Analava Mitra

Effect of flaxseed gum on reduction of blood glucose and cholesterol in type 2 diabetic patients

The effects of ingestion of flaxseed gum on blood glucose and cholesterol, particularly low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, in type 2 diabetes were evaluated. Flaxseed gum was incorporated in wheat flour chapattis. Sixty patients of type 2 diabetes were fed a daily diet for 3 months, along with six wheat flour chapattis containing flaxseed gum (5 g), as per the recommendations of the American Diabetic Association. The control group (60 individuals) consumed an identical diet but the chapattis were without gum. The blood biochemistry profiles monitored before starting the study and at monthly intervals showed fasting blood sugar in the experimental group decreased from 154±8 mg/dl to 136±7 mg/dl (P=0.03) while the total cholesterol reduced from 182±11 mg/dl to 163±9 mg/dl (P=0.03). Results showed a decrease in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol from 110±8 mg/dl to 92±9 mg/dl (P=0.02). The study demonstrated the efficacy of flax gum in the blood biochemistry profiles of type 2 diabetes.

Health Effects of Palm Oil

Abstract Increasingly, over the past 40 years, the conception of diet has undergone major changes. Many of these changes involve changes in dietary intake of fats and oils. There has been an increasing consumption of partially hydrogenated trans-vegetable oils and a decreasing intake of lauric acid-containing oils. Although popular literature usually attribute an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) to elevated levels of serum cholesterol, which in turn are thought to derive from an increased dietary intake of saturated fats and cholesterol. The palm oil and palm kernel oil are high in saturated fatty acids, about 50% and 80% respectively and are esterified with glycerol. In developing countries, vegetable oils are replacing animal fats because of the cost and health concerns. It is reassuring to know that the consumption of palm oil as a source of dietary fat does not pose any additional risks for coronary artery disease when consumed in realistic amounts as part of a healthy diet.

Crosslinking of gelatin-based drug carriers by genipin induces changes in drug kinetic profiles in vitro

Hydrogels are extensively studied as carrier matrices for the controlled release of bioactive molecules. The aim of this study was to design gelatin-based hydrogels crosslinked with genipin and study the impact of crosslinking temperature (5, 15 or 25°C) on gel strength, microstructure, cytocompatibility, swelling and drug release. Gels crosslinked at 25°C exhibited the highest Flory–Rehner crosslink density, lowest swelling ratio and the slowest release of indomethacin (Idn, model anti-inflammatory drug). Diffusional exponents (n) indicated non-Fickian swelling kinetics while drug transport was anomalous. Hydrogel biocompatibility, in vitro cell viability, cell cycle experiments with AH-927 and HaCaT cell lines indicated normal cell proliferation without any effect on cell cycle. Overall, these results substantiated the use of genipin-crosslinked hydrogels as a viable carrier matrix for drug release applications.

Chitosan microspheres in novel drug delivery systems.

The main aim in the drug therapy of any disease is to attain the desired therapeutic concentration of the drug in plasma or at the site of action and maintain it for the entire duration of treatment. A drug on being used in conventional dosage forms leads to unavoidable fluctuations in the drug concentration leading to under medication or overmedication and increased frequency of dose administration as well as poor patient compliance. To minimize drug degradation and loss, to prevent harmful side effects and to increase drug bioavailability various drug delivery and drug targeting systems are currently under development. Handling the treatment of severe disease conditions has necessitated the development of innovative ideas to modify drug delivery techniques. Drug targeting means delivery of the drug-loaded system to the site of interest. Drug carrier systems include polymers, micelles, microcapsules, liposomes and lipoproteins to name some. Different polymer carriers exert different effects on drug delivery. Synthetic polymers are usually non-biocompatible, non-biodegradable and expensive. Natural polymers such as chitin and chitosan are devoid of such problems. Chitosan comes from the deacetylation of chitin, a natural biopolymer originating from crustacean shells. Chitosan is a biocompatible, biodegradable, and nontoxic natural polymer with excellent film-forming ability. Being of cationic character, chitosan is able to react with polyanions giving rise to polyelectrolyte complexes. Hence chitosan has become a promising natural polymer for the preparation of microspheres/nanospheres and microcapsules. The techniques employed to microencapsulate with chitosan include ionotropic gelation, spray drying, emulsion phase separation, simple and complex coacervation. This review focuses on the preparation, characterization of chitosan microspheres and their role in novel drug delivery systems.

Automated tissue classification framework for reproducible chronic wound assessment.

The aim of this paper was to develop a computer assisted tissue classification (granulation, necrotic, and slough) scheme for chronic wound (CW) evaluation using medical image processing and statistical machine learning techniques. The red-green-blue (RGB) wound images grabbed by normal digital camera were first transformed into HSI (hue, saturation, and intensity) color space and subsequently the “S” component of HSI color channels was selected as it provided higher contrast. Wound areas from 6 different types of CW were segmented from whole images using fuzzy divergence based thresholding by minimizing edge ambiguity. A set of color and textural features describing granulation, necrotic, and slough tissues in the segmented wound area were extracted using various mathematical techniques. Finally, statistical learning algorithms, namely, Bayesian classification and support vector machine (SVM), were trained and tested for wound tissue classification in different CW images. The performance of the wound area segmentation protocol was further validated by ground truth images labeled by clinical experts. It was observed that SVM with 3rd order polynomial kernel provided the highest accuracies, that is, 86.94%, 90.47%, and 75.53%, for classifying granulation, slough, and necrotic tissues, respectively. The proposed automated tissue classification technique achieved the highest overall accuracy, that is, 87.61%, with highest kappa statistic value (0.793).

Impedimetric characterization of human blood using three-electrode based ECIS devices

Abstract In this study, three-electrode based electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS) devices were used to study the electrical properties of blood and its constituents using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The three-electrode based ECIS devices were fabricated by using micromachining technology with varying sizes for working, reference and counter electrodes. The blood and its constituents such as serum, plasma, and red blood cells (RBCs) were prepared by conventional methods and stored for impedance measurement using fabricated microdevices. Equivalent circuits for blood, serum, plasma and RBCs were proposed using the software package ZSimpWin to validate the experimental data. The proposed equivalent circuit models of blood and its components have excellent agreement up to a frequency of 1 MHz. It is evident from the experimental results that blood and its components have specific impedance signatures that decrease with the increase of frequency. Blood shows higher impedance than the other samples in the lower frequency range (<50 kHz). It was also found that above 50 kHz, the impedance value of RBCs is nearly the same as whole blood. The impedance of serum and plasma steadily decreases with the increase of frequency up to 100 kHz and flattens out after that. The minimum impedance value achieved for serum and plasma is much less than the value obtained for whole blood.

Gelatin-Based Emulsion Gels for Diffusion-Controlled Release Applications

Emulsion gels are now emerging as a new class of biomaterials for controlled-release applications. Novel food-grade emulsion gels consisting of indomethacin-loaded vegetable oil droplets dispersed within genipin-cross-linked gelatin-based hydrogels were characterized for their physical and drug-release properties. Varying the weight ratio of the aqueous and oil phases between 5:1 and 5:5 was used to modulate construct swelling and drug release. The dispersed oil droplets generally became larger, more polydispersed and aggregated with an increase in oil fraction. Cross-linking with genipin increased the puncture strength of the gels vs. their uncross-linked counterparts and was necessary to prevent breakdown. Swelling of the emulsion gels demonstrated Fickian behaviour at all gelatin: oil ratios. Indomethacin release followed Fickian diffusion at higher oil fractions only, demonstrating coupled Fickian and super-Case-II transport at lower oil ratios (5:1, 5:2 and 5:3). Overall, the introduction of a dispersed oil phase within a hydrogel was exploited for the release of hydrophobic bioactive compounds, with tailoring of composition used to significantly alter release kinetics.

Dietary influence on TYPE 2 Diabetes (NIDDM)

Abstract Incidence of diabetes particularly Non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus is on the rise amongst the entire world population particularly in the residents belonging to younger age groups of developing countries located in Southeast Asia. The causes are many and predominated by nature-nurture role. Improper dietary intake of w-6 and w-3 fatty acids chasing the cholesterol myth of 70’s may be an important reason of increased diabetes in India. Coronary risk in Indians is associated with an increased prevalence of Type 2 diabetes mellitus, rise in plasma or tissue levels of triglycerides and low-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. A review on available literature points out that proper diets and life-style patterns as advised reduce the incidence of diabetes and also check relentless progress of the disease.

Characterization and scanning electron microscopic investigation of crosslinked freeze dried gelatin matrices for study of drug diffusivity and release kinetics

Drug delivery is a promising technique to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of the drug. However, properties of carrier materials require intense improvement for effective transport of drug molecules. In the current study, attempts have been made to develop freeze dried gelatin matrices cross linked with genipin at various temperatures (5°C, 15°C and 25°C) prior to freeze-drying (-80°C). The freeze dried matrices thus obtained at the said temperatures are characterized for crosslinking density, compression strength, swelling behaviors. The matrix crosslinked at 25°C showed highest Flory-Rehner crosslinking density (467 ± 46) (p<0.05), highest compressive strength (12.36 ± 0.12) (p<0.05) and lowest equilibrium water content. In this context, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was performed to study the surface morphology (size and shape of pores) of the crosslinked matrices. These images were further processed for quantitative analysis of morphological features, viz., areas, radius, ferret diameter, length of major and minor axis and eccentricity using MATLAB toolboxes. These quantitative analyses correlate transport and the release kinetics of model anti-inflammatory drug (indomethacin) from crosslinked matrices in vitro to tune as a controllable delivery system. The diffusional exponent (n) for all constructs ranging from 0.61 to 0.69 (p<0.05) (0.45

Frequency dependent impedimetric cytotoxic evaluation of anticancer drug on breast cancer cell

The present work reports the impedance characteristics of MCF-7 cell lines treated with anticancer drug ZD6474 to evaluate the cytotoxic effect on cellular electrical behaviour using miniature impedance sensors. Four types of impedance sensing devices with different electrode geometries are fabricated by microfabrication technology. The frequency response characteristics of drug treated cells are studied to evaluate cytotoxic effect of ZD6474 and also to assess the frequency dependent sensitivity variation with electrode area. A significant variation in magnitude of measured impedance data is obtained for drug treated samples above 10 µM dose indicating prominent effect of ZD6474 which results in suppression of cell proliferation and induction of apoptosis process. The results obtained by impedimetric method are correlated well with conventional in vitro assays such as flow cytometry, cell viability assays and microscopic imaging. Finally an empirical relation between cell impedance, electrode area and drug dose is established from impedance data which exhibits a negative correlation between drug doses and impedance of cancer cells.