Comparison of hemodynamic responses of intravenous dexmedetomidine and esmolol infusion during laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is one of the commonest surgery performed under general anesthesia in this set up but maintaining the hemodynamic stability is challenging in these patients. The present study was conducted to comparatively analyse the hemodynamic variations using intravenous dexmedetomidine and intravenous esmolol during laparoscopic cholecystectomy.Methods: Study was conducted on 90 adult patients aged 18-60 years, of ASA grade I or II of both gender, scheduled for laparoscopic cholecystectomy under general anesthesia. Patients were randomized into three groups of 30 patients each. Patients of Group A received esmolol infusion (loading: 1mg/kg and maintenance: 5-15µg/kg/min), patients of Group B received dexmedetomedine infusion (loading: 0.7µg/kg and maintenance: 0.4µg/kg/hr) and Group C (control group) received normal saline infusion. Patients were monitored for changes in heart rate, ECG, systemic blood pressure and EtCO2, at baseline, at 5 min and 10 min after giving study drug bolus, after induction, intubation, skin incision and CO2 insufflation. Thereafter, these changes were recorded at 15 min intervals till the end of surgery.Results: It was observed that perioperative use of dexmedetomidine and esmolol infusions maintained better hemodynamic stability as compared to the normal saline in control group. Though the patients in esmolol group showed less fluctuations in BP and HR (as compared to control group), but, stability was better in the patients of dexmedetomidine group at all-time intervals.Conclusions: Dexmedetomidine infusion was a better option for maintaining hemodynamic stability in comparison to emolol infusion during laparoscopic surgeries

Niosomes: A Promising Approach in Drug Delivery Systems

Design of vesicles as a tool to enhance drug delivery has created a lot of interest among humans operating within drug delivery systems space over the past decade. Niosomes are formations of vesicles by a hydrating mixture of cholesterol and nonionic surfactants. Completely different novel approaches used to deliver these medicines include liposomes, microspheres, engineering science, small emulsions, antibody-loaded drug delivery, magnetic microcapsules, implantable pumps and niosomes. Design and development of novel drug delivery system (NDDS) has two prerequisites. First, it should distribute the drug in accordance with a predetermined rate and second it should release therapeutically effective amount of drug at the site of action. Conventional dosage forms are unable to meet these requisites. Niosomes are basically non-ionic surfactant based vesicles in which an aqueous solution of solute is completely sealed off by a membrane resulting from the group of surfactant macromolecules as bilayer. Niosomes remain in the bloodstream for a reasonable time, which is useful for targeted drug delivery. This review additionally presents an overview of the strategies of preparation of niosome, types of niosomes, characterization and their applications. Keywords: Niosomes, Vesicles, NDDS, Conventional, Micromolecules

MICROSPHERES: A PROMISING DRUG CARRIER

Microsphere as a drug carrier is one of the method of delivering therapeutic agent to the target site in a sustained and controlled manner. Microspheres are defined as free flowing powders of spherical shape, consisting of proteins or synthetic polymers, which are either biodegradable or non-biodegradable in nature and ideally having a particle size ranging from 1 – 1000 μm. The main aim of such novel drug delivery system is to overcome the limitations of conventional dosage forms and providing more patient compliance, increase bioavailability and more specifically targeted delivery of drugs or other active agents. This present review articles deals with the ideal characteristics, types, methods of preparation, their characteristics evaluation, in vitro-in vivo correlation and applications of microsphere as drug carrier. There are various methods available today for the preparation of microspheres with the goal of achieving reproducibility and consistency with good entrapment efficiency. The prepared microspheres are then exposed to various evaluation parameters. Therefore microsphere as drug carrier can be used for delivery of various therapeutic agents to the target site and can be surface engineered for further extending their therapeutic applications. Keywords: Microspheres, Drug delivery, biodegradable polymer, bioavailability, Preparation, applications

PHYSICIAN AND PHARMACIST OPINION ON DIABETES MELLITUS AND THE MOST COMMONLY PRESCRIBED ANTI-DIABETIC DRUG IN VARIOUS DISTRICTS OF U.P. (WEST), INDIA

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a chronic hyperglycemic condition resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action or both. The prevalence of diabetes is increasing rapidly worldwide and the World Health Organization indicates global prevalence of diabetes was estimated to be 9% among adults aged 18+ years and it will be the 7th leading cause of death in 2030. The aim of this paper is to gather latest information on the prevalence of Diabetes among the human society and also to investigate pharmaceutical marketing of Metformin and its combinations used for Diabetes Mellitus in various districts of U.P. (West) region. The survey was based on the questionnaire which was presented before the physicians and the pharmacist in-charge on medical store to get information about the patient having diabetes mellitus and commonly prescribed brands of Metformin alone and its combination with other anti-diabetic drugs. On the basis of physician’s opinion on the Diabetes (type 2), 65.78% of patients from total OPD patients was found to have diabetes,  49.76% patients are type-2 patients, 7.45% of teenagers was fall in the category of having type-1 diabetes and 8.57% were among the new patients of diabetes. There are 20 and 30 brands in Metformin (and its HCl salt), Metformin (and its HCl salt) with other anti-diabetic drug categories, respectively. The sale of Glyciphage of Franco Indian Remedies brand of the Metformin only, Diapride M 1 containing Glimepiride and Metformin 500 mg from Micro Labs Ltd., respective categories, were highest in the area of interest. KEYWORDS: Diabetes Mellitus, Metformin (and its HCl salt), Combination drugs, Marketing Investigation

PPAndroid-Benchmarker: Benchmarking Privacy Protection Systems on Android Devices

Mobile devices are ubiquitous in today's digital world. While people enjoy the convenience brought by mobile devices, it has been proven that many mobile apps leak personal information without user consent or even awareness. That can occur due to many reasons, such as careless programming errors, intention of developers to collect private information, infection of innocent apps by malware, etc. Thus, the research community has proposed many methods and systems to detect privacy leakage and prevent such detected leakage on mobile devices. This is a to do note at margin While it is obviously essential to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of privacy protection systems, we are not aware of any automated system that can benchmark performance of privacy protection systems on Android devices. In this paper, we report PPAndroid-Benchmarker, the first system of this kind, which can fairly benchmark any privacy protection systems dynamically (i.e., in run time) or statically. PPAndroid-Benchmarker has been released as an open-source tool and we believe that it will help the research community, developers and even end users to analyze, improve, and choose privacy protection systems on Android devices. We applied PPAndroid-Benchmarker in dynamic mode to 165 Android apps with some privacy protection features, selected from variant app markets and the research community, and showed effectiveness of the tool. We also illustrate two components of PPAndroid-Benchmarker on the design level, which are Automatic Test Apps Generator for benchmarking static analysis based tools and Reconfigurability Engine that allows any instance of PPAndroid-Benchmarker to be reconfigured including but not limited to adding and removing information sources and sinks. Furthermore, we give some insights about current status of mobile privacy protection and prevention in app markets based upon our analysis

Case report: Retroperitoneal biliary fluid collections secondary to common bile duct rupture - an unusual complication of choledocholithiasis in a child

Rupture of the common bile duct (CBD) in a child secondary to choledocholithiasis is a rare event. In this article, the authors describe a child who presented with an acute abdomen due to CBD rupture, with subsequent acute retroperitoneal fluid collections, all diagnosed preoperatively on CT scan. The aim of this article is to show the pathways that such collections can take in the retroperitoneum