ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ACTIVITY OF ROOT AND FRUIT OF GOKSHURA (TRIBULUS TERRESTRIS LINN.) IN ALBINO RATS

Gokshura Moola (root of Tribulus terrestris Linn.) is one of the ingredients of the group of ten medicinal plant roots called Dasamoola. It is a major ingredient of Ayurvedic formulations so that the Ayurvedic manufacturing industry is consuming them in abundantly. Instead of roots, the fruits of Tribulus terrestris is roughly using in all the preparations of Dasamoola. In Ayurvedic classics Gokshura is said to be useful in the treatment of dysurea (Mutrakrichra), inflammation (sopham), renal calculi (Asmari), cardiac diseases (Hridroga), rheumatoid arthritis (Amavata), rejuvenation (Rasayana), aphrodisiac (Vajeekarana), etc. Ancient Ayurvedic literature opines that the properties and actions attributed to one part of the plant will be the same for the other parts too. If the fruit of the plant is equally effective as the root then the destruction of the whole plant can be prevented. Hence, the present study is carried to evaluate and compare the anti-inflammatory activity of both root and fruit Kashaya (decoction) experimentally by- Carrageenan induced rat paw oedema method with Diclofenac sodium (20 mg/kg) as standard. The results were analysed statistically by ANOVA and LSD post hoc pair wise comparison test. Both root and fruit of Gokshura, showed significant anti inflammatory activity in albino rats. But the root of Gokshura (Tribulus terrestris Linn) showed a greater anti inflammatory action in comparison to its fruit. Thus the current substitution of Gokshura roots with fruits can be substantiated by this study but effect may be less compared to root part

T Cell Responses to Neural Autoantigens Are Similar in Alzheimer’s Disease Patients and Age-Matched Healthy Controls

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a chronic multifactorial and complex neurodegenerative disorder is a leading cause of dementia. Recently, neuroinflammation has been hypothesized as a contributing factor to AD pathogenesis. The role of adaptive immune responses against neuronal antigens, which can either confer protection or induce damage in AD, has not been fully characterized. Here, we measured T cell responses to several potential antigens of neural origin including amyloid precursor protein (APP), amyloid beta (Aβ), tau, α-synuclein, and transactive response DNA binding protein (TDP-43) in patients with AD and age-matched healthy controls (HC). Antigen-specific T cell reactivity was detected for all tested antigens, and response to tau-derived epitopes was particularly strong, but no significant differences between individuals with AD and age-matched HC were identified. We also did not observe any correlation between the antigen-specific T cell responses and clinical variables including age, gender, years since diagnosis and cognitive score. Additionally, further characterization did not reveal any differences in the relative frequency of major Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMC) subsets, or in the expression of genes between AD patients and HC. These observations have not identified a key role of neuronal antigen-specific T cell responses in AD

Nanoionics-Based Three-Terminal Synaptic Device Using Zinc Oxide

Artificial synaptic thin film transistors (TFTs) capable of simultaneously manifesting signal transmission and self-learning are demonstrated using transparent zinc oxide (ZnO) in combination with high κ tantalum oxide as gate insulator. The devices exhibit pronounced memory retention with a memory window in excess of 4 V realized using an operating voltage less than 6 V. Gate polarity induced motion of oxygen vacancies in the gate insulator is proposed to play a vital role in emulating synaptic behavior, directly measured as the transmission of a signal between the source and drain (S/D) terminals, but with the added benefit of independent control of synaptic weight. Unlike in two terminal memristor/resistive switching devices, multistate memory levels are demonstrated using the gate terminal without hampering the signal transmission across the S/D electrodes. Synaptic functions in the devices can be emulated using a low programming voltage of 200 mV, an order of magnitude smaller than in conventional resistive random access memory and other field effect transistor based synaptic technologies. Robust synaptic properties demonstrated using fully transparent, ecofriendly inorganic materials chosen here show greater promise in realizing scalable synaptic devices compared to organic synaptic and other liquid electrolyte gated device technologies. Most importantly, the strong coupling between the in-plane gate and semiconductor channel through ionic charge in the gate insulator shown by these devices, can lead to an artificial neural network with multiple presynaptic terminals for complex synaptic learning processes. This provides opportunities to alleviate the extreme requirements of component and interconnect density in realizing brainlike systems

A study on the health status of adolescent school students in North Kerala during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

Introduction: During the initial phase of COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the schools and educational institutions were closed countrywide. Hence, more than 90% of students admitted to educational institutions worldwide are affected as 188 countries have implemented COVID restrictions. Hence, this study focuses on the health status of adolescent students during the shutdown of educational institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aim and Objective: This study assesses mental health, dental health, eye health, physical activity, immunization, and nutrition in adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic among adolescent boys and girls. Materials and Methods: The current cross-sectional study was done among school-going adolescent children. One hundred and eighty students from different syllabus systems and urban and rural parts of north Kerala participated. The data collected were entered into an excel sheet and analyzed using the SPSS software. Results: 59.4% of students have gained weight due to sedentary behaviour. Students spend more time in front (95%) of a digital screen, leading to computer vision syndrome. Loss of social interactions adversely affected students' mental health by 37.8%. Thirty percentage of physically active students were involved in indoor physical activities such as Zumba and aerobics. In addition, 77% of students have not taken their routine immunization. Conclusion: The newer learning methods have impacted the students' knowledge. There is no uniformity in the form of teaching. Multiple factors have played a role in improving the lockdown situation, including the families, schools, local authorities, government, digital media, and newspapers

Tumor cells fail to present MHC-II restricted epitopes derived from oncogenes to CD4+ T cells

CD4+ T cells play a critical role in antitumor immunity via recognition of peptide antigens presented on MHC class II (MHC-II). Although some solid cancers can be induced to express MHC-II, the extent to which this enables direct recognition by tumor-specific CD4+ T cells is unclear. We isolated and characterized T cell antigen receptors (TCRs) from naturally primed CD4+ T cells specific for 2 oncoproteins, HPV-16 E6 and the activating KRASG12V mutation, from patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, respectively, and determined their ability to recognize autologous or human leukocyte antigen-matched antigen-expressing tumor cells. We found in both cases that the TCRs were capable of recognizing peptide-loaded target cells expressing the relevant MHC-II or B cell antigen-presenting cells (APCs) when the antigens were endogenously expressed and directed to the endosomal pathway but failed to recognize tumor cells expressing the source protein even after induction of surface MHC-II expression by IFN-γ or transduction with CIITA. These results suggest that priming and functional recognition of both a nuclear (E6) and a membrane-associated (KRAS) oncoprotein are predominantly confined to crosspresenting APCs rather than via direct recognition of tumor cells induced to express MHC-II

Linked CD4+/CD8+ T cell neoantigen vaccination overcomes immune checkpoint blockade resistance and enables tumor regression

Therapeutic benefit to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) is currently limited to the subset of cancers thought to possess a sufficient tumor mutational burden (TMB) to allow for the spontaneous recognition of neoantigens (NeoAg) by autologous T cells. We explored whether the response to ICB of an aggressive low-TMB squamous cell tumor could be improved through combination immunotherapy using functionally defined NeoAg as targets for endogenous CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. We found that, whereas vaccination with CD4+ or CD8+ NeoAg alone did not offer prophylactic or therapeutic immunity, vaccines containing NeoAg recognized by both subsets overcame ICB resistance and led to the eradication of large established tumors that contained a subset of PD-L1+ tumor-initiating cancer stem cells (tCSC), provided the relevant epitopes were physically linked. Therapeutic CD4+/CD8+ T cell NeoAg vaccination produced a modified tumor microenvironment (TME) with increased numbers of NeoAg-specific CD8+ T cells existing in progenitor and intermediate exhausted states enabled by combination ICB-mediated intermolecular epitope spreading. We believe that the concepts explored herein should be exploited for the development of more potent personalized cancer vaccines that can expand the range of tumors treatable with ICB