The Toxic Effects BPA on Fetuses, Infants, and Children

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an organic synthetic compound with the chemical formula (CH3)2C(C6H4OH)2 belonging to the group of diphenylmethane derivatives and bisphenols, with two hydroxyphenyl groups. BPA is the common name for 2,2-(4,4′-dihydroxydiphenyl) propane, IUPAC name 4,4′-(propane-2,2-diyl) diphenol, alternative name p,p′-isopropylidenebisphenol, with two phenol moieties. Its important properties include low vapor pressure, moderate water solubility, and low volatility. It is a colorless solid that is soluble in organic solvents, but poorly soluble in water. BPA is a plastic component produced in large quantities for use chiefly in the production of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. BPA epoxy has a good, broad range of chemical resistance, good physical properties, and is cured using a wide variety of curing agents at ambient temperatures. The present chapter focuses on different toxic effects and the influence of BPA on different stages of human life in fetuses, infants, and children. The chapter also concentrates on how to handle BPA, its treatment, and preventive measures against BPA exposure

Radiological and clinical outcomes in patients undergoing anterior cervical discectomy and fusion: Comparing titanium and PEEK (polyetheretherketone) cages

Objectives: To study clinical and radiological outcomes in patients who had undergone the procedure of anterior cervical discectomy and fusion with titanium or PEEK (polyetheretherketone) cages for cervical disc prolapse.Methods: This is a retrospective/non-randomized study which was conducted at the Combined Military Hospital Peshawar. Study interval was four years from 1st October, 2010 to 31st September, 2014. Total number of included patients were 149. All of the patients had undergone the procedure of anterior cervical discectomy and fusion with titanium or PEEK (polyetheretherketone) cages. All of the patients had plain MRI cervical spine done for diagnosis of anterior cervical disc prolapse.Results: Most of the patients had stenosis at the C5 / C6 (PEEK cage group 63% and titanium cage group 47.6%) and C6 / C7 (PEEK cage group 15.38% and titanium cage group 19.04%) cervical level. Bi-level involvement was also seen. In the patients who complained of brachialgia, total resolution of symptoms was seen after the operation. Three (2.01%) of the patients in titanium cage group, who presented with axial neck pain, continued to complain of pain after the operation. Four (2.6%) of the patients in PEEK (polyetheretherketone) cage group and 2 (1.3%) in titanium cage group complained of pain at the donor site (iliac crest). Fusion rate was 100% with both titanium and PEEK (polyetheretherketone) cages at one year.Conclusion: Results with titanium and PEEK (polyetheretherketone) cages are excellent. There was no significant difference in clinical and radiological outcome between two groups of patients (p \u3e 0.05). Fusion rate was 100% at one year with both cages

Support Vector Machine-based method for predicting subcellular localization of mycobacterial proteins using evolutionary information and motifs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In past number of methods have been developed for predicting subcellular location of eukaryotic, prokaryotic (Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria) and human proteins but no method has been developed for mycobacterial proteins which may represent repertoire of potent immunogens of this dreaded pathogen. In this study, attempt has been made to develop method for predicting subcellular location of mycobacterial proteins.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The models were trained and tested on 852 mycobacterial proteins and evaluated using five-fold cross-validation technique. First SVM (Support Vector Machine) model was developed using amino acid composition and overall accuracy of 82.51% was achieved with average accuracy (mean of class-wise accuracy) of 68.47%. In order to utilize evolutionary information, a SVM model was developed using PSSM (Position-Specific Scoring Matrix) profiles obtained from PSI-BLAST (Position-Specific Iterated BLAST) and overall accuracy achieved was of 86.62% with average accuracy of 73.71%. In addition, HMM (Hidden Markov Model), MEME/MAST (Multiple Em for Motif Elicitation/Motif Alignment and Search Tool) and hybrid model that combined two or more models were also developed. We achieved maximum overall accuracy of 86.8% with average accuracy of 89.00% using combination of PSSM based SVM model and MEME/MAST. Performance of our method was compared with that of the existing methods developed for predicting subcellular locations of Gram-positive bacterial proteins.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A highly accurate method has been developed for predicting subcellular location of mycobacterial proteins. This method also predicts very important class of proteins that is membrane-attached proteins. This method will be useful in annotating newly sequenced or hypothetical mycobacterial proteins. Based on above study, a freely accessible web server TBpred http://www.imtech.res.in/raghava/tbpred/ has been developed.</p

Another D in MUDPILES? A Review of Diet-Associated Nondiabetic Ketoacidosis.

Ketogenic diet or very-low-carbohydrate diet gained widespread popularity in the 1990s due to their favorable effects on weight loss and diabetes among others with good short-term safety data. People on ketogenic diets exist in a state of dietary ketosis in which the body production of ketone is equal to consumption and no harmful effects of ketonemia occur. However, in face of stress, the harmless dietary ketosis can lead to profound acid-base disturbances due to massive overproduction of ketone bodies that overwhelms the acid buffer system of the body. A handful of case reports have been published on this topic calling the safety of ketogenic diet into question. In this article, we chronicle a unique case of ketogenic (Atkins) diet-associated ketoacidosis, and we present a comprehensive literature review on the etiology of ketoacidosis

Hmrbase: a database of hormones and their receptors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hormones are signaling molecules that play vital roles in various life processes, like growth and differentiation, physiology, and reproduction. These molecules are mostly secreted by endocrine glands, and transported to target organs through the bloodstream. Deficient, or excessive, levels of hormones are associated with several diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes etc. Thus, it is important to collect and compile information about hormones and their receptors.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>This manuscript describes a database called Hmrbase which has been developed for managing information about hormones and their receptors. It is a highly curated database for which information has been collected from the literature and the public databases. The current version of Hmrbase contains comprehensive information about ~2000 hormones, e.g., about their function, source organism, receptors, mature sequences, structures etc. Hmrbase also contains information about ~3000 hormone receptors, in terms of amino acid sequences, subcellular localizations, ligands, and post-translational modifications etc. One of the major features of this database is that it provides data about ~4100 hormone-receptor pairs. A number of online tools have been integrated into the database, to provide the facilities like keyword search, structure-based search, mapping of a given peptide(s) on the hormone/receptor sequence, sequence similarity search. This database also provides a number of external links to other resources/databases in order to help in the retrieving of further related information.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Owing to the high impact of endocrine research in the biomedical sciences, the Hmrbase could become a leading data portal for researchers. The salient features of Hmrbase are hormone-receptor pair-related information, mapping of peptide stretches on the protein sequences of hormones and receptors, Pfam domain annotations, categorical browsing options, online data submission, DrugPedia linkage etc. Hmrbase is available online for public from <url>http://crdd.osdd.net/raghava/hmrbase/</url>.</p

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Top 100 Cited Articles on Hepatic Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

The purpose of this study is to guide the readers to the impact of the articles published on hepatic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We searched Scopus using 10 different search terms for hepatic MRI. The selected studies were thoroughly reviewed by two independent authors and any disagreement was sorted out by mutual consensus. The list of articles and journals was downloaded into an excel spreadsheet. Only the top 100 cited articles were selected by mutual consensus among all the authors. These articles were further read in the full-text form and were further categorized into subgroups. Three authors independently reviewed the top 100 selected articles, and subsequently data was extracted from them and analyzed. Our study showed that the highest number of top 100 cited articles on hepatic MRI were from Radiology (30 articles) followed by European Radiology (14 articles). The American Journal of Roentgenology, Radiographics, and Journal of Magnetic Resonance had seven articles each. The United States had the highest number of articles by region. Nineteen other journals contributed only one article each to the list of top 100 cited articles. The contribution of authors to the top 100 cited articles was reviewed; all the authors contributing with more than two articles to the highly cited articles are given in Table 3 in the supplementary material. The maximum number of articles were published during 2009 (14 articles), and for a five-year period, the maximum contribution was made during 2008-2013 (44 articles). Our analysis gives an insight on the frequency of citations of top articles on hepatic MRI, categorizes the subtopics, the timeline of the publications, and contributions from different geographic distributions

Physicochemical properties of doping Nickel –Cobalt oxides catalysts supported on SiO2 and its catalytic activity

The physicochemical and catalytic properties of low-cost metal mixed oxide catalysts have been researched and characterized. To explore catalysts, various characterization techniques such as BET and X-ray diffraction (XRD) have been utilized. Three distinct catalysts, C1(NiO-Co3O4/Silica), C2(NiO- Co3O4-ZnO/ Silica), and C3(NiO- Co3O4-BaO/ Silica), are synthesized with 20 wt% mixed oxide (NiO- Co3O4) supported on silica and doped with zinc/barium oxide, and then dried at 110C overnight and calcined at 350oC All three catalysts have been tested in an ethyl acetate saponification reaction, and the conversion of reactants is calculated. In comparison to the other catalysts, C2 (NiO-Co3O4-ZnO/ Silica), which is a combination of NiO-Co3O4/SiO2 doped with zinc oxide, show good catalytic activity. In terms of catalyst doping, the addition of zinc oxide to the Silica supported original composition boosted the catalytic activity for the saponification reaction compared to barium oxide and without doped

Proprotein convertase subtilisin/Kexin type-9 (PCSK-9) inhibitors induced liver injury - a retrospective analysis.

Background: Proprotein convertase subtilisin/Kexin type 9 (PCSK-9) inhibitors induced liver dysfunction in patients with or without previous liver injury, and this is not well discussed in the previous literature. Methods: A total sample of 202 patients were retrospectively reviewed at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, from the year 2015 to 2018 based on predefined selection criteria. Inclusion criteria involved patients with dyslipidemia, with or without PCSK-9 inhibitors, liver function tests and lipid profile at baseline and at a mean of 6-month follow-up. The variables, including age, gender, and confounding factors like other medications (statin, oral antidiabetic, and antihypertensive) induced, or chronic secondary liver diseases causing liver injury were taken into consideration. Exclusion criteria included patients without dyslipidemia. Results: The mean age of the study population was 64 ± 11 years (63% males and 37% females). The lipid profile including triglyceride and cholesterol levels during 6-month followup visit showed a mean of 184 ± 260 and 163 ± 50 mg/dL as compared to that at baseline of 227 ± 603 and 181 ± 70 mg/dL, respectively. In terms of clinical efficacy, a 6-month follows-up showed a drop in triglyceride and cholesterol levels by 38 and 15 mg/dL, respectively. A liver function test at 6 months in patients taking PCSK-9 inhibitors showed an increase in alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) by 5.8 mg/dL (p = 0.037) and 6.2 mg/dL (p = 0.008), respectively, from baseline values. Conclusion: PCSK-9 inhibitors should be used cautiously with a follow-up liver function test

An overview of enhancing drought tolerance in cotton through manipulating stress resistance genes

Drought stress affects the normal growth of plant by influencing Physiological, morphological molecular and biochemical traits at cellular level. It is a polygenic trait, controlled by multiple genes, which makes its manipulation difficult by genetic engineering. It seems drought could be major threat in future to high yield of cotton in Pakistan as well around the globe because it is spontaneous and cannot be controlled with manuring and skilled agricultural practices. Gene manipulation could be a solution of this threat by producing transgenic cotton plants. As it is polygenic trait, so, understanding about cellular mechanism of drought tolerance is crucial to impart tolerance by controlling gene expression under stressed conditions. Universal Stress Proteins (USP) genes have already been identified in drought stressed leaves of Gossypium arboreum which make this variety of cotton a rich source of stress tolerance genes. USP genes could be manipulated for drought tolerant transgenic cotton with high yielding as well and it is most important family of proteins in this regard. This family encompasses a conserved group of proteins that has been reported in different organisms which are activating under various abiotic stress conditions. USP is also a regulatory protein; its activity can be increased by manipulating its interactions