity and TSS and water pH and dissolved oxygen

(1S,5R,7R,30S)-14-De­oxy­isogarcinol

The title compound, C38H50O5 {systematic name: 10-(3-hy­droxy­benzo­yl)-2,2,7,7-tetra­methyl-3,6,8-tris­(3-methyl­but-2-en­yl)-3,4,4a,5,6,7-hexa­hydro-4a,8-methano-2H-cyclo­octa­[b]pyran-9,11(8H)-dione}, is a polyisoprenylated benzophenone, isolated for the first time from the fruits of Garcinia indica during our investigation of bioactive compounds from this plant and their large-scale extraction. The relative configuration of the title compound was chosen based on comparison of its spectroscopic and optical rotation data with that of the isomorphous and isostructural compound isogarcinol, whose absolute configuration is known. The crystal packing features O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. A Cambridge Structural Database analysis revealed that the crystal structure reported here is isomorphous and isostructural with that of isogarcinol

Prediction of fruit rot disease incidence in Arecanut based on weather parameters

Received: July 19th, 2022 ; Accepted: October 20th, 2022 ; Published: November 22nd, 2022 ; Correspondence: [email protected] occurrence of pests and diseases in arecanut crops has always been an important factor affecting the total production of arecanut. Arecanut is always dependent on environmental factors during its growth. Thus monitoring and early prediction of the occurrence of the disease would be very helpful for prevention and therefore more crop production. Here, we propose artificial intelligence-based deep learning models for fruit rot disease prediction. Historical data on fruit rot incidence in representative areas of arecanut production in Udupi along with historical weather data are the parameters used to develop region-specific models for the Udupi district. The fruit rot disease incidence score value is predicted using recurrent neural network variants (i.e., Vanilla LSTM, Vanilla GRU, stacked LSTM, and Bidirectional LSTM) for the first time. The predictive performance of the proposed models is evaluated by mean square error (MSE) along with the 5-fold cross-validation technique. Further, compared to other deep learning and machine learning models, the Vanilla LSTM model gives 1.5 MSE, while the Vanilla GRU model gives 1.3 MSE making it the best prediction model for arecanut fruit rot disease

Culture of live feed organisms

In any maricuUure practice, availability of seed is one of the prime requisites for sustaining growth, development and to make the activity viable ecologically and economically. As the natural source of seed is often beset with environmental / conservational problems, the dependable source is production through hatchery techniques. Uninterrupted production and supply of live feeds alone can sustain hatchery operations and to feed the emerging larvae or post larvae with different feed requirements at different stages of development / growth. Technologies developed by CMFRl in this line are given in this paper. The method of culturing important live feed organisms such as micro-algae, rotifers, cladocerans and Artemia salina along with their harvesting and preservation are briefly described in this accoun

Study of protein synthesis in rat liver mitochondria: use of cycloheximide

1. Effects of short-term and long-term administration of cycloheximide on rat liver mitochondrial protein synthesis have been examined and were found to be different. 2. Long-term administration of cycloheximide resulted in inhibition of total cellular protein synthesis including that of mitochondria while, at short-term intervals, 8–10% of mitochondrial protein synthesis was cycloheximide-resistant. 3. The inhibitory effect was also reflected in terms of protein synthesizing ability of mitochondria in vitro, the inhibition becoming apparent at 40 min and showing progressive increase with time. 4. The observed inhibition of mitochondrial protein synthesis by cycloheximide was not due to either inhibition of energy metabolism or alteration of amino-acid pool. 5. Cycloheximide did not enter mitochondria or sonic preparation under conditions in vitro. On the other hand, after administration of [3H]cycloheximide, significant quantities of the label were found to be associated with mitochondria and mitoribosomes. 6. These results indicated that cycloheximide reached the site of action in mitochondria under conditions in vivo but was unable to do so in vitro. 7. The results are discussed to elucidate the possible mechanisms involved in the inhibition of truly mitochondrial protein synthesis by cycloheximide

Determination of gestational age: correlation between foetal biometry and transverse cerebellar diameter in women with uncomplicated pregnancy

Background: Transverse Cerebellar Diameter (TCD) serves as a reliable predictor of gestational age in foetus and is a standard against which aberrations in other foetal parameters can be compared, especially when the GA cannot be determined by the date of last menstrual period or early pregnancy scan, TCD is one foetal parameter that has remained consistently superior in predicting gestational age in both singleton and twin gestation. Aim of the study was to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of transverse cerebellar diameter by using ultrasonography for determining the gestational age of the foetus.Methods: A cross-sectional study was done in 100 uncomplicated pregnant patients between the 15th week of gestation to term referred from routine antenatal clinic in outpatient and in-patient department of Obstetrics and Gynecology department of Vinayaka Mission Krupananda Variyar medical college and hospital, Salem during study period April 2015-March 2016. TCD is obtained in the axial plane in the cerebellar view i.e. with a slight rotation of the transducer approximately 30° from the conventional thalamic plane where the biparietal diameter is measured using the cavum septi pellucidi, third ventricle and thalami as landmarks.Results: The correlation of transcerebellar diameter (TCD) with that of BPD (bi-parietal diameter) had shown a perfect positive correlation (r = 0.978) and a similar type of correlation was also seen with HC (head circumference) (r = 0.979), AC (abdominal circumference) (r = 0.966), FL (femur length) (r = 0.976) and USG GA (ultrasonogram gestational age) (r = 0.983).Conclusions: In the normally developing foetus, the TCD increases in a linear fashion with advancing gestational age. The data of this study suggest foetal TCD on ultrasound is a reliable predictive biometric parameter of gestational age

EVALUATION OF STRESS ALLEVIATING POTENTIAL OF PERGULARIA DAEMIA ON CERTAIN IMMUNOLOGICAL PARAMETERS

Objective: Pergularia daemia [PD] Forsk, commonly called Veliparuthi†in Tamil belongs to the family of Asclepiadaceae. It has been used by villagers as traditional folk medicine for various ailments such as antipyretic, anti-venom, emmenagogue, anti-helminthic, and to treat malarial fever, infantile diarrhea. Scientific reports revealed several pharmacological properties of PD extract. Preliminary in vitro studies on the plant revealed the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activities of the plant. So the present study planned to investigate the in vivo stress alleviating the potential of  PD extract on noise stress induced model of wistar albino rats.Methods: Adult Wistar albino rats were exposed to pure tone noise stress for 45 min for one day and the effect of ethanolic PD extract on plasma corticosterone, organ weight body weight ratio of lymphoid organs and adrenal gland,immunological parameters like total leucocyte count, differential leukocyte, neutrophil adherence test and candida phagocytosis was studied.Results: Results revealed that acute stress significantly increased the plasma corticosterone level [p<0.001] and decreased the organ weight body weight ratio of the spleen [p<0.001] and thymus [p<0.01]. It also significantly decreased the total leucocyte count [p<0.001], percentage of neutrophils [p<0.001], eosinophils [p<0.004] and lymphocytes [p<0.001], neutrophil adherence [p<0.001] and enhanced the phagocytic index and avidity index [p<0.001] in acute noise stress exposed groups. Administration of PD extract significantly prevented those acute noise stress-induced changes [p<0.001].Conclusion: We can be  PD extract protected against the noise stress induced changes in albino rats and this stress alleviating and immunomodulatory potential of the plant may be attributed to the phytochemicals and bioactive compounds present in it.Keywords: Stress indices, Immunomodulatory, bioactive compounds, Pergularia daemiaÂ