scholarly journals LAY USE OF AMAZONIAN PLANTS FOR THE TREATMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine STOREY ◽  
Júlia Ignez SALEM

The Brazilian State of Amazonas has a high incidence of Tuberculosis, 91.4 in 10,000 habitants (SESAU, 1994) and resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are frequently being found in the region (SALEM et.al, 1990). These problems have been associated with side effects caused by the antibiotics used to treat Tuberculosis, which have in rum been associated with treatment non-compliance (PATTISAPU, 1984). To resolve this problem a cost effective alternative treatment for Tuberculosis with few or no side effects, needs to be found. Amazonas has an abundance of plants, many of which are used by the lay population for medicinal purposes. A survey was carried out in five towns of the region, interviewing patients receiving treatment for Tuberculosis, to find out whether and which plants have been used to treat Tuberculosis. Results showed that the majority of patients in the sample had used medicinal plants before or after diagnosis of Tuberculoses. Thirteen different plants were recorded for this purpose. Chenopodium ambrosioides L, popularly known as Mastruz, was the most commonly used, followed by Caesalpinia ferrea Mart. Jucá and Spilanthes acmella DC. Jambu. This study concentrates on Mastruz as it was used more frequently than the other medicinal plants. No significant effects on baciloscopy test results were found when Mastruz was used before diagnosis. ln-vitro laboratory tests have also not shown any tuberculocidal effects for Mastruz. Further tests are being carried out on the other medicinal plants.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1192-1198
Author(s):  
M.S. Mohammad ◽  
Tibebe Tesfaye ◽  
Kim Ki-Seong

Ultrasonic thickness gauges are easy to operate and reliable, and can be used to measure a wide range of thicknesses and inspect all engineering materials. Supplementing the simple ultrasonic thickness gauges that present results in either a digital readout or as an A-scan with systems that enable correlating the measured values to their positions on the inspected surface to produce a two-dimensional (2D) thickness representation can extend their benefits and provide a cost-effective alternative to expensive advanced C-scan machines. In previous work, the authors introduced a system for the positioning and mapping of the values measured by the ultrasonic thickness gauges and flaw detectors (Tesfaye et al. 2019). The system is an alternative to the systems that use mechanical scanners, encoders, and sophisticated UT machines. It used a camera to record the probe’s movement and a projected laser grid obtained by a laser pattern generator to locate the probe on the inspected surface. In this paper, a novel system is proposed to be applied to flat surfaces, in addition to overcoming the other limitations posed due to the use of the laser projection. The proposed system uses two video cameras, one to monitor the probe’s movement on the inspected surface and the other to capture the corresponding digital readout of the thickness gauge. The acquired images of the probe’s position and thickness gauge readout are processed to plot the measured data in a 2D color-coded map. The system is meant to be simpler and more effective than the previous development.


2009 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 1383-1389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella M. Scandurra ◽  
Geoffrey W. de Lisle ◽  
Sonia M. Cavaignac ◽  
May Young ◽  
R. Pamela Kawakami ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (basonym M. paratuberculosis) is the causative agent of paratuberculosis, a chronic enteritis of ruminants. To control the considerable economic effect that paratuberculosis has on the livestock industry, a vaccine that induces protection with minimal side effects is required. We employed transposon mutagenesis and allelic exchange to develop three potential vaccine candidates, which were then tested for virulence with macrophages, mice, and goats. All three models identified the WAg906 mutant as being the most attenuated, but some differences in the levels of attenuation were evident among the models when testing the other strains. In a preliminary mouse vaccine experiment, limited protection was induced by WAg915, as evidenced by a reduced bacterial load in spleens and livers 12 weeks following intraperitoneal challenge with M. paratuberculosis K10. While we found macrophages and murine models to be rapid and cost-effective alternatives for the initial screening of M. paratuberculosis mutants for attenuation, it appears necessary to do the definitive assessment of attenuation with a ruminant model.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 122-129
Author(s):  
Poonam Daswani ◽  
Vigneshwaran Muthuraman ◽  
Ragini Macaden ◽  
Mary Dias ◽  
Tannaz Birdi

Background: Although shigellosis is self-limiting, antibiotics are recommended to minimize the severity of symptoms and reduce mortality rates. However, due to the increasing reports of antibiotic resistance, alternative approaches are needed to combat shigellosis. Interest for research on medicinal plants has increased in recent years, and hence, they can be explored to treat this infectious diarrhoea. Objective: To study the effect of Psidium guajava L. (guava) leaf decoction (GLD) on the antibiotic-resistant clinical isolates of Shigella spp. Materials and Methods: A total of 43 isolated Shigella spp. from diarrhoeal patients were used in this study. The effect of GLD on the bacterial viability was initially assessed. The isolates were divided into two categories: sensitive and resistant to GLD. For sensitive isolates, antibacterial activity of GLD was evaluated while for resistant strains, the ability of GLD for reducing the bacterial invasion of the HEp-2 cell line underwent an investigation. Results: Among the 43 Shigella isolates, GLD affected the growth of 23 strains. The invasion of 9 strains from the 20 remaining resistant isolates was unaffected. Although the number of isolates was less, the data suggested that isolates belonging to S. flexneri serogroup were more sensitive to GLD in comparison with other spp (i.e., sonnei, boydii, and dysenteriae). Conclusion: The results of this study revealed the efficacy of GLD against drug-resistant Shigella spp. and thus could be considered for the treatment of diarrhoea. GLD can be a cost-effective alternative to antibiotics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-443
Author(s):  
Anjana Goel ◽  
Ashok K. Bhatia

Introduction: Nanotechnology is a branch of nanosciences which includes the manipulation of particles at their atomic level in order to obtain certain desirable properties that enhance their use in the treatment of various metabolic disorders as well as other life-threatening diseases including cancer. Photosynthesized nanoparticles are eco-friendly, reliable and cost-effective. This biogenic route of nanoparticles synthesis is emerging as a beneficial method as plants contain diverse bioactive phytochemicals which act as reducing and capping agent thus, increase the stability and reduction rate of nanoparticles. The most commonly used nanoparticles are of silver, gold, iron oxides and copper. In few studies, bimetallic nanoparticles have been reported to have anti-cancer potential. The use of medicinal plants for the purpose of designing nanoparticles has paved a way for targeting a drug to the particular affected site of the tumor. Conclusion: This review focuses on the anti-cancerous potential of nanoparticles of different metals using a variety of medicinal plants. These biogenic nanoparticles could limit the use of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, as these therapies have huge side effects which cannot be tolerated by the cancer patients, and in many cases, the patients die because of these treatments. Hence nanoparticles mediated therapy is now gaining attention for the treatment of cancer as targeted drug therapy, without having undesirable side effects.


2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (1) ◽  
pp. 5531-5537
Author(s):  
Wilson Ho ◽  
Ghazaleh Soltanieh ◽  
Wylong Wang

Tuned mass rail dampers are cost effective for the mitigation of the airborne noise and vibration with the ability to be tuned for individual site. TMDs have been developed and installed at a single rail in a curve tunnel and achieve more than 4dB(A) noise reduction in many cases. According to the on-site noise reduction performance during damper installation, half, one, two or three dampers can be installed at each spacing between two baseplates. TMDs with only half-installation provides more than 10dB reduction at vertical pin-pin resonance (~1kHz). With the standard installation, they provide the strong damping to half the corrugation growth rate. The stick-slip phenomena which causes the corrugation will be affected by the damping effect from TMDs. On the other hand, they can also be tuned to the low-frequency (p2 resonance) for grandborne noise control. The high reduction of the grand borne noise proved our claim for effectiveness of the TMDs besides many other studies on the other parameters like the type of the baseplates or the soil types. According to the test results TMDs achieve strong performance in different range of the frequencies.


Author(s):  
Adem Özkiraz ◽  
Ali Gücükoğlu

This study was conducted to determine the Listeria monocytogenes’s presence, serotypes and resistance against various antibiotics in modified atmosphere packaged (MAP) ground and cubed beef samples. Five of ground (5/50-10%) and 3 of cubed beef samples (3/50-6%) were identified as L. monocytogenes positive in MAP samples. Eleven L. monocytogenes isolates that obtained from samples being investigated in term of hlyA gene by PCR method have verified that this gene (100%). In serotyping results, 3 of 8 isolate that obtained from MAP ground beef samples were 1/2a, the other 3 isolate was 1/2b and the remaining 2 isolate was 4b. Also, 1 of 3 isolate that obtained from MAP cubed beef samples were 1/2b, the other one isolate was 1/2c and the last one was 4b. One isolate against (9%) ampicillin, 2 isolate against (18.2%) chloramphenicol, 3 isolate against (27.2%) erythromycin, 4 isolate against (36.3%) oxytetracycline and 4 isolate against (36.3%) penicillin G, 6 isolate against (54.5%) tetracycline and 3 isolate against (27.2%) vancomycin was resistant in 11 L. monocytogenes isolates that confirmed by PCR. The L. monocytogenes isolates were found to be resistant to one or more antibiotics in antibiotic-resistance test results. In conclusion, applying of national residue monitoring program by official authority for prevention of intensive antibiotic use in order to prevent the development of resistant strains to antibiotics has great importance.


Author(s):  
Jithin Mathew Abraham ◽  
Saramma Abraham ◽  
Sangeetha Merrin Varghese

Background: Sore throat and cough during emergence are common side effects of general anaesthesia and its incidence is reported by 30-70% of patients after tracheal intubation. Also, not to forget the hemodynamic fluctuations associated with it, adds on to the magnitude of the problem. Thinking of a simple and cost-effective way to tackle this problem, this study was undertaken to determine the benefits of using intra-cuff lignocaine to prevent post intubation sore throat and emergence cough. The objective of this study to assess the efficacy of intra-cuff 2% lignocaine solution, in reducing emergence cough and post-operative sore throat after extubation in general surgery patients intubated for 2-4 hours.Methods: A prospective observational study where 100 ASA I and II status patients divided into 2 groups of 50 each was compared. In one group ETT cuff was filled with air, while in the other group, 2% plain lignocaine solution was used. Side effects like sore throat, coughing and blood pressure changes were assessed. Chi square and t-tests were used to compare the findings.Results: Among those patients where intra-cuff lignocaine was used, only 27.5% complained of sore throat and 12.5% had emergence cough, whereas among those patients where intra-cuff air was used, 72.5% had post-operative sore throat and 87.5% of patients had cough on emergence.Conclusions: This study proves that 2% intra-cuff lignocaine is an effective method in reducing post-operative sore throat and emergence cough and thereby beneficial in controlling the hemodynamic changes associated with emergence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 197-208
Author(s):  
Leo Gu Li ◽  
Albert Kwok Hung Kwan

Previous research studies have indicated that using fibres to improve crack resistance and applying expansive agent (EA) to compensate shrinkage are both effective methods to mitigate shrinkage cracking of concrete, and the additions of both fibres and EA can enhance the other performance attributes of concrete. In this study, an EA was added to fibre reinforced concrete (FRC) to produce concrete mixes with various water/binder (W/B) ratios, steel fibre (SF) contents and EA contents for testing of their workability and compressive properties. The test results showed that adding EA would slightly increase the superplasticiser (SP) demand and decrease the compressive strength, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio, but significantly improve the toughness and specific toughness of the steel FRC produced. Such improvement in toughness may be attributed to the pre-stress of the concrete matrix and the confinement effect of the SFs due to the expansion of the concrete and the restraint of the SFs against such expansion.


Alloy Digest ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  

Abstract JS777 is a high-alloy, fully austenitic stainless steel developed for applications where corrosive conditions are too severe for the standard grades of stainless steel. It also provides a cost-effective alternative to more expensive nickel-base and titanium-base alloys. It has relatively high resistance to stress-corrosion cracking and to intergranular corrosion. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, hardness, elasticity, and tensile properties. It also includes information on corrosion resistance as well as forming, heat treating, machining, joining, and surface treatment. Filing Code: SS-377. Producer or source: Jessop Steel Company.


Alloy Digest ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 58 (11) ◽  

Abstract Ancorsteel 4300 alloy ferrous powder simulates wrought steel compositions and is a cost-effective alternative to alloys requiring secondary processing. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, hardness, and tensile properties as well as fracture toughness. It also includes information on heat treating and powder metal forms. Filing Code: SA-611. Producer or source: Hoeganaes Corporation.


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