Prevalence of abnormal semen analysis in patients of infertility at a rural setup in Central India

Background: Semen analysis is an indispensable diagnostic tool in the evaluation of the male partners of infertile couples.Methods: Semen samples were analysed by manual method. Analyses were for volume, viscosity, sperm concentration, motility, and morphology, according to WHO guidelines on semen analysisResults: This study, done at a rural setup, at Acharya Vinoba Bhave Rural Hospital has demonstrated that abnormal semen quality is a major factor in our rural setup with 52% of male partners of infertile couples having abnormal semen parameters.Conclusion: Male contribution towards infertility is yet to be studied and requires more elaborate research

Prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus, its associated risk factors and pregnancy outcomes at a rural setup in Central India

Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is characterised by carbohydrate intolerance of varying severity with onset or first recognition during pregnancy. GDM is an important public health problem in India.Method: The present study was carried out in 300 antenatal women. Fasting blood glucose was measured after which they were given 75 g oral glucose and plasma glucose was estimated at 2 h. Patients with plasma glucose >140 mg/dl were labelled as GDM. Thus WHO criteria were used for diagnosing GDM. Data was collected from all subjects on demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, education level, parity, family history of diabetes and/or hypertension, BMI, etc. and pregnancy outcome was studied.Results: Prevalence of GDM was found to be 8.33%. Gestational diabetes mellitus was found to be significantly associated with age, parity, BMI, socioeconomic status, education level and was also found to be associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes.Conclusion: GDM adversely affects maternal and fetal outcomes and its prevalence is steadily rising. Appropriate interventions are required for its control

A Comprehensive Review On The Drugs Acting On Mutravaha Srotas

Ayurveda has given utmost importance to the Mutravaha Srotas (urinary system) and the Mutravaha Srotogata Vikaras (urinary tract disorders). As a system responsible for the homeostasis of fluids in the body, it also detoxifies the body by excreting certain waste products through the urine. When a person is diseased, symptoms such as increased or decreased urine production, painful micturition, stone formation and thus obstructed micturition, increased frequency of micturition and so on occurs. There are many herbs with different actions specifically aimed at relieving urinary system disorders. Drugs like Jambu, Amrasthi are likely to reduce the increased flow of urine and hence are considered as Mutrasangrahaneeya, while drugs like Ikshu, Kusha and so on increase the flow of urine and hence are considered as Mutravirechaneeya. There are drugs like Padma, Utpala, and so on which gives normal colour to urine and are known as Mutravirajaneeya dravyas. Asmarighna dravyas breaks down the stones and remove them through the urine. These dravyas, when used under proper guidance, help in relieving the pain and discomfort caused by the disease

Evaluation Of Knowledge, Attitude And Practice In Parents Regarding Paediatric Oral Health Care

Objective:  To assess the knowledge, attitude, and practise in parents regarding paediatric oral health care.       Design:  A cross sectional questionnaire survey of 500 parents visiting dental clinics for the first time at the Department of Paediatric and Preventive Dentistry for dental treatment of their child.  Outcome measures:  Responses were obtained for dental knowledge, attitudes and practise. Relating to the eruption and shedding of deciduous and permanent teeth, preventive aids in pedodontics, diseased conditions such as dental decay, gums swelling and crowding, frequency of consumption of refined food by their children and oral health practise.      Results:  Parents have approximately similar percentage of positive knowledge i.e.38.4% and 38.8% towards preventive oral health and oral disease respectively. In addition the positive attitude was also found to be 77.5% and 77.8% towards preventive oral health and oral disease respectively. Whereas only 11.41% showed a positive attitude towards practising the preventive oral health, in contrast with oral disease showing 35.6% parents positive practise. Conclusions:  Parents had positive attitude on the need to conserve natural teeth for their children, but they lacked adequate knowledge regarding preventive oral health and oral disease. And also very low utilization of dental services in spite of positive attitude towards dental treatments

Cross-cultural adaptation into Punjabi of the English version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale

BACKGROUND: We wanted to use a Punjabi version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) to enable non-English speaking patients to participate in a clinical trial. The aim of the study was to translate and validate the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale into Punjabi. METHODS: The HADS was translated into Punjabi by a multidisciplinary team, verified against the original version, and administered to 73 bilingual patients attending an outpatient clinic. RESULTS: One sample t-tests and the Bland-Altman plots demonstrated acceptable linguistic agreement between the two versions of the HADS. Spearman's rank-order correlation coefficients (p < 0.0001) demonstrate excellent conceptual agreement between each item and its corresponding subscale score, for both versions. Concordance rates revealed that the Punjabi HADS adequately identified borderline cases of anxiety (80.8%), definite cases of anxiety (91.8%) and depression (91.8%), but was less reliable in identifying borderline cases of depression (65.8%). Cronbach alpha coefficients revealed high levels of internal consistency for both the Punjabi and English versions (0.81 and 0.86 for anxiety and 0.71 and 0.85 for depression, respectively). CONCLUSION: The Punjabi HADS is an acceptable, reliable and valid measure of anxiety and depression among physically ill Punjabi speaking people in the United Kingdom

Structure and Evolution of Streptomyces Interaction Networks in Soil and In Silico

Soil grains harbor an astonishing diversity of Streptomyces strains producing diverse secondary metabolites. However, it is not understood how this genotypic and chemical diversity is ecologically maintained. While secondary metabolites are known to mediate signaling and warfare among strains, no systematic measurement of the resulting interaction networks has been available. We developed a high-throughput platform to measure all pairwise interactions among 64 Streptomyces strains isolated from several individual grains of soil. We acquired more than 10,000 time-lapse movies of colony development of each isolate on media containing compounds produced by each of the other isolates. We observed a rich set of such sender-receiver interactions, including inhibition and promotion of growth and aerial mycelium formation. The probability that two random isolates interact is balanced; it is neither close to zero nor one. The interactions are not random: the distribution of the number of interactions per sender is bimodal and there is enrichment for reciprocity—if strain A inhibits or promotes B, it is likely that B also inhibits or promotes A. Such reciprocity is further enriched in strains derived from the same soil grain, suggesting that it may be a property of coexisting communities. Interactions appear to evolve rapidly: isolates with identical 16S rRNA sequences can have very different interaction patterns. A simple eco-evolutionary model of bacteria interacting through antibiotic production shows how fast evolution of production and resistance can lead to the observed statistical properties of the network. In the model, communities are evolutionarily unstable—they are constantly being invaded by strains with new sets of interactions. This combination of experimental and theoretical observations suggests that diverse Streptomyces communities do not represent a stable ecological state but an intrinsically dynamic eco-evolutionary phenomenon

Exome Sequencing Implicates Ancestry-Related Mendelian Variation at SYNE1 in Childhood-Onset Essential Hypertension

Childhood-onset essential hypertension (COEH) is an uncommon form of hypertension that manifests in childhood or adolescence and, in the United States, disproportionately affects children of African ancestry. The etiology of COEH is unknown, but its childhood onset, low prevalence, high heritability, and skewed ancestral demography suggest the potential to identify rare genetic variation segregating in a Mendelian manner among affected individuals and thereby implicate genes important to disease pathogenesis. However, no COEH genes have been reported to date. Here, we identify recessive segregation of rare and putatively damaging missense variation in the spectrin domain of spectrin repeat containing nuclear envelope protein 1 (SYNE1), a cardiovascular candidate gene, in 3 of 16 families with early-onset COEH without an antecedent family history. By leveraging exome sequence data from an additional 48 COEH families, 1,700 in-house trios, and publicly available data sets, we demonstrate that compound heterozygous SYNE1 variation in these COEH individuals occurred more often than expected by chance and that this class of biallelic rare variation was significantly enriched among individuals of African genetic ancestry. Using in vitro shRNA knockdown of SYNE1, we show that reduced SYNE1 expression resulted in a substantial decrease in the elasticity of smooth muscle vascular cells that could be rescued by pharmacological inhibition of the downstream RhoA/Rho-associated protein kinase pathway. These results provide insights into the molecular genetics and underlying pathophysiology of COEH and suggest a role for precision therapeutics in the future

Colistin: recent data on pharmacodynamics properties and clinical efficacy in critically ill patients

Recent clinical studies performed in a large number of patients showed that colistin "forgotten" for several decades revived for the management of infections due to multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacteria (GNB) and had acceptable effectiveness and considerably less toxicity than that reported in older publications. Colistin is a rapidly bactericidal antimicrobial agent that possesses a significant postantibiotic effect against MDR Gram-negative pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Klebsiella pneumoniae. The optimal colistin dosing regimen against MDR GNB is still unknown in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting. A better understanding of the pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic relationship of colistin is urgently needed to determine the optimal dosing regimen. Although pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data in ICU patients are scarce, recent evidence shows that the pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics of colistimethate sodium and colistin in critically ill patients differ from those previously found in other groups, such as cystic fibrosis patients. The AUC:MIC ratio has been found to be the parameter best associated with colistin efficacy. To maximize the AUC:MIC ratio, higher doses of colistimethate sodium and alterations in the dosing intervals may be warranted in the ICU setting. In addition, the development of colistin resistance has been linked to inadequate colistin dosing. This enforces the importance of colistin dose optimization in critically ill patients. Although higher colistin doses seem to be beneficial, the lack of colistin pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic data results in difficulty for the optimization of daily colistin dose. In conclusion, although colistin seems to be a very reliable alternative for the management of life-threatening nosocomial infections due to MDR GNB, it should be emphasized that there is a lack of guidelines regarding the ideal management of these infections and the appropriate colistin doses in critically ill patients with and without multiple organ failure

Short interfering RNA against STAT1 attenuates cisplatin-induced ototoxicity in the rat by suppressing inflammation

Cisplatin is widely used for treating various solid tumors. However, this drug produces dose-limiting ototoxicity and nephrotoxicity, which significantly reduce the quality of life of cancer patients. While nephrotoxicity could be alleviated by diuresis, there is currently no approved treatment for hearing loss. Previous studies show that the ROS and inflammation are major contributors to cisplatin-induced hearing loss. In this study, we show that ROS trigger the inflammatory process in the cochlea by activating signal transducer and activator of transcription-1 (STAT1). Activation of STAT1 activation was dependent on ROS generation through NOX3 NADPH oxidase, knockdown of which by siRNA reduced STAT1 activation. Moreover, STAT1 siRNA protected against activation of p53, reduced apoptosis, reduced damage to OHCs and preserved hearing in rats. STAT1 siRNA attenuated the increase in inflammatory mediators, such as TNF-α, inhibition of which protected cells from cisplatin-mediated apoptosis. Finally, we showed that trans-tympanic administration of etanercept, a TNF-α antagonist, protected against OHC damage and cisplatin-induced hearing loss. These studies suggest that controlling inflammation by inhibition of STAT1-dependent pathways in the cochlea could serve as an effective approach to treat cisplatin ototoxicity and improve the overall quality of life for cancer patients

Coupling changes in cell shape to chromosome segregation

Animal cells undergo dramatic changes in shape, mechanics and polarity as they progress through the different stages of cell division. These changes begin at mitotic entry, with cell–substrate adhesion remodelling, assembly of a cortical actomyosin network and osmotic swelling, which together enable cells to adopt a near spherical form even when growing in a crowded tissue environment. These shape changes, which probably aid spindle assembly and positioning, are then reversed at mitotic exit to restore the interphase cell morphology. Here, we discuss the dynamics, regulation and function of these processes, and how cell shape changes and sister chromatid segregation are coupled to ensure that the daughter cells generated through division receive their fair inheritance