Pharmacy

In the present study, the defatted successive ethyl acetate and methanol extracts from Trapa natans fruit peel were evaluated for their protective effects on paracetamol-induced liver damage in Wistar albino rats. Serum biochemical parameters viz. serum glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (SGOT), serum glutamate pyruvate transaminase (SGPT), serum alkaline phosphatase (SALP), total protein, bilirubin, cholesterol, triglycerides were evaluated. All biochemical findings indicated that both the test extracts exerted significant hepatoprotective efficacy against paracetamol-induced hepatic damage in rats. The methanol extract was found to be more effective than the ethyl acetate extract. Therefore, from the present study it can be concluded that T. natans fruit peel had remarkable hepatoprotective activity in rats.

The rapid growth of the internet and the World Wide Web has led to the development of pharmacoinformatics technologies to assist oncology healthcare professionals in delivering optimum pharmaceutical care and health related outcomes. There is an increasing recognition that information technology can be effectively used for drug discovery. The work in pharmacoinformatics can be broadly divided into two categories - scientific aspects and service aspects. The scientific component deals with the drug discovery and development activities, whereas the service oriented aspects are more patient centric. Pharmacoinformatics subject feeds on many emerging information technologies like neuroinformatics, immunoinformatics, biosystem informatics, metabolomics, chemical reaction informatics, toxicoinformatics, cancer informatics, genome informatics, proteome informatics, biomedical informatics, The minimizing the time between a drug‘s discovery and its delivery to the marketplace and maintaining high productivity in the manufacturing processes. During a product‘s lifecycle many complex decisions must be made to achieve these goals. To better support the development and manufacturing processes at each stage, we have proposed a new epitome to facilitate the management and transfer of data information and knowledge. In future these information technology efforts are expected to grow both in terms of their reliability and scope. Thus, this emerging technology (pharmacoinformatics) is becoming an essential component of pharmaceutical sciences.

Antihypertensive drugs are medicines that help lower blood pressure. Fast-moving lifestyles, unearthly hours at work, stress, addiction to alcohol and unhealthy meals are making more and more Indians fall prey to high blood pressure at a very young age. The biggest problem with hypertension is that there are no symptoms. Thus people tend to be unaware that they have hypertension. The prevalence of hypertension ranges from 20-40 per cent in urban adults and 12-17 per cent among rural adults. Experts estimate that the number of patients in India with high BP is likely to rise from about 140 million in 2008 to nearly 215 million by 2030 along with an increase in the risk of complications such as heart attacks, strokes, kidney problems and other serious illnesses.

Meningococcal disease is a severe illness with high case fatality (5-10%) and frequent sequelae. Meningococcal meningitis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the meningitis belt. Meningococcal disease is a major public health challenge in countries of sub-Saharan Africa lying in the meningitis belt. Human infections caused by meningococcal (Neisseria meningitidis) remain a serious health problem, infecting 500,000 to 1.2 million people and killing between 50,000 and 135,000 per year worldwide. The causative agent, Neisseria meningitidis normally lives in a commensal relationship with humans, colonizing the nasopharynx, and is transmitted between healthy persons by close contact. The most common symptoms are a stiff neck, high fever, sensitivity to light, confusion, headaches and vomiting. Low meningitis thresholds improve timely detection of epidemics. The diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis is confirmed by cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis, Gram stain, polymerase chain reaction, culture of cerebrospinal fluid. Meningococcal disease can be treated with a number of effective antibiotics. It is important that treatment be started as soon as possible. If meningococcal disease is suspected, antibiotics are given right away. Antibiotics effective for this purpose include rifampicin, ciprofloxacin, ceftriaxone or azithromycin. Currently available meningococcal vaccines include polysaccharide vaccines against serogroups A, C, W135 & Y and newer protein polysaccharide conjugate vaccines against serogroup C. This review covers key aspects of the pathogenesis and management of meningococcal disease, as well as the very recent developments in disease epidemiology, outbreaks, and the evolution of meningococcal immunizations.

Current anticancer drug development strategies involve identifying novel molecular targets which are crucial for tumourigenesis. The molecular chaperone heat shock protein (HSP) 90 is of interest as an anticancer drug target because of its importance in maintaining the conformation, stability and function of key oncogenic client proteins involved in signal transduction pathways leading to proliferation, cell cycle progression and apoptosis, as well as other features of the malignant phenotype such as invasion, angiogenesis and metastasis. HSP90 inhibitors geldanamycin, geldanamycin derivatives and radicicol exert their antitumour effect by inhibiting the intrinsic ATPase activity of HSP90, resulting inactivation, destabilization and degradation of HSP90 client proteins. HSP90 is new therapeutic target attack on all of the hallmark traits of cancer such as self – sufficiency in growth signals, evading apoptosis, sustained angiogenesis, limitless replictive potential, tissue invasion, insensitivity to anti-growth signals. Clinical activity has been seen with 17-AAG in breast and prostate cancer. Hsp90 inhibitors have entered Phase II and III clinical trials, and have shown therapeutic activity in several types of cancer.

Pattern Mining is the process of extracting or mining the patterns from very large amount of biological datasets. Utilization of Data mining algorithms can reveal biological relevant associations between different genes and gene based expression. In Data Mining, several techniques are available for predicting frequent patterns. One among the technique is association rule mining algorithm; which can be applied for solving the crucial problems faced in the field of biological science. From the literature, various algorithms have been employed in generating frequent patterns for distinct application. These algorithms have some limitations in predicting frequent patterns, such as space, time complexity and accuracy. In order to overcome these drawbacks, the study is made on existing algorithms for generating frequent patterns from the biological sequences. The literature survey gives a significant number of methods were generated for predicting associative patterns. The proposed system has to be developed for solving problems in archiving glucose samples of many patients. Biological sequence may be a collection of DNA sequence, Gene expression sequence or Protein sequence for a specific viral disease. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Proteins are organic compounds made up of amino acids arranged in a linear chain and folded into a globular form. And it will also satisfy some factors such as: time complexity, space and predict accurate solution to the required problem. With the help of these three factors into consideration and efficient algorithm can be identified for predicting the dominating amino acids for any kind of specific biological implication.

Digitalis (cardiac glycosides) is a naturally occurring substance in various plants (digitalis, squill). They are mainly used in the treatment of heart failure and cardiac rhythm disorders. They induce a positive inotropic effect by inhibiting NA+/K+-ATPase which results in an increase in the amount of calcium released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum in each cycle of contractions. Digitalis toxicity is a rare drug complication, but potentially serious. This is rare when good rules of drug prescription are respected, though this is not often the case. This highlights on the need for further information to physicians and their patients about the risk involved, including renal failure and electrolyte imbalance (hypercalcemia, hyperperkalemia, hypokalemia etc.).

The aim of this study was to investigate the microbial quality of 10 different Herbal Medicinal Products (HMPs) sourced sampled from traditional medicine distributors and retail pharmacy outlets in Accra, Ghana. A total of 10 herbal medicinal products that were made for in vitro administration were randomly sampled in triplicates for analysis. Microbial Count was performed on the products. Isolation and identification various microbes from herbal medicinal samples were done also done. The results show that all of the products had their manufacturing and expiry dates stated, 5 (50%) products have been registered by FDB. The microbial load of the products varied considerably. The lowest microbial count was 2.2 x103 cfu/ml and the highest count was 6.2 x103 cfu/ml. Two (20%) of the products showed no bacteria growth. The predominant organism isolated was Staphylococcus aureaus and Bacillus spp. Only one sample had fungi isolate from it. However, E. coli, Klebsiella spp and Salmonella spp was not isolated in any of the 10 samples. There is need for constant monitoring and control of the standards of herbal medicines products in the Ghanaian market.

Acute poisoning by Organophosphorus compounds is one of the important cause of morbidity and mortality in the world, especially in developing countries. Accidental and intentional pesticides poisoning occurs worldwide with a significant mortality. Recent studies have shown an increase in numbers with three hundred thousand deaths occurring in Asia alone. The most common pesticide in India are due to anti-cholinesterase’s which includes organophosphates and carbamate, followed by aluminum phosphide.The effective number of cases of pesticide poisoning occurring in India is very high, and the calculated number of intentional cases as reported by NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) is again very high. A retrospective analysis covering last 15 years showed the most common agents causing acute poisoning was anti-cholinesterase’s followed by aluminum phosphide.The with a mean age of 27.8 years(range 13 to 82 years) Organophosphates share structural similarity with acetylcholine and bind covalently with cholinesterase molecule. This results in accumulation of acetylcholine at synapses causing over stimulation at post-synaptic receptors in central and peripheral nervous system. The clinical features of acute OPC poisoning are secondary to stimulation of muscarinic and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the parasympathetic system, sympathetic ganglia; neuromuscular junctions.Disrruption of transmission will also occur at the acetylcholine receptor sites within the central nervous system. The muscarinic receptors,M1 and M2 have different regional distribution in brain. The M1 receptors are the main type found in the human cerebral cortex, caudate nucleus, hippocampus, nucleus accumbens, and globus pallidus,while the M2 type dominates in the thalamus, brain stem,pons,and the cerebellum. Different subtypes of nicotinic receptors have been described in human brain using ligands with different affinities. Diagnosis of OPC poisoning is based on history of exposure to known OP compounds, characteristic clinical features. Estimation of acetyl cholinesterase activity is useful for confirmation of poisoning. But the degree of decrease in cholinesterase levels does not show linear relationship with severity of clinical features and prognosis. Detection of the offending agent in gastric lavage sample is one of the methods to determine the involved agent. OPC poisoning has several toxicological effects on the body, namely on respiratory system, cardiovascular system, neurological system & endocrinal system.

A novel series of 6-Chloro-3-(2-morpholino methyl amino)-6-substituted phenyl pyrimidine-4-yl-2H-chromone-2-one (CT₁M–CT₅M), 3-(2-((piperidine-1-yl)methylamino)-6-substituted phenylpyrimidin-4-yl)- 6-Chloro- 2H- chromone -2- one (CT₁P–CT₅P) have been synthesized from 3-(2-amino-6-pyrimidin-4-yl)-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one (CT₁-CT₅) which were synthesized from 3-acetyl-6-Chloro-2H-chromen-2-one (3). The structures of the synthesized compounds were elucidated by I. R., ¹H NMR spectroscopic techniques. The synthesized compounds were screened for in-vitro antimicrobial activity at a 25, 50, 100 and 200 mcg concentrations. Among them, compounds CT₂M, CT₃M, CT₅M, CT₂P, CT₃P and CT₅P exhibited significant antibacterial activity against P.aeruginosa and S.aureus comparable with standard drug Ampicillin trihydrate. Compounds CT₁M, CT₂M, CT₃M, CT₅M, CT₂P, and CT₅P exhibited significant antifungal activity against P.chrysogenum and A.niger comparable with standard drug Fluconazole using cup-plate method. Compounds have been further evaluated by measuring zone of inhibition and percent inhibition.