Immunology of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is a major health problem throughout the world causing large number of deaths, more than that from any other single infectious disease. The review attempts to summarize the information available on host immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Since the main route of entry of the causative agent is the respiratory route, alveolar macrophages are the important cell types, which combat the pathogen. Various aspects of macrophage-mycobacterium interactions and the role of macrophage in host response such as binding of M. tuberculosis to macrophages via surface receptors, phagosome-lysosome fusion, mycobacterial growth inhibition/killing through free radical based mechanisms such as reactive oxygen and nitrogen intermediates; cytokine-mediated mechanisms; recruitment of accessory immune cells for local inflammatory response and presentation of antigens to T cells for development of acquired immunity have been described. The role of macrophage apoptosis in containing the growth of the bacilli is also discussed. The role of other components of innate immune response such as natural resistance associated macrophage protein (Nramp), neutrophils, and natural killer cells has been discussed. The specific acquired immune response through CD4 T cells, mainly responsible for protective Th1 cytokines and through CD8 cells bringing about cytotoxicity, also has been described. The role of CD-1 restricted CD8+ T cells and non-MHC restricted g/d T cells has been described although it is incompletely understood at the present time. Humoral immune response is seen though not implicated in protection. The value of cytokine therapy has also been reviewed. Influence of the host human leucocyte antigens (HLA) on the susceptibility to disease is discussed. Mycobacteria are endowed with mechanisms through which they can evade the onslaught of host defense response. These mechanisms are discussed including diminishing the ability of antigen presenting cells to present antigens to CD4+ T cells; production of suppressive cytokines; escape from fused phagosomes and inducing T cell apoptosis. The review brings out the complexity of the host-pathogen interaction and underlines the importance of identifying the mechanisms involved in protection, in order to design vaccine strategies and find out surrogate markers to be measured as in vitro correlate of protective immunity

Classification of Typed Characters Using Backpropagation Neural Network

This thesis concentrates on classification of typed characters using a neural network. Recognition of typed or printed characters using intelligent methods like neural network has found much application in the recent decades. The ability of moment invariants to represent characters independent of position, size and orientation have caused them to be proposed as pattern sensitive features in classification and recognition of these characters. In this research, uppercase English characters is represented by invariant features derived using functions of regular moments, namely Hu invariants. Moments up to the third order have been used for the recognition of these typed characters. A single layer perceptron artificial neural network trained by the backpropagation algorithm is used to classify these characters into their respective categories. Experimental study conducted with three different fonts commonly used in word processing applications shows good classification results. Some suggestions for further work in this area have also been presented

An Uncommon Adverse Effect of a Common Drug-DRESS Syndrome-not just skin deep!

Drug Rash with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms (DRESS) Syndrome is a rare, life-threatening hypersensitivity reaction that causes skin exfoliation, hematological abnormalities, lymphadenopathy, and extensive internal organ involvement. Characterized by a long latency period, this unusual side effect of aromatic anti-epileptic drugs, as well as many common drugs cause a mortality rate of up to 10% if left untreated. In the absence of a well-established therapy, primary and secondary prevention have a key role in the management of DRESS Syndrome. Herewith presenting a case of an adolescent girl with rashes and systemic symptoms, the cause of which, on obtaining a detailed history and step wise investigations was diagnosed as DRESS Syndrome

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe work described in this dissertation attempts to advance the science of developing semisolid microbicide products through (a) application-oriented design of drug delivery vehicles and (b) selection of HIV-specific active ingredients that yield advantage over the current antiretroviral strategies, particularly in regards to the mechanism of action through inhibition of HIV entry. Two approaches that exploit the underlying composition-structureproperty- performance relationship in polymeric systems to improve semisolid gels for the prevention of sexual transmission of HIV were explored. Firstly, an algorithm that allows de novo engineering of a delivery vehicle was developed, optimizing the composition and consequently the properties of the material to meet a predefined set of performance criteria for vaginal drug delivery. Secondly, a pH-responsive mucus-like material with the ability to attenuate the transport of virus and immune cells was engineered. Inhibition of viral transport was observed at pH above 4.8, with minimal signs of toxicity to vaginal tissue. Second part of this dissertation describes the assessment of two potent antiretroviral agents that inhibit HIV entry. The ingenuity of these agents lies in (a) the dual mechanism of HIV inhibition associated with the small molecule pyrimidinedione analogs, and (b) the design of a gp120 targeted macromolecular therapeutic that is synthetic in nature and shows activity comparable to that of iv the protein-based lectins. Hydroxyethyl cellulose gels formulated with 0.25 w% pyrimidinedione analog showed activity at ~ 14 ug/mL in an in vitro antiviral assay. In the design of gp120 targeted synthetic lectins, benzoboroxole showed weak affinity for nonreducing sugars; however, it demonstrated antiviral activity at nanomolar concentrations when incorporated into high molecular weight polymers. Activity increased with increasing degree of functionalization and molecular weight of the polymer. Supplementing the polymer backbone with sulfonic acid increased its aqueous solubility in addition to a synergistic increase in antiviral activity. These strategies support the paradigm shift from use of generic semisolid drug delivery systems to a performance-based design of polymeric materials for vaginal drug delivery. Furthermore, formulating semisolid systems to deliver antiretroviral agents, such as the pyrimidinediones or the synthetic lectins, may provide a versatile microbicide candidate that is potent, affordable and nontoxic

Comparitive study of Epidural 0.75% Ropivacaine with Dexmeditomidine and 0.75% Ropivacaine alone for lower limb surgeries

AIM OF THE STUDY: To study the synergistic effect of adding dexmedetomidine to ropivacaine 0.75% in epidural anaesthesia for lower limb surgeries, regarding Onset and duration of sensory blockade, Onset and duration of motor blockade, Haemodynamic changes, Maximum dermatomal level of analgesia, Intensity of motor blockade, Sedation, Any adverse effects. Settings and Design: A prospective, randomized study was conducted in our Government Rajaji Hospital Madurai. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study population was randomly divided into two groups with 50 patients in each group Group-R-15ml of 0.75% ropicacaine and Group- RD- 15ml of 0.75% ropivacaine+ 0.6μg/kg of dexmeditomidine. Assessment of sensory and motor blockade were done at the end of each minute with the patient in supine position after completion of the injection of 15 ml of the study drug, which is taken as the starting time. The onset time and the maximum level of sensory and motor block were recorded. Sedation scoring as per five point sedation scale. RESULTS: Dexmedetomidine group had rapid onset of action (p 0.05). The occurrence of side effects (tremor, nausea and SpO2 0.05). INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSION: There is a clear synergism between dexmedetomidine and ropivacaine compared with plain ropivacaine in epidural anesthesia without increased morbidity

A Machine Learning Model to Identify Fake Data from Social Media using Sentiment Features

The exponential growth in the use of social media is leading to sharing of information among each other through which the spreading of fake news is common these days. online social networking is the main source for fake news. The most popular social media are Twitter and Facebook, through which the majority of the news reaches the public. This study is aim to try different classification algorithms in comparing with Dataset. For our experiment purpose the dataset used is Real or Fake News dataset which is extracted from Kaggle, which comprises 30Mb of twitter data. The two major classification algorithms used are Naive Bayes and Logistic Regression classification algorithm. The algorithms result in Accuracy score 82.48%, AUC 1.0 and kappa score 0.64 and Accuracy score 91.16%, AUC 0.91 and kappa score 0.82 respectively for the given dataset. The two different classification algorithms are successfully checked with the given dataset. The sentimental analysis is the other way of identification of fake data problem which can be implemented to know the positive and negative sentiment in the given twits. VADER feature is the one of the feature extraction which can be tried with the dataset to find out fake and real data

Effect of surfactant on the release of ciprofloxacin from gelatin microspheres

Gelatin microspheres with high entrapment efficiency were prepared by emulsification (using different surfactants) and crosslinking by glutaraldehyde with a view to improve stability of the microspheres. The microspheres were characterized for entrapment efficiency of ciprofloxacin, swelling, FT-IR, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and leakage properties.From the results obtained we inferred that the gelatin microspheres entrapped with ciprofloxacin prepared by using three different surfactants increased the shelf life of gelatin microspheres