Cross sectional study evaluating the correlation of thyroid dysfunction with severity of disease in rheumatoid arthritis

Background: The present study was conducted to evaluate the correlation of disease severity in RA and thyroid dysfunction.Methods: The present cross-sectional descriptive study enrolled 164 participants aged 12 years and above diagnosed as having RA. Use of drugs causing thyroid dysfunction, malignancy, diabetes mellitus, systemic hypertension, pregnancy and prior thyroidectomy were the criteria for exclusion. Data was analyzed using R and tests of significance were Chi square test and independent sample t-test and Pearson correlation. Institutional ethics committee approved the study and written informed consent was obtained from all study participants.Results: Serum TSH positively correlated with DAS 28 (r=0.2, p=0.005), ESR (r=0.2, p=0.03), CRP (r=0.2, p=0.006), RA factor (r=0.2, p=0.003), subjective assessment (r=0.3, p= 0.001) and anti TPO antibodies (r=0.7, p=0.001). Free T4 negatively correlated with DAS28 (r=-0.2, p=0.006), ESR (r=-0.2, p=0.02), CRP (r=-0.2, p=0.01). RA factor (r=-0.2, p=0.01), subjective assessment (r=-0.2, p= 0.01), anti TPO (r=-0.6, p=0.001) and Free T3 negatively correlated with DAS28 score (r=-0.2, p=0.02) , ESR (r=-0.2, p=0.03), RA factor (r=-0.3, p=0.001) and anti TPO antibodies (r=- 0.3, p=0.001).Conclusions: Hypothyroidism was significantly associated with disease severity of RA with linear positive correlation of TSH with DAS28 score, ESR, CRP, RA factor, subjective assessment and anti TPO antibodies, linear negative correlation of serum free T4 with DAS 28 score, ESR, CRP, RA factor, subjective assessment and anti TPO antibody and linear negative correlation of free T3 with DAS28 score, ESR, RA factor and anti TPO antibody was observed

A Study on Minimal Hepatic Encephalopathy in Cirrhotics.

INTRODUCTION : Hepatic encephalopathy includes a spectrum of transient and reversible neurological and psychiatric manifestations usually found in patients with chronic liver disease and portal hypertension. Its occurrence indicates a poor prognostic factor with a projected one year survival rate of 43%. It occurs in 50% to 70% of cirrhotic patients. The least severe form of hepatic encephalopathy, which is not recognized on clinical examination is Minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE). It impairs health related quality of life (HRQOL). It can be detected by using sensitive tests like number connection tests, line tracing tests and figure connection tests, EEG, visual, auditory and somatosensory evoked potentials. Ammonia levels are found to be elevated in patients with minimal hepatic encephalopathy and therefore can play a role in the causation of minimal hepatic encephalopathy. Minimal hepatic encephalopathy has a subtle but negative impact on a patient’s spatial and motor skills, the ability to perform complex tasks such as driving, and even quality of life. Some studies have reported that patients with MHE can progress and later on develop overt hepatic encephalopathy. Due to its negative impact on daily living, it has been suggested that the failure to diagnose this condition could be classified as a medical error. Helicobacter pylori, a gram negative microaerophilic bacteria produces ammonia from urea, which is absorbed in the gastric lumen into circulation.Infection with these bacteria can result in hyperammonemia and hepatic encephalopathy and eradication of these bacteria results in decreased ammonia levels. AIM AND OBJECTIVES : 1. To study the incidence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy in asymptomatic cirrhotics. 2. To study the prevalence of helicobacter pylori in asymptomatic cirrhotics with minimal hepatic encephalopathy. CONCLUSION : This study shows the high incidence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy in asymptomatic cirrhotic patients. This study proves that the prevalence of H.pylori is markedly high in patients with minimal hepatic encephalopathy

Processing and characterization of polystyrene nanocomposites based on CoAl layered double hydroxide

AbstractThe present work deals with the development of polystyrene (PS) nanocomposites through solvent blending technique with diverse contents of modified CoAl layered double hydroxide (LDH). The prepared PS as well as PS/CoAl LDH (1–7 wt.%) nanocomposites were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), rheological analysis, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The XRD results suggested the formation of exfoliated structure, while TEM images clearly indicated the intercalated morphology of PS nanocomposites at higher loading. The presence of various functional groups in the CoAl LDH and PS/CoAl LDH nanocomposites was verified by FTIR analysis. TGA data confirmed that the thermal stability of PS composites was enhanced significantly as compared to pristine PS. While considering 15% weight loss as a reference point, it was found that the thermal degradation (Td) temperature increased up to 28.5 °C for PS nanocomposites prepared with 7 wt.% CoAl LDH loading over pristine PS. All the nanocomposite samples displayed superior glass transition temperature (Tg), in which PS nanocomposites containing 7 wt.% LDH showed about 5.5 °C higher Tg over pristine PS. In addition, the kinetics for thermal degradation of the composites was studied using Coats-Redfern method. The Criado method was ultimately used to evaluate the decomposition reaction mechanism of the nanocomposites. The complex viscosity and rheological muduli of nanocomposites were found to be higher than that of pristine PS when the frequency increased from 0.01 to 100 s−1

Comparative study of adverse drug reaction pattern of two anti-asthma groups of drugs in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Bronchial Asthma is one of the worldwide health problems associated with increased morbidity and also mortality. Bronchial Asthma is a disease of airways that is characterized by increased responsiveness of the trachea-bronchial tree. Anti asthmatic drugs are associated with adverse effects which can affect the compliance and course of treatment. Monitoring adverse drug reactions in asthma will play a vital role in alerting physicians about the possibility and circumstances of such events, thereby protecting the user population from avoidable harm.Methods: The study was conducted in 500 bronchial asthma patients (250 patients in Beta 2 agonist group (Salbutamol) and 250 patients in Methylxanthine group (Deriphyllin) who fulfilled the study criteria and were observed for three months at Madras Medical College and Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, Chennai. Their prescriptions were collected and analysed. Adverse drug reactions(ADRs) in each group were collected and evaluated. The causality assessment was done by WHO-UMC assessment scale and severity by using Modified Hartwig-Seigel severity assessment scale.Results: Total 38% of patients taking anti-asthma drugs were encountered adverse drug reactions and were more common in elderly females (61 to 70 years). Adverse Drug Reactions were more common in Methylxanthine group (48%) compared to Beta 2 agonist group (28%). Headache (38%) was the commonest ADR in Methylxanthine group and Tremors (31%) in Beta 2 agonist group. Most of ADRs were mild (95 %), manageable and comes under possible (60 %) category of WHO causality assessment scale.Conclusions: Treatment of Bronchial Asthma is mainly based on Beta 2 agonist and Methylxanthine group. So, occurrence of ADR is much common. Our study offers a representative idea of the ADR profile of anti asthmatic drugs. Constant vigil in detecting ADRs and subsequent dose adjustments can make therapy with anti asthmatic drugs safer and more effective. This, in turn, will improve compliance

In vitro antibacterial effects of red alga Champia parvula (C. Agardh) of various solvents against human pathogenic bacteria

The aim of the present study is to evaluate the antimicrobial inhibitory effect of Champia parvula (red alga) of various solvents at the concentration 100 g/mL, on pathogenic bacteria like Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus vulgaris, Bacillus cerus, Bacillus subtilius, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella typhii were studied by the disc diffusion method. The present study reveals that a higher zone of inhibition against Salmonella typhii (15.4 0.2), Bacillus subtilius (13.8 0.1) , Staphylococcus aureus (10.7 0.2) and Proteus vulgaris (10.6 0.1) in the methanol extract alone, followed by acetone, benzene, chloroform, and ethyl acetate extracts showed moderate activity against most of the pathogens, whereas chloroform extract is inactive only against Bacillus cerus. The positive control streptomycin shows inhibitory action against all the pathogens studied. This study shows the potential of marine active compounds from Champia parvula as an antimicrobial agent for a disease free environment

Hemidesmus indicus and Hibiscus rosa-sinensis Affect Ischemia Reperfusion Injury in Isolated Rat Hearts

Hemidesmus indicus (L.) R. Br. (HI) and Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L. (HRS) are widely used traditional medicine. We investigated cardioprotective effects of these plants applied for 15 min at concentrations of 90, 180, and 360 μg/mL in Langendorff-perfused rat hearts prior to 25-min global ischemia/120-min reperfusion (I/R). Functional recovery (left ventricular developed pressure—LVDP, and rate of development of pressure), reperfusion arrhythmias, and infarct size (TTC staining) served as the endpoints. A transient increase in LVDP (32%–75%) occurred at all concentrations of HI, while coronary flow (CF) was significantly increased after HI 180 and 360. Only a moderate increase in LVDP (21% and 55%) and a tendency to increase CF was observed at HRS 180 and 360. HI and HRS at 180 and 360 significantly improved postischemic recovery of LVDP. Both the drugs dose-dependently reduced the numbers of ectopic beats and duration of ventricular tachycardia. The size of infarction was significantly decreased by HI 360, while HRS significantly reduced the infarct size at all concentrations in a dose-dependent manner. Thus, it can be concluded that HI might cause vasodilation, positive inotropic effect, and cardioprotection, while HRS might cause these effects at higher concentrations. However, further study is needed to elucidate the exact mechanism of their actions

SINGLE VERSUS MULTIPLE TRIAL VECTORS IN CLASSICAL DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION FOR OPTIMIZING THE QUANTIZATION TABLE IN JPEG BASELINE ALGORITHM

Quantization Table is responsible for compression / quality trade-off in baseline Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) algorithm and therefore it is viewed as an optimization problem. In the literature, it has been found that Classical Differential Evolution (CDE) is a promising algorithm to generate the optimal quantization table. However, the searching capability of CDE could be limited due to generation of single trial vector in an iteration which in turn reduces the convergence speed. This paper studies the performance of CDE by employing multiple trial vectors in a single iteration. An extensive performance analysis has been made between CDE and CDE with multiple trial vectors in terms of Optimization process, accuracy, convergence speed and reliability. The analysis report reveals that CDE with multiple trial vectors improves the convergence speed of CDE and the same is confirmed using a statistical hypothesis test (t-test)

Automated Accidental Precautions in Public Transportation Management System

This paper aims at different types of transportation problems by presenting a proper management process to improve the public transportation management system. In modern era, the accidents and the indifference makes the major death rate, this is because of the lagging of immediate precautionary actions. In order to decrease the death rate and also to improve the immediate measures for the effect is proposed by using the method of IoT. In this system, every bus contains GPS to track the bus if it met with an accident, crash sensor and pressure sensor is also used to check whether the bus dashed with other vehicles or not and piezo sensor is to check if the bus roll down due to any mechanical failures. The level of accident at the hazardous weather that is, the wind flow at hills station makes an unstable condition for the transportation system. Basically, in hill areas the wind flowin every day is unpredictable one and a challengeable one. To avoid those risky factors, we implemented cruise control which accommodate the speed limit of the vehicles according to the pre-moving vehicles

Antidiabetic potential of Lantana aculeata root extract in alloxan-induced diabetic rats

The present study investigates the antidiabetic potential of dried mature roots of Lantana aculeata, a weed belonging to verbenaceae family on biochemical profile in alloxan-induced diabetic rats. The effects of an ethanolic extract of the dried mature roots of Lantana aculeata on serum glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides, plasma insulin and liver glycogen were examined in control and experimental groups. Lantana aculeata root extract reduced the serum glucose concentration at 24, 48 and 72 hours. To verify the activity sub-chronically, the extract administered orally in the doses of 25, 50 and 100 mg/kg to diabetic rats for 30 days, that significantly reduced the level of glucose, total cholesterol and triglycerides with an increase in insulin and glycogen concentration to near normal levels in a dose-dependent manner. The results indicate that roots of Lantana aculeata possess antidiabetic potential in alloxan-induced diabetic rats. The activity might be due to high concentration of oleanolic acid present in the roots.Keywords: Antidiabetic activity, Lantana aculeata roots, Oleanolic aci

Ensemble of Homogenous and Heterogeneous Classifiers using K-Fold Cross Validation with Reduced Entropy

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects millions of people worldwide, greatly reducing their quality of life and creating serious economic, social, and medical problems. Some automated diagnosis methods can detect chronic renal disease. In-depth studies on data mining techniques have recently focused on accuracy in the diagnosis of chronic renal illnesses, either by taking advantage of the disease's simplicity or doing feature selection in addition to pre-processing. In order to handle the unbalanced dataset in this work, Synthetic Minority Over Sampling Technique (SMOTE) is used during pre-processing. For this investigation, 400 data from the publicly accessible UCI machine learning (ML) repository are used. For the implementation, both homogeneous and heterogeneous ensemble classifiers which combine two separate classifiers have been used. Different machine learning (ML) techniques, such as the Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Adaboost classifier, Decision Tree (DT), Reduced Error Pruning Tree, Alternating Decision Tree, and Random Forests Algorithm and their ensembles with a significant reduction in entropy, are used to perform the classification. With a 99.12% accuracy rate and a 99.10% f1 score, the homogeneous classifier Adaboost-Random Forest outperforms other models in the prediction of CKD