Usefulness of Various Peripheral Blood Leukocyte Count ratios in Malaria Evaluation

Malaria is a major public health problem in India. Changes in blood cell counts are a well-known feature of malaria. Hence an attempt has been made to assess the role of leucocyte ratios in malaria as predictors of malaria infection and its clinical severity. Methods: A retrospective observational cohort study was carried out in a tertiary care teaching hospital over a period of 2 months. A total of 171 samples and 48 controls were included in the study. All the absolute and differential white blood cell counts were done. The neutrophil-lymphocyte count ratio (NLCR), monocyte-lymphocyte count ratio (MLCR) and monocyte-neutrophil count ratio (MNCR) were calculated by using the absolute neutrophil, lymphocyte and monocyte count respectively. The results were analyzed statistically using SPSS software for windows. Results: Among 171 cases 145(84.8%), 19(11.1%), 7(4.1%) were Pl. vivax, Pl. falciparum and mixed malaria respectively. 52 cases were severe and 119 were non-severe. 52, 45, 47, 27 were parasitemia grade 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively. NLCR, MLCR and MNCR showed a sensitivity of 60.8%, 71.7%, 70.8% and specificity of 43.8%, 60.4%, and 56.3% respectively in malaria diagnosis. There was no association of NLCR, MLCR, MNCR with the type and severity of malaria. NLCR, MNCR correlated with varying grade of parasitemia. Conclusion: The results show the ratios NLCR, MLCR and MNCR have a better sensitivity but less specificity. The sensitivity and specificity for MLCR are the highest and can be used as a supportive to a screening test. The ratios can be used to show the presence of malaria parasite but there is no association with the type and severity of malaria. MLCR is a good predictor of malarial presence. NLCR and MNCR are associated with parasitemia

Activation of autophagic flux maintains mitochondrial homeostasis during cardiac ischemia/reperfusion injury

Reperfusion injury after extended ischemia accounts for approximately 50% of myocardial infarct size, and there is no standard therapy. HDAC inhibition reduces infarct size and enhances cardiomyocyte autophagy and PGC1α-mediated mitochondrial biogenesis when administered at the time of reperfusion. Furthermore, a specific autophagy-inducing peptide, Tat-Beclin 1 (TB), reduces infarct size when administered at the time of reperfusion. However, since SAHA affects multiple pathways in addition to inducing autophagy, whether autophagic flux induced by TB maintains mitochondrial homeostasis during ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is unknown. We tested whether the augmentation of autophagic flux by TB has cardioprotection by preserving mitochondrial homeostasis both in vitro and in vivo. Wild-type mice were randomized into two groups: Tat-Scrambled (TS) peptide as the control and TB as the experimental group. Mice were subjected to I/R surgery (45 min coronary ligation, 24 h reperfusion). Autophagic flux, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), mitochondrial morphology, and mitochondrial dynamic genes were assayed. Cultured neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVMs) were treated with a simulated I/R injury to verify cardiomyocyte specificity. The essential autophagy gene, ATG7, conditional cardiomyocyte-specific knockout (ATG7 cKO) mice, and isolated adult mouse ventricular myocytes (AMVMs) were used to evaluate the dependency of autophagy in adult cardiomyocytes. In NRVMs subjected to I/R, TB increased autophagic flux, mtDNA content, mitochondrial function, reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS), and mtDNA damage. Similarly, in the infarct border zone of the mouse heart, TB induced autophagy, increased mitochondrial size and mtDNA content, and promoted the expression of PGC1α and mitochondrial dynamic genes. Conversely, loss of ATG7 in AMVMs and in the myocardium of ATG7 cKO mice abolished the beneficial effects of TB on mitochondrial homeostasis. Thus, autophagic flux is a sufficient and essential process to mitigate myocardial reperfusion injury by maintaining mitochondrial homeostasis and partly by inducing PGC1α-mediated mitochondrial biogenesis

A facile single injection Hydrothermal method for the synthesis of thiol capped CdTe Quantum dots as light harvesters

A facile, Single Injection Hydrothermal (SIH) method has been developed to synthesize high quality 3-​Mercaptopropionic Acid (MPA) stabilized aq. CdTe QDs, entirely in ambient environment. The synthesis protocol eliminates the use of inert atm. for reducing elemental Tellurium powder to Te precursor avoiding the oxidn. of Te powder. The XRD result revealed that the synthesized QDs are in cubic zincblende type cryst. structure, without signature of Te oxidn. FTIR spectra have confirmed the attachment of short chained org. compd. MPA to the surface of QDs by covalent bond. The Quantum confinement effect was clearly evident by shift in Longitudinal Optic (LO) peak of Raman spectra and absorption peak wavelength with respect to bulk CdTe materials. The optical direct band gap energy of CdTe QDs is between 3.63 eV to 1.96 eV and QDs size below 6 nm, confirm the QDs are well under strong Quantum confinement regime. Also, photoluminescence spectra depict a stable and high luminescence emission from green to dark red color. All these results corroborate that the synthesis of CdTe QDs procedure is very advantageous and present a simple, economical and easily up scalable method for large scale prodn

CD4+ T-lymphocytes exhibit biphasic kinetics post-myocardial infarction

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Benign breast diseases: experience at a teaching hospital in rural India

Background: Though benign breast diseases are very common with nearly 1/3 of women suffering some time during their life time, not many studies have focused on this entity, especially in rural areas. Our teaching hospital situated amongst the villages in rural part of India provided the right background for the study.  Objective: To determine the frequency of benign breast diseases in a teaching hospital situated in the rural setting and to analyze the role of triple assessment in assessing benign breast diseases.Study design: Prospective, descriptive study.Setting: MVJ Medical College and Research Hospital, Hoskote, Bangalore Rural district, Karnataka, India.Method of study: Data including age, complaints, clinical examination, radiological investigations and histopathological diagnosis was collected from patients presenting to the department of surgery with breast complaints. Patients with carcinoma of the breast were excluded from the study.Results: A total of 110 patients were studied between November 2009 to March 2011. Mean age of patients was 28.6 years. Fibroadenoma was the most common diagnosis in 56.4% followed by fibroadenosis in 20.9%. There was one case each of lipoma, tuberculosis and duct ectasia and two cases of atypical ductal hyperplasia. The sensitivity of clinical diagnosis in our study was 91.1% and FNAC was 100% accurate in all patients with fibroadenoma but had a sensitivity of only 78% in the diagnosis of fibroadenosis. Only 3.3% of cases of fibroadenoma were treated conservatively

Novel roles for the transcriptional repressor E4BP4 in both cardiac physiology and pathophysiology

Circadian clocks temporally orchestrate biological processes critical for cellular/organ function. For example, the cardiomyocyte circadian clock modulates cardiac metabolism, signaling, and electrophysiology over the course of the day, such that, disruption of the clock leads to age-onset cardiomyopathy (through unknown mechanisms). Here, we report that genetic disruption of the cardiomyocyte clock results in chronic induction of the transcriptional repressor E4BP4. Importantly, E4BP4 deletion prevents age-onset cardiomyopathy following clock disruption. These studies also indicate that E4BP4 regulates both cardiac metabolism (eg, fatty acid oxidation) and electrophysiology (eg, QT interval). Collectively, these studies reveal that E4BP4 is a novel regulator of both cardiac physiology and pathophysiology

Loss-Induced Limits to Phase Measurement Precision with Maximally Entangled States

The presence of loss limits the precision of an approach to phase measurement using maximally entangled states, also referred to as NOON states. A calculation using a simple beam-splitter model of loss shows that, for all nonzero values L of the loss, phase measurement precision degrades with increasing number N of entangled photons for N sufficiently large. For L above a critical value of approximately 0.785, phase measurement precision degrades with increasing N for all values of N. For L near zero, phase measurement precision improves with increasing N down to a limiting precision of approximately 1.018 L radians, attained at N approximately equal to 2.218/L, and degrades as N increases beyond this value. Phase measurement precision with multiple measurements and a fixed total number of photons N_T is also examined. For L above a critical value of approximately 0.586, the ratio of phase measurement precision attainable with NOON states to that attainable by conventional methods using unentangled coherent states degrades with increasing N, the number of entangled photons employed in a single measurement, for all values of N. For L near zero this ratio is optimized by using approximately N=1.279/L entangled photons in each measurement, yielding a precision of approximately 1.340 sqrt(L/N_T) radians.Comment: Additional references include

TNFR1 contributes to activation-induced cell death of pathological CD4+ T lymphocytes during ischemic heart failure

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