Rickettsia conorii infection with fatal complication

Rickettsial diseases (RD) are a group of endotheliotropic infectious diseases caused by different species of genera Rickettsia. RD are not an uncommon disease and may be misdiagnosed during the evaluation of acute febrile illness due to a lack of reliable serological marker and diagnostic culture methods. Clinical manifestation of RD varies from febrile illness with rashes and myalgia to fatal complications such as shock and respiratory failure. We describe a case of a young male who presented initially with acute febrile illness, followed by shock and respiratory failure, and unfortunately succumbed to death. A post-mortem examination showed histological features of endotheliotropic infection, such as interstitial / perivascular edema in various organs and noncardiogenic pulmonary edema (suggesting increased vascular permeability) and evidence of vasculitis in the lung, liver, and intestines. Molecular studies performed from lung, liver, and kidney tissue confirm the diagnosis of spotted fever group rickettsial disease due to Rickettsia conorii

CLINICAL EVALUATION OF COMPARATIVE AND COMBINED EFFECT OF POLYHERBAL MICROBICIDE (BASANT) AND SELECTED PROBIOTICS IN THE TREATMENT OF RECCURRENT VAGINOSIS - A PHASE II PLACEBO CONTROLLED TRIAL

Background: Vaginosis is a widely prevalent syndrome in women. Treatment with one or more antibiotics cures invariably the infections. However recurrence is frequent and pH of the vagina is not always restored to the normal acidic range. This trial was conducted to determine whether a Polyherbal Microbicide BASANT or three selected strains of Probiotics Lactobacilli alone or the two in combination can regress Vaginosis, bring down the vaginal pH to acidic range and restore healthy vagina with colonised Lactobacilli.Methods: Women suffering from recurrent episodes of vaginosis were given capsules of either BASANT, Probiotics, Combination of the two or Placebo capsules for insertion in vagina for 7 nights. On day 10, Pelvic examination, pH, Whiff test, Gram stain for Clue cells and swab taken for culture of lactobacilli.Results: BASANT regressed Vaginosis in 14/ 20, Probiotics in 13/20, Combination of the two in 19/ 20 women and Placebo in 1/ 20 women.Conclusion: While both Polyherbal microbicide BASANT and the three strains of the lactobacilli cured Vaginosis in 65 to 70% of women, the combination was highly effective in curing 95% of women

Microfractionation of ce separated compounds into droplets

ABSTRACT MICROFRACTIONATION OF CE-SEPARATED COMPOUNDS INTO DROPLETS by PRIYANKA SEHGAL August, 2011 Advisor: Dr. Amar Basu Major: Biomedical Engineering Degree: Master of Science With the growing need to explore molecular diversity in systems biology and drug discovery, the fractionation of biological and chemical compounds is becoming a critically important unit operation for lab-on-a-chip devices. Chemical compounds separated using HPLC and CE can be encapsulated and stored in microfluidic droplets, these droplet fractions can then be used in high throughput screening assays. We and others have demonstrated droplet microfractionation using HPLC as the separation techniques, however, microfractionation using CE has only been demonstrated once. Coupling the CE channel with drop generators has previously required in-channel electrodes. In this study, we designed a novel design which, through selective surface treatment of the PDMS channels, avoids on chip electrodes, thereby simplifying the system and avoiding bubble generation. This study describes a microfluidic structure for encapsulating CE-separated compounds into microdroplets. Compared to prior efforts, this simpler approach avoids on-chip electrodes which cause bubble generation. It can generate heterogeneous drop libraries for high throughput screening. This technique could be used to create screening libraries of containing from complex biological or environmental samples which were separated using CE. These libraries can then be assayed and manipulated using the wealth of technologies available in drop-based fluidics

Cystic endosalpingiosis of the uterus-a rare entity in disguise

Cystic endosalpingiosis is a non - neoplastic lesion characterised by multiple cysts lined with benign tubal type epithelium. Our case presented as cystic ovarian neoplasm clinically and radiologically. Patient underwent Total abdominal hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. Microscopically, the cyst consists of multiple cysts lined by benign tubal type epithelium. A diagnosis of subserosal cystic endosalphingiosis was made. Increasing awareness of this entity would be helpful in making correct diagnosis by pathologists

Machine learning application: Detecting COVID-19 using X-Ray images

The Coronavirus which is scientifically named COVID-19. Its strain was found in Wuhan, a city of China, at the end of 2019. After that the case of coronavirus started spreading quickly around the world and has turned it into a huge global pandemic. Now coronavirus has made a huge impact on human lives since the last several years where people are losing their lives, people are losing their jobs. It has a devastating effect on human life already. Since this virus has come as a complete surprise to everyone in 2019 there were not so many detection or screening methods or trained healthcare workers for this medical challenge and the virus being airborne was spreading really very rapidly. It has been found that COVID-19 affects the epithelial cells which are present in the respiratory tract of our body, so we can use X-ray images and various artificial intelligence techniques to detect the virus. We have built a Deep Learning model, and trained over 200 COVID-19 positive X-ray images and 202 Normal X-ray images of lungs of people

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Presented at OSGEO-India: FOSS4G 2015 - Second National Conference "OPEN SOURCE GEOSPATIAL TOOLS IN CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH AND NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT” 8-10 June 2015, Dehradun, IndiaThe paper describes design, development and application of a web enabled spatial decision support system (SDSS) for near real time crop monitoring at district level and making the information available to different stakeholders for building resilience of agriculture to climate/weather variability. The system uses direct-broadcast remote sensing data available in public domain and free web enabled open source software (FOSS) technologies for building spatial decision support application. The system uses multi-temporal remote sensing images received at IARI satellite ground station from Terra/Aqua MODIS sensor. Regular real-time satellite derived parameters of rainfall, day and night land surface temperature (LST), and crop vigour index of NDVI are generated for crop pixels and aggregated at district level for 579 districts of the country. Using historical values (2000-2014), Weekly anomaly indices of standardized precipitation index (SPI), Temperature Condition Index (TCI) and Crop Condition Index (CCI) are generated for each districts of India for current period. The historical and real-time basic parameters and anomaly indices are archived in a database and are made available on a web portal. Three-tier architecture is implemented on web-portal using open source Web GIS – the data is imported and stored in PostGIS/PostgreSQL in tabular form. The server-tier includes Apache web server, PHP and Geoserver. Open layer is used for visualization of geospatial data for client application. This Geoportal allows visualization of SPI, VCI and TCI as categorized maps for current period and over the crop season. Besides, for a selected district, it shows the temporal profile of parameters for current year and its comparison with that of previous year and long term average in graphical and tabular format. This prototype SDSS allow researchers, farmers, stakeholders and policy makers to explore and benefit from visualizing and analyzing current weather and agricultural situation. It is expected that such a system will help in managing the agricultural weather uncertainties at the level of decision-makers in federal and provincial government departments and also at farmer’s level, thus building resilience of agricultural systems to climate variability at multiple levels.ICAR - National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) Projec

Insulin like growth factor binding protein 4 promotes GBM progression and regulates key factors involved in EMT and invasion

Insulin like growth factor binding protein 4 (IGFBP4) regulates growth and development of tissues and organs by negatively regulating IGF signaling. Among most cancers, IGFBP4 has growth inhibitory role and reported as a down-regulated gene, except for renal cell carcinoma, wherein IGFBP4 promotes tumor progression. IGFBP4 expression has been shown to be higher in increasing grades of astrocytoma. However, the functional role of IGFBP4 in gliomas has not been explored. Surgical biopsies of 20 normal brain and 198 astrocytoma samples were analyzed for IGFBP4 expression by qRT-PCR. Highest expression of IGFBP4 mRNA was seen in GBM tumors compared to control brain tissues (median log2 of 2.035, p < 0.0001). Immunohistochemical analysis of 53 tissue samples revealed predominant nuclear staining of IGFBP4, seen maximally in GBMs when compared to DA and AA tumors (median LI = 29.12 +/- A 16.943, p < 0.001). Over expression of IGFBP4 in U343 glioma cells resulted in up-regulation of molecules involved in tumor growth, EMT and invasion such as pAkt, pErk, Vimentin, and N-cadherin and down-regulation of E-cadherin. Functionally, IGFBP4 over expression in these cells resulted in increased proliferation, migration and invasion as assessed by MTT, transwell migration, and Matrigel invasion assays. These findings were confirmed upon IGFBP4 knockdown in U251 glioma cells. Our data suggest a pro-tumorigenic role for IGFBP4 in glioma