Evaluation of rational drug use pattern using WHO prescribing indicators in a medical intensive care unit of a tertiary teaching hospital in Kerala, India

Background: ICU patients are exposed to more number of life saving drugs and face drug related problems like therapeutic failure, drug interactions and frequent adverse drug reactions. The cost of ICU hospitalisation and money spent on medicines is also a huge burden on these patients. A study of prescribing pattern in an ICU set up will serve as a medical audit to monitor and evaluate the prescribing practices to make it more rational and cost effective.Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out in a medical ICU of a tertiary care hospital. All the inpatients admitted in the medical ICU during the study period of 2 months were included in the study. The data obtained from the case sheets were used to assess the prescribing pattern and rationality of drug use.Results: A total of 101 patients were admitted in 2 months. The most common illness for which the patients (22) were admitted was respiratory problems. Average number of drugs per prescription was 6.9. Cardiovascular system (23.9%) drugs were the most frequently prescribed. Pantoprazole (77) was the single most commonly prescribed drug. 40% of the drugs were prescribed from the essential drug list. The average cost of medicines incurred per person in our study was 5126.33 in INR.Conclusions: Polypharmacy and unwanted prescription of proton pump inhibitors can be avoided by prescribing more generics and drugs from essential drug list

Effect of an organophosphorous pesticide (Dimethoate) on oxygen consumption of the fish Tilapia mossambica

Impact of sublethal concentrations of pesticide Dimethoate on oxygen consumption of Tilapia mossambica is reported. The rate of oxygen consumption of the fish was studied under the concentrations of 0.15ppm, 0.2ppm,0.3ppm and 0.6ppm under 1/20,1/15,1/10, and 1/5   of sublethal concentration respectively during the 24,48,72 and 96 hours of exposure.The initial elevation in the oxygen consumption could be explained in terms of acceleration of oxidative metabolism during the initial hours of exposure, as a result of sudden response to the toxic stimulus of pesticide. The present study reveals that the pesticide dimethoate is toxic to the fish, Tilapia mossambica and even low concentration of dimethoate stress create respiratory disturbance which ultimately leads to the deterioration of general health of the fis

New spectrophotometric method for the determination of flutamide in pharmaceutical preparations

A sensitive and simple spectrophotometric method for the determinations of reduction product of flutamide (FLA) is described. The method is based on the interaction of diazotized flutamide reduction product with N-(1-naphthyl) ethylenediamine dihydrochloride (NEDA) in neutral or resorcinol (RSL) in alkaline medium. Absorbance of the resulting chromophores is measured at 525 or 480 nm, respectively, and is stable for at least 7 days. The two coupling reagents are applied successfully for the determination of FLA in tablets. The common excipients used as additives in pharmaceutical preparations do not interfere with the determination. Results from the analysis of pure FLA and its commercial tablets by the proposed methods agree well with the reported method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Response of Beet Root Tubers to Gypsum, P Levels, Boron and Iron Sulphate in Salt-Affected Soils

A field-experiment was conducted in salt-affected soils of Dodda Seebi tank command area of Tumkur district, Karnataka during rabi season of 2007 to study effect of gypsum, P level, borax and iron sulphate on beet root tuber yield and nutrient uptake. Treatments included two main-plot treatments, viz., M0: Control (without gypsum) and M1: gypsum application @ 9.0 t ha-1 and eight sub-plot treatments, viz., S1: Phosphorus @ 100 kg P2O5 ha-1, S2: Phosphorus @ 150 kg P2O5 ha-1, S3: S1 + Borax @ 5 kg ha-1, S4: S2 + Borax @ 5 kg ha-1, S5: S1 + FeSO5 @ 25 kg ha-1, S6: S2 + FeSO4 @ 25 kg ha-1, S7: S3 + FeSO4 @ 25 kg ha-1 and S8: S4 + FeSO4 @ 25 kg ha-1. Recommended N and K were applied to all treatments. The experiment was laid out in split plot design with three replications. Beet root, a salt-tolerant crop, was sown for testing its performance in salt-affected soils. Significantly higher tuber yield of 12.70 t ha-1 was realized when the crop received gypsum @ 9.0 t ha-1 compared to control (7.73 t ha-1), besides higher nutrient uptake by the tubers. Among the nutrients, application of P at higher level (150 kg P2O5 ha-1) plus recommended NK along with borax and iron sulphate realized higher tuber yield (15.72 t ha-1) as well as nutrients uptake by tubers. Crop that received gypsum in combination with P at a higher level plus recommended NK, along with borax and iron sulphate, resulted in highest tuber yield (19.72 t ha-1) and nutrient uptake

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHODS FOR THE QUANTIFICATION OF EFAVIRENZ IN TABLETS

Two simple and precise spectrophotometric methods ( A and B ) were developed for the estimation of efavirenz ( EFZ ) in bulk drug as well as in pharmaceutical dosage form( tablets). Methods A is based on the formation of pink coloured chromogen  by the diazotization and coupling reaction of EFZ with β-Naphthol. The λmax of the pink coloured chromogen was found to be 494nm. Method B is First derivative spectroscopy method. The first derivative spectrum is a plot of the rate of change of absorbance with wavelength against wavelength (dA /dλ versus λ). It is characterized by a maximum, minimum and a cross- over point at the λmax of the absorption band. Beer’s law was obeyed in the concentration range of 10-60µg/ml and 4-24 µg/ml for methods A and B respectively. The proposed methods were statistically validated and found to be useful for the routine determination of EFZ in tablets. Key words: Efavirenz,  β- Naphthol, First derivative spectroscopy, Tablets, Validatio

Purging of silence for robust speaker identification in colossal database

The aim of this work is to develop an effective speaker recognition system under noisy environments for large data sets. The important phases involved in typical identification systems are feature extraction, training and testing. During the feature extraction phase, the speaker-specific information is processed based on the characteristics of the voice signal. Effective methods have been proposed for the silence removal in order to achieve accurate recognition under noisy environments in this work. Pitch and Pitch-strength parameters are extracted as distinct features from the input speech spectrum. Multi-linear principle component analysis (MPCA) is is utilized to minimize the complexity of the parameter matrix. Silence removal using zero crossing rate (ZCR) and endpoint detection algorithm (EDA) methods are applied on the source utterance during the feature extraction phase. These features are useful in later classification phase, where the identification is made on the basis of support vector machine (SVM) algorithms. Forward loking schostic (FOLOS) is the efficient large-scale SVM algorithm that has been employed for the effective classification among speakers. The evaluation findings indicate that the methods suggested increase the performance for large amounts of data in noise ecosystems

Ensuring Semantic Security in Keyword Search using Searchable Public-Key Ciphertexts with Hidden Structures

This paper propose searchable public key ciphertexts with inconspicuous structure for catchphrase investigate as quick as doable lacking giving up semantic security of the scrambled watchwords. In SPCHS, each one watchword searchable ciphertext are arranged by inconspicuous relative, and with the pursuit trapdoor consequent to a catchphrase, the littlest sum in succession of the relations is identify with a search for calculation as the supervision to find all comparing ciphertext capably. In SPCHS (Searchable Public-Key Ciphertexts with Hidden Structures), all catchphrase searchable ciphertexts are organized by concealed relations, and with the inquiry trapdoor relating to a watchword, the base data of the relations is revealed to a hunt calculation as the direction to locate all coordinating ciphertexts proficiently. The inquiry intricacy of our plan is reliant on the genuine number of the ciphertexts containing the questioned catchphrase, instead of the quantity of all ciphertexts. At long last, we introduce a non specific SPCHS development from mysterious character based encryption and crash free full-personality moldable Identity-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism (IBKEM) with secrecy. We outline two impact free full-character pliant IBKEM examples, which are semantically secure and unknown, individually

Comparative study of wound healing effect of topical Acacia catechu extract and silver sulfadiazine on excisional wound model in guinea pigs

Background: Impaired and aberrant wound healing imposes a huge financial burden and places an enormous drain in health care resources in the developed world and an insurmountable problem in the developing countries too. In this study, authors have compared the wound healing effect of topical application of Acacia catechu extract with silver sulfadiazine in excisional wound model in guinea pigs.Methods: Twelve guinea pigs were randomly divided into two groups (n=6). The wound healing was observed in excision model. The standard group is treated with silver sulfadiazine (group 1) and the test group with Acacia catechu extract (group 2). The mean wound size expressed in mm2 and the mean percentage of the wound healed was measured on day 0, 4, 8, 12, 16 and 19. Biopsy was done on day 21 for histopathological examination (HPE).Results: Statistical analysis was done by using unpaired t test for between the groups comparison and by using paired t test for within the group comparison. The mean percentage of the wound healed with-in the groups was found to be statistically highly significant (p value 0.05). A comparable increase in collagen content and granulation tissue was found on HPE in both the groups on day 21.Conclusions: Wound healing effect of the Acacia catechu extract is equal to and comparable with that of silver sulfadiazine