Engaging for-profit providers in TB control: lessons learnt from initiatives in South Asia.

There has been a huge expansion in the private health-care sector over the past two decades, particularly in South Asia, resulting in over 80% of patients seeking care from private health providers. Despite concerns about the quality and equity of private sector service provision, most government public health bodies recognize that the private sector reaches individuals that public institutions cannot cater to, thereby being important in moving closer to universal health coverage. Numerous initiatives have been launched and are being planned to involve private practitioners in effectively diagnosing, reporting and managing infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. However, there is a notable dearth of papers discussing which elements of private sector engagement strategies are more or less successful and the ethical issues that arise when engagement strategies are operationalized. This article brings together the authors' experiences of working on projects to engage private allopathic health providers in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India for improved tuberculosis control. Motivations of and strategies required to engage private allopathic heath providers, specifically doctors, diagnostic laboratories and pharmacies, and some of the ethical issues that arise when designing programmes for engagement are discussed

Effects of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor: ramipril on different biochemical parameters in essential hypertensive patients

Background: Hypertension is a major risk factor for macrovascular diseases. The beneficial effects of lowering blood pressure on the vascular morbidity and mortality are well documented and demonstrated. The beneficial effects of antihypertensive agents on cardiovascular system can be counter-balanced by the induction of metabolic disorders. The modifications in various metabolic parameters (like lipids, serum electrolytes, uric acid, blood glucose levels, etc) are responsible for different adverse drug reactions of antihypertensive drugs. It might also have potential to produce secondary morbidities after long term use. The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of the commonly used first line antihypertensive drugs on these different biochemical parameters. Recent comparative studies suggest that, for the prevention of cardiovascular events, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI) may be superior to alternative antihypertensive agents, independently of their antihypertensive effect and also claimed to have neutral or favourable effects on carbohydrate metabolism, lipid profile, uric acid. The metabolic abnormalities can be improved by ACEI. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the effects of ramipril on different biochemical parameters in essential hypertensive patients. Objective was to study effects of six months monodrug therapy with ramipril on different biochemical parameters in essential hypertensive patients.Methods: 30 newly diagnosed patients of either gender with essential hypertension were included in the study. Patients having co-morbidities like diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, gout, pregnant females were excluded from the study. Baseline readings of lipid profile, serum electrolytes, fasting blood sugar and uric acid were recorded before starting ramipril drug therapy. Same biochemical tests were repeated after six months ramipril monodrug treatment.Results: After comparing the means there is significant decrease in triglyceride levels, highly significant decrease in LDL, uric acid, sodium and fasting sugar level and highly significant increase in HDL levels.Conclusions: Ramipril has beneficial effects on RAS (Renin angiotensin system) and kinin system or both may contribute to the improvement in different biochemical parameters by ramipril

UNDERSTANDING ALCOHOL ADDICTION: MECHANISM, CONSEQUENCES AND MANAGEMENT

Forensic medicine and toxicology is branch which deals with the study of poison and its treating measure. Forensic medicine is considered as Agadtantra and Vidhivyadyak in Ayurveda. Alcohol is treated as poison (neurotoxic cerebral inebriant poison) when consume much more dose and as medicine in limited dose. In today's era alcohol addiction is very common, most of youth and student addicted to alcohol but also the aged person becoming addicted to it due to today's stress full life style e.g. educational stress, family stress and job stress thats why they addicted to alcohol for false relaxation or pleasure. Alcohol consumption effects on both the quantity and quality of human life, it has consequences for health and well-being. Approximately 90 percent of absorbed alcohol is oxidized in the liver, harm cause to liver which leads to cirrhosis of liver which is incurable. Excessive intake of alcohol, person is so much under its influence that, he loses control over his mental faculties, he is unable to perform the duties on which he is engaged at particular time, and he may be source of danger to himself or the others. This review article deals with how the addiction takes place control of the normal individual, how alcohol deleteriously acts on the body, what effect of alcohol produce on every system of the body, how much quantity of alcohol proved to be fatal for an individual, what short term and long term effect of alcohol addiction, its complications readdiction techniques and much more, this articles conclude that the health hazardous effect of alcohol addiction and important of its timely managements.

A Survey on Opinion Mining Techniques

Mining of opinions from customer reviews is received tremendous attention from both domain dependent document and domain independent document as it decides the overall rating of any product. The sale and market of product is totally dependent on these reviews. Opinion identification is not a big problem if we use a single review corpus, but it will give poor results. On using two or more corpus it is more complex. There are number of existing techniques for opinion mining, but are suitable for a single corpus not for multiple corpuses. In this current paper we propose a Novel technique for mining opinion features from two or more review corpus. This technique use two corpus one is domain dependent and other domain independent. We will major domain dependent relevance for candidate feature with both domain dependent and domain independent corpus, we call it as intrinsic domain relevance and extrinsic domain relevance respectively. The opinion features with IDR greater than intrinsic domain relevance threshold and less than extrinsic domain relevance are user opinions plays an important role in finding grade of the product. Many users now a day won’t to now the grade of the product along with which positive and negative factors decide this rating. In proposed paper different techniques are proposed to extract opinion features from two or more review corpora

FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF ION-SENSITIVE IN-SITU NASAL GEL OF ZOLMITRIPTAN

In situ gel system is novel drug delivery system in which there is transition of sol to gel on external stimuli like change in pH, temperature or change in ion concentration (sol-gel transition). In the present study various formulations were prepared by using gellan gum as gelling agent and HPMC K100 as controlled or sustained release polymer. All the formulations were evaluated for various parameters like pH, viscosity, drug content, gel strength, mucoadhesive strength and drug release. At minimum concentration of polymer lose their integrity and at maximum concentration stiff gel were formed. At optimized concentration of gelling agent and HPMC K100 showed in situ gelling with all parameter in range. In Vitro release data revealed that the optimized formulation showed controlled and sustained drug release pattern. The optimized formulation also obeyed korsmer Peppas model equation and which showed the release exponent n value 0.765. Thus the ex vivo higher bioavailability can be expected from the optimized formulation.Â

Fabrication and evaluation of selegiline HCl embedded transdermal film for management of Parkinson’s disease

Purpose: Selegiline HCl (SGN) is indicated for treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Its mode of action involves inhibition of MAO-B enzyme. It shows extensive hepatic first-pass metabolism and low biological half-life of 1.2 -2 hours. It results in 10 % bioavailability on oral administration. To circumvent these problems, it was envisaged to develop transdermal film of selegiline HCl for management of PD.   Method: The transdermal film were developed using ethyl-vinyl acetate (EVA) as a film former. Dibutyl phthalate (DBT) and triethyl citrate (TEC) were used as plasticizers in concentrations 10 to 20 % of polymer weight. Oleic acid and linoleic acid were used as penetration enhancers in concentrations 0.5 to 2 %.  Effect of concentration of plasticizers and penetration enhancers were investigated on ex-vivo skin permeation of SGN. The films were subjected to evaluation parameters like weight variation, thickness, drug content, skin irritancy and stability studies.        Results: The transdermal film containing 20 % w/w of TEC of polymer weight has resulted in smooth flexible film. Maximum drug diffusion in ex-vivo permeation was observed. The transdermal film containing 2 % w/w of linoleic acid has shown maximum dug diffusion in ex-vivo permeation studies.   Conclusion: SGN embedded transdermal films were successfully developed using EVA as a film former. TEC and linoleic acid has shown enhanced skin diffusion of drug as compared to DBT and oleic acid. Hence it is a promising approach for transdermal delivery of SGN

Concentration and characterization of microalgae proteins from Chlorella pyrenoidosa

Background: Many methods are available for the concentration of proteins; however, most are not easily scalable due to costs, the need of specialized instruments and skilled workers or are very time-consuming. Three-phase partitioning (TPP) is a separation technique that has gained a lot of interest due to its rapid, simple and scalable use for concentration, isolation and decontamination of proteins from crude samples with high recovery yields. In the present work, the effect of various parameters of TPP was evaluated to optimize the concentration of proteins from Chlorella pyrenoidosa (CP), is green algae that increasingly being used as food supplements because of its positive impacts on human health. Results: Chlorella pyrenoidosa was cultivated in a closed system under controlled conditions. After reaching maximum growth, the microalgae was harvested, dried and powdered. Afterwards, TPP of CP cell lysate was done to concentrate protein content. To maximize protein concentration, various parameters were optimized such as solvent (t-butanol), ammonium sulphate concentration (40 % w/v), solid load (0.75 g/20 mL), pH (6), incubation time (20 min), slurry to butanol ratio (1:1.5) and enzymatic treatment (combination of Stargen™ and Carezyme™). Also, total starch, cellulose and carbohydrate content before and after the enzymatic treatment were determined to comprehend the impact of enzymatic treatment on protein concentration. Using these optimized parameters, 78.1 % w/w protein concentration was obtained in middle protein concentrate phase. This protein concentrate was characterizedfor proximate composition, colour analysis, water holding capacity, oil-holding capacity, foaming capacity, foam stability, amino acid composition, protein quality and thermal properties. Conclusion: Various process parameters of TPP influence the protein concentration of middle protein concentrate phase. Enzymatically treated biomass also enhanced protein concentration in middle protein concentrate phase. Characterization of protein concentrate revealed the presence high-quality protein. Therefore, it is possible to implement TPP at an industrial scale for protein concentration.Fil: Waghmare, Ashish G.. Institute of Chemical Technology. Food Engineering and Technology Department; IndiaFil: Salve, Manoj K.. Institute of Chemical Technology. Food Engineering and Technology Department; IndiaFil: Leblanc, Jean Guy Joseph. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucuman. Centro de Referencia Para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Arya, Shalini S.. Institute of Chemical Technology. Food Engineering and Technology Department; Indi

Studies on solvent systems for enhanced skin permeation of venlafaxine hydrochloride

Venlafaxine hydrochloride (VH) is a serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor indicated for treatment of depression disorder. It shows low biological half-life 5±2 h and low oral bioavailability 45±15 % due to extensive hepatic first-pass metabolism. Frequent administration of VH is required to maintain steady state plasma concentration of drug. To overcome hepatic first pass metabolism and to cross blood brain barrier for effectively achieving plasma concentration of VH in brain, we envisaged to develop transdermal drug delivery system containing VH loaded polymeric nanoparticles. Effect of solvent systems (SS), penetration enhancers (PE), and VH nanoparticles (VHNPs) on transdermal diffusion of drug were studied. VHNPs were prepared by double emulsion solvent evaporation method using high speed homogenizer followed by probe sonication. Poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) and tween 80 were used as polymer and surfactant respectively. Mean particle size, polydispersity index, zeta potential, entrapment efficiency of optimized VHNPs were found to be 175.4 nm, 0.109, (-) 24 mV and 56 %.respectively. Scanning electron microscopy confirmed spherical shape of drug loaded polymeric nanoparticles. SS comprising 50% PG in EtOH shown maximum flux 158.67 ± 2.9 (µg/cm2/h) and lag time was found to be 5.60 ±0.16 h. The PE 5 (%v/v) limonene shown maximum flux 200.47±3.6 (µg/cm2/h) and lag time 3.17±0.11 h. The flux and lag time in case of VHNPs were found to be 192.24±3.20 (µg/cm2/h) and 4.22±0.14 h respectively. Based on flux, clearance and surface area of transdermal patch, a theoretical meaningful plasma level concentration of VH ranging from 12.85 to 128.5 (ng/mL) can be achieved. Keywords: Depression, Venlafaxine hydrochloride, Poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid), Solvent systems, Penetration enhancers, Nanoparticles (NPs

Aspect Mining for Drug Recommendation: A Survey

Now a days due to this computerized world all the information related to the patients queries are available on internet. This survey paper compares various research issues and few techniques related to the user query for their drug discovery. These reviews helps users to know more about the drug dosage, their side-effects and also specifications. Reviews provides positive as well as negative feedback, Hence these reviews also plays an important role for patients and pharmaceutical industries. The probabilistic aspect mining model (PAMM) identifies aspects according to the class labels. PAMM finds aspects related to one class instead of finding aspects for all classes simultaneously in each execution. PAMM also find aspects measured using the mean point wise mutual information .Hence mixing concepts of different class label gets avoided