Cooked Rice and Oat Meal Similarly Reduce Hypercholesterolemia in Rats

Five groups of rats were given five different diets for 4 weeks after one week adaptation with standard casein. These diets include: casein diet as a control group (C), cooked rice ( R), cooked rice with 1% exogenous cholesterol (RC), oat meal (O), and oat meal with 1% exogenous cholesterol (OC) (Different analysis was determined on animals of these groups at the end of the experiment). The rats weights at the end of experiment showed that weight gain of control group rats was significantly higher (p.0.01) than other groups but there were no differences among other groups. The concentration of serum total cholesterol for (O) group (64.6 mg/100 ml) and that of (R) group (67.7 mg/100 ml) were significantly lower (p.0.01) than those of other groups and the control group was the highest one in all groups (112.42 mg/100 ml). The results also showed significant differences among mean relative weights of Liver, spleen and heart of different groups. The highest and lowest values of mean relative weight of rat's liver, spleen and heart in experimental groups were : (O) group (3.87) and R group (3.29) for liver, (R) group (0.48) and (O) group (0.38) for spleen, both RC and R groups (0.37) and (O) group (0.33) for heart respectively. The (R) and (O) diets significantly lowered the total fat content (24.0, 26.16 mg/kg respectively) while (O) diet lowered the cholesterol content (1.36 mg/kg) of the liver compared to the control diet (51.9 and 2.47 mg/kg for total fat and cholesterol respectively). For bile acid content in the feces, there were significant differences (p.0.01) among the different groups; (OC) group showed the highest (10.4 mg/gm of feces) and the control group showed the lowes

Pharmacotherapy-Based Problems in the Management of Diabetes Mellitus: Needs Much More to be Done!

A total of 856 diabetic patients were evaluated for pharmacotherapy-based problems like for possible drug interactions, adverse drug reactions, and other mismatches, if any. Poor correlation between the advised insulin therapy and patients’ fasting blood glucose levels (12%, n=103) was observed. To most of the patients (41.66%, n= 357), insulin therapy was advised in combination with glucocorticoides, thiazides diuretics, and propranolol. Prescribing beta blocker (propranolol) with insulin is contraindicated. The higher incidence of diabetic foot patients was in the mean age of 57±3.4 years that was controlled with combination therapy of insulin and oral antidiabetics (63.0%, n=516). 11.1% of the treated patients could not take the prescribed therapy due to poor acceptance of insulin therapy due to its syringe needle prick. 41.66% risks of potential drug interactions, 7.93% adverse drug reactions, and 6.6% mismatches were recorded, as per the international approved algorithm, for managing a diabetes mellitus that reflects poor health care system. All these events necessitate for coordinating with other health professionals to make the therapy safer in the better interest of the patients. It is concluded that in practice prescribing pattern carries more risks for patients. It is imperative to improve the practice of pharmacotherapeutics rather than to practice in routine

Photochemically reduced polyoxometalate assisted generation of silver and gold nanoparticles in composite films: a single step route

A simple method to embed noble metal (Ag, Au) nanoparticles in organic–inorganic nanocomposite films by single step method is described. This is accomplished by the assistance of Keggin ions present in the composite film. The photochemically reduced composite film has served both as a reducing agent and host for the metal nanoparticles in a single process. The embedded metal nanoparticles in composites film have been characterized by UV–Visible, TEM, EDAX, XPS techniques. Particles of less than 20 nm were readily embedded using the described approach, and monodisperse nanoparticles were obtained under optimized conditions. The fluorescence experiments showed that embedded Ag and Au nanoparticles are responsible for fluorescence emissions. The described method is facile and simple, and provides a simple potential route to fabricate self-standing noble metal embedded composite films

In vitro evaluation of Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC. antioxidant activity

Mucuna pruriens (L). Dc is a plant of the Fabaceae family, commonly known as velvet bean, itchy bean, chiporro bean, mucuna, among others. This plant has several medicinal properties, including its potential to treat Parkinson's disease (PD). International studies have shown that this plant surpasses the benefits of the substance levodopa in the treatment of PD. Taking into account that nerve cells are highly sensitive to oxidative substances, this study evaluated the antioxidant activity of mucuna and compared it to that of levodopa. The plant seeds' phenolic concentration was quantified by using the Folin-Denis reagent and the antioxidant activity assays were performed by using three different methods: the reduction of the phosphomolybdenium complex, the reduction of radical 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH•) and the formation of radical monocation ABTS•+, from the acid [2-2'-azinobis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonate)]. Results showed that M. pruriens presents high antioxidant capacity, although not superior to isolated levodopa antioxidant capacity. Therefore, further studies should be performed to elucidate the activity of this plant in humans.A Mucuna pruriens (L). Dc é uma planta da família Fabaceae, conhecida popularmente como feijão-veludo, fava-coceira, feijão chiporro, mucuna, entre outros. Possui diversas propriedades medicinais, entre elas, o tratamento da doença de Parkinson (DP). Estudos internacionais vêm demonstrando que essa planta possui atividade superior à do fármaco levodopa para o tratamento da DP. O presente estudo avaliou a possibilidade da atividade antioxidante dessa planta auxiliar nesses resultados, uma vez que as células nervosas são altamente sensíveis às substâncias oxidativas. Para isto foi quantificada a concentração fenólica da semente da mucuna e os testes empregados para a avaliação da atividade antioxidante foram o teste de redução do complexo fosfomolibdênio, redução do radical 1,1-difenil-2-picril-hidrazil (DPPH•) e a formação do radical monocatiônico ABTS•+, proveniente do ácido [2-2'-azino-bis(3-etil-benzolina-6-sulfonado)]. Essa análise demonstrou que M. pruriens possui alta capacidade antioxidante, no entanto, não superior à levodopa isolada e, portanto, novos estudos devem ser realizados para a elucidação da atividade dessa planta em seres humanos

Contourlet structural similarity for facial expression recognition

This paper presents a novel classification method based on perceptual image quality metrics for facial expression recognition. The features are extracted based on Contourlet sub-bands. Then, the optimum features are selected using minimum redundancy and maximum relevance algorithm (MRMR). The selected features are classified by structural similarity metric in contourlet domain. The proposed method has been extensively assessed using two different databases: the Cohn-Kanade database and the JAFFE database. A series of experiments have been carried out and a comparative study suggests the efficiency of the proposed method in enhancing the classification rates of a number of known algorithms

Automatic facial expression recognition: Feature extraction and selection

In this paper,we investigate feature extraction and feature selection methods as well as classification methods for automatic facial expression recognition (FER) system. The FER system is fully automatic and consists of the following modules: face detection, facial detection, feature extraction, selection of optimal features, and classification. Face detection is based on AdaBoost algorithm and is followed by the extraction of frame with the maximum intensity of emotion using the inter-frame mutual information criterion. The selected frames are then processed to generate characteristic features using different methods including: Gabor filters, log Gabor filter, local binary pattern (LBP) operator, higher-order local autocorrelation (HLAC) and a recent proposed method calledHLAC-like features (HLACLF). Themost informative features are selected based on both wrapper and filter feature selection methods. Experiments on several facial expression databases show comparisons of different methods