Efficacy and safety of apremilast versus dapsone versus colchicine in recurrent aphthous stomatitis: a three arm double blinded comparative study

Background: Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is often considered as an incurable ailment. Therefore, an effective management option is required for controlling the symptoms and severity of RAS. We aimed to conduct a study to compare the effectiveness and safety profile of apremilast, dapsone and colchicine in management of RAS. Methods: This three-arm double blinded comparative study included 60 cases of recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS). Twenty patients each were randomly allocated in three groups: group A (apremilast), group B (dapsone) and group C (colchicine). Results: At the end of 6 weeks, the complete response was seen in 6 (30%) patients in group A as compared to 2 (10%) and 4 (20%) patients in group B and C (p >0.05). At the end of 12 weeks, response rate became statistically significant (p=0.003) with complete response in 14 (70%) of patients. Median time to recurrence, defined as oral ulcer after loss of complete response, was significantly increased to 4.3 weeks in group A as compared to group B and C. The most commonly encountered side effects were gastrointestinal in all three groups. None of the adverse effects resulted in discontinuation of treatment, hospitalization or death in any patient. Conclusions: Although, traditional therapies like dapsone and colchicine have been commonly used in clinical practice, apremilast yielded a rapid and maintained improvement of RAS

Pregnancy in rudimentary horn

Pregnancy in rudimentary horn is rare occurrence with incidence of less than 1 in 150,000. Pregnant rudimentary horn can present with wide range of symptoms that may be similar to ectopic pregnancy or may remain silent with features of normal pregnancy. Management is typically resection of the rudimentary horn and the ipsilateral fallopian tube by either laparotomy or laparoscopy

IN VITRO ANALYSIS OF ANTIMICROBIAL COMPOUNDS FROM ALSTONIA SCHOLARIS

Objective: The increasing prevalence of drug-resistant pathogens has gained the attention of pharmaceutical and scientific communities towardpotential antimicrobial agents from plant-derived sources. The present work deals with the extraction, screening, and characterization of antimicrobialcompounds from Alstonia scholaris against various pathogenic micro-organisms.Methods: The components of crude extracts obtained after soxhlet extraction of plants were characterized through thin layer chromatography(TLC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The antimicrobial effect was checked at different concentration against Bacillus subtilisMTCC 121, Staphylococcus aureus MTCC 96, Escherichia coli MTCC 43, Klebsiella pneumonia MTCC 432, Pseudomonas aeruginosa MTCC 424, andStreptococcus pyogenes MTCC 497.Results and Conclusion: A. scholaris extract showed a significant antibacterial effect against selective pathogens. The bioactive compounds wereseparated and identified by TLC and GC-MS, respectively.Keywords: Bioactive metabolites, Extraction, Bioactivity, Pathogens, Minimum inhibitory concentration

SHOT SEGMENTATION FOR CONTENT BASED VIDEO RETRIEVAL

Content based video retrieval is a technique used to search and browse large collections of videos stored in a database. This technique has proven to be useful for numerous applications spreadacross different domains like, surveillance, security, biomedicine, and traffic regulation. Here, the analysis is carried out based on certain properties extracted from the video frames such as colour, edge, motion, and texture. Instead of storing the features of every single frame of the video, only the features of the representative frames,which describethe entire video, are stored. This results in better storage memory utilization. We propose a method which aims at efficiently segmenting the video into shots and selecting the key frames of each shot accordingly. In order to determine the shot boundaries, we have incorporated Colour Histogram and Background Subtraction methods in this paper.The analysis of the proposed technique is carried out for different videos

Determinants associated with internet gaming disorder in female medical students: a logistic regression analysis using a random sampling survey

Abstract Background Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is a momentously growing issue of all ages, and medical students are not immune from the ever-increasing online gaming vogue. The Indian context is little comprehended, necessitating further research on the magnitude and variables. This study aims to determine the prevalence and risk variables of IGD among female medical students. This cross-sectional survey was conducted from March to May 2023 on 512 female (a calculated sample size) medical undergraduate students enrolled in a tertiary center located in a rural area of North India. A stratified random sampling technique was used to choose the participants. The study included a semi-structured questionnaire containing socio-demographic and personal details and gaming characteristics. It also includes a standardized tool, i.e., the Gaming Disorder and Hazardous Gaming Scale (GDHGS) to assess the outcome. The Binary logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the determinants of the dependent variable. Results Among the participants, only 236 (46.1%) were identified as gamers. The mean age of the gamers was 21.09 (SD = 1.65) years. Among the gamers, around 31 (13.1%) medical undergraduate students had IGD. The Binary logistic regression analysis identified a few significant determinants of IGD such as dissatisfaction with academic performance (COR = 24.8), playing internet games for more than 2 h per day (COR = 5.9), playing paid games (COR = 2.8), and playing games daily (COR = 4.99). Conclusion IGD is highly prevalent among professional medical college students, and its propensity is linked with poor academic performance, using paid games, and spending long hours and days on gaming. Thus, administrators should identify at-risk students and help them in seeking therapy

Cloning and sequence analysis of hyaluronoglucosaminidase (nagH) gene of Clostridium chauvoei

Aim: Blackleg disease is caused by Clostridium chauvoei in ruminants. Although virulence factors such as C. chauvoei toxin A, sialidase, and flagellin are well characterized, hyaluronidases of C. chauvoei are not characterized. The present study was aimed at cloning and sequence analysis of hyaluronoglucosaminidase (nagH) gene of C. chauvoei. Materials and Methods: C. chauvoei strain ATCC 10092 was grown in ATCC 2107 media and confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using the primers specific for 16-23S rDNA spacer region. nagH gene of C. chauvoei was amplified and cloned into pRham-SUMO vector and transformed into Escherichia cloni 10G cells. The construct was then transformed into E. cloni cells. Colony PCR was carried out to screen the colonies followed by sequencing of nagH gene in the construct. Results: PCR amplification yielded nagH gene of 1143 bp product, which was cloned in prokaryotic expression system. Colony PCR, as well as sequencing of nagH gene, confirmed the presence of insert. Sequence was then subjected to BLAST analysis of NCBI, which confirmed that the sequence was indeed of nagH gene of C. chauvoei. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequence showed that it is closely related to Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium paraputrificum. Conclusion: The gene for virulence factor nagH was cloned into a prokaryotic expression vector and confirmed by sequencing

Genotyping & diagnostic methods for hepatitis C virus: A need of low-resource countries

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a blood borne and transfusion-transmitted infection (TTI). It has emerged as one of the major health challenges worldwide. In India, around 12-18 million peoples are infected with HCV, but in terms of prevalence percentage, its looks moderate due to large population. The burden of the HCV infection increases due to lack of foolproof screening of blood and blood products before transfusion. The qualified screening and quantification of HCV play an important role in diagnosis and treatment of HCV-related diseases. If identified early, HCV infection can be managed and treated by recently available antiviral therapies with fewer side effects. However, its identification at chronic phase makes its treatment very challenging and sometimes ineffective. The drugs therapy for HCV infection treatment is also dependent on its genotype. Different genotypes of HCV differ from each other at genomic level. The RNA viruses (such as HCV) are evolving perpetually due to interaction and integration among people from different regions and countries which lead to varying therapeutic response in HCV-infected patients in different geographical regions. Therefore, proper diagnosis for infecting virus and then exact determination of genotype become important for targeted treatment. This review summarizes the general information on HCV, and methods used for its diagnosis and genotyping

DISCERNING SPAM IN SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

<div>Social Networking Sites, in the present scenario, are an amalgam of knowledge and spam. As their popularity surges among the users day by day so does it among the spammers looking at easy targets for their campaigns. The threat due to spams causing atrocious harm to the bandwidth, overloading the servers, spreading malicious pages online et cetera has increased manifold making it necessary for researchers to foray into this field of spam detection and reduce their effect on the various social networking sites.</div><div><br></div><div>In this paper, we propose a framework for spam detection in the two largest social networking sites namely, Twitter and Facebook. We’ll be utilizing the data publically available on these two giants of social networking era. Initially, we’ll be citing the various approaches that have already been explored in this field. After that we’ll briefly explain the two methods that we used to collect the datasets from these websites. </div

Efficacy and safety of Erbium-YAG laser ablation therapy in superficial dermatoses: The workhorse of dermatology

Background: Erbium-YAG laser has been the working horse in dermatology for years. Surprisingly, data on the efficacy and adverse effects of this novel resurfacing and ablative technique of erbium-YAG laser for superficial dermatoses in Indian skin is limited. Aim and Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety profile of erbium-YAG laser ablation in superficial cutaneous lesions. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and fifty patients of various superficial dermatoses, treatable by erbium-YAG laser, were recruited in the study. All the patients were subjected to erbium-YAG laser sessions. The number of laser sessions, fluence, frequency and other parameters were individualized as per the respective dermatosis. The clinical response was evaluated as grade 4 (100% lesion clearance), grade 3 (75–99%), grade 2 (50–75%) or grade 1 (<50%). Results: The overall mean age of our study group was 37.70 years. In our study, 52.38% cases of verruca plana, 36.84% cases of seborrheic keratosis, 56.4% cases of xanthelasma palpebrarum, 22% cases of acquired melanocytic nevus, 23.8% cases of plantar wart and 40% cases of sebaceous hyperplasia showed complete clearance. The most common adverse effect was post-laser erythema in 50.4% of cases, followed by pain in 36.8%. Besides this, scarring and dyspigmentation were observed in 11.6% and 12% of cases, respectively. The rate of recurrence on 3 months follow-up was 9 (23.07%) cases in xanthelasma palpebrarum, 11 (28.9%) cases in seborrheic keratosis, 10 (23.8%) cases in verruca plana and 9 (42.8%) cases in plantar warts. Conclusion: This study suggested that erbium-YAG ablation achieved good results for superficial lesions like verruca plana, seborrheic keratosis, xanthelasma palpebrarum, plantar wart, sebaceous hyperplasia and acquired melanocytic nevus. Thus, Er: YAG laser can offer a one-step procedure with better cosmetic results and a lesser rate of recurrence