Determination of Arsenic Content of Available Traditional Medicines in Malaysia using Hydride Generation Atomic Absorption Spectrometry

Purpose: To determine the content of arsenic (As) in some locally available traditional medicines in the East Coast region of Malaysia.Methods: The determination of As was conducted using hydride generation-atomic absorption spectrometry (HG-AAS). Sample preparation entailed mineral acid digestion using hydrochloric acid and nitric acid mixture in a ratio of 1:3. Sixty samples were collected from different locations including shops and open markets in East Coast region of Malaysia, namely, Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan states. Most of these preparations were not registered with Malaysian drug authority.Results: Out of sixty traditional medicine samples, twenty six contained As in a concentration range of 0.2150 - 1.3254 ppm. As for the rest, they were below the limit of quantification (LOQ).Conclusion: Traditional medicine samples available in the east coast region of Malaysia contain levels of arsenic that can adversely affect health upon consumption.Keywords: Traditional medicine, Arsenic, Hydride Generation –Atomic Absorption Spectrometer HGAAS

Development and Validation of Reversed Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Method for Determination of Amlodipine

Purpose: To develop and validate a new sensitive and low-cost method for the analysis of amlodipine in tablet dosage form using reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) with ultraviolet (UV) detection.Methods: Standards and samples were prepared by dissolving amlodipine besylate standard or amlodipine tablets in mobile phase and sonicated for 5 min. The samples were analysed by RP-HPLC equipped with quaternary pump and auto-injector. Separation was achieved using C18 column, and the mobile phase consisted of ammonium acetate buffer containing 0.02 % triethylamine TEA (pH = 4, adjusted using glacial acetic acid) and acetonitrile in the ratio 60:40 v/v. The flow rate was 1 ml/min and a UV detector was used for the detection of amlodipine at a wavelength of 248 nm. The method was validated according to International Conference of Harmonization (ICH) guidelines.Results: The retention time for amlodipine peak was 3.44 ± 0.41 min with a total run time of 6 min. The method was linear over the range of 0.5 - 40 μg/ml with coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.999. Recovery was 98.09 - 100.19 %, and the method showed high precision and repeatability. All validated parameters were within the range of ICH requirements.Conclusion: A new rapid sensitive and low-cost method has been developed and validated for the analysis of amlodipine in tablet dosage form.Keywords: Amlodipine, Recovery, Repeatability, Precision, Reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography, Validatio

The use of medicinal plants in health care practices by Rohingya refugees in a degraded forest and conservation area of Bangladesh

People in developing countries traditionally rely on plants for their primary healthcare. This dependence is relatively higher in forests in remote areas due to the lack of access to modern health facilities and easy availability of the plant products.We carried out an ethno-medicinal survey in Teknaf Game Reserve (TGR), a heavily degraded forest and conservation area in southern Bangladesh, to explore the diversity of plants used by Rohingya refugees for treating various ailments. The study also documented the traditional utilization, collection and perceptions of medicinal plants by the Rohingyas residing on the edges of this conservation area. We collected primary information through direct observation and by interviewing older respondents using a semi-structured questionnaire. A total of 34 plant species in 28 families were frequently used by the Rohingyas to treat 45 ailments, ranging from simple headaches to highly complex eye and heart diseases. For medicinal preparations and treating various ailments, aboveground plant parts were used more than belowground parts. The collection of medicinal plants was mostly from the TGR. © 2009 Taylor & Francis

Vulnerable diseases affecting child mortality in Sierra Leone: emerging health issue

Child mortality in Sierra Leone is the highest ranked in the world. The main causes for child mortality are maternal factors, environmental factors and health factors. Minimal research has been carried out on health factors in Sierra Leone. The objective of this study is to see how maternal and environmental factors have an effect on health factors, which in turn cause child mortality. The data used were from the 2008 Sierra Leone Demographic and Household Survey (SLDHS). The study showed that child mortality had statistically significant factors associated with it: place of residence, birth number, religion and type of toilet facility. Furthermore, the SLDHS had not given much information regarding the cause of diseases affecting children, so we looked only at the effects they had on children. Acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea and measles each had one variable that was statistically significant. As for pneumonia, there were no variables associated with children contracting the disease

Decadal changes of the Western Arabian sea ecosystem

Historical data from oceanographic expeditions and remotely sensed data on outgoing longwave radiation, temperature, wind speed and ocean color in the western Arabian Sea (1950–2010) were used to investigate decadal trends in the physical and biochemical properties of the upper 300 m. 72 % of the 29,043 vertical profiles retrieved originated from USA and UK expeditions. Increasing outgoing longwave radiation, surface air temperatures and sea surface temperature were identified on decadal timescales. These were well correlated with decreasing wind speeds associated with a reduced Siberian High atmospheric anomaly. Shoaling of the oxycline and nitracline was observed as well as acidification of the upper 300 m. These physical and chemical changes were accompanied by declining chlorophyll-a concentrations, vertical macrofaunal habitat compression, declining sardine landings and an increase of fish kill incidents along the Omani coast

Dickson polynomial-based secure group authentication scheme for Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) paves the way for the modern smart industrial applications and cities. Trusted Authority acts as a sole control in monitoring and maintaining the communications between the IoT devices and the infrastructure. The communication between the IoT devices happens from one trusted entity of an area to the other by way of generating security certificates. Establishing trust by way of generating security certificates for the IoT devices in a smart city application can be of high cost and expensive. In order to facilitate this, a secure group authentication scheme that creates trust amongst a group of IoT devices owned by several entities has been proposed. The majority of proposed authentication techniques are made for individual device authentication and are also utilized for group authentication; nevertheless, a unique solution for group authentication is the Dickson polynomial based secure group authentication scheme. The secret keys used in our proposed authentication technique are generated using the Dickson polynomial, which enables the group to authenticate without generating an excessive amount of network traffic overhead. IoT devices' group authentication has made use of the Dickson polynomial. Blockchain technology is employed to enable secure, efficient, and fast data transfer among the unique IoT devices of each group deployed at different places. Also, the proposed secure group authentication scheme developed based on Dickson polynomials is resistant to replay, man-in-the-middle, tampering, side channel and signature forgeries, impersonation, and ephemeral key secret leakage attacks. In order to accomplish this, we have implemented a hardware-based physically unclonable function. Implementation has been carried using python language and deployed and tested on Blockchain using Ethereum Goerli’s Testnet framework. Performance analysis has been carried out by choosing various benchmarks and found that the proposed framework outperforms its counterparts through various metrics. Different parameters are also utilized to assess the performance of the proposed blockchain framework and shows that it has better performance in terms of computation, communication, storage and latency

Travel ban effects on SARS-CoV-2 transmission lineages in the UAE as inferred by genomic epidemiology

Global and local whole genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 enables the tracing of domestic and international transmissions. We sequenced Viral RNA from 37 sampled Covid-19 patients with RT-PCR-confirmed infections across the UAE and developed time-resolved phylogenies with 69 local and 3,894 global genome sequences. Furthermore, we investigated specific clades associated with the UAE cohort and, their global diversity, introduction events and inferred domestic and international virus transmissions between January and June 2020. The study comprehensively characterized the genomic aspects of the virus and its spread within the UAE and identified that the prevalence shift of the D614G mutation was due to the later introductions of the G-variant associated with international travel, rather than higher local transmissibility. For clades spanning different emirates, the most recent common ancestors pre-date domestic travel bans. In conclusion, we observe a steep and sustained decline of international transmissions immediately following the introduction of international travel restrictions

Integrating livelihoods and conservation in protected areas: Understanding the role and stakeholder views on prospects for non-timber forest products, a Bangladesh case study

Protected areas (PAs) represent a key global strategy in biodiversity conservation. In tropical developing countries, the management of PAs is a great challenge as many contain resources on which local communities rely. Collection and trading of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) is a well-established forest-based livelihood strategy, which has been promoted as a potential means for enhanced conservation and improved rural livelihoods in recent years, even though the sustainability or ecological implications have rarely been tested. We conducted an exploratory survey to understand the role and stakeholder views on conservation prospects and perceived ecological feasibility of NTFPs and harvesting schemes in a northeastern PA of Bangladesh, namely the Satchari National Park. Households (n = 101) were interviewed from three different forest dependency categories, adopting a stratified random sampling approach and using a semi-structured questionnaire. The study identified 13 locally important NTFPs, with five being critically important to supporting local livelihoods. Our study suggests that collection, processing and trading in NTFPs constitutes the primary occupation for about 18% of local inhabitants and account for an estimated 19% of their cash annual income. The household consensus on issues relating to NTFPs and their prospective role in conservation was surprisingly high, with 48% of respondents believing that promotion of NTFPs in the PA could have positive conservation value. The majority (71%) of households also had some understanding of the ecological implications of NTFP harvesting, sustainability (53%) and possible management and monitoring regimes (100%). With little known about their real application in the field, our study suggests further investigations are required to understand the ecological compatibility of traditional NTFP harvesting patterns and management. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Informing the design of a national screening and treatment programme for chronic viral hepatitis in primary care: qualitative study of at-risk immigrant communities and healthcare professionals

n Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise statedThis paper presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under the Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP-PG-1209-10038).

Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Drug Resistance in Dhaka Central Jail, the Largest Prison in Bangladesh

There are limited data on TB among prison inmates in Bangladesh. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), its drug resistance and risk factors in Dhaka Central Jail, the largest prison in Bangladesh.Cross sectional survey with, active screening of a total number of 11,001 inmates over a period of 2 years. Sputum samples from TB suspects were taken for acid- fast bacilli (AFB) microscopy, culture and drug susceptibility testing. (5.37, 4.02–7.16).The study results revealed a very high prevalence of TB in the prison population in Dhaka Central Jail. Entry examinations and active symptom screening among inmates are important to control TB transmission inside the prison. Identifying undiagnosed smear-negative TB cases remains a challenge to combat this deadly disease in this difficult setting