Biosensors are emerging as efficient (sensitive and selective) and affordable analytical diagnostic tools for early-stage disease detection, as required for personalized health wellness management. ...Low-level detection of a targeted disease biomarker (pM level) has emerged extremely useful to evaluate the progression of disease under therapy. Such collected bioinformatics and its multi-aspects-oriented analytics is in demand to explore the effectiveness of a prescribed treatment, optimize therapy, and correlate biomarker level with disease pathogenesis. Owing to nanotechnology-enabled advancements in sensing unit fabrication, device integration, interfacing, packaging, and sensing performance at point-of-care (POC) has rendered diagnostics according to the requirements of disease management and patient disease profile i.e. in a personalized manner. Efforts are continuously being made to promote the state of art biosensing technology as a next-generation non-invasive disease diagnostics methodology. Keeping this in view, this progressive opinion article describes personalized health care management related analytical tools which can provide access to better health for everyone, with overreaching aim to manage healthy tomorrow timely. Considering accomplishments and predictions, such affordable intelligent diagnostics tools are urgently required to manage COVID-19 pandemic, a life-threatening respiratory infectious disease, where a rapid, selective and sensitive detection of human beta severe acute respiratory system coronavirus (SARS-COoV-2) protein is the key factor.
Display omitted
•Investigated efficient miniaturized nano-enabled sensors are suitable for POC diagnostics.•Smartphone assisted POC diagnostics is making personalized diagnostics possible.•AI is managing bioinformatics and big data analytics to optimize personalized wellness.•AI supported IoT-based diagnostics is emerging for targeted disease management.•AI and IoT assisted POC diagnostics are needed for COVID-19 pandemic management.
An infection (COVID-19) without any specific cure makes the people more vulnerable to get affected due to insufficient knowledge and unhealthy practices. In this scenario, healthcare students can act ...as reliable information providers. This study aimed to assess the knowledge and perception about COVID-19 among medical and allied health science students.
A web-based cross sectional survey was conducted during February and March 2020. A 24-item survey was developed and randomly distributed among the study population. Descriptive statistics was applied to represent participant characteristics and Chi-square test was used to evaluate the level of association among variables with a significance level of p <0.01.
Total, 97.95% (715/730) participants completed the survey. High proportion of students were from pharmacy (45.73%) followed by medical (22.52%), physiotherapy, nursing and dental background. Majority of participants were having adequate knowledge while about 18% had partial knowledge about the symptoms of severe COVID-19 cases. Students have shown a positive perception of COVID-19 prevention and control while few invalid responses related to the use of herbal medicines or garlic were noted. About 50% had rightly stated that, the antibiotics and vaccine are not effective in COVID-19 infection at present.
As the COVID-19 cases are rapidly increasing worldwide, it is essential to improve the knowledge and beliefs among general public to prevent its spread. Health care students with their education background and basic understanding about COVID-19 can play a significant role by making community people aware about the seriousness of this pandemic situation.
Background: Nowadays, brand-name drugs are becoming an out-of-pocket expense which comprises 80% of total health-care expenditures. However, generic drugs are less expensive than brand-name drugs ...with the same therapeutic effect, but many doctors hold negative views of generics and resist prescribing. This study was designed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of doctors toward generic medicines.
Methods: This was a questionnaire-based cross-sectional study conducted in a multispecialty private hospital. The study participants were doctors who were practising in a hospital during the study period (January 2017 to July 2017). The questionnaire comprises 35 questions related to demographics, knowledge, attitude, and practice evaluation of generic medicines. Descriptive statistics was applied to represent participant characteristics and response rates.
Results: A total of 86 questionnaires were distributed to the doctors and the response rate was 37%. The majority of doctors who participated in this survey perceived that generic medicine is effective, safe, and has same active component, dose, and bioequivalent as the brand medicines. Majority of the doctors (72%) believe that generic drugs were manufactured by poor techniques. However, more than three-quarter of doctors (78%) routinely prescribed generic drugs.
Conclusion: Most of the doctors had an honest angle about the efficacy and safety of generic medicine. However, a high proportion of physicians believe that the generic drugs are of poorer quality. To have a better understanding of the generic drug, the doctor must be well informed about the generics products during their academic career that will significantly impact health-care budgets.
Abstract The noisier a region or city is, the faster the rate of global warming. Noise is not a substance. However, most sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are also sources of ...noise; for example, busy highways in cities can occasionally see as many as 100 cars per hour. Planting trees to mitigate noise pollution has been identified as one of the most sustainable methods to employ, since plants may function as a buffer and absorb sounds. Several plant species were chosen to assess noise absorption based on parameters such as leaf thickness, breadth, surface area, and length. The initial goal of this study is to estimate the noise absorption on the selected flora native to the Malaysian environment, where the noise was measured using an in-house developed impedance tube to discover the effective acoustic characteristics of leaves. The investigation was then carried on by assessing the data on the correlation coefficient parameter in order to determine the link between noise absorption and leaf features. Because of the freshness and perishability of the materials, measurements were repeated twice. Only 100% and 50% vegetation quantity size were measured for 10 sample species during the initial data collection. According to the findings, half of the leaves’ features were connected with noise absorption. This might be owing to the freshness state, which cannot be maintained for an extended period of time. To acquire a better value, the experiment was repeated within the permissible freshness time. The findings are as predicted, with the maximum noise absorption and features correlation at 100% plant density including twigs. When the vegetation amount is lowered to 50%, this will progressively diminish. The notion is confirmed by the fact that a tube packed with thicker samples absorbs more noise. The correlation study identifies that each leaf has its unique capacity for noise absorption dependent on its properties and freshness level.
Levetiracetam Krishna, Kavita; Raut, Asawari L; Gohel, Kushal H ...
Journal of the Association of Physicians of India
59
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Levetiracetam (LEV) is a novel antiepileptic drug (AED) which was discovered in early 1980s and soon, in 1999 FDA approved LEV for the management of partial onset seizure. In India, LEV tablet was ...approved in April 2005. It acts by binding to the synaptic vesicle protein SV2A, which is present on synaptic vesicles and some neuroendocrine cells. Pharmacokinetics of LEV such as, less protein binding and lack of hepatic metabolism makes LEV less susceptible to drug interactions with other anticonvulsants. Evidence also suggests that LEV is much better than other AEDs in the way of broad therapeutic window, convenient dosing and less adverse effect. Besides the pharmacological effects, pharmacoeconomically also, LEV is a beneficial drug. All these valuable pharmacological and pharmacoeconomic aspect makes LEV an important option in management of various types of epilepsy.
In a randomized trial, 450 patients with venous leg ulcers were assigned to early endovenous ablation within 2 weeks after randomization or to deferred ablation after ulcer healing. The time to ulcer ...healing was shorter with early ablation than with deferred ablation.
High blood pressure is responsible for the modulation of blood vessel morphology and function. Arterial hypertension is considered to play a significant role in atherosclerotic ischaemic heart ...disease, stroke and hypertensive nephropathy, whereas high venous pressure causes varicose vein formation and chronic venous insufficiency and contributes to vein bypass graft failure. Hypertension exerts differing injurious forces on the vessel wall, namely shear stress and circumferential stretch. Morphological and molecular changes in blood vessels ascribed to elevated pressure consist of endothelial damage, neointima formation, activation of inflammatory cascades, hypertrophy, migration and phenotypic changes in vascular smooth muscle cells, as well as extracellular matrix imbalances. Differential expression of genes encoding relevant factors including vascular endothelial growth factor, endothelin-1, interleukin-6, vascular cell adhesion molecule, intercellular adhesion molecule, matrix metalloproteinase-2 and -9 and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 has been explored using ex vivo cellular or organ stretch models and in vivo experimental animal models. Identification of pertinent genes may unravel new therapeutic strategies to counter the effects of pressure-induced stretch on the vessel wall and hence minimise its notable complications.
Objectives One of the thrust areas in drug delivery research is transdermal drug delivery systems (TDDS) due to their characteristic advantages over oral and parenteral drug delivery systems. ...Researchers have focused their attention on the use of microneedles to overcome the barrier of the stratum corneum. Microneedles deliver the drug into the epidermis without disruption of nerve endings. Recent advances in the development of microneedles are discussed in this review for the benefit of young scientists and to promote research in the area.
Key findings Microneedles are fabricated using a microelectromechanical system employing silicon, metals, polymers or polysaccharides. Solid coated microneedles can be used to pierce the superficial skin layer followed by delivery of the drug. Advances in microneedle research led to development of dissolvable/degradable and hollow microneedles to deliver drugs at a higher dose and to engineer drug release. Iontophoresis, sonophoresis and electrophoresis can be used to modify drug delivery when used in concern with hollow microneedles. Microneedles can be used to deliver macromolecules such as insulin, growth hormones, immunobiologicals, proteins and peptides. Microneedles containing ‘cosmeceuticals’ are currently available to treat acne, pigmentation, scars and wrinkles, as well as for skin tone improvement.
Summary Literature survey and patents filled revealed that microneedle‐based drug delivery system can be explored as a potential tool for the delivery of a variety of macromolecules that are not effectively delivered by conventional transdermal techniques.
PDF
