Prevalence of anaemia among pregnant women in rural India: a longitudinal observational study

Background: Anemia is a major public health problem affecting both the developed as well as the developing countries. According to World Health Organization, prevalence of anaemia among pregnant women in developed countries is about 14%, whereas it is still as high as 51% in the developing world. The aim of the present study was to understand the health profile and the socio demographic factors of the country’s rural pregnant females and to estimate the exact prevalence of anemia and its associated factors among pregnant women at term based on the level of hemoglobin.Methods: This was a prospective, longitudinal cross sectional study. Hemoglobin estimates from pregnant females at term using antenatal care services or delivery services in a general hospital in a rural area of India, from September 2014 to March 2015 i.e. a period of 6 months, were obtained. The incidence of anemia and its associated socio demographic factors was studied. Although the overall prevalence of anaemia did not vary significantly with literacy level, the severity of anaemia differs to a great extent.Results: The prevalence of anemia was 98% among the pregnant females in this region of rural India. Out of these 41.76% had mild anemia, 37.05% had moderate anemia, 15.88% had severe anemia and 3.29% very severe anemia according to ICMR classification of anemia. The mean hemoglobin level was found to be 8.845. The number of ANC visits in present pregnancy and whether the pregnant female had taken iron folic acid prophylaxis also were very significant variables in the determination of prevalence as well as the severity of anemia.Conclusions: There is a significantly high prevalence of anaemia among pregnant women in rural areas of India. Our study has also enlisted a few socio demographic factors that contribute to such high prevalence of this disease. Programs focused on target population need to be planned and implemented with active participation of locals

Optimal Two Stage Flow Shop Scheduling to Minimize the Rental Cost including Job Block Criteria, Set Up Times and Processing Times Associated with Probabilities

This paper is an attempt to study the two stage flow shop scheduling problem in which the processing time and independent set up times of the jobs are associated with probabilities to minimize the rental cost under restrictive rental policy including equivalent job-block criteria. The study gives an optimal schedule rule in order to minimize the rental cost of machines through heuristic approach. The proposed method is very simple and easy to understand and also, provide an important tool for decision makers. To make the method effective and justified a computer program followed by a numerical illustration is given

Comparison of dexmedetomidine versus midazolam for intranasal premedication in children posted for elective surgery: a double-blind, randomised study

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effect of dexmedetomidine with midazolam for intranasal premedication in children posted for elective surgery.Trial design: This was a prospective, randomised, double-blinded clinical study.Method: 60 children, 3 to 10 years of age, with American Society of Anaesthesiologists (ASA) physical status I, scheduled for elective surgery, were randomly divided into two groups, group D (dexmedetomidine) and group M (midazolam). Group D patients received intranasal dexmedetomidine 1 μg/kg and group M patients intranasal midazolam 0.2 mg/kg, approximately 30 minutes before induction of anaesthesia, in the form of a spray.Outcome: Preoperative effects on heart rate, blood pressure, sedation and anxiety including parental separation and mask acceptance were assessed.Results: Intranasal dexmedetomidine (1 μg/kg) premedication resulted in statistically significant but clinically unimportant lower heart rate and blood pressure at 10, 20, and 30 minutes following administration compared with intranasal midazolam (0.2 mg/kg). There were no episodes of hypotension or bradycardia. Children in group D achieved better parental separation and mask acceptance scores compared with group M.Conclusion: Dexmedetomidine resulted in better parental separation and mask acceptance scores than intranasal midazolam. Thus it would seem to offer some advantage compared with midazolam.Keywords: dexmedetomidine, intranasal, midazolam, paediatric patient

Relationship between the duration of diabetes and severity of neuropathy in patients of peripheral neuropathic diabetic foot ulcers

Background: Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) has devastating impact on the social, personal as well as economic life of a diabetic patient. In US, prevalence of peripheral neuropathy in adult diabetics is approximately 28%. The aim of this study is to establish relationship between the duration of diabetes and severity of neuropathy in patients with peripheral neuropathic DFU. Methods: This is a prospective observational study, including 30 patients, who underwent history, examination and Toronto clinical scoring system (TCSS) was used for diagnosing severity of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (mild, moderate, severe) from a period of October 2015 to June 2017. Results: In this study, we observed that the mean age of the diabetic foot patients was 53.50±12.03 years ranging from 30 to 75 years. Male-to-female ratio was 1.5:1. The mean duration of diabetes was 6.38±4.57 years. The patients with mild neuropathy had a mean duration of diabetes of 4.77±2.61 years, while, those with moderate and severe neuropathy had mean duration of 7.17±1.48years and 8.48±4.59 years, respectively. Conclusions: The study concluded that there is a significant association between duration of diabetes and severity of neuropathy, i.e., patients with longer duration of diabetes had severe peripheral neuropathy

A web server for predicting inhibitors against bacterial target GlmU protein

Background: The emergence of drug resistant tuberculosis poses a serious concern globally and researchers are in rigorous search for new drugs to fight against these dreadful bacteria. Recently, the bacterial GlmU protein, involved in peptidoglycan, lipopolysaccharide and techoic acid synthesis, has been identified as an important drug target. A unique C-terminal disordered tail, essential for survival and the absence of gene in host makes GlmU a suitable target for inhibitor design. Results: This study describes the models developed for predicting inhibitory activity (IC50) of chemical compounds against GlmU protein using QSAR and docking techniques. These models were trained on 84 diverse compounds (GlmU inhibitors) taken from PubChem BioAssay (AID 1376). These inhibitors were docked in the active site of the C-terminal domain of GlmU protein (2OI6) using the AutoDock. A QSAR model was developed using docking energies as descriptors and achieved maximum correlation of 0.35/0.12 (r/r2) between actual and predicted pIC50. Secondly, QSAR models were developed using molecular descriptors calculated using various software packages and achieved maximum correlation of 0.77/0.60 (r/r2). Finally, hybrid models were developed using various types of descriptors and achieved high correlation of 0.83/0.70 (r/r2) between predicted and actual pIC50. It was observed that some molecular descriptors used in this study had high correlation with pIC50. We screened chemical libraries using models developed in this study and predicted 40 potential GlmU inhibitors. These inhibitors could be used to develop drugs against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Conclusion: These results demonstrate that docking energies can be used as descriptors for developing QSAR models. The current work suggests that docking energies based descriptors could be used along with commonly used molecular descriptors for predicting inhibitory activity (IC50) of molecules against GlmU. Based on this study an open source platform, http://crdd.osdd.net/raghava/gdoq, has been developed for predicting inhibitors GlmU

Efficacy of chlorhexidine, hydrogen peroxide and tulsi extract mouthwash in reducing halitosis using spectrophotometric analysis : a randomized controlled trial

To evaluate the efficacy of tulsi extract mouthrinse in reducing halitosis as compared to chlorhexidine and hydrogen peroxide mouthrinses using spectrophotometric analysis. It was a parallel, single center, double blinded randomized controlled trial of 15 days duration. A total of 300 participants were screened, out of which 45 subjects those fulfilled inclusion criteria of age range 17-35 years were included in the trial. The participants were randomly provided with tulsi, hydrogen peroxide or chlorhexidine mouthwashes (control group) to use 10 ml twice daily for 15 days. Clinical measurements were taken at baseline and 15 days using arbitrary 0-5 scale for organoleptic odor assessments, spectrophotometric analysis for Volatile Sulphide Compounds (VSCs) from saliva samples, Löe & Silness gingival index and Silness & Löe plaque index. After intervention, organoleptic, VSCs, gingival and plaque scores showed statistically significant decrease in all the three study groups. The mean percentage reduction in VSC and organoleptic scores was significantly greater in chlorhexidine and hydrogen peroxide groups than in the tulsi group and the mean percentage reduction in plaque and gingival scores was significantly greater in chlorhexidine group than in hydrogen peroxide and tulsi group. Tulsi may not have the efficacy of chlorhexidine and hydrogen peroxide mouthrinses. But, Tulsi is effective in reducing halitosis, plaque and gingivitis and with its lack of side effects & cost effectiveness, can be an effective & economic tool to deal with halitosis. The spectrophotometric technique appears to be a promising method for evaluation of oral malodor

Efficacy of premixed versus sequential administration of dexmedetomidine as an adjuvant to intrathecal hyperbaric bupivacaine in lower limb surgery

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of intrathecal hyperbaric bupivacaine premixed with dexmeditomidine compared with sequential administration in separate syringes on block characteristics, haemodynamic parameters, side effect profile and postoperative analgesic requirement.Trial design: This was a prospective, randomised clinical studyMethod: Sixty orthopaedic patients scheduled for elective lower limb surgery under spinal anaesthesia were divided into two groups to receive either intrathecal hyperbaric bupivacaine 12.5 mg premixed (Group P) with dexmeditomidine 10 μg (diluted to 0.5 ml with normal saline) or by sequential administration in separate syringes (Group S). Outcome: Block characteristics, haemodynamic parameters, side effect profile and postoperative analgesic requirement were compared in both groups.Results: Time to achieve T10 spinal level was significantly less in group S (4.467 + 0.973 min) compared with group P (5.5 + 1.167 min). Similarly, patients in group S achieved Modified Bromage III earlier (6.1 + 1.296 min) than group P (7.5 + 1.333 min), p-value 0.0001.Conclusion: Dexmeditomidine given sequentially in a separate syringe as adjuvant to intrathecal hyperbaric bupivacaine can result in faster onset of both sensory and motor block and prolongs the duration of spinal anaesthesia, minimises clinically significant side effects and reduces the postoperative analgesic requirement.Keywords: dexmedetomidine, hyperbaric bupivacaine, intrathecal bloc

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

BIAdb: A curated database of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids

Background: Benzylisoquinoline is the structural backbone of many alkaloids with a wide variety of structures including papaverine, noscapine, codeine, morphine, apomorphine, berberine, protopine and tubocurarine. Many benzylisoquinoline alkaloids have been reported to show therapeutic properties and to act as novel medicines. Thus it is important to collect and compile benzylisoquinoline alkaloids in order to explore their usage in medicine. Description: We extract information about benzylisoquinoline alkaloids from various sources like PubChem, KEGG, KNApSAcK and manual curation from literature. This information was processed and compiled in order to create a comprehensive database of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, called BIAdb. The current version of BIAdb contains information about 846 unique benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, with multiple entries in term of source, function leads to total number of 2504 records. One of the major features of this database is that it provides data about 627 different plant species as a source of benzylisoquinoline and 114 different types of function performed by these compounds. A large number of online tools have been integrated, which facilitate user in exploring full potential of BIAdb. In order to provide additional information, we give external links to other resources/databases. One of the important features of this database is that it is tightly integrated with Drugpedia, which allows managing data in fixed/flexible format. Conclusions: A database of benzylisoquinoline compounds has been created, which provides comprehensive information about benzylisoquinoline alkaloids. This database will be very useful for those who are working in the field of drug discovery based on natural products. This database will also serve researchers working in the field of synthetic biology, as developing medicinally important alkaloids using synthetic process are one of important challenges. This database is available from http://crdd.osdd.net/raghava/biadb/

3-STAGE SPECIALLY STRUCTURED FLOW SHOP SCHEDULING TO MINIMIZE THE RENTAL COST, SET UP TIME SEPARATED FROM PROCESSING TIME INCLUDING JOB WEIGHTAGE

ABSTRACT This article describe the development of a new heuristic algorithm which guarantees an optimal solution for specially structured flow shop problem with n-jobs,3-machines, to minimize the rental cost under specified rental policy in which set up times are separated from processes time, including job weightage. Further the processing times are not merely random but bear a well defined relationship to one another. Most of literature emphasized on minimization of idle time/ make span. But minimization of make span may not always lead to minimize rental cost of machines. Objective of this work is to minimize the rental cost of machines under a specified rental policy irrespective of make span