Validation Of A Custom-made Microarray To Study Human Intestinal Microflora

Intestinal microflora refers to all the different species of bacteria that reside in the human gut and is an important organ of the human body because almost all the digestive reactions of the host occur in the intestine. The bacteria of the intestine play a key role in this process by supplementing the intestine with various enzymes and proteins that are required for the digestive process. At the same time, these bacteria were shown to be implicated in a variety of gastrointestinal disorders like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Inflammatory Bowel Disorder and Gastrointestinal Cancer, but with the current knowledge about the microflora it is difficult to determine which exact species is responsible for a particular disease caused. The knowledge about the composition of the typical intestinal microflora is very limited, the cause at large being the lack of properculture techniques to isolate and study the microfloral species in artificial media. Majority of the species of the microflora are obligate anaerobes and selective culturing techniques provide very limited knowledge about the composition of such complex microflora. Phylogenetic microarrays are one such approach to study various members of the microflora because they contain probes for numerous species of bacteria on a single glass slide and are also known to provide robust and high throughput analysis. ENTREZ nucleotide database was used to compile a list of 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequences of bacterial species isolated from the human intestine and they were grouped into various phylo-species. Representative sequences for each phylo-species were extracted and the probes on the microarray were designed based on these representative sequences. 16 different bacterial species were used for validation experiments, which represented bacteria from various groups. The results showed that the microarray correctly identified 15 of a total 16 bacterial species. The detection sensitivity of the microarray was at least 1pg. As a test, fecal samples from adults and children were analyzed by the microarray. Clostridia were the dominant group of the microflora followed by Bacteroidetes in both adults and children. The analysis of the fecal samples showed clear differences between the microflora composition of adults and children

Pulmonary endoplasmic reticulum stress-scars, smoke, and suffocation.

Protein misfolding within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER stress) can be a cause or consequence of pulmonary disease. Mutation of proteins restricted to the alveolar type II pneumocyte can lead to inherited forms of pulmonary fibrosis, but even sporadic cases of pulmonary fibrosis appear to be strongly associated with activation of the unfolded protein response and/or the integrated stress response. Inhalation of smoke can impair protein folding and may be an important cause of pulmonary ER stress. Similarly, tissue hypoxia can lead to impaired protein homeostasis (proteostasis). But the mechanisms linking smoke and hypoxia to ER stress are only partially understood. In this review, we will examine the role of ER stress in the pathogenesis of lung disease by focusing on fibrosis, smoke, and hypoxia

A Study on Role of Antenatal Care in Pregnancy Outcome in Tertiary Health Care Centre, Hyderabad

Background: Antenatal care (ANC) and regular antenatal visits are one of the interventions that have the potential to improve both maternal and child survival. The utilization of antenatal services remains less than 60% in India. The study aimed to find out the association between ANC visits and pregnancy outcome.Subjects and Method: Cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 antenatal women in a tertiary care centre over a period of 3 months. After taking informed consent data was collected by interviewer technique using a pretested semi-structured questionnaire. Questionnaire includes information related to socio-demographic variables, number of ANC visits, delivery outcome (normal/ LSCS) low birth weight, stillbirths, and abortions. Thus, collected data was entered in excel and analyzed using epi info 7.22.6. The bivariate analysis was the chi-square test. Binary logistic regression was used to study the association between delivery outcome and its covariates. Logistic regression was also done to see the association between ANC visits and Low birth weight and stillbirths.Results: Out of 59 women who had less than 4 ANC visits had more number of abortions (18.6%) (OR= 32.08; CI 95%= 4.03 to 255.07; p<0.001), low birth weights (52.5%) (OR= 4.46; CI 95%= 2.31 to 8.62; p= 0.001), still births (8.5%) (OR= -1.00; CI 95%= -1 to -0.001 p=0.001), out of 22 illiterate mothers 16 of them had poor pregnancy outcomes (p= 0.002) and first ANC visit during first trimester had less complications (p <0.001). Binary logistic regression revealed significant association between delivery outcome and Socio-economic status (OR= 2.14; CI 95%= -1.47 to 3.13; p<0.001) as well as frequency of ANC visits (OR= 0.65; CI 95%= 0.55 to 0.77; p<0.001). Significant association was also observed between ANC visits and Low birth weight (OR= 0.52; CI 95%= -0.43 to 0.62; p <0.001). Logistic regression between ANC visits and stillbirths/abortion showed signi­fi­cant association (OR= 0.36 (CI 95%= -0.23 to 0.55; p<0.001).Conclusion: The study shows that less than 4 ANC visits, illiteracy increases the risk of poor preg­nan­cy outcome. Women who had their first ANC visits during first trimester had less comp­li­ca­tions.Keywords: antenatal care, pregnancy outcomes, socio-demographic factors.Correspondence: K. Bhavani. Department of Community Medicine, Osmania Medical College, Hyderabad, Tela­nga­na. Email: [email protected]. Mobile: 9502710778.Journal of Maternal and Child Health (2022), 07(06): 653-661https://doi.org/10.26911/thejmch.2022.07.06.04

BACE inhibitors as potential therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease.

C1 - Journal Articles RefereedAccumulation of Abeta peptide in the brain results in the formation of amyloid plaques characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. Abeta soluble oligomers and protofibrils are neurotoxic and these are believed to be a major cause of neurodegeneration in AD. Abeta is derived from a precursor protein by two sequential cleavage steps involving beta- and gamma-secretases, two proteolytic enzymes that represent rational drug targets. beta-secretase was identified as the membrane-anchored aspartyl protease BACE (or BACE1) and found to be elevated in brain cortex of patients with sporadic Alzheimer's disease. In this review, we summarize current approaches towards the development of BACE inhibitors with focus on bioactive compounds and related patents. Recent reports have described drugs that are effective at inhibiting Abeta production in the brain of transgenic mouse models. The beginning of Phase I clinical trials has been approved for one of them and we can expect that in the near future BACE inhibitors will provide novel effective therapeutics to treat AD

Are regulations achieving their objectives? Post Implementation Reviews – why they should be done, why they aren’t done and how to get them done

Regulatory policy is often under-prioritised by governments, particularly when compared with the detailed focus associated with tax and spending measures. Even where a clear policy development process is adopted and applied for regulatory measures, it rarely has the same profile or attendant resources as applied to fiscal measures. This paper highlights one aspect of this regulatory policy deficit – the lack of priority given to evaluation and ex-post review of regulatory measures. Post implementation reviews (PIRs) are an essential part of the framework for ensuring best practice regulatory policy making by government and regulators. Ex post evaluation highlights whether regulations are achieving their objectives and operating as expected, or whether they are leading to unintended consequences or imposing disproportionately high costs. They inform decisions over whether to retain, revise or remove the regulation. However only 25% of OECD countries have formal requirements for PIRs and even then, an evaluation is often not undertaken for many regulatory measures. This paper reviews the different approaches to PIRs in the UK, Canada, Australia, the US and the European Union in terms of system governance, methodology and public transparency and capacity building. It highlights the methodological challenges in undertaking PIRs, in particular the importance of a well-designed monitoring and evaluation plan and the failure to feed the results of the PIR into subsequent modifications to the regulations which suggests a systematic failure in the policy making framework. The paper suggests that PIRs are not undertaken more comprehensively due to: limited political benefit, lack of prioritisation and concern over exposing previous policy failures. It proposes seven policy approaches that might lead to a more comprehensive approach to PIRs, however the common thread running through all of these approaches is the critical importance of high-level political support. Without high-level backing, statutory requirements will be variously disregarded, internal and external voices ignored and the pragmatic short-term pressures to focus on new and high profile policy measures will trump the longer-term benefits from a comprehensive approach to policy evaluation.Version of Recor

A cross sectional study on awareness about risk factors of cancer cervix among women of reproductive age in the rural field practice area of a medical college

Background: Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women with an estimated. 6,04,000 new cases in 2020 representing 66% of all female cancers. It is the leading cause of cancer-related death among women. Objectives: To assess the awareness about risk factors of cancer cervix and factors associated with it. Subjects and Methods: This is a community-based cross-sectional study done in rural field practice area of a Medical College, Hyderabad, Telangana from March to June, among all consenting women in reproductive age group. Data were collected using a predesigned semi-structured questionnaire which contains questions on sociodemographic factors, reproductive risk factors such as age at marriage, prolong use of OCPs, and multiple births. Results: Out of the 270 females, respondents belonged majorly to 25 − 34 years age group. About 76.2% of the respondents (206/270) had heard about cervical cancer, of the 76.2% of the study subjects who had heard about cancer cervix, none of them were aware about pap test and vaccination for human papilloma virus (HPV) which is meant to prevent cancer cervix. Conclusion: The study showed that women had a fair knowledge about risk factors and symptoms of cancer cervix. Awareness on screening tests, i.e., pap test, HPV vaccinations was poor