Using technology, bioinformatics and health informatics approaches to improve learning experiences in optometry education, research and practice

Rapid advances in ocular diagnostic approaches and emerging links of pathological changes in the eye with systemic disorders have widened the scope of optometry as the front line of eye health care. Expanding professional requirements stipulate that optometry students get a meticulous training in relevant information and communication technologies (ICT) and various bioinformatics and health informatics software to meet current and future challenges. Greater incorporation of ICT approaches in optometry education can facilitate increased student engagement in shared learning experiences and improve collaborative learning. This, in turn, will enable students to participate in and prepare for the complex real-world situations. A judicious use of ICTs by teachers in learning endeavors can help students develop innovative patterns of thinking to be a successful optometry professional. ICT-facilitated learning enables students and professionals to carry out their own research and take initiatives and thus shifts the equilibrium towards self-education. It is important that optometry and allied vision science schools adapt to the changing professional requirements with pedagogical evolution and react appropriately to provide the best educational experience for the students and teachers. This review aims to highlight the scope of ICT applications in optometry education and professional development drawing from similar experiences in other disciplines. Further, while enhanced use of ICT in optometry has the potential to create opportunities for transformative learning experiences, many schools use it merely to reinforce conventional teaching practices. Tremendous developments in ICT should allow educators to consider using ICT tools to enhance communication as well as providing a novel, richer, and more meaningful medium for the comprehensive knowledge construction in optometry and allied health disciplines

Impaired energy metabolism: Involvement in neurodegenerative processes and CNS ageing

World is experiencing a consistent and steady increase in the ageing population with even higher proportional differences in the developed countries. Increase in ageing populations is directly correlated with the increased prevalence of age-related degenerative diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) such as Alzheimer’s disease and various other forms of dementias, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, retinal degenerative disorders, Huntington’s’ disease, multiple sclerosis, psychiatric and behavioural disorders amongst others

Signet ring cell cholangiocarcinoma in a patient previously operated for cholecystectomy: is there any connecting link?

Cholangiocarcinoma are malefic tumours of bile duct. Signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) is rare entity. Several risk factors have been attributed to its ethology, the main overriding link between two being chronic inflammation of the bile system. Cholecystectomy has also been a proposed risk factor. This study was undertaken in Department of Pathology at LLRM Medical College, Meerut. A 49 years old female, operated for cholecystectomy 1.5 year back in same hospital, now presented with chief complains of jaundice and abdominal discomfort. The blood chemistry revealed increased total bilirubin (13.7 mg/dl), Alkaline phosphatase (877.6 IU/L), Carbohydrate Antigen (CA) 199(184 U/ml) and Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) (14.5 ng/ml). Computed Tomography (CT) showed a stricture in mid Common bile duct (CBD). Excision of stricture was done using retrocholic hepatico-jejunostomy. Tissue was submitted for histopathology. Histopathological assessment showed SRCC. The patient failed to turn up for further management but returned back after a span of time presenting with gross ascites and pallor ultimately leading to death within 12 weeks of diagnosis. This was the first case of SRCC to arise in a patient who had a previous history of cholecystectomy. Whether there is some connecting link between the two is still not clear. Further studies are warranted in this direction to establish cholecystectomy as an etiological factor for cholangiocarcinoma

TrkB Receptor Signalling: Implications in Neurodegenerative, Psychiatric and Proliferative Disorders

The Trk family of receptors play a wide variety of roles in physiological and disease processes in both neuronal and non-neuronal tissues. Amongst these the TrkB receptor in particular has attracted major attention due to its critical role in signalling for brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), neurotrophin-3 (NT3) and neurotrophin-4 (NT4). TrkB signalling is indispensable for the survival, development and synaptic plasticity of several subtypes of neurons in the nervous system. Substantial evidence has emerged over the last decade about the involvement of aberrant TrkB signalling and its compromise in various neuropsychiatric and degenerative conditions. Unusual changes in TrkB signalling pathway have also been observed and implicated in a range of cancers. Variations in TrkB pathway have been observed in obesity and hyperphagia related disorders as well. Both BDNF and TrkB have been shown to play critical roles in the survival of retinal ganglion cells in the retina. The ability to specifically modulate TrkB signalling can be critical in various pathological scenarios associated with this pathway. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms underlying TrkB signalling, disease implications and explore plausible ameliorative or preventive approaches

Molecular determinants and interaction data of cyclic peptide inhibitor with the extracellular domain of TrkB receptor

TrkB is a high affinity receptor for the brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its phosphorylation stimulates activation of several intracellular signalling pathways linked to cellular growth, differentiation and maintenance. Identification of various activators and inhibitors of the TrkB receptor and greater understanding their binding mechanisms is critical to elucidate the biochemical and pharmacological pathways and analyse various protein crystallization studies. The data presented here is related to the research article entitled Brain Derived neurotrophic factor is involved in the regulation of glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3β) signalling [1]. Cyclotraxin B (CTXB) is a disulphide bridge linked cyclic peptide molecule that interacts with TrkB receptor and inhibits the BDNF/TrkB downstream signalling. This article reports for the first time binding mechanism and interaction parameters of CTXB with the TrkB receptor. The molecular model of CTXB has been generated and it\u27s docking with TrkB domain carried out to determine the critical residues involved in the protein peptide interaction. © 2016 The Authors

Multiplex biomarkers in blood

Advances in the field of blood biomarker discovery will help in identifying Alzheimer\u27s disease in its preclinical stage, allowing treatment to be initiated before irreversible damage occurs. This review discusses some recent past and current approaches being taken by researchers in the field. Individual blood biomarkers have been unsuccessful in defining the disease pathology, progression and thus diagnosis. This directs to the need for discovering a multiplex panel of blood biomarkers as a promising approach with high sensitivity and specificity for early diagnosis. However, it is a great challenge to standardize a worldwide blood biomarker panel due to the innate differences in the population tested, nature of the samples and methods utilised in different studies across the globe. We highlight several issues that result in the lack of reproducibility in this field of research currently faced by researchers. Several important measures are summarized towards the end of the review that can be taken to minimize the variability among various centres

A comparative evaluation of bone marrow biopsy and bone marrow aspiration in different haematological condition with special reference to leukaemia and lymphoma

Background: For diagnosis of haematological disorders there are three modalities to examine bone marrow, bone marrow aspiration cytology (BMA), bone marrow imprint (BMI) and bone marrow biopsy (BMB). BMA gives cytological picture; BMI also gives cytological picture but cells are less in number and BMB gives cytological as well as architectural picture. BMA alone may not be sufficient to reach diagnosis therefore the present study was undertaken to compare the above modalities. The study was conducted with the aim to perform cytomorphological evaluation of bone marrow in various haematological disorders with special reference to leukaemia and lymphoma and to compare bone marrow aspiration smears with bone marrow trephine biopsy.Methods: The present study was conducted in department of pathology, LLRM Medical College, Meerut inpatients attending the outpatient department and in-patient department of pediatrics and medicine of SVBP Hospital attached to LLRM Medical College, Meerut, over a period of one year i.e. from March 2018 to May 2019. A detailed clinical history, physical examination and laboratory examination of all the cases was done.Results: Out of 50 cases, maximum number of cases were of anemia 26/50 (52%) followed by leukemia 17/50 (34%), lymphoma 5/50 (10%), multiple myeloma 1/50 (2%), myelofibrosis 1/50 (2%), leishmaniasis 1/50 (2%) and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura 1/50(2%). BMA smears were compared with biopsy and concordance and discordance was established. The overall diagnostic accuracy of aspiration was 94%.Conclusions: Bone marrow examination is a safe, quick easy and cost-effective procedure with very less patient discomfort. BMA shows better cellular details when compared to BMI and BMB. BMB is diagnostic investigation in dry tap cases like aplastic anemia, myelofibrosis, myelodysplastic syndrome and metastatic tumors. In present study, concordance between BMA and BMB was seen in majority of the cases and diagnostic accuracy was 94% study concludes that bone marrow aspiration cytology and trephine biopsy complement each other and should be performed simultaneously for complete bone marrow work up and evaluation

Drug repositioning: current scenario and future prospective for rewriting saga of drug development

Drug development is a process that demands huge investment of resources and time with only 1 drug candidate successful in reaching market among 10,000 screened taking time duration of 10-15 years and millions of dollars. This high attrition rates discourage investors and researchers. The pharmaceutical industry is shifting its attention away from de novo drug research and towards discovering novel targets and indications for already-approved drugs. In order to accelerate the drug development process with reduced risk of failure and relatively lower costs, pharmaceutical companies have adopted drug repositioning as an alternative. Therefore, a good strategy for drug development would be drug repositioning or drug repurposing, which is to identify, investigate, and exploit new therapeutic uses of already-available, on-market drugs, as well as those that have been withdrawn due to toxicities or that remain on shelves in various stages of development. The outbreak of SARS-COV-19 shows that humanity is constantly vulnerable to epidemics and new microbial attacks and that there is no time to create disease-specific therapies. Consequently, it would seem advantageous to use what is already accessible. Novel therapeutic indications that have previously been approved by the market can reduce investment costs significantly in terms of money, resources, and most importantly, time, as long as they meet PKPD and toxicity standards. Sponsors and pharmaceutical corporations get enthusiastic about additional investments and initiatives related to drug development as a consequence. The upcoming therapeutic revolution, especially with the aid of artificial intelligence, is indicated by the successful applications of several already-available drugs against COVID-19 and the various phases of repurposed drugs against TB, colorectal cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, cervical cancer, and Parkinsonism

New challenge of asymptomatic infections from COVID-19: current scenario

Since the outbreak of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease in China, late December 2019, it took a substantial detriment and challenges for more than 200 countries worldwide. Recently with the upcoming insights about etiology of the virus, there is increasing evidence that many patients with COVID-19 are asymptomatic or they have only mild symptoms, but they act as carrier and are able to transmit the virus to others. There are technical difficulties in screening for these asymptomatic infections, which makes it even more challenging for any nation to control this epidemic. This article reviews entry & replication of the virus, pathogenesis, asymptomatic infections, dissemination, prevention, control & treatment in asymptomatic infections with COVID-19, expecting it would be helpful for early prevention and containment of this severe public health threat worldwide

Changing trends in diagnostics of trypanosomosis in animals

Animal trypanosomosis presents special problems with regard to diagnosis since the clinical signs are not pathognomonic and standard parasitological techniques are not sufficiently sensitive. Formol-gel and mercuric chloride tests using serum of infected animals were adopted as a routine diagnostic tool for trypanosomosis, however, these chemical tests suffer from inherent problem of non specificity. To overcome this problem, alternative methods of diagnosis were developed, which detected antibody responses to antigens of infecting trypanosomes. Indirect immunofluorescent antibody test, enzyme immunoassay (ELISA) and the card agglutination test for trypanosomosis (CATT) were found to be useful tests for the diagnosis of Trypanosoma evansi infections in view of their sensitivity and specificity. However, antibody detection tests failed to distinguish between current and past infections because of persistent antibody titres. Recently, development of assays for the detection of circulating trypanosomal antigens in infected animals has circumvented this problem since antigen-positivity indicates existing infection. Latex agglutination test, being simple to perform, rapid, convenient, cost-effective could be quite suitable for field-level diagnosis and screening of trypanosomosis. Presently molecular diagnostic techniques like polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA probes for detection of parasitic DNA have been used more efficiently as these indicate a sure sign of an active infection. These techniques eliminate the possibilities of cross-reaction and offer high specificity and sensitivity for detection of trypanosomosis in animals