Development of spermatic granuloma in albino rats following administration of water extract of Heliotropium bacciferum Forssk

A spermatic granuloma is a chronic inflammatory reaction produced in response to extravasated sperm within the intertubular connective tissue. The present study investigates the possible toxic effects of water extract of Heliotropium bacciferum on the reproductive system of male albino rats and the associated potential for the development of spermatic granulomas. H. bacciferum is a herbal plant used in traditional medicine and reported to have cytotoxic effects due to pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Histological examinations revealed no changes in the tissues of the testes, although, some changes were detected in the cauda epididymis, the most important of which was the development of small lesions of spermatic granulomas. Clear gaps were observed between the epithelial linings of the epididymal tubules.     

Structural re-positioning,in silico molecular modelling,oxidative degradation,and biological screening of linagliptin as adenosine 3 receptor (ADORA3) modulators targeting hepatocellular carcinoma

Chemical entities with structural diversity were introduced as candidates targeting adenosine receptor with different clinical activities, containing 3,7-dihydro-1H-purine-2,6-dione, especially adenosine 3 receptors (ADORA3). Our initial approach started with pharmacophore screening of ADORA3 modulators; to choose linagliptin (LIN), approved anti-diabetic drug as Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, to be studied for its modulating effect towards ADORA3. This was followed by generation, purification, analytical method development, and structural elucidation of oxidative degraded product (DEG). Both of LIN and DEG showed inhibitory profile against hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines with induction of apoptosis at G2/M phase with increase in caspase-3 levels, accompanied by a downregulation in gene and protein expression levels of ADORA3 with a subsequent increase in cAMP. Quantitative in vitro assessment of LIN binding affinity against ADORA3 was also performed to exhibit inhibitory profile at Ki of 37.7?nM. In silico molecular modelling showing binding affinity of LIN and DEG towards ADORA3 was conducted.     

Factorial design optimization of micelle enhanced synchronous spectrofluorimetric assay of Omarigliptin: Applied to content uniformity testing and in vitro drug release

A micelle enhanced spectrofluorimetric method was developed for determination of Omarigliptin (OMG) based on its native fluorescence behavior. The interaction of OMG with surfactants and macromolecules was studied. In aqueous solution, the relative fluorescence intensity (RFI) of OMG was enhanced by 24% in the presence of Tween 80 at pH 3.5. The optimal conditions for the micelle enhanced fluorescence were attained by Minitab® program using Plackett–Burman factorial design. Pareto chart, contour plots and surface plots were used to exclude the insignificant variables and optimize the significant factors. The spectrofluorimeter was operated under synchronous mode using ?λ = 30 nm and recording the RFI of the intense narrow band at 267 nm for OMG in 0.5% w/v Tween 80 + 0.2 M acetate buffer (pH 3.5) system using water as diluent. Using synchronous scan mode offered many advantages including considerable reduction of spectral overlap and enhanced linearity of the calibrators. Validation parameters were satisfied over the concentration range 0.1–2 μg/ml. The developed method was the first analytical procedure for OMG assay in Marizev® tablets. Moreover, content uniformity testing and in vitro drug release of tablets were performed.     

Studying Individual Patterns of Development Using I-States as Objects Analysis (ISOA)

An approach is presented for studying individual pattern development in person-oriented terms focusing on the concept of i-state, i.e. an individual's configuration of information at a specific point in time. The procedure is called I-States as Objects Analysis (ISOA). First common i-states (typical states) are identified using cluster analysis of subindividuals and then this information is used for describing typical developmental patterns. Both a general procedure and a specific procedure used on a demonstration data set were developed. Using ISOA, change and stability can be studied both with regard to structure and with regard to individual variation. An empirical example was given which concerned longitudinal data about school grades at four different ages for 333 boys and girls. The data were split into a test sample and a replication sample of equal sizes. It was contended from the empirical study that ISOA functioned reasonably well on the sample studied. In the discussion, it was pointed out that ISOA can be a powerful method to use for small samples with many measurement occasions and that the method is optimal for studying short-term change.     

Solutes in native plants in the Arabian Gulf region and the role of microorganisms: future research

Aims One of the outstanding challenges facing humankind is increasing crop production under various types of severe environmental conditions. Many measures have been taken to adopt molecular and biotechnological approaches that lead to the development of transgenic plants able to deal with such harsh and polluted environments. However, such solutions could be very expensive and require considerable efforts and time to achieve these objectives. The main objective of this review is to discuss the new biological solutions that have emerged in the last decade, as environmentally friendly approaches, perhaps to support and/or replace the present efforts. These solutions based on plant–microbe interactions could be a lifeline and promising alternative strategy to create plants with a high resistance to the extreme environments.     

A novel multi-planar radiography method for three dimensional pose reconstruction of the patellofemoral and tibiofemoral joints after arthroplasty

Determining the 3D pose of the patella after total knee arthroplasty is challenging. The commonly used single-plane fluoroscopy is prone to large errors in the clinically relevant mediolateral direction. A conventional fixed bi-planar setup is limited in the minimum angular distance between the imaging planes necessary for visualizing the patellar component, and requires a highly flexible setup to adjust for the subject-specific geometries. As an alternative solution, this study investigated the use of a novel multi-planar imaging setup that consists of a C-arm tracked by an external optoelectric tracking system, to acquire calibrated radiographs from multiple orientations. To determine the accuracies, a knee prosthesis was implanted on artificial bones and imaged in simulated 'Supine' and 'Weightbearing' configurations. The results were compared with measures from a coordinate measuring machine as the ground-truth reference. The weightbearing configuration was the preferred imaging direction with RMS errors of 0.48 mm and 1.32 ° for mediolateral shift and tilt of the patella, respectively, the two most clinically relevant measures. The 'imaging accuracies' of the system, defined as the accuracies in 3D reconstruction of a cylindrical ball bearing phantom (so as to avoid the influence of the shape and orientation of the imaging object), showed an order of magnitude (11.5 times) reduction in the out-of-plane RMS errors in comparison to single-plane fluoroscopy. With this new method, complete 3D pose of the patellofemoral and tibiofemoral joints during quasi-static activities can be determined with a many-fold (up to 8 times) (3.4mm) improvement in the out-of-plane accuracies compared to a conventional single-plane fluoroscopy setup.     

Reduced neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant by convalescent and vaccine sera

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