Effect of Pulsed 810 nm Laser Photobiomodulation on Dermal Wound Healing and Oxidative Stress in Immunosuppressed Rats

Under immunosuppression, the sequential overlapping wound repair phases get hampered due to dysregulated or persistent inflammation leading to non-healing chronic wounds formation. The present study investigates the effect of low-power 810 nm diode laser (70 mW mean output power; 40 mW/cm2 average irradiance; 24 J/cm2 total fluence; 10 Hz pulse frequency; duty cycle 50 per cent; 10 min. illumination time once daily for seven days) photobiomodulation (PBM) on dermal penetration ability, wound healing and oxidative stress in hydrocortisone-induced immunosuppressed rats. The results of the penetration ability of 810 nm laser irradiation to the depth of the sub-dermal region revealed that the transmitted power of laser at 10 Hz pulsed-mode was better and easier than continuous-mode. The present findings clearly delineated that PBM with 810 nm laser at 10 Hz significantly augmented healing and reduced oxidative stress as evidenced by decreased free radicals, nitric oxide (NO) levels, enhanced superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzyme activity and wound area contraction facilitating the cellular redox homeostasis and promoting the tissue repair process. In conclusion, PBM with NIR 810 nm laser at pulsed-mode 10 Hz frequency showed better penetration and accelerated dermal wound healing in immunosuppressed rats

Serological and molecular approaches for leptospirosis at a tertiary care centre in northern India

Background: Aims and objectives of the study was to determine prevalence rate of leptospirosis and recognition of common epidemiological situation and clinical manifestations of leptospirosis in patients with pyrexia of unknown origin at a tertiary care centre.Methods: This was a hospital based prospective observational study. The duration of study was from August 2015 to July 2016. Patients with clinical symptoms of pyrexia of unknown origin attending Gandhi Memorial and Associated Hospital, King George’s Medical University Lucknow during the study period were enrolled in this study. We performed the IgM ELISA and PCR for the leptospirosis at our centre and for the Micro Agglutination Test (MAT), we sent the serum samples to regional medical research centre Department of Health Research Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India Port Blair.Results: A Total of 104 symptomatic patients were recruited. Of total, IgM ELISA for leptospirosis were positive in 25 patients, PCR in 20 patients and MAT shows significant titres in 3 samples. The ROC curve analysis revealed significant diagnostic accuracy of IgM ELISA with 100.00% sensitivity and 78.22% specificity however showed less positive predictive value (12.0%) but high negative predictive value (100.0%). Most common presentation were fever, jaundice and rashes (40.4%) followed by fever and jaundice (29.8%).Conclusions: Leptospirosis IgM ELISA and PCR showed good detection accuracy. Age, sex, occupation is not significantly associated to the leptospirosis

Role of H2S Supplementation on Burn Wound Healing and Molecular Chaperones

Treatment of non-healing burn injuries is a major challenge for the current scientific research. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is an endogenous gasotransmitter, which regulates redox homeostasis and cytoprotection during pathophysiological conditions. Similarly, heat shock proteins (HSPs) are molecular chaperones, which also confer cytoprotection during the wound repair process. Notably, the role of H2S as a regulator of HSPs during burn wound healing is still elusive. The present study investigated the effects of H2S supplementation on molecular chaperones during full-thickness, third-degree burn wound healing in the experimental rats. The animals were treated with sodium hydrosulphide (NaHS) as H2S donor (5 mg/kg body weight, intraperitoneal) daily for 10 days prior to burn-induction and continued till the fifth-day post-wounding. Histopathological analysis (Masson’s trichrome) revealed enhanced wound healing evident by increased collagen fiber deposition, cellular proliferation and re-epithelialisation in NaHS administered group as compared to the burn control. Furthermore, immunoblot analyses demonstrated significantly increased protein expression of molecular chaperons viz. HSP90, HSP70, HSP27, and GRP78 in H2S treated group as compared to control. Therefore, the present study signifies that H2S supplementation upregulates the protein expression levels of molecular chaperones, which could facilitate the cytoprotection during the tissue repair process and accelerates the burn wound healing

Efficacy of Ropivacaine for Sub-Arachnoid Block in Patients with Recent History of Scorpion Sting: A case series

Failure of sub-arachnoid block (SAB), due to resistance to bupivacaine after a recent scorpion sting can lead to multiple block attempts and subsequent conversion to general anaesthesia. We report this case series of 10 patients with successful SAB with newly launched 0.75% hyperbaric ropivacaine, in patients with recent scorpion sting. Thus, intrathecal hyperbaric ropivacaine may be considered as the local anaesthetic agent of choice in patients with scorpion sting to prevent failure of SAB. Keywords: Bupivacaine; Ropivacaine; Scorpion sting; Spinal anaesthesia

Integrated Alternative Source of Energy System with Grid Substation

This paper discusses the modeling, simulation and optimization of integrated alternative source of energy system with grid substation. When there is a lack of energy in grid substation to meet the demand of customer load then alternative source of energy compensates energy deficiency and after that if there is excess energy available then remaining energy is stored in battery bank or sells to grid according to need. In another case when required energy is not generated by alternative sources then remaining energy is purchased from the grid and if the grid substation hasn't available these remaining energy to meet the customer load demand during the peak load then stored battery energy is also active. The size of integrated alternative source of energy system may vary from few hundred watts to ten or hundreds of MW. The possible sources of alternative energy like solar, wind and biomass are considered under this paper. Study location, Muzaffarpur district of Bihar (India), is taken because there is good potential of energy generation from alternative source of energy and still there is no any wind and solar energy power plant. The modeling and simulation of the system is done by using HOMER software and the software solve the optimization problem to minimize the total cost of system and maximum utilization of alternative source of energy

Study to determine serum vitamin D levels in patients with congestive heart failure

Background: It was to evaluate the association of serum levels of vitamin D in patients with congestive heart failure.Methods: The present study was conducted in the department of Medicine at Chattrapati Shivaji Subharti Hospital among 100 patients, aged 18 years and above diagnosed as congestive heart failure on the basis of clinical and echocardiographic evidence. Clinical manifestations looked for CHF were: Dyspnea, orthopnea, acute pulmonary edema, cerebral symptoms, cheyne-stokes respiration, cyanosis, sinus tachycardia, raised jugular venous pressure, congestive hepatomegaly and pedal edema. In the present study deficiency/ insufficiency of vitamin D was considered when the presence of levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D was 30 respectively with statistically significant difference. The Mean±SD scores of CPK MB (IU/L) was found to be 33.1±20.8 and 18.6±13.3 among the subjects having vitamin D levels 30 respectively with statistically significant difference.Conclusions: The results of the present study suggest that low levels of vitamin D may adversely affect the cardiovascular system

Pseudo-Hermitian Interactions in Dirac Theory: Examples

We consider a couple of examples to study the pseudo-Hermitian interaction in relativistic quantum mechanics. Rasbha interaction, commonly used to study the spin Hall effect, is considered with imaginary coupling. The corresponding Dirac Hamiltonian is shown to be parity pseudo-Hermitian. In the other example we consider parity pseudo-Hermitian scalar interaction with arbitrary parameter in Dirac theory. In both the cases we show that the energy spectrum is real and all the other features of non-relativistic pseudo-Hermitian formulation are present. Using the spectral method the positive definite metric operator ($\eta$) has been calculated explicitly for both the models to ensure positive definite norms for the state vectors.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, No figs, Revised version to appear in MPL

Wireless Protocols for Anti Cloning and Security

RFID system (Radio-Frequency Identification) is a technology for automated identification of objects and people. Human beings are smart enough to identify an object under a variety of challenge circumstances. RFID systems are emerging as one of the most pervasive computing technologies. But there are still a large number of problems that are to be addressed. One of the fundamental issues still to be addressed is privacy, which concludes association threat, location threat, preference threat, constellation threat, transaction threat, action threat and breadcrumb threat (Kim, J., Yang, C, Jeon, J,2007). Misbehaviours of both readers and tags will lead to attacks to the system. The common attacks on the readers, tags and the air interface between them comprise: Tracking or Tracing, Tamper, Clandestine Scanning, Counterfeit Tags, Cloning Tags, Eavesdropping, Replay, man-in-the-middle attack, Spoofing, Differential power analysis, Timing Attacks, Denial of Service, Physical Attacking and so on (P. Cuenca and L. Orozco-Barbosa, 2006.),(Kim, J., Yang, C, Jeon, J, 2007). Due to scarceness of resources most of the proposed protocols were designed using symmetric key cryptographic algorithms. However, it has been shown that it is inevitable to use public-key cryptographic algorithms to satisfy these requirements. A number of mechanisms have been devised   to overcome the problems related to security and privacy issue of RFID systems. In this paper we propose three anonymous RFID authentication protocols and prove that they are secure in the traditional cryptographic framework. Our model allows most of the threats that apply to RFIDs systems including, denial of service, impersonation, malicious traceability, information leakage through power analysis and active man-in-the middle attacks. Our protocols are efficient and scalable

Tumor Necrosis Factor-α Regulates Distinct Molecular Pathways and Gene Networks in Cultured Skeletal Muscle Cells

Skeletal muscle wasting is a debilitating consequence of large number of disease states and conditions. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) is one of the most important muscle-wasting cytokine, elevated levels of which cause significant muscular abnormalities. However, the underpinning molecular mechanisms by which TNF-α causes skeletal muscle wasting are less well-understood.We have used microarray, quantitative real-time PCR (QRT-PCR), Western blot, and bioinformatics tools to study the effects of TNF-α on various molecular pathways and gene networks in C2C12 cells (a mouse myoblastic cell line). Microarray analyses of C2C12 myotubes treated with TNF-α (10 ng/ml) for 18h showed differential expression of a number of genes involved in distinct molecular pathways. The genes involved in nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappaB) signaling, 26s proteasome pathway, Notch1 signaling, and chemokine networks are the most important ones affected by TNF-α. The expression of some of the genes in microarray dataset showed good correlation in independent QRT-PCR and Western blot assays. Analysis of TNF-treated myotubes showed that TNF-α augments the activity of both canonical and alternative NF-κB signaling pathways in myotubes. Bioinformatics analyses of microarray dataset revealed that TNF-α affects the activity of several important pathways including those involved in oxidative stress, hepatic fibrosis, mitochondrial dysfunction, cholesterol biosynthesis, and TGF-β signaling. Furthermore, TNF-α was found to affect the gene networks related to drug metabolism, cell cycle, cancer, neurological disease, organismal injury, and abnormalities in myotubes.TNF-α regulates the expression of multiple genes involved in various toxic pathways which may be responsible for TNF-induced muscle loss in catabolic conditions. Our study suggests that TNF-α activates both canonical and alternative NF-κB signaling pathways in a time-dependent manner in skeletal muscle cells. The study provides novel insight into the mechanisms of action of TNF-α in skeletal muscle cells