Short-course chemotherapy of pulmonary tuberculosis

The last four decades have seen spectacular developments in the management of pulmonary tuberculosis. The discovery of streptomycin in 1943 by Waksman was soon followed by other drugs with anti-tuberculosis activity, such as PAS, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, thioacetazone, ethambutol, rifampicin and others. The dis-covery of the anti-tuberculosis activity of isonia-zid in 1952 was a great land-mark which re-volutionalised the treatment of tuberculosis. Because of its high efficacy, low toxicity and low cost, isoniazid soon became the drug of choice in tuberculosis. Administered alone daily for 12 months, it has a potential of producing bacteri-ological quiescence in approximately 70% of pulmonary tuberculosis cases excreting isoniazid-sensitive cultures in their sputum. The con-comitant administration of thioacetazone or PAS daily for 1 year increases the efficacy of the regimen to about 85%. However, approximately 20% of the patients with quiescent disease at 1 year have a bacteriological relapse after stopping chemotherapy, so that the overall efficacy of the 2-drug regimens is reduced to less than 70% even among those patients who consume the drugs regularly. Such relapses can be prevented by continuing chemotherapy beyond 12 months for another 6-12 months. It is, therefore, customary to prescribe regimens of 8-24 months to tuberculosis patients

Axially magnetized Dark Energy cosmological model

We investigate the behaviour of the skewness parameters for an anisotropic universe in the framework of General Relativity. Non interacting dark energy is considered in presence of electromagnetic field. A time varying deceleration parameter simulated by a hybrid scale factor is considered. The dynamics of the universe is investigated in presence and absence of magnetic field. The equation of state parameter of dark energy evolves within the range predicted by the observations. Magnetic field is observed to have a substantial effect on the cosmic dynamics and the skewness parameters. The models discussed here end in a big rip and become isotropic at finite time.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, Version accepted for publication in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Azimuthal correlations of D-mesons in pp+pp and pp+Pb collisions at LHC energies

We study the correlations of D mesons produced in $p$+$p$ and $p$+Pb collisions. These are found to be sensitive to the effects of the cold nuclear medium and the transverse momentum ($p_T$) regions we are looking into. In order to put this on a quantitative footing, as a first step we analyse the azimuthal correlations of D meson-charged hadron(Dh), and then predict the same for D meson -anti D meson ($D\overline{D}$) pairs in $p$+$p$ and $p$+Pb collisions with strong coupling at leading order $\cal{O}$($\alpha_{s}^{2}$) and next to leading order $\cal{O}$($\alpha_{s}^{3}$) which includes space-time evolution (in both systems), as well cold nuclear matter effects (in $p$+Pb). This also sets the stage and baseline for the identification and study of medium modification of azimuthal correlations in relativistic collision of heavy nuclei at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure