Influence of glimepiride and Nerium oleander extract on insulin, glucose levels and some liver enzymes activities in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

The present study is aimed to assess the therapeutic potential of sulfonylurea drug glimepiride in comparison with Nerium oleander plant extract on insulin, glucose levels and some liver enzymes activities in streptozotocininduced diabetic rats. Animals were divided into control and experimental groups. The experimental group was rendered diabetic by intraperitoneal injection of a single dose of 50 mg/kg body weight streptozotocin. Rats with serum glucose levels> 200 mg/dl were subdivided into three sub-groups: rats of the first sub-group were remained without treatment and considered as diabetics. Animals of the second subgroup were orally administered 0.1 mg/kg body weight/day glimepiride allover the experimental period of 4 weeks. The third sub-group was orally received 250 mg/kg body weight/day Nerium oleander extract for 4 weeks. Streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats showed hypoinsulinemia and

Impact of feature extraction techniques on classification accuracy for EMG based ankle joint movements

EMG based control becomes the core of the pros-theses, orthoses and rehabilitation devices in the recent research. Though the difficulties of using EMG as a control signal due to the complexity nature of this signal, the researchers employed the pattern recognition technique to overcome this problem. The EMG pattern recognition mainly consists of four stages; signal detection and preprocessing feature extraction, dimensionality reduction and classification. However, the success of any pattern recognition technique depends on the feature extraction and dimensionality reduction stages. In this paper time domain (TD) with 6th order auto regressive (AR) coefficients features and three techniques of dimensionality reduction; principal component analysis (PCA), uncorrelated linear discriminant analysis (ULDA) and fuzzy neighborhood preserving analysis with QR decomposition (FNPA-QR) were demonstrated. The EMG data were recorded from the below knee muscles of ten intact-subjects. Four ankle joint movements are classified using three classifiers; LDA, k-NN and MLP. The results show the superiority of TD&6th AR with FNPA-QR and k-NN combination with (96.20% ± 4.1) accuracy

Modelling and control of standing up and sitting down manoeuver

Exoskeleton Robot is one of the most significant examples of human-oriented robotic devices. Nevertheless, the main challenge remains the complexity of their mechanical design and human-robot interfaces. This paper is an outcome of a research to model and to simulate the support of mobility of an elderly people using exoskeleton. Exoskeleton is developed in order to complement the corporal deficiencies of an elderly person in standing up and sitting down. When the natural joint torques is integrated with the exoskeleton's torque the result is in an overall torque that is comparable to that of a physically normal person. This work focuses on standing-up and sitting-down movements. Appropriate simulation models are formulated and their performances examined against measured data. The results with PID control show that at different speed of standing up and sitting down, the joint torques can be compromised. This is done within allowable limits

Review of surface electrode placement for recording electromyography signals

Background: Surface Electromyography (SEMG) signal has used in monitoring muscle activities. It has been widely applied in many areas, such as body member prosthesis, noise cancellation for brain-computer interface, and robotics. The SEMG acquisition method for collecting the signal with low-noise has extensively investigated in the last decade. The objective of this study is to review the recent works on electrode position and identify avenues for future research. Methods: A review of the relevant literature published between 1986 and 2015. This study commences with the basics of SEMG and recent methods for electrode position. Result: The different noises affecting SEMG signal include the spread of the innervation zone, cross-talk from neighbour muscles, electrode size, and location of electrode placement. Moreover, electrode placement or displacement effect SEMG signal in both time and frequency domain. Conclusion: Although several SEMG studies examined the effects of electrode position and internal electrode distance on forearm muscles, only a few studies addressed the methodological difficulties of the electrode position. In the majority of studies, electrodes were placed without the specific symptoms of the points along the length or shape of the muscle. Moreover, IED varied in different studies

Prodigiosin-Functionalized Probiotic Ghosts as a Bioinspired Combination Against Colorectal Cancer Cells

Lactobacillus acidophilus ghosts (LAGs) with the unique safety of a probiotic, inherent tropism for colon cells, and multiple bioactivities offer promise as drug carriers for colon targeting. Our objective was to evaluate LAGs functionalized with prodigiosin (PG), apoptotic secondary bacterial metabolite, as a bioinspired formulation against colorectal cancer (CRC). LAGs were prepared by a chemical method and highly purified by density gradient centrifugation. LAGs were characterized by microscopic and staining techniques as relatively small-sized uniform vesicles (≈1.6 µm), nearly devoid of cytoplasmic and genetic materials and having a negatively charged intact envelope. PG was highly bound to LAGs envelope, generating a physiologically stable bioactive entity (PG-LAGs), as verified by multiple microscopic techniques and lack of PG release under physiological conditions. PG-LAGs were active against HCT116 CRC cells at both the cellular and molecular levels. Cell viability data highlighted the cytotoxicity of PG and LAGs and LAGs-induced enhancement of PG selectivity for HCT116 cells, anticipating dose reduction for PG and LAGs. Molecularly, expression of the apoptotic caspase 3 and P53 biomarkers in HCT116 intracellular proteins was significantly upregulated while that of the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 (B-cell lymphoma 2) was downregulated by PG-LAGs relative to PG and 5-fluorouracil. PG-LAGs provide a novel bacteria-based combination for anticancer biomedicine

COMPARATIVE PROFILING OF BIOMARKER PSORALEN IN ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVE EXTRACTS OF DIFFERENT SPECIES OF GENUS FICUS BY VALIDATED HPTLC METHOD

Background: A simple but sensitive HPTLC method was developed for the comparative evaluation of psoralen in antioxidant active extracts of leaves of five different species of genus Ficus (Ficus carica, Ficus nitida, Ficus ingens, Ficus palmata and Ficus vasta). Materials and Methods: HPTLC studies were carried out using CAMAG HPTLC system on Glass-backed silica gel 60F254 HPTLC pre-coated plates using selected mobile phase toluene: methanol (9:1). The antioxidant activity was carried out, using DPPH free radical method. Results: Among all the five species of genus Ficus, F. palmata and F. carica exhibited comparatively good antioxidant activity in DPPH assay. The developed HPTLC method was found to give a compact spot for psoralen (Rf = 0.55±0.001) at 305 nm. The regression equation and r2 for psoralen was found to be Y= 4.516X+35.894 and 0.998. The quantification result revealed the presence of psoralen in only two species, F. carica (0.24%, w/w) and F. palmata (1.88%, w/w) which supported their supremacy for anti-oxidant potential over other species. The statistical analysis proved that the developed method was reproducible and selective. Conclusion: The developed method can be used as an important tool to assure the therapeutic dose of active ingredients in herbal formulations as well as for standardization and quality control of bulk drugs and in-process formulations. This method can also be employed for the further study of degradation kinetics and determination of psoralen in plasma and other biological fluids

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Classification of ankle joint movements based on surface electromyography signals

Electromyography (EMG) signal has valuable information about the force of the muscle contraction and the movement direction. This crucial information has been used for many years in exoskeleton, orthoses and prostheses robots. An essential part of those devices is EMG based control system that employs the EMG signal from different muscles to control prostheses and exoskeleton robot. However, using EMG signal as an input control signal for those devices is not easy due to the complexity nature of this signal that produces the different body movements. This difficulty can be overcome by using pattern recognition techniques to discriminant different limb movement’s pattern then use the classified signal as input control signal to manipulate and drive the assistive robot devices. Though much research have been carried out to classify the upper and lower limbs movement based on the EMG signal, still there is a strong need to obtain an accurate pattern classification system in computationally efficient manner. In this work two parts are primarily presented. The first partt was design and implements a multichannel EMG acquisition system to detect and acquire the leg muscles’ signal. In this part four EMG channels were implemented using instrumentation amplifier (INA114) for pre-amplification stage then the amplified signal was filtered using band pass filter to eliminate the unwanted signals. Operational amplifier (OPA2604) was involved for the main amplification stage to get the output signal in volts. The EMG signals were detected during movement of the ankle joint of a healthy subjects. Then the signal sampled at rate of 2 kHz using NI 6009 DAQ card and LabVIEW software was employed to store and display the acquired signal. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) were applied to assess the recoded electromyography signal. The second part is to classify four ankle joint movements which are dorsiflexion, plantar flexion, adduction and abduction. The data was collected from twenty healthy subjects using the custom multichannel EMG acquisition system designed in the first part of this project. In this section, new time domain feature set was evaluated and compared with well known time domain features. Three classifiers were employed to evaluate the two feature sets. These classifiers are linear discriminant Analysis (LDA), K nearest neighbourhood (k-NN) and Naïve Bayes classifier (NB). The result showed the superiority of the new time domain feature set which are the logarithmic based time domain features upon the conventional time domain feature. In addition, the results show the outperformance of LDA classifier among the other two classifiers used in this study

Protective potential of glimepiride and Nerium oleander extract on lipid profile, body growth rate, and renal function in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

This study aimed to assess the protective potential of glimepiride and Nerium oleander extract on lipid profile, body growth rate, and renal function in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. The animals were divided into control and experimental groups. The experimental group was rendered diabetic by intraperitoneal injection of a single dose of 50 mg/kg body weight streptozotocin. Rats with glucose levels> 200 mg/dl were subdivided into 3 sub-groups. Rats in the first sub-group remained without treatment and were considered diabetic. Those in the second and third subgroups were orally administered 0.1 mg/kg body weight daily glimepiride and 250 mg/kg body weight daily Nerium oleander extract, respectively, for 4 weeks. In the streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats, serum triglycerides and cholesterol were significantly increased whereas body growth rate was markedly decreased compared to the controls. In contrast to uric acid and creatinine, urea concentrations were markedly elevated. Treatment of diabetic rats with glimepiride or plant extract improved all of these parameters, indicating their antidiabetic efficacy