Clinical and laboratory profile of children admitted with measles in a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Measles is a vaccine-preventable viral illness associated with substantial childhood morbidity and mortality. Recently, changing trends in the occurrence of measles are noted like incidence in younger infants and in those who have received measles vaccine. Objectives: The objective was to study the clinical profile of children with measles and to study the usefulness of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in diagnosing measles and to study the measles-specific immunoglobulin M (IgM) response in children with measles. Materials and Methods: This study was done in the Pediatrics Department of a Tertiary Care Center, and the study population was children up to 12 years of age admitted in the setting with a clinical diagnosis of measles during the study period and who were laboratory confirmed by PCR/IgM ELISA or both. Results: Of 173 clinically diagnosed cases, 149 laboratory confirmed cases were taken for analysis and studied. Of these, 47% of cases were below 9 months. Newborns constituted 2.01% of the total cases. The mean age was 13 months and the male:female ratio was 1.13:1. A total of 24.8% children were unimmunized, 16.77% had a single dose, and 8.72% had 2 doses of measles vaccine. Overall mortality was 0.67% and bronchopneumonia was the major complication (76.5%). Among immunized children with measles confirmed by PCR, measles-specific IgM response was reactive in 36.4% of cases. In the early phase of measles (within 3 days) confirmed by PCR, IgM response was inconclusive in 60% of cases. Conclusion: In our study, 47% of the cases of measles were below 9 months; therefore, the age of measles vaccination may be reconsidered. Among eligible cases (>9 months), 24.83% were not immunized for measles which indicates that measles immunization coverage should be increased. Among the measles cases, 25% had measles vaccination which highlights the need to check for the determinants of vaccine failure. In our study, the RT-PCR was found to be useful for early diagnosis of measles and for diagnosis in immunized children

SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND IN VITRO MICROBIAL EVALUATION OF REGIOISOMERS OF ALLYL PHENYL ETHERS DERIVED 1, 2, 4-TRIAZOLES

Objective: Synthesis and antimicrobial evaluation of regioisomers of allyl phenyl ethers derived 1, 2, 4-triazoles. Methods: A series of new 1,2,4-triazole derivatives of allyl phenyl ethers were synthesized by reacting a mixture of regio isomers 1-(3-bromo-2-methoxypropoxy)-arene and 1-(2-bromo-3-methoxypropoxy)-arene with 1,2,4-triazole in presence of K2CO3 and DMF at 80oC in good yields. Allyl phenyl ethers 1(a-f) were synthesized by refluxing the substituted phenols with allyl bromide in the presence of K2CO3 and acetone in excellent yields. The newly synthesized compounds were characterized by IR, 1HNMR, Mass spectral studies and elemental analysis. These compounds were also screened for their In-vitro antibacterial and antifungal activities. Results: Allyl phenyl ethers derived 1,2,4-triazol derivatives were synthesized in good yields. Conclusion: Preliminary results revealed that some of the synthesized compounds were showed promising antibacterial and antifungal activity

SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND IN VITRO ANTIMICROBIAL EVALUATION OF SOME NEW AMIDES OF THIOMORPHOLINE CARBOXYLATE

Objective: Synthesis and antimicrobial evaluation of some new amides of Thiomorpholine caboxylate.Methods: A series of new amides of Thiomorpholine caboxylate were synthesized by reacting 4-tert-butyl 2-methyl thiomorpholine-2,4-dicarboxylate 1,1-dioxide with primary amines in presence of Trimethyl aluminum in toluene at ambient temperature in good yields. 4-tert-butyl 2-methyl thiomorpholine-2,4-dicarboxylate 1,1-dioxide was synthesized by reacting tert-butyl thiomorpholine-4-carboxylate 1,1-dioxide with methyl chloroformate in presence of LiHMDS (1M in THF) at -78oC for the first time. The newly synthesized compounds were characterized by IR, 1HNMR, 13C NMR, Mass spectral studies and elemental analysis.Results: A series of new amides of Thiomorpholine carboxylate were synthesized in good yields and all the compounds were screened for their In-vitro antimicrobial activities. Conclusion: Preliminary results revealed that the synthesized compounds were showed moderate to good antibacterial and antifungal activity

Green Tea Catechin, Epigallocatechin Gallate, Suppresses Signaling by the dsRNA Innate Immune Receptor RIG-I

The Innate immune system constitutes the first line of defense against pathogen infections. The Retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) receptor recognizes triphosphorylated ssRNAs and dsRNA to initiate downstream signaling of interferon response. However, unregulated activity of these receptors could lead to autoimmune diseases. We seek to identify small molecules that can specifically regulate RIG-I signaling.Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a polyphenolic catechin present in green tea, was identified in a small molecule screen. It was found to bind RIG-I and inhibits its signaling at low micromolar concentrations in HEK293T cells. Furthermore, EGCG dose-dependently inhibited the ATPase activity of recombinant RIG-I but did not compete with RIG-I interaction with RNA or with ATP. EGCG did not inhibit signaling by Toll-like receptors 3, 4, 9 or constitutive signaling by the adapter protein IPS-1. Structure activity relationship analysis showed that EGCG, its epimer GCG and a digallate-containing compound, theaflavin 3,3' digallate (TFDG) were potent RIG-I inhibitors. EGCG also inhibited IL6 secretion and IFN- β mRNA synthesis in BEAS-2B cells, which harbors intact endogenous RIG-I signaling pathway.EGCG and its derivatives could have potential therapeutic use as a modulator of RIG-I mediated immune responses

A Cell-Based Assay for RNA Synthesis by the HCV Polymerase Reveals New Insights on Mechanism of Polymerase Inhibitors and Modulation by NS5A

RNA synthesis by the genotype 1b hepatitis C virus (HCV) polymerase (NS5B) transiently expressed in Human embryonic kidney 293T cells or liver hepatocytes was found to robustly stimulate RIG-I-dependent luciferase production from the interferon β promoter in the absence of exogenously provided ligand. This cell-based assay, henceforth named the 5BR assay, could be used to examine HCV polymerase activity in the absence of other HCV proteins. Mutations that decreased de novo initiated RNA synthesis in biochemical assays decreased activation of RIG-I signaling. In addition, NS5B that lacks the C-terminal transmembrane helix but remains competent for RNA synthesis could activate RIG-I signaling. The addition of cyclosporine A to the cells reduced luciferase levels without affecting agonist-induced RIG-I signaling. Furthermore, non-nucleoside inhibitor benzothiadiazines (BTDs) that bind within the template channel of the 1b NS5B were found to inhibit the readout from the 5BR assay. Mutation M414T in NS5B that rendered the HCV replicon resistant to BTD was also resistant to BTDs in the 5BR assay. Co-expression of the HCV NS5A protein along with NS5B and RIG-I was found to inhibit the readout from the 5BR assay. The inhibition by NS5A was decreased with the removal of the transmembrane helix in NS5B. Lastly, NS5B from all six major HCV genotypes showed robust activation of RIG-I in the 5BR assay. In summary, the 5BR assay could be used to validate inhibitors of the HCV polymerase as well as to elucidate requirements for HCV-dependent RNA synthesis

MRI Kidney Tumor Image Classification with SMOTE Preprocessing and SIFT-tSNE Features using CNN

Kidney tumor detection is a challenging task due to the complexity of tumor characteristics and variability in imaging modalities. In this paper, we propose a deep learning-based approach for detecting kidney tumors with 98.5% accuracy. Our method addresses the issue of an imbalanced dataset by applying the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) to balance the distribution of images. SMOTE generates synthetic samples of the minority class to increase the number of samples, thus providing a balanced dataset. We utilize a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture that is trained on this balanced dataset of kidney tumor images. The CNN can learn and extract relevant features from the images, resulting in precise tumor classification. We evaluated our approach on a separate dataset and compared it with state-of-the-art methods. The results demonstrate that our method not only outperforms other methods but also shows robustness in detecting kidney tumors with a high degree of accuracy. By enabling early detection and diagnosis of kidney tumors, our proposed method can potentially improve patient outcomes. Additionally, addressing the imbalance in the dataset using SMOTE demonstrates the usefulness of this technique in improving the performance of deep learning-based image classification systems

Ensemble of Homogenous and Heterogeneous Classifiers using K-Fold Cross Validation with Reduced Entropy

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects millions of people worldwide, greatly reducing their quality of life and creating serious economic, social, and medical problems. Some automated diagnosis methods can detect chronic renal disease. In-depth studies on data mining techniques have recently focused on accuracy in the diagnosis of chronic renal illnesses, either by taking advantage of the disease's simplicity or doing feature selection in addition to pre-processing. In order to handle the unbalanced dataset in this work, Synthetic Minority Over Sampling Technique (SMOTE) is used during pre-processing. For this investigation, 400 data from the publicly accessible UCI machine learning (ML) repository are used. For the implementation, both homogeneous and heterogeneous ensemble classifiers which combine two separate classifiers have been used. Different machine learning (ML) techniques, such as the Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Adaboost classifier, Decision Tree (DT), Reduced Error Pruning Tree, Alternating Decision Tree, and Random Forests Algorithm and their ensembles with a significant reduction in entropy, are used to perform the classification. With a 99.12% accuracy rate and a 99.10% f1 score, the homogeneous classifier Adaboost-Random Forest outperforms other models in the prediction of CKD

Design and Synthesis of Some New Quinoline Based 1,2,3-Triazoles as Antimicrobial and Antimalarial Agents

A series of novel 6-bromo-2-chloro-3-(4-phenyl-[1,2,3]triazol-1-ylmethyl)-quinoline and its derivatives (5a-j) were synthesized in good yields from the intermediates (6-bromo-2-chloro-quinolin-3-yl)-methanol (2), methanesulfonic acid (6-bromo-2-chloroquinolin-3-yl)methyl methanesulfonate (3) and 3-azidomethyl-6-bromo-2-chloro-quinoline (4). The synthetic route leading to the title compounds is commenced from commercially available 6-bromo-2-chloro-quinolin-3-carbaldehyde (1). The chemical structures of the newly synthesized compounds were elucidated by their IR, 1H and 13C NMR, mass spectral data and elemental analysis. Further, all the target compounds were screened for their antimicrobial activity against various microorganisms and antimalarial activity towards P. falciparum. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17807/orbital.v7i3.69

Quantum Noise Randomized Ciphers

We review the notion of a classical random cipher and its advantages. We sharpen the usual description of random ciphers to a particular mathematical characterization suggested by the salient feature responsible for their increased security. We describe a concrete system known as AlphaEta and show that it is equivalent to a random cipher in which the required randomization is effected by coherent-state quantum noise. We describe the currently known security features of AlphaEta and similar systems, including lower bounds on the unicity distances against ciphertext-only and known-plaintext attacks. We show how AlphaEta used in conjunction with any standard stream cipher such as AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) provides an additional, qualitatively different layer of security from physical encryption against known-plaintext attacks on the key. We refute some claims in the literature that AlphaEta is equivalent to a non-random stream cipher.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A; Discussion augmented and re-organized; Section 5 contains a detailed response to 'T. Nishioka, T. Hasegawa, H. Ishizuka, K. Imafuku, H. Imai: Phys. Lett. A 327 (2004) 28-32 /quant-ph/0310168' & 'T. Nishioka, T. Hasegawa, H. Ishizuka, K. Imafuku, H. Imai: Phys. Lett. A 346 (2005) 7