Claude Farrugia

Gelatin Behaviour in Dilute Aqueous Solution: Designing a Nanoparticulate Formulation

Although it has been claimed that nanoparticles can be produced from gelatin, a naturally occurring polypeptide, the commercial conversion of animal collagen to gelatin results in a heterogeneous product with a wide molecular‐weight range. This is probably responsible for the widely observed variation in the experimental conditions required for nanoparticle formation.

The effect of turmeric (Curcumin) supplementation on cytokine and inflammatory marker responses following 2 hours of endurance cycling

BackgroundEndurance exercise induces IL-6 production from myocytes that is thought to impair intracellular defence mechanisms. Curcumin inhibits NF-κB and activator protein 1, responsible for cytokine transcription, in cell lines. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of curcumin supplementation on the cytokine and stress responses following 2 h of cycling.MethodsEleven male recreational athletes (35.5 ± 5.7 years; Wmax 275 ± 6 W; 87.2 ± 10.3 kg) consuming a low carbohydrate diet of 2.3 ± 0.2 g/kg/day underwent three double blind trials with curcumin supplementation, placebo supplementation, and no supplementation (control) to observe the response of serum interleukins (IL-6, IL1-RA, IL-10), cortisol, c-reactive protein (CRP), and subjective assessment of training stress. Exercise was set at 95% lactate threshold (54 ± 7% Wmax) to ensure that all athletes completed the trial protocol.ResultsThe trial protocol elicted a rise in IL-6 and IL1-RA, but not IL-10. The supplementation regimen failed to produce statistically significant results when compared to placebo and control. IL-6 serum concentrations one hour following exercise were (Median (IQR): 2.0 (1.8-3.6) Curcumin; 4.8 (2.1-7.3) Placebo; 3.5 (1.9-7.7) Control). Differences between supplementation and placebo failed to reach statistical significance (p = 0.18) with the median test. Repeated measures ANOVA time-trial interaction was at p = 0.06 between curcumin supplementation and placebo. A positive correlation (p = 0.02) between absolute exercise intensity and 1 h post-exercise for IL-6 concentration was observed. Participants reported “better than usual” scores in the subjective assessment of psychological stress when supplementing with curcumin, indicating that they felt less stressed during training days (p = 0.04) compared to placebo even though there was no difference in RPE during any of the training days or trials.ConclusionThe limitations of the current regimen and trial involved a number of factors including sample size, mode of exercise, intensity of exercise, and dose of curcumin. Nevertheless these results provide insight for future studies with larger samples, and multiple curcumin dosages to investigate if different curcumin regimens can lead to statistically different interleukin levels when compared to a control and placebo.

Analysis of the molecular diversity of Olea europaea in the Mediterranean Island of Malta

The island of Malta is a small densely populated land mass located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Genetic material from local olive tree varieties on the island was amplified using RAPD, 36 loci were subsequently generated and a dendrogram based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficient constructed. Analysis of clustering patterns indicated a high degree of genetic diversity (0.18–0.68), an early separation between the majority of the native varieties and more recently introduced varieties, supporting the idea of a history of limited genetic exchange and indicating a separate clustering for the majority of the ‘Malti’ and ‘Bidni’ varieties. Principal Component Analysis of banding patterns confirmed these clustering patterns and analysis of the incidence of bands for primers OPA-17, OPC-19, OPI-18 (vector correlation significance <0.01) as well as for OPAG-13, OPAN-15 (vector correlation between 0.01 and 0.05) showed strong correlation. Native Maltese varieties were characterised by a higher number of bands arising from the former group of primers indicating their use as a possible means to distinguish between local and imported varieties.

Application of fluorescence spectroscopy and chemometric models for the detection of vegetable oil adulterants in Maltese virgin olive oils

AbstractFluorescence spectrometry, combined with principle component analysis, partial least-squares regression (PLSR) and artificial neural network (ANN), was applied for the analysis of Maltese extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) adulterated by blending with vegetable oil (corn oil, soybean oil, linseed oil, or sunflower oil). The novel results showed that adjusted PLSR models based on synchronised spectra for detecting the % amount of EVOO in vegetable oil blends had a lower root mean square error (0.02–6.27%) and higher R2 (0.983–1.000) value than those observed when using PLSR on the whole spectrum. This study also highlights the use of ANN as an alternative chemometric tool for the detection of olive oil adulteration. The performance of the model generated by the ANN is highly dependent both on the type of data input and the mode of cross validation; for spectral data which had a variable importance plot value > 0.8 the excluded row cross validation was more appropriate while for complete spectral analysis k-fold or CV-10 was more appropriate.