Effects of thymoquinone on liver miRNAs and oxidative stress in Ehrlich acid mouse solid tumor model

We investigated the effects of thymoquinone (TQ) on the expression of liver microRNAs (miRNAs), liver histopathology and oxidative stress in Ehrlich acid solid tumor model induced mice. We used 24 male BALB/c mice divided randomly into three groups. Control (C) group mice were injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) with 0.5 ml saline for four weeks. Tumor (T) group mice were injected i.p. with 0.5 ml saline for four weeks, then Ehrlich acid tumor cells were injected subcutaneously into the neck to induce solid tumor formation. TQ (T + Tq) group mice injected i.p. with 10 mg/kg TQ for four weeks, then Ehrlich acid tumor cells were injected subcutaneously into the neck of the mice in this group to induce solid tumor formation. At the end of the study, liver from all groups were removed for histopathological and miRNAs analysis, and oxidative stress measurement. We found that the expression of miR-206b-3p was up-regulated and the oxidative stress and necrosis increased in the liver tissue of mice with Ehrlich acid solid tumor. TQ application decreased the oxidative stress, prevented necrosis, increased regeneration and down-regulated the expression of miR-206b-3p in the liver tissue.     

Evaluation of malondialdehyde as an index of lead damage in rat brain homogenates

Lipid peroxidation in vitro homogenates of brain was examined as sequela of lead toxicity. The levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) in homogenates of rat brain (1 ml, 5% w/v) treated with lead (50 g) alone or in combination with ascorbic acid (100 g), alphatocopherol (100 g) or hydroquinone (100 g) were evaluated. The levels of MDA were consistently evoked by lead in a dose-related manner. The toxicity of lead was further advanced by the action of the pro-oxidant drug ascorbic acid on the brain. However, the anti-oxidant drugs alphatocopherol and hydroquinone decreased the toxic effect of lead on the brain. These results clearly show that the enhanced lipid peroxidation may provide a basis of lead-induced neurotoxicity.     

Studies on the effect ofbacillus thuringiensis Berl. on the spiny bollworm,Earias insulana Boisd. and other lepidopterous insects

Résumé Bacillus thuringiensis Berl. tue 50 % des chenilles d'Earias insulana après 72 heures. Le traitement est appliqué avec une suspension de 4 g par litre d'eau (à raison de 30 milliards de spores par gramme). Dans les mêmes conditions, la mortalité atteint 100 % pour le ver à soie. Une mortalité plus élevée est constatée lors des applications sur chenilles jeunes. La poudre de larves mortes après infection parB. thuringiensis détermine une mortalité faible, tandis que les chenilles nourries de feuilles de muriers préalablement traitées par une suspension d'excrétats de vers à soie infectés deBacillus thuringiensis, ne sont pas tuées. Dans les champs de coton, leBacillus détermine une réduction considérable de l'infestation parEarias mais cette réduction n'atteint pas celle obtenue par traitement chimique. LeBacillus est sans effet sur la population d'Aleurodes et sur celle des Acariens (Tetranychus atlanticus Mcgregor) contrairement à l'endrine qui favorise la pullulation de ces derniers.      

Health Professionals' Knowledge,Attitudes and Practices about Pharmacovigilance in India: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background

Spontaneous or voluntary reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is one of the vital roles of all health professionals. In India, under-reporting of ADRs by health professionals is recognized as one of the leading causes of poor ADR signal detection. Therefore, reviewing the literature can provide a better understanding of the status of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of Pharmacovigilance (PV) activities by health professionals.

Methods

A systematic review was performed through Pubmed, Scopus, Embase and Google Scholar scientific databases. Studies pertaining to KAP of PV and ADR reporting by Indian health professionals between January 2011 and July 2015 were included in a meta-analysis.

Results

A total of 28 studies were included in the systematic review and 18 of them were selected for meta-analysis. Overall, 55.6% (95% CI 44.4–66.9; p<0.001) of the population studied were not aware of the existence of the Pharmacovigilance Programme in India (PvPI), and 31.9% (95% CI 16.3–47.4; p<0.001) thought that "all drugs available in the market are safe". Furthermore, 28.7% (95% CI 16.4–40.9; p<0.001) of them were not interested in reporting ADRs and 74.5%, (95% CI 67.9–81.9; p<0.001) never reported any ADR to PV centers.

Conclusion

There was an enormous gap of KAP towards PV and ADR reporting, particularly PV practice in India. There is therefore an urgent need for educational awareness, simplification of the ADR reporting process, and implementation of imperative measures to practice PV among healthcare professionals. In order to understand the PV status, PvPI should procedurally assess the KAP of health professionals PV activities in India.     

I point my heart with the tip of my fingers–Biometry for the diagnosis of congenital heart defects

Congenital heart defects are characterized by abnormal positioning of some anatomical structures relative to a normal heart. Classically the classification of the disease or the stage of the disease is based on the measurement of the relative position of these structures by the cardiac morphologist. We propose a method in which the heart volume is acquired by a CT scanner. In this paper we present a tool which allows us to define landmarks interactively in this heart volume. These landmarks are then used to estimate some simple geometrical models of the anatomical structures and so as to describe their relative position and orientation.     

A comparative study of cell classifiers for image-based high-throughput screening

Background

Millions of cells are present in thousands of images created in high-throughput screening (HTS). Biologists could classify each of these cells into a phenotype by visual inspection. But in the presence of millions of cells this visual classification task becomes infeasible. Biologists train classification models on a few thousand visually classified example cells and iteratively improve the training data by visual inspection of the important misclassified phenotypes. Classification methods differ in performance and performance evaluation time. We present a comparative study of computational performance of gentle boosting, joint boosting CellProfiler Analyst (CPA), support vector machines (linear and radial basis function) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) on two data sets of HT29 and HeLa cancer cells.

Results

For the HT29 data set we find that gentle boosting, SVM (linear) and SVM (RBF) are close in performance but SVM (linear) is faster than gentle boosting and SVM (RBF). For the HT29 data set the average performance difference between SVM (RBF) and SVM (linear) is 0.42 %. For the HeLa data set we find that SVM (RBF) outperforms other classification methods and is on average 1.41 % better in performance than SVM (linear).

Conclusions

Our study proposes SVM (linear) for iterative improvement of the training data and SVM (RBF) for the final classifier to classify all unlabeled cells in the whole data set.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2105-15-342) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

不同季节新疆圆柏总黄酮含量的变化

目的:确定乌鲁木齐南山地区新疆圆柏总黄酮含量最高的时期及其季节变化。方法:采用溶剂法萃取不同季节新疆圆柏叶、果实与枝干的总黄酮,以芦丁作为标准品,用比色法进行含量测定。结果:新疆圆柏的果实中黄酮含量最高,为0.62%～1.13%,以10月份的含量最高;叶中黄酮含量变化为0.28%～0.83%,4月份最高;枝干中的黄酮含量最少,变化不明显。结论:新疆圆柏黄酮含量的季节变化与其生长习性及乌鲁木齐南山气候有关。