A study on range of hip and knee motion in normal individuals performing muslim prayers

INTRODUCTION There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and the act of praying represent a paramount and fundamental activity of daily living in their community. They need to adopt several postures that require deep flexion of knee and hip joints to carry out this daily ritual. The increased demand in the range of motion for the lower limb joints has been a focus of interest, in the improvement of arthroplasty implants. This will allow an individual to carry out their responsibility as a Muslim and be well received in this society. However, there is a lack of data on normative range of motion studies for the knee and hip joint during Muslim prayers. The intention of this study was to simultaneously obtain normative passive range of flexion data and the functional range of flexion during Muslim prayers in the knee and hip joints of Malay individuals. METHODS A cohort of 127 Malay males aged between 20 and 30 years were recruited in this cross sectional study. Passive range of motion (PROM) and the flexion angle of the knee and hip joints were measured using a standard goniometer. Demographic and the range of motion data were collected. The effects of body mass index (BMI), abdominal circumference (AC) and limb circumferences (LC) on range of motion were analyzed. RESULTS The demographic and range of motion data was tabulated and presented as minimum and maximum range, mean and standard deviation. The passive range of motion for the knee and hip joints in this study was comparable to other existing normative range of motion database. The variables BMI and AC demonstrated a significant correlation with the knee joint (R2= 0.66). Whereas BMI was the only variable showing correlation for the hip joint (R2= 0.49 ). The recorded mean flexion for Muslim prayers was 0.24, 128.52 and 163.59 degrees for the knee during bowing, prostration and sitting respectively. The mean flexion in the hip joint for the said movement was 53.67, 92.52 and 75.15 correspondingly. CONCLUSION The mean (SD) of the passive knee flexion and passive hip flexion were 141.10(6.60) and 122.10(8.70) degrees respectively which are similar to the values reported previously in the literature. The BMI had significant correlation with both the knee PROM as well as the hip PROM, whereas, the abdominal circumference had only significant correlation for the knee PROM. The limb circumference did not have any significant correlation with both the knee and hip PROM. The predictive equation was also obtained by regression analysis to determine the expected degree of flexion in our local population and is included in the study

Ursolic Acid Analogs as Potential Therapeutics for Cancer

Ursolic acid (UA) is a pentacyclic triterpene isolated from a large variety of vegetables, fruits and many traditional medicinal plants. It is a structural isomer of Oleanolic Acid. The medicinal application of UA has been explored extensively over the last two decades. The diverse pharmacological properties of UA include anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antiviral, antioxidant, anti-proliferative, etc. Especially, UA holds a promising position, potentially, as a cancer preventive and therapeutic agent due to its relatively non-toxic properties against normal cells but its antioxidant and antiproliferative activities against cancer cells. Cell culture studies have shown interference of UA with multiple pharmacological and molecular targets that play a critical role in many cells signaling pathways. Although UA is considered a privileged natural product, its clinical applications are limited due to its low absorption through the gastro-intestinal track and rapid elimination. The low bioavailability of UA limits its use as a therapeutic drug. To overcome these drawbacks and utilize the importance of the scaffold, many researchers have been engaged in designing and developing synthetic analogs of UA via structural modifications. This present review summarizes the synthetic UA analogs and their cytotoxic antiproliferative properties reported in the last two decades

Design, Synthesis, and Molecular Docking Studies of Curcumin Hybrid Conjugates as Potential Therapeutics for Breast Cancer

Curcumin (CUR) has received great attention over the past two decades due to its anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties. Similarly, Dichloroacetate (DCA), an pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 1 (PKD1) inhibitor, has gained huge attention as a potential anticancer drug. However, the clinical utility of these two agents is very limited because of the poor bioavailability and unsolicited side effects, respectively. We have synthesized fusion conjugates of CUR and DCA with an amino acids linker to overcome these limitations by utilizing the molecular hybridization approach. The molecular docking studies showed the potential targets of Curcumin-Modified Conjugates (CMCs) in breast cancer cells. We synthesized six hybrid conjugates named CMC1-6. These six CMC conjugates do not show any significant toxicity in a human normal immortalized mammary epithelial cell line (MCF10A) in vitro and C57BL/6 mice in vivo. However, treatment with CMC1 and CMC2 significantly reduced the growth and clonogenic survival by colony-formation assays in several human breast cancer cells (BC). Treatment by oral gavage of a transgenic mouse BC and metastatic BC tumor-bearing mice with CMC2 significantly reduced tumor growth and metastasis. Overall, our study provides strong evidence that CUR and DCA conjugates have a significant anticancer properties at a sub-micromolar concentration and overcome the clinical limitation of using CUR and DCA as potential anticancer drugs