Omental pedicle transposition and suture repair of peripheral nerve: A comparative study of functional, histological, morphometric and relative gastrocnemius muscle weight in rabbits

The peripheral nervous system is able to regenerate after injury. Etiologies of injuries include penetrating injury, crush, traction, and ischemia compression. However, the presence of various nerve injury treatments such as coaptation and another technique to attain functional nerve regeneration are still inadequate. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of omental pedicle transposition and epineural nerve suture on peripheral nerve regeneration in a rabbit model. Ten male New Zealand white rabbits were divided into two groups. In the primary epineural repair group or control group (CG), the left sciatic nerve was skeletonized from the sciatic notch till the point of bifurcation. The nerve was transected at the mid shaft of the femoral bone and repaired with six epineural sutures. In the treatment group (TG), the epineural repaired sciatic nerve was wrapped with omental pedicle around the site of coaptation. Assessment of the nerve regeneration was based on functional (motor and sensory), histological, morphometric criteria and relative gastrocnemius muscle weight. The results of the examination show that the treated group had better regeneration and functional recovery.Keywords: Omental pedicle, regeneration, hispathological, morphometric, sciatic nerv

Determination of antioxidant activity in methanolic and chloroformic extracts of Momordica charantia

The aim of this study was to determine and compare the antioxidant activity of methanolic and chloroformic extracts of Momordica charantia (MC) fruit. In this study, the total antioxidant and free radical scavenging activities in methanolic and chloroformic were measured by ferric thiocyanate (FTC), thiobarbituric acid (TBA) and 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) methods. Total phenol and flavonoid contents of the MC extracts were also evaluated. The total antioxidant activity results indicated that, the inhibition percent of methanolic extract was significantly higher than the inhibition percent of chloroformic extract in the FTC and TBA methods. A higher IC50 value for free radical scavenging was found for methanolic extract when compared with chloroformic extract. Methanolic extract contained a significantly higher concentration of total phenols and flavonoids when compared with chloroformic extract. Methanolic extract contained more potent antioxidant and high polyphenol compounds when compared with chloroformic extract. The present study, confirmed that, the type of solvent has an important role in detecting plant compounds. The natural plant antioxidants and phenolics compounds in MC have the capability of being used in food systems to preserve food quality.Key words: Momordica charantia, antioxidant activity, polyphenol compounds, phenolics, flavonoids

Anatomy of the female reproductive system of Rusa deer (Rusa timorensis)

The study aims to present baseline data on the reproductive anatomy of a poorly known tropical deer  species, Rusa deer (Rusa timorensis). The anatomy of female reproductive system is described using  seven uniparous hinds, aged between four and eight years. The various reproductive structures were  studied via standard descriptive methods. There was a significant difference in the length and width of both  right and left ovaries. The left ovary was slightly larger than the right ovary which indicates that it is physiologically more active. The results of the study showed that the anatomy of female reproductive  system of R. timorensis was similar to that observed in domestic ruminants except that the uterus did not  have an interconual ligament and this implies that the uterine horns are anchored in such a way that sperm deposited into only one uterine horn of the Rusa deer will be transported to the other uterine horn  (interconual transport). Unlike the red brocket deer and pampas deer, the cervix of R. timorensis was  characterized by six cervical rings projecting into the cervical canal. This feature should be taken into  account when designing effective instrumentation and techniques for transcervical passage of semen during  artificial insemination in this species. The results from this study have provided baseline data on the reproductive anatomy of this vulnerable species, and the knowledge generated can be useful in the  development of appropriate reproductive techniques in order to increase its population in captivity and also enable easy detection of its reproductive anomalies, thus strategies to propagate and conserve the species can be established.Keywords: Anatomy, Female, Reproductive system, Rusa deer, Timorensi

Effect of promoter strength and signal sequence on the periplasmic expression of human interferon-α2b in Escherichia coli

Two plasmids, pFLAG-ATS and pET 26b(+), were studied for the periplasmic expression of recombinant human interferon-α2b (IFN-α2b) in Escherichia coli. The pFLAG-ATS contains ompA signal sequence and tac promoter while pET 26b(+) contains pelB signal sequence and T7lac promoter. It was observed that periplasmic expression of IFN-α2b from pET 26b(+) was around 3000 times higher than pFLAG-ATS. Difference in the expression level was attributed to the difference in the promoters and the signal sequences. In silico analysis of mRNA secondary structures were analyzed using Vienna RNA package and MFOLD. The resultssuggested that the increase of expression would mainly due to the difference in the translation initiation associated with secondary structure of mRNA transcribed by both plasmids

Contributions of mean and shape of blood pressure distribution to worldwide trends and variations in raised blood pressure: A pooled analysis of 1018 population-based measurement studies with 88.6 million participants

© The Author(s) 2018. Background: Change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure could be due to both shifts in the entire distribution of blood pressure (representing the combined effects of public health interventions and secular trends) and changes in its high-blood-pressure tail (representing successful clinical interventions to control blood pressure in the hypertensive population). Our aim was to quantify the contributions of these two phenomena to the worldwide trends in the prevalence of raised blood pressure. Methods: We pooled 1018 population-based studies with blood pressure measurements on 88.6 million participants from 1985 to 2016. We first calculated mean systolic blood pressure (SBP), mean diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and prevalence of raised blood pressure by sex and 10-year age group from 20-29 years to 70-79 years in each study, taking into account complex survey design and survey sample weights, where relevant. We used a linear mixed effect model to quantify the association between (probittransformed) prevalence of raised blood pressure and age-group- and sex-specific mean blood pressure. We calculated the contributions of change in mean SBP and DBP, and of change in the prevalence-mean association, to the change in prevalence of raised blood pressure. Results: In 2005-16, at the same level of population mean SBP and DBP, men and women in South Asia and in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa would have the highest prevalence of raised blood pressure, and men and women in the highincome Asia Pacific and high-income Western regions would have the lowest. In most region-sex-age groups where the prevalence of raised blood pressure declined, one half or more of the decline was due to the decline in mean blood pressure. Where prevalence of raised blood pressure has increased, the change was entirely driven by increasing mean blood pressure, offset partly by the change in the prevalence-mean association. Conclusions: Change in mean blood pressure is the main driver of the worldwide change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure, but change in the high-blood-pressure tail of the distribution has also contributed to the change in prevalence, especially in older age groups

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries(1,2). However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world(3) and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health(4,5). However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol-which is a marker of cardiovascular riskchanged from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million-4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.Peer reviewe

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe

Identification of oil palm root-specific genes through mining of RNA-Seq data and RT-qPCR analysis

Identification of novel genes that are specifically expressed in root is essential for isolation and characterisation of root-specific promoters. Mining the transcriptome of various oil palm tissue-specific data generated from ribonucleic acid-sequencing (RNA-Seq) technology has enabled the discovery of root-specific genes. A total of seven candidates of root-specifically or preferentially expressed genes were selected from RNA-Seq analysis, and the gene expression profiles were validated using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). The relative fold change of transcript expression in RT-qPCR was statistically analysed by comparing with root tissues at the in vitro culture stage (RS1). Results showed that the transcript annotated as an oil palm metallothionine (EgMT) gene was significantly upregulated at around 7 to 170-fold across the different developmental stages of root tissues. A proline-rich protein (EgPRP1) transcript was also significantly upregulated by about 7 to 55-fold. Both EgMT and EgPRP1 transcripts had relatively low expressions in the other tissues studied. The high levels of expression of EgMT and EgPRP1 in roots highlighted the genes’ promoter’s potential to regulate a strong expression level of transgenes in a root-specific manner