Antimicrobial Activity of Apple Cider Vinegar

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in researching and developing new antimicrobial agents from various sources to combat microbial resistance. Apple cider vinegar, otherwise known as cider vinegar or ACV, is a type of vinegar made from cider or apple must and has a pale to medium amber color. Unpasteurized or organic ACV contains mother of vinegar. It has been used for medicinal purpose for thousands of years for its various medicinal properties. The antimicrobial activity of cider vinegar has been recognized but not investigated. It can be used as alternative to commercial antimicrobial agents. The present study aims at finding the antibacterial and antifungal activities of various dilutions of ACV against diverse range of bacteria and fungi to generate data for which little investigation exist

Assessment of Wastewater Quality of Paharang Drain and its Impact on the Ground Water Quality of Adjacent Areas

This study was conducted to assess the effect of wastewater quality of Paharang drain Faisalabad on ground water quality of adjacent areas. Ground water samples and drain water samples were collected and analyzed by using standard methods. Parameters of wastewater samples were compared with Pakistan National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS). Results indicated that physico-chemical parameters including pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), chloride, fluoride and total hardness were found exceeding the permissible limits in wastewater samples. Similarly, few physicochemical parameters in groundwater were found within the permissible limit while electrical conductivity (EC), TDS, chlorides (Cl), fluoride (F), and total hardness in most of samples were found above the Pak EPA and WHO standard limits. Heavy metals like nickel (Ni), chromium (Cr), iron (Fe), lead (Pb), and arsenic (As) were found within the prescribed concentrations in drain and ground water samples. Statistical analysis showed significant effect of some drain wastewater parameters like conductivity, TDS, salt, temperature, and Cl on the corresponding ground water quality. A strong positive correlation between pH, EC, TDS, Salt, and Cl in drain wastewater and strong positive correlation between EC, TDS and Salt in ground water samples was observed. For improving the ground water quality in the adjacent areas textile wastewater treatment all factories is required, and a combined effluent treatment plant (CETP) at the Paharang drain is also recommended

Synthesis, characterization and pharmacological evaluation of palmitic acid derivatives of salicylic acid and anthranilic acid

In the present study, salicylic acid and anthranilic acid were modified as lipids palmitoylsalicylic acid (PSA) and N-​palmitoylanthranilic acid (N-​PAA) by a simple esterification​/amidation reaction of the resp. acid with palmitoyl chloride. On screening for the pharmacol. activity, PSA exhibited potent and persistent analgesic and antiinflammatory effects, while N-​PAA, demonstrated novel analgesic and antipyretic effects

CPEC Investment Opportunities and Challenges in Pakistan

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is related with energy and infrastructural projects. China has made massive investments in Pakistan so the region will attract reasonable foreign direct investments. Three routes are developed for infrastructural development i.e. Khunjerab to Gwader, establishment of railway, airport and seaport at Gwader so lot of prospering opportunities will be for the areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. As CPEC is a combination of the myriad projects on infrastructure and energy sector and these projects will be supported by an investment of $46 billion, whereby$ 35 billion will be spent on energy sector and remaining $11 billion will be spent on infrastructural developments. This review considered the available research on the prospects and issues of CPEC and provides implications for research and Pakistani economy. Available research on CPEC and its implications is descriptive in nature. There is a need to conduct sector specific studies to lay out policies and framework of action to capitalize on the opportunities provided by CPEC

Uncertainty assisted robust tuberculosis identification with Bayesian convolutional neural networks

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that can lead towards death if left untreated. TB detection involves extraction of complex TB manifestation features such as lung cavity, air space consolidation, endobronchial spread, and pleural effusions from chest x-rays (CXRs). Deep learning based approach named convolutional neural network (CNN) has the ability to learn complex features from CXR images. The main problem is that CNN does not consider uncertainty to classify CXRs using softmax layer. It lacks in presenting the true probability of CXRs by differentiating confusing cases during TB detection. This paper presents the solution for TB identification by using Bayesian-based convolutional neural network (B-CNN). It deals with the uncertain cases that have low discernibility among the TB and non-TB manifested CXRs. The proposed TB identification methodology based on B-CNN is evaluated on two TB benchmark datasets, i.e., Montgomery and Shenzhen. For training and testing of proposed scheme we have utilized Google Colab platform which provides NVidia Tesla K80 with 12 GB of VRAM, single core of 2.3 GHz Xeon Processor, 12 GB RAM and 320 GB of disk. B-CNN achieves 96.42% and 86.46% accuracy on both dataset, respectively as compared to the state-of-the-art machine learning and CNN approaches. Moreover, B-CNN validates its results by filtering the CXRs as confusion cases where the variance of B-CNN predicted outputs is more than a certain threshold. Results prove the supremacy of B-CNN for the identification of TB and non-TB sample CXRs as compared to counterparts in terms of accuracy, variance in the predicted probabilities and model uncertainty

Silene conoidea L.: A Review on its Systematic, Ethnobotany and Phytochemical profile

Silene conoidea L. is a weed commonly grown in subtropical and temperate zone of western Eurasia, and some part of Himalaya. S. conoidea is a small herb height from 20 to 40cm mostly grow as weed in different crops like wheat, barley, mustard, roquette and lentil pea. This is the first attempt to gather utmost information about the species distribution, taxonomy, ethno-medicines, phytochemical analysis, biological activity etc. of Silene conoidea. The present review aim was to collect fragmented information about the species in addition to explore its therapeutic importance in future research opportunities. A total of 100 research articles were reviewed using different sources like; Scopus, web of science, Science direct, google scholar and PubMed. The species are used as multipurpose in different biological activities against microbes, bacteria and as insecticidal. Silene is also important due to high contents of various chemicals compounds. Chemical extracts contain flavones, glycosides, saponins, sterols and glycosides. A research study shows that S. conoidea can be used as an indicator species of gold. Traditional therapeutic values of the species for treating respiratory, antioxidant, anti-diabetic and anticancer are needed to be validated through more research. Ethno-pharmacological and clinical trial research can be subjected for future studies

Diversity of medicinal plants used as male contraceptives: An initiative towards herbal contraceptives

In the recent era, population control is a global issue as well as national community health concern. Plants are being used as a source of medicines by human beings since ancient time. This study highlights the collection, identification and diversity of medicinal plants concerning their traditional knowledge to get better access to the herbal male contraception. Local informants and traditional health practitioners were consulted for information about the local names, distribution, part used and mode of utilization of the medicinal plant. To select plants with high medicinal uses, different quantitative measurements i.e. Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC), Disease Consensus Index (DCI) and descriptive methods of Jaccard Index (JI) was performed. A total of 100 plant species (used for infertility by the local communities) belonging to 50 families and 91 genera were collected. Jaccard Index results showed that 28 plant species were reported for the first time used as male contraceptives in Pakistan. The frequency of citation (FC) value ranged from 35 to 56. Plants with high Relative frequency of citation (RFC) and Disease Consensus index (DCI) values showed a high consensus for the antifertility among informants and THPs. Our study is focused on the diversity and priority of medicinal plants as male contraceptives.

Global, regional, and national burden of colorectal cancer and its risk factors, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Funding: F Carvalho and E Fernandes acknowledge support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT), in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy i4HB; FCT/MCTES through the project UIDB/50006/2020. J Conde acknowledges the European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-StG-2019-848325). V M Costa acknowledges the grant SFRH/BHD/110001/2015, received by Portuguese national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), IP, under the Norma Transitória DL57/2016/CP1334/CT0006.proofepub_ahead_of_prin

Measuring universal health coverage based on an index of effective coverage of health services in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) involves all people receiving the health services they need, of high quality, without experiencing financial hardship. Making progress towards UHC is a policy priority for both countries and global institutions, as highlighted by the agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO's Thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW13). Measuring effective coverage at the health-system level is important for understanding whether health services are aligned with countries' health profiles and are of sufficient quality to produce health gains for populations of all ages. Methods Based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, we assessed UHC effective coverage for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019. Drawing from a measurement framework developed through WHO's GPW13 consultation, we mapped 23 effective coverage indicators to a matrix representing health service types (eg, promotion, prevention, and treatment) and five population-age groups spanning from reproductive and newborn to older adults (≥65 years). Effective coverage indicators were based on intervention coverage or outcome-based measures such as mortality-to-incidence ratios to approximate access to quality care; outcome-based measures were transformed to values on a scale of 0–100 based on the 2·5th and 97·5th percentile of location-year values. We constructed the UHC effective coverage index by weighting each effective coverage indicator relative to its associated potential health gains, as measured by disability-adjusted life-years for each location-year and population-age group. For three tests of validity (content, known-groups, and convergent), UHC effective coverage index performance was generally better than that of other UHC service coverage indices from WHO (ie, the current metric for SDG indicator 3.8.1 on UHC service coverage), the World Bank, and GBD 2017. We quantified frontiers of UHC effective coverage performance on the basis of pooled health spending per capita, representing UHC effective coverage index levels achieved in 2019 relative to country-level government health spending, prepaid private expenditures, and development assistance for health. To assess current trajectories towards the GPW13 UHC billion target—1 billion more people benefiting from UHC by 2023—we estimated additional population equivalents with UHC effective coverage from 2018 to 2023. Findings Globally, performance on the UHC effective coverage index improved from 45·8 (95% uncertainty interval 44·2–47·5) in 1990 to 60·3 (58·7–61·9) in 2019, yet country-level UHC effective coverage in 2019 still spanned from 95 or higher in Japan and Iceland to lower than 25 in Somalia and the Central African Republic. Since 2010, sub-Saharan Africa showed accelerated gains on the UHC effective coverage index (at an average increase of 2·6% [1·9–3·3] per year up to 2019); by contrast, most other GBD super-regions had slowed rates of progress in 2010–2019 relative to 1990–2010. Many countries showed lagging performance on effective coverage indicators for non-communicable diseases relative to those for communicable diseases and maternal and child health, despite non-communicable diseases accounting for a greater proportion of potential health gains in 2019, suggesting that many health systems are not keeping pace with the rising non-communicable disease burden and associated population health needs. In 2019, the UHC effective coverage index was associated with pooled health spending per capita (r=0·79), although countries across the development spectrum had much lower UHC effective coverage than is potentially achievable relative to their health spending. Under maximum efficiency of translating health spending into UHC effective coverage performance, countries would need to reach $1398 pooled health spending per capita (US$ adjusted for purchasing power parity) in order to achieve 80 on the UHC effective coverage index. From 2018 to 2023, an estimated 388·9 million (358·6–421·3) more population equivalents would have UHC effective coverage, falling well short of the GPW13 target of 1 billion more people benefiting from UHC during this time. Current projections point to an estimated 3·1 billion (3·0–3·2) population equivalents still lacking UHC effective coverage in 2023, with nearly a third (968·1 million [903·5–1040·3]) residing in south Asia. Interpretation The present study demonstrates the utility of measuring effective coverage and its role in supporting improved health outcomes for all people—the ultimate goal of UHC and its achievement. Global ambitions to accelerate progress on UHC service coverage are increasingly unlikely unless concerted action on non-communicable diseases occurs and countries can better translate health spending into improved performance. Focusing on effective coverage and accounting for the world's evolving health needs lays the groundwork for better understanding how close—or how far—all populations are in benefiting from UHC

Molecular Docking Studies of Novel Palmitoyl-ligands for Cyclooxygenase-2

An in silico approach was adopted to identify potential cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors through molecular docking studies. The in vivo studies indicated that synthetic palmitoyl derivatives of salicylic acid, para amino phenol, para amino benzoic acid, and anthranilic acid possessed significant pharmacological activities like anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and antipyretic activities. None of the tested substances produced any significant gastric lesions in experimental animals. In an attempt to understand the ligandprotein interactions in terms of the binding affinity, the above synthetic molecules were subjected to docking analysis using AutoDock. The palmitoyl derivatives palmitoyl anthranilic acid, palmitoyl para amino benzoic acid, palmitoyl para amino phenol, and palmitoyl salicylic acid showed better binding energy than the known inhibitor diclofenac bound to 1PXX. All the palmitoyl derivatives made similar interactions with the binding site residues of cyclooxygenase-2 as compared to that of the known inhibitor. Thus, structure-based drug discovery approach was successfully employed to identify some promising pro-drugs for the treatment of pain and inflammation