Assessment of Neuropharmacological Profile of Ethanolic Extract of Lawsonia Inermis Flowers

On preliminary basis neuropharmacological profile of ethanolic extract of flowers of Lawsonia inermis was carried out. For assessing the activity of flowers on central nervous system locomotor activity using actophotometer, muscle relaxant activity using rotarod apparatus, pentobarbital-induced hypnosis and anticonvulsant activity by maximal electroshock test was performed.  Ethanolic extract of flowers of Lawsonia inermis decreased the motor activity by 48.63 % and showed 49.03% noteworthy muscle relaxation along with 127.73% potentiation of pentobarbital-induced sleeping time and 66.67% decreased the duration of tonic hind leg extension of seizures activity.  The results conclude that the extract of flowers of Lawsonia inermis has significant central nervous system depressant activity. Further investigations are, however, necessary to explore mechanism(s) of action involved in these pharmacological activities

Evaluations of antidepressant activity of Punica granatum peel extract in albino mice

Background: Depression is the most common disorder of mental illnesses and affects excess of 10-15% of population. According to the WHO reports, more than 350 million persons suffer from depression all over the world. The aim of present study is to evaluate anti-depressant activity of Punica granatum peel extract (PgPE) in albino mice.Methods: Male albino mice (20-30 g) were used. Animals were divided into 5 groups with 6 animals in each which were subjected to forced swim test. Group 1 is control, group 2 received (standard) imipramine 10 mg/kg, p.o, group 3 (T1) PgPE 50 mg/kg, p.o, group 4 (T2) PgPE 100 mg/kg, p.o, group 5 (T3) PgPE 200 mg/kg, at first animals were forced to swim for 15 min (trained), and the study was performed after 24 hrs. All the animals were treated with individual drug 60 min prior to study, animals were forced to swim for 6 min and the duration of immobility was recorded. The mouse was considered immobile when it floats motionlessly or made only those moments necessary to keep its head above the water surface. The total duration of immobility of each mouse was recorded after the test in each group.Results: The duration of immobility is significantly reduced at PgPE 200 mg/kg and results were analysed by one way analysis of variance (ANOVA).Conclusions: PgPE 200 mg/kg significantly (p<0.05) decreases the duration of immobility in mice

A Study on Microbiological Profile of Vaginitis and Its Association with Urinary Tract Infection during Pregnancy in a Tertiary Care Hospital

INTRODUCTION: Infectious vaginitis which includes bacterial vaginosis (BV), vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) and trichomoniasis are common disorders seen in women. Both vaginitis and urinary tract infection (UTI) during pregnancy have risk to lives of both the mother and the fetus. AIM OF THE STUDY: To identify common causes of infectious vaginitis in pregnancy and to determine the risk of urinary tract infections in pregnant women with bacterial vaginosis. METHODOLOGY: Cross sectional descriptive study was done among 200 pregnant patients attending Institute of obstetrics and gynaecology, Egmore. Study period was from March 2017 to February 2018. Duplicate High Vaginal Swab and urine sample were collected from each patient. BV was diagnosed using Amsel’s criteria and Nugent’s scoring. VVC was determined by culture on Sabouraud Dextrose Agar and Candida species were identified by sugar fermentation and assimilation test. Trichomoniasis was detected by observing motile trophozoites under microscope. Diagnosis of UTI was made when there were at least 105 colony forming units/ml of urine. RESULTS: Out of 200 patients, 65 were positive for infectious vaginitis and 32 had UTI. Among 65 infected patients, BV and VVC were found in 42 (64.6%) and 23 (35.4%) respectively. BV associated with UTI was seen in 35.7% of the patients. The association between BV and UTI was found to be statistically significant (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Hence, BV was the most common vaginitis among pregnant women and women with BV are at increased risk for UTIs. We recommend that all pregnant women during antenatal check up should be screened for the presence of BV and UTI

ANTI-DIABETIC ACTIVITY OF EPIPREMNUM AUREUM.L IN NORMAL AND ALLOXAN-INDUCED DIABETIC RATS

ABSTRACTObjective: The study was carried out with the objective of phytochemical screening and to evaluate the anti-diabetic activity of aqueous and alcoholicextract of E. aureum.Methods: The anti-diabetic activity was determined alloxan-induced diabetic rats. A total of 24 albino Wistar rats of either sex weighing 200-250 gwere divided into 4 groups consisting of 4 rats in each group. Group-1 served as control, Group-2 received standard drug, Group-3 received test drugaqueous extract of E. aureum, and Group-4 received test drug alcoholic extract of E. aureum.Results: Phytochemical investigation of aqueous and alcoholic extracts of E. aureum revealed the presence of alkaloids, tannins, saponins, terpenoids,and flavonoids as secondary metabolites. The both aqueous and alcoholic extracts of E. aureum showed a significant reduction in blood glucose levelsdue to the presence of phytochemicals such as flavonoids, terpenoids, and alkaloids in both extracts of E. aureum. The administration of drug (IP) wascontinued upto 15 days.Conclusion: Extracts of E. aureum have shown the great potential of anti-diabetic activity in normal and alloxan-induced rats. Flavonoids might beproducing hypoglycemic effect by a mechanism independent from insulin secretion, e.g. by the inhibition of endogenous glucose production or bythe inhibition of intestinal glucose absorption. This study E. aureum of both aqueous and alcoholic extracts was showed significant effect on alloxaninducedrats.Keywords: Epipremnum aureum, Anti-diabetic activity, Alloxan-induced diabetic rats, Glucometer

Prioritization of Traffic for Resource Constrained Delay Tolerant Networks

In networks with common shared wireless medium, the available bandwidth is always valuable and often scarce resource. In addition to it, memory available at nodes (eg., sensor nodes) might be limited relative to the amount of information that needs to be stored locally. As Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) rely on node mobility for data dissemination, the high node mobility limits the duration of contact. Besides the issue of contact opportunities between nodes, the bandwidth, available storage at peering nodes and contact duration also affect data forwarding. These factors also influence the mechanisms such as buffer replacement and scheduling policies. So there are secondary problems that routing strategies may need to take care of such as to deal with limited resources like buffer, bandwidth and power. Furthermore, despite inherent delay tolerance of most DTN driving applications, there can be situations where some messages may be more important than the others and expected to get delivered earlier. So considering the network limitations and application requirements, the problem of choosing the messages to be transmitted when a contact opportunity arises and the messages to be dropped when buffer full is formulated. A buffer management policy to address these issues is proposed and analysed in this paper. Additionally the buffer utilization of various DTN routing protocols and the impact of buffer size on the performance of DTN are studied

Susceptibility of south Indian strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to tuberactinomycin

A total of 114 strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated from sputum samples of 114 patients of pulmonary tuberculosis in south India, were coded and tested for their in vitro susceptibility to tuberactinomycin (Tum) incorporated in Lowenstein-Jensen (LJ) medium. Of these strains, 95 (83.3%) and 15 (13.2%) were susceptible to Tum at 25 and 50 mg/l respectively. Only 4 (3.5%) strains were inhibited at 100 mg/l or more. Of the 37 drug sensitive strains, 2 (5.4%) were not susceptible to Tum at 25 mg/l compared to 17 (22.1%) of 77 strains-resistant to one or more of antituberculosis drugs (P <0.02). The drug susceptibility pattern of the strains revealed that there was no significant association of resistance between Tum and streptomycin or rifampicin or ethambutol or ethionamide or isoniazid. However, 15 (53.6%) of 28 kanamycin (K) resistant strains were not susceptible to Tum at 25 mg/l. This cross resistance between Tum and K was further studied in 24 and 15 K sensitive and resistant strains respectively, by correlating their proportion resistance at 16 mg/l and it was found to have a significant positive correlation (r = 0.55; X0.01)

Gastro-intestinal absorption of isoniazid and rifampicin in patients with intestinal tuberculosis

The gastro-intestinal absorption of isoniazid and rifampicin was studied in 12 patients with intestinal tuberculosis (10 slow and 2 rapid acetylators of isoniazid) and compared with that in 18 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (8 slow and 10 rapid acetylators). Exposure (area under the time-concentration curve), calculated on the basis of serum concentrations of the two drugs at 1, 2, 3, 6 and 8 hours, and the proportion of dose of isoniazid excreted in urine collected over the period (0-8½) hours as isoniccotinyl compounds after drug administration were similar in the 2 groups suggesting no impairment of gastro-intestinal absorption of the 2 drugs in patients with intestinal tuberculosis. It was also observed that there was no delay in the absorption of the 2 drugs in patients with intestinal tuberculosis as compared to that in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. The absorption of D-xylose, used to assess the absorptive capacity of the proximal small intestine, was also similar and normal in both groups of patients

Evaluation of Directly Observed Treatment providers in the revised national tuberculosis control programme

Background: Non-governmental personnel such as Anganwadi workers and community volunteers have been used as directly observed treatment (DOT) providers in the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), but their effectiveness has not been documented. Aim: To assess the treatment outcome and problems encountered by patients managed by different DOT providers in the RNTCP. Material and Methods: Patients diagnosed with tuberculosis at 17 Primary Health Institutions (PHIs) in Tiruvallur District during a 3-year period received DOT from one of the four types of trained DOT providers (PHI staff, governmental outreach workers, Anganwadi workers, community volunteers), and their treatment outcomes were compared. Of the 1131 new smear-positive patients treated between May 1999 through June 2002, 199 (18%) received DOT from PHI staff, 238(21%) from outreach workers, 496 (44%) from Anganwadi workers, and 170 (15%) from community volunteers. Twenty-eight patients (2%) collected drugs for self-administration. Results: Treatment success rates among patients treated by different DOT providers, Anganwadi workers (80%), governmental outreach workers (81%), community volunteers (76%) and PHI staff (76%), were statistically similar. Patients who received drugs for self-administration were significantly more likely to fail to treatment or die than patients who were treated by a DOT provider (5/28 versus 84/1103; odds ratio=4.1; 95% confidence interval=1.2-12.6; p=0.02). Conclusion: In addition to governmental staff, Anganwadi workers and community volunteers can be effectively utilized as DOT providers

Identification of potential targets and Screening for common signature in novel anticancer inhibitors in human

Cancer remains a basic burden to public health despite substantial efforts aimed at developing effective chemotherapeutics. The goal of the project is to screen for common signature in novel drug targets and identification of potential lead molecules by analysis and prediction of its ADMET properties with high specificity. In the present study we have screened all 11,000 entries for Human Cancer Proteins available in PDB and retrieved 12 hits classified according to space group, accessible/buried surface area, and free energy of dissociation and further considered for the analysis of cation-pi interactions study results showed that high exposed percentage for Lys and Arg due to their hydrophilic properties and having high accessible surface area. Phe was having low percentage of exposed compared to other residues due to its hydrophobic nature. Ligands were screened through HitsGen by Inventus software, which is a standalone software that performs ADMET screening for ligands through six assays namely CACO, efflux, BBB, FDP,VDSS and finally 8 ligands that are being satisfied through all the screening results which are further analysed by docking studies using NOVODOCKER. We have observed that Tyr,Thr,Asp residues have significantly involved in donor /acceptor interaction, Though there is no significant PPI is observed among all the targets. After screening 216 hits and performing protein -ligand interaction studies revealed that Leucovorin and Morphine are potential ligands among 216 hits which can be further analysed for In vivo studies

Influence of particle size on the physicochemical properties and stickiness of dairy powders

peer-reviewedThe compositional and physicochemical properties of different whey permeate (WPP), demineralised whey (DWP) and skim milk powder (SMP) size fractions were investigated. Bulk composition of WPP and DWP was significantly (P < 0.05) influenced by powder particle size; smaller particles had higher protein and lower lactose contents. Microscopic observations showed that WPP and DWP contained both larger lactose crystals and smaller amorphous particles. Bulk composition of SMP did not vary with particle size. Surface composition of the smallest SMP fraction (<75 μm) showed significantly lower protein (−9%) and higher fat (+5%) coverage compared with non-fractionated powders. For all powders, smaller particles were more susceptible to sticking. Hygroscopicity of SMP was not affected by particle size; hygroscopicity of semi-crystalline powders was inversely related to particle size. This study provides insights into differences between size fractions of dairy powders, which can potentially impact the sticking/caking behaviour of fine particles during processing.ACCEPTEDpeer-reviewe