Indigenous Healing Practices of Mental Illness in Southern Punjab

Culture encompasses a person's lifestyle. Cultures vary greatly in their views on ideas, beliefs, customs, and practices. However, the cultural view of illness is a strong weapon that may be used to develop a belief about the etiology of any illness or disease. The study aimed to see the indigenous curing process of Mental Illness in Jalalpur Pirwala, Southern Punjab. The researcher chose to conduct her study in the developing region of Jalalpur Pirwala in Pakistan to see the cultural beliefs held by families in an area where people have a greater tendency to believe in saints and superstitions. From a personhood perspective, there is limited research on adulthood mental illness in Pakistan; this phenomenological study is a contribution to the anthropological inquiries being conducted in a specific subfield of anthropology known as Psychological Anthropology. People with mental illnesses who were between the ages of 18 and 60 were the focus of the study. Various techniques of data collecting were used, such as unstructured interviews with practitioners (spiritual bhoopa/healers), observation, and in-depth interviews with carers of mentally ill individuals. Caretakers and practitioners were selected through snowball sampling. Document and thematic analysis were used to enhance the reliability and validity of the qualitative research. According to the findings, cultural beliefs about mental illness are tied to the divine or supernatural in which preference of healing for mental illness is associated with bhoopa (Traditional practitioner) with indigenous rituals of healing. Carers of mentally ill persons prefer traditional, spiritual, or faith healing rather than westernized psychological treatments

EVALUATION OF COMMON ORGANISMS CAUSING VAGINAL DISCHARGE

Background: Vaginal discharge is very common problem among females. Alteration in balance of normal vaginal organisms can cause the overgrowth of the bacteria that creates vaginal discharge. It is common among sexually active women yet there still remain gaps in our knowledge of this infectious disorder. Objective: To evaluate the frequency of bacterial vaginosis (BV), vaginal candidiasis (VC), vaginal trichomoniasis and Group B streptococcus in women complaining of vaginal discharge in our setup. Method: A total of 100 women of reproductive age group with the complaint of vaginal discharge were included in the study. After filling proforma patients were examined by speculum examination and two high vaginal swabs (HVS) were collected aseptically from each patient. One swab was used for making wet mount for clue cells, pus cells and for motility of Trichomonas vaginalis. The other swab was used to check pH and Amine test. The growth was confirmed by Gram staining in each case. Results: Gardnerrella vaginalis were isolated in 28%, Group B streptococcus in 5% and T. vaginolis in 4% of women. Conclusion: Gardnerella vaginalis causing BV is the most common cause of vaginal discharge in otherwise healthy women of reproductive age group in our setup

EVALUATION OF ANTIOXIDANT AND ANTIMICROBIAL POTENTIAL OF TWO ENDANGERED PLANT SPECIES ATROPA BELLADONNA AND MATRICARIA CHAMOMILLA

Background: Plants are the natural source of antioxidants as well as antimicrobial compounds that has great potentials in pharmaceutical industry. In the present study, two medicinal plants Atropa belladonna and Matricaria chamomilla were collected from Northern areas of Pakistan. Materials and Methods: The extracts of the collected plants were obtained by microwave assisted extraction (MAE) with changing parameters, power level and time; methanol and ethanol were solvents used during extraction. The extracts of plants were tested against different bacterial strains. Results: It was observed that ethanolic extracts of Atropa belladonna has more significant antimicrobial activity against S.aureus than E.coli. In parallel, methanolic extract of Matricaria chamomilla showed greater significant antibacterial activity against S.aureus when compared with E.coli. In comparison, ethanolic extracts of Matricaria chamomilla has shown more significant results against S. aureus than E.coli (p≤0.05). Both plants had no antibacterial activity against S.typhi. The free radical scavenging activity observed by DPPH assay, indicate that both plants have antioxidant activity at all levels of concentrations in solvent tested during the present work. However, methanolic extracts had greater antioxidant activity when compared with ethanolic extracts. Conclusion: Present study is thus helpful in highlighting present potentials for antioxidant and antimicrobial properties in the selected plants

Association of STAT4 rs7574865 with sysceptibility to juvenile onset systemic lupus erythematous in Pakistani population

Association of STAT4 (signal transducer and activator of transcription4) haplotype tagged by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs7574865 with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was reported in different populations. This study was aimed to investigate a genetic association between STAT4 single nucleotide polymorphism (rs7574865) with susceptibility and clinical features of systemic lupus erythematosus in Pakistani population. A total of 75 clinically diagnosed individuals affected with SLE were enrolled from Children’s Hospital and Institute of Child Health Lahore. Sixty-eight healthy individuals of same ethnicity were also enrolled for this study. Clinical assessment of patients was done with the help of clinical features suggestive for SLE and some diagnostic tests specific for the disease were performed. SNP rs7574865 was genotyped by allele specific tetra ARMS PCR assay to check and compare the genotypic allele frequencies between SLE patients and healthy controls. Different statistical analysis ChiSquare, Fisher’s exact tests and binary Logistic Regression is performed to determine association of risk alleles with SLE in Pakistani population. p value less than >0.05 consider significant. This study showed the frequency of GG (28%), TT (12%), and GT alleles (60%) in SLE patients while controls showed allele frequencies of GG (5%), TT (29%) and GT (64%), respectively. The results showed that GG genotype and G allele in STAT4 rs7574865 was the risk allele for SLE while T allele proved to be the protective one for disease susceptibility when compared with healthy controls genotypic frequencies. This study suggests the strong association of SNP rs7574865 in STAT4 with the risk of SLE in Pakistani population. However, G allele showed no association with organ damage and immune disorder of SLE

Cytotoxic Evaluation and Molecular Docking Studies of Aminopyridine Derivatives as Potential Anticancer Agents

Background: The development of resistance to available anticancer drugs is increasingly becoming a major challenge and new chemical entities could be unveiled to compensate for this therapeutic failure. Objectives: The current study demonstrated whether N-protected and deprotected amino acid derivatives of 2aminopyridine could attenuate tumor development using colorectal cancer cell lines. Methods: Biological assays were performed to investigate the anticancer potential of synthesized compounds. The in silico ADME profiling and docking studies were also performed by docking the designed compounds against the active binding site of beta-catenin (CTNNB1) to analyze the binding mode of these compounds. Four derivatives 4a, 4b, 4c, and 4d were selected for investigation of in vitro anticancer potential using colorectal cancer cell line HCT 116. The anti-tumor activities of synthesized compounds were further validated by evaluating the inhibitory effects of these compounds on the target protein beta-catenin through in vitro enzyme inhibitory assay. Results: The docking analysis revealed favorable binding energies and interactions with the target proteins. The in vitro MTT assay on colorectal cancer cell line HCT 116 and HT29 revealed potential anti-tumor activities with an IC50 range of 3.7-8.1µM and 3.27-7.7 µM, respectively. The inhibitory properties of these compounds on the concentration of beta-catenin by ELISA revealed significant percent inhibition of target protein at 100 µg/ml. Conclusion: In conclusion, the synthesized compounds showed significant anti-tumor activities both in silico and in vitro, having potential for further investigating its role in colorectal cancer

Evaluation of antifungal and antioxidant potential of two medicinal plants: Aconitum heterophyllum and Polygonum bistorta

Objective: To focus on the evaluation of antimicrobial and antioxidant activity of two endangered medicinal plants Aconitum heterophyllum (A. heterophyllum) and Polygonum bistorta (P. bistorta). Materials: Plant extracts were obtained by using microwave assisted extraction method. The in vitro antifungal activity of A. heterophyllum and P. bistorta extracts were determined by measuring diameters of inhibitory zones of these extracts against Aspergillus niger and Alternalia solani. Results: Methanolic extract of A. heterophyllum showed significant (P≤0.05) antifungal activity against both the tested organisms. It was also observed that ethanolic extracts of P. bistorta also had good antifungal activity against the tested fungal strains as compared to the methanolic extracts. It showed significant antifungal activity (P≤0.05) against both the tested strains. Antioxidant activity of methanolic and ethanolic extracts of A. heterophyllum and P. bistorta were also measured using a radical scavenging method. Ascorbic acid was used as a standard. Conclusions: It was observed that A. heterophyllum and P. bistorta have significant antioxidant activity. Higher antioxidant activity was recorded in methanolic extract of A. heterophyllum as compared to its ethanolic extract. However, in case of P. bistorta ethanolic extract of the plant exhibited higher antioxidant potential than methanolic extracts. Hence both of these plants have significant antimicrobial as well as antioxidant potential

An efficient precoding algorithm for mmWave massive MIMO systems

Symmetrical precoding and algorithms play a vital role in the field of wireless communications and cellular networks. This paper proposed a low-complexity hybrid precoding algorithm for mmWave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The traditional orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) has a large complexity, as it requires matrix inversion and known candidate matrices. Therefore, we propose a bird swarm algorithm (BSA) based matrix-inversion bypass (MIB) OMP (BSAMIBOMP) algorithm which has the feature to quickly search the BSA global optimum value. It only directly finds the array response vector multiplied by the residual inner product, so it does not require the candidate’s matrices. Moreover, it deploys the Banachiewicz–Schur generalized inverse of the partitioned matrix to decompose the high-dimensional matrix into low-dimensional in order to avoid the need for a matrix inversion operation. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm effectively improves the bit error rate (BER), spectral efficiency (SE), complexity, and energy efficiency of the mmWave massive MIMO system as compared with the existing OMP hybrid and SDRAltMin algorithm without any matrix inversion and known candidate matrix information requirement

First-Principles Insights into Structural, Optoelectronic, and Elastic Properties of Fluoro-Perovskites KXF3 (X = Ru, Os)

The need for new and better semiconductor materials for use in renewable energy devices motivates us to study KRuF3 and KOsF3 fluoride materials. In the present work, we computationally studied these materials and elaborate their varied properties comprehensively with the assistance of density functional theory-based techniques. To find the structural stability of these under-consideration materials, we employed the Birch-Murnaghan fit, while their electronic characteristics were determined with the usage of modified potential of Becke-Johnson. During the study, it became evident from the band-structure results of the KRuF3 and KOsF3 materials that both present an indirect semiconductor nature having the band gap values of 2.1 and 1.7 eV, respectively. For both the studied materials, the three essential elastic constants were determined first, which were further used to evaluate all the mechanical parameters of the studied materials. From the calculated values of Pugh’s ratio and Poisson’s ratio for the KRuF3 and KOsF3 materials, both were verified to procure the nature of ductility. During the study, we concluded from the results of absorption coefficient and optical conduction in the UV energy range that both the studied materials proved their ability for utilization in the numerous future optoelectronic devices. © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical SocietyPNURSP2023R24; Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, PNU; Deanship of Scientific Research, King Khalid University: 61421, RGP.2/498/44The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University Abha 61421, Asir, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for funding this work through the Large Groups Project under grant number RGP.2/498/44. Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number (PNURSP2023R24), Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia