ANTIHYPERGLYCAEMIC EFFECT OF FICUS DALHOUSIAE MIQ LEAF ETHANOLIC EXTRACT IN ALLOXAN-INDUCED DIABETIC RATS

Objective: Ficus dalhousiae Miq. Has been documented for a wide range of uses in Ayurvedic and Unani medicine. The aim of this study was to evaluate the anti-hyperglycaemic effect of FDLEE in alloxan induced diabetic rats. Methods: Plant material was collected from Tirupati A. P, during the month of March 2013 the leaves were wiped carefully to make them free from dust and foreign material and dried under shade at room temperature. After seven days, the leaves were powdered and passed through a sieve. The powder was weighed (500 gm) and was extracted by maceration process and the solvent was evaporated in a rotavapor at 40º- 50º C under reduced pressure. The total yield of the extract was 16.5%. Phytochemical screening was carried out for the detection of alkaloids, flavanoids, glycosides, saponins, sterols and tannins by simple qualitative methods. Diabetes mellitus was induced by single i. p injection of freshly prepared solution of Alloxan monohydrate at a dose of 150mg/kg b. w. The animals were kept under observation for 48hr; Blood glucose was measured by glucometer. The rats with blood glucose levels above 250 mg/dl were selected for the experimental studies. FDLEE (100, 200 & 400mg/kg, b. w) was administered orally once a day for a period of 10 days. Body weight and blood glucose levels were determined on different experimental days. Results: Significant decrease in body weight and increase in blood glucose and lipid profile were observed in diabetic rats. The administration of FDLEE and glibenclamide daily for 10 days reversed body weights and blood glucose significantly. Conclusion: FDLEE exhibited anti-hyperglycaemic and anti-hyperlipidaemic effects in diabetic rats which supports its use as an adjunct in treatment of diabetes

Pharmacological evaluation of novel dimers of an arylpropionic acid class of non-selective cyclooxygenase inhibitors

Purpose: To explore and identify cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibitors with optimal potency and efficacy using an arylpropionic acid class of drugs as lead molecules.Methods: The selected lead molecules were dimerised through chemical processes (reflux condensation) and characterised in terms of structural properties using infrared, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, electron impact mass spectrometry, and  elemental analysis techniques. The molecules were evaluated  pharmacologically for acute toxicity and anti-inflammatory  (carrageenaninduced paw oedema test), analgesic (acetic acid-induced writhing test in mice), and antipyretic (Brewer’s yeast-induced pyrexia test in mice) activities against control (normal saline) and relevant reference standard drugs. Docking analyses were also performed to assess possible protein–ligand interactions.Results: The test compounds were non-toxic at doses of 50, 100 and 150 mg/kg body weight, ip. Pharmacological evaluation  revealed that the test compounds, TC-I through TC-IV, had significant antiinflammatory and peripheral analgesic activities (p < 0.001). An antipyretic test showed that TC-I, -II, and -III showed highly significant antipyretic activities at all doses tested. TC-IV at 20 and 30 mg/kg body weight exhibited significant antipyretic activities (p < 0.05), while at 50 mg/kg body weight, the activity was highly significant (p < 0.001). Molecular modelling revealed strong inhibitory interactions with docking scores of  116.2, 128.8, 144.2, and 136.0 kcal/mol, respectively, in comparison with the reference ligand,  flurbiprofen (94.9 kcal/mol).Conclusion: The dimerised lead drug molecules showed significant anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and antipyretic activities in  animals and may further be explored as potential new drug candidates for inflammatory conditions.Keywords: Analgesic, Anti-inflammatory, Antipyretic, Arylpropionic acid, COX-2 inhibitors, Molecular dockin

Short-Term Load Forecasting Using AMI Data

Accurate short-term load forecasting is essential for efficient operation of the power sector. Predicting load at a fine granularity such as individual households or buildings is challenging due to higher volatility and uncertainty in the load. In aggregate loads such as at grids level, the inherent stochasticity and fluctuations are averaged-out, the problem becomes substantially easier. We propose an approach for short-term load forecasting at individual consumers (households) level, called Forecasting using Matrix Factorization (FMF). FMF does not use any consumers' demographic or activity patterns information. Therefore, it can be applied to any locality with the readily available smart meters and weather data. We perform extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets and demonstrate that FMF significantly outperforms the computationally expensive state-of-the-art methods for this problem. We achieve up to 26.5% and 24.4 % improvement in RMSE over Regression Tree and Support Vector Machine, respectively and up to 36% and 73.2% improvement in MAPE over Random Forest and Long Short-Term Memory neural network, respectively

Lipid Polymer Hybrid Nanoparticles: A Novel Approach for Drug Delivery

Applications of nanotechnology and material sciences emerge in the development of various novel drug delivery systems that have been proven as promising clinically. Among these, liposomes, noisome, polymeric carriers and lipid-based delivery system were extensively explored and enter into clinical trials and clinical applications. However, each system has its own pros and cons in term of different physicochemical, pharmacokinetics and therapeutics aspects. Lipid-polymer hybrid carriers merge the potential benefit of these structural components and can be prepared by different approaches to improve the therapeutic outcomes. In this chapter, we provide the useful insight about the lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles (LPHNPs) that can be prepared by using the different structural components including the synthetic and natural polymers and lipids. Among these, we also explain the various methods to prepare the LPHNPs with various desired characteristics. Finally, the various therapeutic and clinical applications have been presented briefly

Amelioration of carbon tetrachloride- and paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity in rats by Ficus dalhousiae

The present study was undertaken to investigate hepatoprotective activity of Ficus dalhousiae leaves ethanolic extract based on its traditional claim. Paracetamol- and carbon tetrachloride-induced hepatotoxicity in albino Wistar rats, experimental models was used for the evaluation. Various biochemical parameters like SGPT, SGOT, serum albumin, alkaline phosphatase, total bilirubin, direct bilirubin and total protein were estimated. Oral treatment with the extract 250 and 500 mg/kg, significantly (p<0.01) altered all the serum marker levels to the normal in both the experimental models. The activity of the extract was comparable to that of standard drug, silymarin (25 mg/kg, p.o.). Histopathological observations also demonstrated protective effect of the test extract on liver anatomy. Overall results suggest that F. dalhousiae possesses in vivo hepatoprotective activity

pH-Responsive Liposomes of Dioleoyl Phosphatidylethanolamine and Cholesteryl Hemisuccinate for the Enhanced Anticancer Efficacy of Cisplatin

The current study aimed to develop pH-responsive cisplatin-loaded liposomes (CDDP@PLs) via the thin film hydration method. Formulations with varied ratios of dioleoyl phosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE) to cholesteryl hemisuccinate (CHEMS) were investigated to obtain the optimal particle size, zeta potential, entrapment efficiency, in vitro release profile, and stability. The particle size of the CDDP@PLs was in the range of 153.2 ± 3.08-206.4 ± 2.26 nm, zeta potential was -17.8 ± 1.26 to -24.6 ± 1.72, and PDI displayed an acceptable size distribution. Transmission electron microscopy revealed a spherical shape with ~200 nm size. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic analysis showed the physicochemical stability of CDDP@PLs, and differential scanning calorimetry analysis showed the loss of the crystalline nature of cisplatin in liposomes. In vitro release study of CDDP@PLs at pH 7.4 depicted the lower release rate of cisplatin (less than 40%), and at a pH of 6.5, an almost 65% release rate was achieved compared to the release rate at pH 5.5 (more than 80%) showing the tumor-specific drug release. The cytotoxicity study showed the improved cytotoxicity of CDDP@PLs compared to cisplatin solution in MDA-MB-231 and SK-OV-3 cell lines, and fluorescence microscopy also showed enhanced cellular internalization. The acute toxicity study showed the safety and biocompatibility of the developed carrier system for the potential delivery of chemotherapeutic agents. These studies suggest that CDDP@PLs could be utilized as an efficient delivery system for the enhancement of therapeutic efficacy and to minimize the side effects of chemotherapy by releasing cisplatin at the tumor site

A Systematic Review of Arsenic Exposure and Its Social and Mental Health Effects with Special Reference to Bangladesh

Underground water in many regions of the world is contaminated with high concentrations of arsenic and the resulting toxicity has created a major environmental and public health problem in the affected regions. Chronic arsenic exposure can cause many diseases, including various physical and psychological harms. Although the physical problems caused by arsenic toxicity are well reported in literature, unfortunately the consequences of arsenic exposure on mental health are not adequately studied. Therefore we conducted a review of the available literature focusing on the social consequences and detrimental effects of arsenic toxicity on mental health. Chronic arsenic exposures have serious implications for its victims (i.e. arsenicosis patients) and their families including social instability, social discrimination, refusal of victims by community and families, and marriage-related problems. Some studies conducted in arsenic affected areas revealed that arsenic exposures are associated with various neurologic problems. Chronic arsenic exposure can lead to mental retardation and developmental disabilities such as physical, cognitive, psychological, sensory and speech impairments. As health is defined by the World Health Organization as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing”, the social dimensions have a large impact on individual’s mental health. Furthermore studies in China und Bangladesh have shown that mental health problems (e.g. depression) are more common among the people affected by arsenic contamination. Our study indicates various neurological, mental and social consequences among arsenic affected victims. Further studies are recommended in arsenic-affected areas to understand the underlying mechanisms of poor mental health caused by arsenic exposure

Area-time Efficient Implementation of NIST Lightweight Hash Functions Targeting IoT Applications

To mitigate cybersecurity breaches, secure communication is crucial for the Internet of Things (IoT) environment. Data integrity is one of the most significant characteristics of security, which can be achieved by employing cryptographic hash functions. In view of the demand from IoT applications, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) initiated a standardization process for lightweight hash functions. This work presents field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementations and carefully worked out optimizations of four Round-3 finalists in the NIST standardization process. A novel compact PHOTON-Beetle implementation is proposed wherein the underlying matrix multiplication is executed in serialized fashion to achieve a small hardware footprint. SPARKLE implementations are carried out by implementing the ARX-box in serialized, parallelized, and hybrid approaches. For Ascon and XOODYAK, the proposed implementations compute certain permutation rounds in one clock cycle in order to explore the trade-off between computation time and hardware area. As a result, this work achieves the smallest hardware footprint for PHOTON-Beetle consuming an area 3.4× smaller than state-of-the-art implementations. Ascon and XOODYAK are implemented in a flexible manner that achieves throughput-to-area (TP/A) ratios 1.8× and 3.9× higher, respectively, compared to implementations found in the literature. In addition, we propose the first FPGA implementations for the SPARKLE hash function. These efficient implementations provide guidelines for choosing a suitable architecture for applications in demand that can be employed in the IoT environment to achieve data integrity for various applications