Assessment of drug utilization pattern and impact of infographics in patients with chronic liver disease

Background: The current study was conducted to ensure that the drugs were effectively utilised and also to create awareness and knowledge by providing counselling with the help of infographics among study population.Methods: A prospective interventional study was conducted in the gastroenterology department of a tertiary care hospital in Kerala. A total of 100 patients diagnosed with chronic liver disease (CLD) were enrolled for the study and data were recorded in a predesigned pro forma. Statistical analysis (paired t test) was performed to assess whether the drug has been effectively utilized in patients. The study population was counselled with the help of infographics and its impact was assessed from the questionnaire, which was set based on 5- point Likert’s scale.Results: Among 100 patients, males are more prevalent between the age groups 60-70. Diabetes mellitus (DM) (66%) and alcohol (37%) are the most common risk factors. Most of the study subjects belong to Child A (50%) category and model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score of 51% of the patients were ≤9 with estimated 3-month mortality rate of 1.9%. Liver function tests (LFT) had shown that there was a significant difference between prior to and after treatment with the level of significance p<0.05, indicating that the drugs had been properly utilized in patients and found to be effective. The distributed infographics had a great impact among the study population.Conclusions: The study concluded that the drugs had been properly utilized and found to be effective in patients. The Infographics showed a positive impact among the study population

Chiral patterns arising from electrostatic growth models

Recently, unusual and strikingly beautiful seahorse-like growth patterns have been observed under conditions of quasi-two-dimensional growth. These `S'-shaped patterns strongly break two-dimensional inversion symmetry; however such broken symmetry occurs only at the level of overall morphology, as the clusters are formed from achiral molecules with an achiral unit cell. Here we describe a mechanism which gives rise to chiral growth morphologies without invoking microscopic chirality. This mechanism involves trapped electrostatic charge on the growing cluster, and the enhancement of growth in regions of large electric field. We illustrate the mechanism with a tree growth model, with a continuum model for the motion of the one-dimensional boundary, and with microscopic Monte Carlo simulations. Our most dramatic results are found using the continuum model, which strongly exhibits spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, and in particular finned `S' shapes like those seen in the experiments.Comment: RevTeX, 12 pages, 9 figure

Structural and Functional Diversity of Acidic Scorpion Potassium Channel Toxins

Background: Although the basic scorpion K + channel toxins (KTxs) are well-known pharmacological tools and potential drug candidates, characterization the acidic KTxs still has the great significance for their potential selectivity towards different K + channel subtypes. Unfortunately, research on the acidic KTxs has been ignored for several years and progressed slowly. Principal Findings: Here, we describe the identification of nine new acidic KTxs by cDNA cloning and bioinformatic analyses. Seven of these toxins belong to three new a-KTx subfamilies (a-KTx28, a-KTx29, and a-KTx30), and two are new members of the known k-KTx2 subfamily. ImKTx104 containing three disulfide bridges, the first member of the a-KTx28 subfamily, has a low sequence homology with other known KTxs, and its NMR structure suggests ImKTx104 adopts a modified cystine-stabilized a-helix-loop-b-sheet (CS-a/b) fold motif that has no apparent a-helixs and b-sheets, but still stabilized by three disulfide bridges. These newly described acidic KTxs exhibit differential pharmacological effects on potassium channels. Acidic scorpion toxin ImKTx104 was the first peptide inhibitor found to affect KCNQ1 channel, which is insensitive to the basic KTxs and is strongly associated with human cardiac abnormalities. ImKTx104 selectively inhibited KCNQ1 channel with a Kd of 11.69 mM, but was less effective against the basic KTxs-sensitive potassium channels. In addition to the ImKTx104 toxin, HeTx204 peptide, containing a cystine-stabilized a-helix-loop-helix (CS-a/a) fold scaffold motif

Promoting Dual-Targeting Anticancer Effect by Regulating the Dynamic Intracellular Self-Assembly

Despite the promise of nanomedicine in the fight against complex diseases, the enthusiasm for its pharmaceutical development is backed by the elevated costs associated with the R&D process. Therefore, as a compromise solution, nanotechnology was mainly applied as a drug delivery system to improve bioavailability and controllability of pharmaceutical drugs. Attempting to break the restrictions without elevating potential costs, we multiply the functions of excipients in the nanodelivery system by endowing subcellular-targeting ability. To prove the concept, fluorescent endoplasmic reticulum-targeted short peptides were covalently connected to chemotherapy medication chlorambucil achieving enhanced drug-loading efficiency. Via visualized intracellular dynamic enzyme-catalyzed hydrolysis, the ER-targeting excipient and nucleus-targeting chlorambucil are released simultaneously, achieving a synergistic anticancer effect and elucidating the influence of intracellular self-assembly transition on enzymatic reactions