Treatment of distal tibia fractures: plating versus intramedullary nailing

Background: Distal tibia shaft fractures pose significant challenge to treating surgeons. Giving more importance to anatomical reduction and ignoring often injured soft tissues has led to poor outcomes and high complication rates. Although multiple options are described to treat these fractures, there is no consensus on the best method of treatment. We hereby want to study the results of distal tibia fractures treated by expert tibia nailing and distal tibia plating.Methods: This study was undertaken in patients who were operated in between January 2012 to March 2015 at M S Ramaiah Teaching Hospital, which is a tertiary care hospital in Bangalore. Study included 52 patients with distal tibia fracture treated by surgery. All the fractures were closed distal diaphyseal fractures without articular involvement. Thirty two patients underwent expert tibia nailing whereas 20 patients were treated with open reduction and internal fixation with locking plates. Patients were followed up at 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year.Results: Fifty two patients included in study and they were divided into two groups as nailing group and plating group. Plating group included 20 patients whereas nailing group included 32 patients. The mode of injury was  road traffic injury in 32 cases , followed by self-fall in 17 cases and sports related injury in 3 cases. Distal tibia fracture was associated with in 29 patients (87%) of nailing group whereas in 17 patients (80) of plating group. Average distance of fracture from pilon was 6 cm in nailing group and 3cm in plating group.  The average duration of surgery in nailing was  group  was 88 minutes (range, 65-130 minutes) whereas average duration of surgery in  plating group was group  was 92 minutes (range, 70-130 minutes).  The average time for union was 16 weeks for nailing group and for plating group it was 18 weeks.  Conclusions: Both intramedullary nailing and plating are the optimal methods of treatment. Plating is preferred in cases where fracture is close to pilon whereas intramedullary nailing is preferred for fractures away from tibial pilon. There is no significant difference between union and complication rates

Bacterial Endo-Symbiont Inhabiting Tridax procumbens L. and Their Antimicrobial Potential

Bacterial symbionts inhabiting Tridax procumbens L. were screened for antimicrobial potential with the aim to isolate potent bacteria bearing significant activity against test pathogens. The selected isolate was subjected to large scale fermentation to extract antimicrobial metabolite. The organic phase was reduced under vacuum pressure and crude ethyl acetate extract (10 mg/mL) was evaluated for antimicrobial activity against panel of test pathogens. The antibacterial activity was measured as a zone of inhibition and compared with standard antibiotics, gentamicin and tetracycline. Similarly, antifungal activity was compared with miconazole and bavistin. Significant activity was conferred against Shigella flexneri (MTCC 731) with 27±1.5 mm zone across the disc. Partially, purification of antimicrobial metabolite with TLC-bioautography and HPLC resulted in active fraction bearing activity at Rf 0.65 and eluting between 4 and 5 retention times. The obtained results are promising enough for future purification and characterization of antimicrobial metabolite. Thus, the study attributes to the growing knowledge on endophytes as one of the rich sources of antimicrobial potentials

mRNA vaccines for cancer immunotherapy

Immunotherapy has emerged as a breakthrough strategy in cancer treatment. mRNA vaccines are an attractive and powerful immunotherapeutic platform against cancer because of their high potency, specificity, versatility, rapid and large-scale development capability, low-cost manufacturing potential, and safety. Recent technological advances in mRNA vaccine design and delivery have accelerated mRNA cancer vaccines’ development and clinical application. In this review, we present various cancer vaccine platforms with a focus on nucleic acid vaccines. We discuss rational design and optimization strategies for mRNA cancer vaccine development. We highlight the platforms available for delivery of the mRNA vaccines with a focus on lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) based delivery systems. Finally, we discuss the limitations of mRNA cancer vaccines and future challenges

Biomimetic synthesis of silver nanoparticles using endosymbiotic bacterium inhabiting euphorbia hirtal. And their bactericidal potential

The present investigation aims to evaluate biomimetic synthesis of silver nanoparticles using endophytic bacterium EH 419 inhabiting Euphorbia hirta L. The synthesized nanoparticles were initially confirmed with change in color from the reaction mixture to brown indicating the synthesis of nanoparticles. Further confirmation was achieved with the characteristic absorption peak at 440 nm using UV-Visible spectroscopy. The synthesized silver nanoparticles were subjected to biophysical characterization using hyphenated techniques. The possible role of biomolecules in mediating the synthesis was depicted with FTIR analysis. Further crystalline nature of synthesized nanoparticles was confirmed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) with prominent diffraction peaks at 2θ which can be indexed to the (111), (200), (220), and (311) reflections of face centered cubic structure (fcc) of metallic silver. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed morphological characteristics of synthesized silver nanoparticles to be polydisperse in nature with size ranging from 10 to 60 nm and different morphological characteristics such as spherical, oval, hexagonal, and cubic shapes. Further silver nanoparticles exhibited bactericidal activity against panel of significant pathogenic bacteria among which Pseudomonas aeruginosa was most sensitive compared to other pathogens. To the best of our knowledge, present study forms first report of bacterial endophyte inhabiting Euphorbia hirta L. in mediating synthesizing silver nanoparticle

Intra-specific differentiation of fungal endosymbiont AlternarialongissimaCLB44 using RNA secondary structure analysisand their anti-infective potential

New antimicrobial agents derived from endosymbio-tic fungi with unique and targeted mode of action are crucially rudimentary to combat multidrug-resistant infections. Most of the fungi isolated as endosymbionts show close morphological feature resemblance to plant pathogenic or free-living forms, and it is difficult to differentiate these different lifestyles. A fungal endosymbiont strain CLB44 was isolated from Combretum latifolium Blume (Combretaceae). CLB44 was then identified as Alternaria longissima based on morphological and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) intervening 5.8S rRNA gene sequence analysis. ITS2 RNA secondary structure analysis was carried out using mfold server with temperature 37 °C, and anti-infective potential was determined by MIC and disk diffusion methods. ITS2 RNA secondary structure analysis clearly distinguished endosymbiotic A. longissima CLB44 from free-living and pathogenic A. longissima members in the same monophyletic clade. Secondary metabolites produced effectively inhibited Pseudomonas aeruginosa (25 μg/ml), Escherichia coli (25 μg/ml), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (50 μg/ml), Candida albicans (100 μg/ml), and other human pathogens. This study emerges as an innovative finding that explores newly revealed ITS2 RNAs that may be an insight as new markers for refining phylogenetic relations and to distinguish fungal endosymbionts with other free-living or pathogenic forms. A. longissima CLB44, in the emerging field of endosymbionts, will pave the way to a novel avenue in drug discovery to combat multidrug-resistant infections. The sequence data of this fungus is deposited in GenBank under the accession no. KU310611

Implication of Business Strategy in Indian Automobile Industry: A Case of Tata Motors

Purpose: Strategic Analysis is a process of business organization which involves studying the business environment and its operations. For the effective decision making and smooth functioning of business organization, the strategic planning is an essential tool. An Indian multinational automobile manufacturing firm founded in 1945 by the Tata group under the name TELCO (Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company). Indian automaker Tata Motors is the biggest in the world. Since Tata Motors was founded, the company has been engaged in many charitable endeavours, including philanthropy. Strategic planning took a major role in the growth and profitability perspectives of this company. Tata Motors' acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover is a unique example of a corporation making a strategic decision based on its internal strengths and external opportunities in order to succeed in a competitive market. Tata Motors sought to broaden the scope of its offering and the geographic scope of its market. A steady rise in the number of mergers in the Indian business has been observed over the past decade. Recently completed mergers and acquisitions are a good indicator of an industry's level of competitiveness, potentials, and capabilities. This research is undertaken to examine the firm's potential and capabilities by comparing its performance before and after mergers and acquisition. Design/Methodology/Approach: When a company expanding its operations in the global level, some factors such as Economic, technological, customer-segment and international competitions will take a major role. The author of this paper has studied the growth of TATA Motors, both domestically and globally, in this study. For the purpose of the study secondary data is collected through various sources such as journals, research articles, newspaper articles and websites of Tata Motors and other ventures. Findings/Result: The study highlights the critics of Tata Motors' acquisition desire factor out that the timing of the deal is affecting the worldwide economy. The call for business and passenger motors declined because of a slowdown with inside the home and international economy. The newly introduced Tata Nexon could be a game changer for the electric car market in the country due to India's large population and rising standard of living. Due to lack of innovation and major competitors in the market Tata Motors needs to be more innovative in its approach. Originality/Value: This paper studies the effectiveness of mergers and acquisitions in terms of change in company’s potentiality and capabilities. Paper Type: Research Case study based on Company Strategic Analysis

Asynchronous flowering in clonal seed orchards - An effective strategy for alternative management

Tropical forests have long been of interest to biologists because of their high species diversity and their complicated patterns of community organization. The recent ecological studies which have demonstrated that tropical trees are diverse in their reproductive biology and dynamic population structure. Asynchronous flowering among the clones in a clonal seed orchard is an inherent problem resulting in poor seed and fruit set in them. These results in the complete defeat of the prime objective of establishment of clonal seed orchards (CSOs) i.e. abundant quality seed production poor flowering and asynchronous flowering between the clones are a major bottleneck in higher seed set in these clonal seed orchards across the country. Asynchrony found between clones may be attributed to the origin of clones, which are collected from different zonal populations as revealed by isoenzyme and DNA markers studies. This article reviews the work done in CSOs across the world and suggests an alternate strategy in designing the clonal seed orchards of the future

Antimicrobial profiling and molecular identification of Alternaria arborescens CLB12, a Myco-endosymbiont inhabiting Combretum latifolium Blume

AbstractFungal endosymbionts are currently driving the therapeutic use of antimicrobial drugs to combat multi drug resistant infections. An endosymbiotic strain CLB12 was isolated from the root tissue of Combretum latifolium Blume (Combretaceae) collected from the Western Ghats of Southern India. Strain CLB12 was then identified as Alternaria arborescens by its characteristic cultural morphology with ITS rDNA and intervening 5.8S rRNA gene sequence. Antimicrobial profiling of ethyl acetate fraction of CLB12 was performed by disc diffusion method. Secondary metabolites produced were effectively inhibited a panel of test human pathogens including Pseudomonas aeruginosa (12.66 ± 0.33 mm), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (12.33 ± 0.33 mm), Bacillus subtilis (16.66 ± 0.33 mm) and Candida albicans (12.00 ± 0.57 mm). TLC-bioautography assay confirmed the presence of antimicrobial compound as depicted by zone of inhibition on the intensive band. Effective inhibition of both bacterial and fungal pathogens suggests that metabolites have a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity. The present research highlights the utility of A. arborescens CLB12 as prolific source for the biodiscovery of new antimicrobials to combat multidrug-resistant pathogens. The study also emphasizes the inter-habitat cycling of fungal endosymbiont and their possible benefits of A. arborescens to the host