Prescribing pattern of fixed dose combinations of antibiotics in a post-operative surgical ward of tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Fixed dose drug combinations (FDCs), are combinations of two or more active drugs. It should be used when the combination has an established advantage over single drug in efficacy, safety and compliance. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists only 19 of such combinations. But Indian market is filled with hundreds of FDCs which were not approved leading to irrational use. This study was focused on finding out the fixed dose combination of antimicrobial agents used in the post-operative general surgery ward of a tertiary care teaching hospital.Methods: After getting approval from institutional human ethics committee the prescriptions of patients admitted during April 2013 to March 2014 were analyzed. Demographic data, FDC prescribed by surgeons, Dose, Frequency, Duration, Route, Formulation, Brand or generic drugs, Adverse events due to use of FDC were collected and SPSS version 17 was used for statistical analysis. Fixed dose combinations were used in 90 Patients. The most commonly used FDC were ampicillin with Cloxacillin (43) followed by amoxicillin with clavulanic acid (22), cefoperazone with sulbactam (19) and piperacillin with tazobactam (6). A common drug used in combination along with FDC was metronidazole and aminoglycoside. The irrational combination seen in this study was ampicillin with Cloxacillin (8.88%) of the total FDC which is not approved by DCGI or FDA.Results: In this study out of 145 drugs used, 41drugs were administered three times a day, 90 drugs were given two times a day and 14 drugs were given once a day dosing. 53 patients received FDCs for prophylaxis and 37 patients for treatment purpose. All FDCs were prescribed in brand names. No adverse drug reaction was observed in this study.Conclusions: Consultants should undergo continuing medical education (CME) on newer drug combinations and their adverse drug reactions which will be evidence-based rather than to rely on representatives

Food utilization in the fish Channa striatus exposed to sublethal concentrations of DDT and methyl parathion

Sublethal concentrations of DDT and methyl parathion (MP) in the medium significantly affected the rates of feeding, absorption and conversion in Channa striatus. Fish exposed to 250 ppb DDT or MP consumed 23 or 50% less food than those exposed to pesticide-free water. Correspondingly, absorption rate also decreased from 120 cal/g live fish/day in the control to 88 and 59 cal/g/day in those exposed to 250 ppb DDT and MP. Efficiency to convert the absorbed food into body substance dropped from 30% in the control to 6 and 12% in the 250 ppb DDT and MP groups. Metabolic rate of the control averaged to 84 cal/g/day; whereas exposure to DDT did not significantly affect the metabolic rate, a concentration of 250 ppb MP depressed the rate to 52 cal/g/day

A prospective comparative efficacy of azilsartan and telmisartan in hypertensive patients

Background: Hypertension (HT) is defined as either a sustained systolic blood pressure of greater than 140 mmHg or a sustained diastolic blood pressure of greater than 90 mmHg, according to joint national committee (JNC VIII) on hypertension.Methods: A prospective, open, randomized parallel group comparative study of AZL versus telmisartan was done in patients of stage-I HT. The study included 80 patients, 40 in each group (group I and group II) coming to the Department of Pharmacology, Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, Pillayarkuppam, Pondicherry from January 2016 to December 2017. The study was conducted over 8 weeks. Group-I, patients received azilsartan 40-80 mg per day in divided doses and group-II, patients received telmisartan 40-80 mg per day in divided doses according to severity of hypertension.Results: Patients receiving AZL 40 mg and telmisartan 40 mg showed a significant fall (p<0.05) in systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) at 4 weeks and 8 weeks, when compared to baseline. The difference in SBP and DBP between group I (AZL) and II (telmisartan) was statistically significant at 4 weeks (p<0.05) and was highly significant at 8 weeks (p<0.001). Adverse effects such as nasopharyngitis, upper respiratory tract infection, gastroenteritis, headache, dizziness, and fatigue were reported with both drugs.Conclusions: Reduction of BP with AZL was more as compared to telmisartan at 4 weeks and 8 weeks. Safety and tolerability were similar in both groups

Algoritam planiranja operacija "flow shop" u cilju smanjivanja vremena izvršenja kod problema n-poslova i m-strojeva

In multi stage job problems, simple priority dispatching rules such as shortest processing time (SPT) and earliest due date (EDD) can be used to obtain solutions of minimum total processing time, but may not sometimes give sequences as expected that are close to optimal. The Johnson\u27s algorithm is especially popular among analytical approaches that are used for solving n-jobs, 2-machines sequence problem. In this paper the presented algorithm is based on converting an m-machine problem to a 2-machine problem. Based on testing and comparison with other relevant methods, the proposed algorithm is offered as a competitive alternative for practical application when solving n-jobs and m-machines problems.U problemima posla s više faza, mogu se koristiti jednostavna prioritetna dispečerska pravila kao što su najkraće vrijeme obrade (PT) i najraniji datum dospijeća (EDD) za dobivanje rješenja najmanjega ukupnog vremena obrade. Međutim, ona ponekad ne daju slijed za koji se očekuje da je blizu optimalnom. Johnsonov algoritam je posebno popularan među analitičkim pristupima koji se koriste za rješavanje problema slijeda n-poslova i 2-stroja. Algoritam prikazan u ovom radu se temelji na pretvaranju problema m-strojeva u problem 2-stroja. Na temelju ispitivanja i usporedbe s drugim relevantnim metodama, predloženi algoritam se nudi kao konkurentna alternativa za praktičnu primjenu pri rješavanju problema n-poslova i m-strojeva

Rhythms in the biting behaviour of a mosquito Armigeres subalbatus

The biting cycle of Armigeres subalbatus is distinctly crepuscular, exhibiting two peaks of activity, a smaller one at dawn and a larger one at dusk. The biting cycle is entrained to natural light-dark cycles and the time interval from dawn to dawn or dusk to dusk peaks is exactly 24 h and from dawn to dusk or dusk to dawn is about 12 h measured at 50% level. This rhythm manifests itself day after day without any marked qualitative change. The rate of change of light intensity may determine the onset of crepuscular biting. The sudden increase (up to ca. 17 lx) or decrease (down to ca. 4 lx) in the intensity of ambient light at the time of sunrise or sunset coincides with the peak of the biting activity. The density of the population of the host-seeking females fluctuates in relation to the phases of the moon, increasing with the full moon phase and decreasing with the new moon phase. Even though the density of the population is greater outdoors than indoors both at ground levels and in the first floor, the peak of activity occurs at the same time in all the places. A vertical stratification of biting activity was also noticed

An approach to assess the quality of honey using partial least square method

The objective of the present study is to obtain the quantity of honey components such as moisture, glucose, fructose and sucrose in order to access the quality of honey. The tested honey samples are authenticated if the characteristics of a pure honey. The average ratio of 56% fructose to 44% glucose, but the ratios in the individual honeys ranged from a high of 64% fructose and 36% glucose to a low of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. The contents such as fructose and sucrose in honey is due to the presence of invertase enzymes. The organic acids present in the honey is responsible for the flavor and stability against the contamination of honey due to microorganisms. The natural food items are adulterated intentionally to increase the quantity and there by the quality gets affected. The main adulterants added in honey are sucrose, corn syrup, sugar syrup and jaggery syrup. The quantification deals in finding out the amount of basic constituents present in pure honey and adulterated honey using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer with the multivariate analysis and validating the same using chemical analysis method. The partial least square model is used in predicting the constituents of the samples

Development of algorithm for identification of maligant growth in cancer using artificial neural network

The precise identification and characterization of small pulmonary nodules at low-dose CT is a necessary requirement for the completion of valuable lung cancer screening. It is compulsory to develop some automated tool, in order to detect pulmonary nodules at low dose ct at the beginning stage itself. The numerous algorithms had been proposed earlier by many researchers in the past, but, the accuracy of prediction is always a challenging task. In this work, an artificial neural network based methodology is proposed to find the irregular growth of lung tissues. Higher probability of detection is taken as a goal to get an automated tool, with great accuracy. The finest feature sets derived from Haralick Gray level co occurrence Matrix and used as the dimension reduction way for feeding neural network. In this work, a binary Binary classifier neural network has been proposed to identify the normal images out of all the images. The capability of the proposed neural network has been quantitatively computed using confusion matrix and found in terms of classification accuracy

Effect of steroid injection on food utilization in Channa striatus

Synthetic anabolic sex steroid hormones such as methyltestosterone (MT), testosterone (T), testosterone propionate (TP), estroid (ED), diethylstilbesterol (DES), diethylstilbesterol dipropionate (DES dipro) and docabolin (DN) were tested separately for their effect on food utilization in Channa striatus. Injection of low dosages of DES, DES dipro and TP acts as appetite depressors and Dn, MT, Ed and T as stimulators. MT, Ed and Dn induced not only increased feeding but also increased conversion. T promoted growth along with food consumption. Though DES and DES dipro suppressed feeding; individuals receiving these hormones showed increased growth with increasing dosage