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To compare the efficacy of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection vs dry needling (DN) for management of trigger points in the masseter muscle in myofascial pain syndrome (MPS) patients.This randomized controlled trial included 30 clinically confirmed cases of myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) in the masseter muscle who were randomly and equally (1:1) assigned to the test (PRP) and control (DN) groups. Both groups were evaluated for pain (visual analog scale [VAS]), range of functional movements, need for pain medication, patient satisfaction (Likert scale), and sleep (VAS) at baseline and 2-week, 1-month, and 3-month follow-ups. VAS pain and Likert score were also obtained at 6-month intervals.The use of PRP solution in MTrPs in MPS patients had a better effect on pain and patient satisfaction compared to DN.PRP appears to be a more effective treatment modality compared to DN in the management of MTrPs in MPS patients.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate key milestones in development of standards of human rights to health care in particular context of addressing palliative care, relevant efforts of advocacy in past decade and future area of growth. Design/methodology/approach In this study, analysis of human rights and its standards in context of palliative care has been provided through the lens of freedom from ill treatment and torture, right to health care and older persons’ and children’s rights. Findings Findings of this study highlighted significant developments in this area which include following: first treaty of human rights which explained right to palliative care; first resolution on palliative care by World Health Assembly; special rapporteur’s report focussed on denial of pain; and addressing issue of controlled medicine availability in special session of UN General Assembly. Originality/value Human rights standards and their development in context of palliative care have been most significant in relation to freedom from ill treatment and torture, right to health care and older persons’ rights. Further work is required in context of children’s rights and treaty bodies of human rights need to consistently address state obligations towards palliative care.

Current methods for extracting information from user resumes do not work well with unstructured user resumes in economic announcements, and they do not work well with documents that have the same users in them. Unstructured user information is turned into structured user information templates in this study. It also proposes a way to build person relationship graphs in the field of economics. First, the lightweight blockchain-based BERT model (B-BERT) is trained. The learned B-BERT pretraining model is then utilized to get the event instance vector, categorize it appropriately, and populate the hierarchical user information templates with accurate user characteristics. The aim of this research is that it has investigated the approach of creating character connection graphs in the Chinese financial system and suggests a framework for doing so in the economic sector. Furthermore, the relationship between users is found through the filled-in user information template, and a graph of user relationships is made. This is how it works: finally, the experiment is checked by filling in a manually annotated dataset. In tests, the method can be used to get text information from unstructured economic user resumes and build a relationship map of people in the financial field. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is capable of efficiently retrieving information from unstructured financial personnel resume text and generating a character relationship graph in the economic sphere.

With the evolution of the technology, digital microfluidic (DMF) biochips have become a vital part of biochemical research. Hence, it is required to consider the reliability of the different fluidic operations performed on a biochip. Sample preparation is an important process of any real-life bioprotocol implementation on a DMF biochip. In this process, sequence of mixing and dilution steps are determined to get the desired target concentrations. The mixers used for performing mix-split steps may incorporate some noise during mixing and can result in the erroneous concentrations of the reagents. Thus, the reliability analysis of the resultant target concentration is necessary and methods are required to be developed to reduce these concentration errors. In this paper, the error and reliability models are discussed to compare the reliabilities of the existing mixing algorithms. Simulation results show that for a given target ratio, reliability of common dilution operation sharing (Liu et al. , ICCAD-2013) is higher. We also discuss the mixer assignment techniques and the heuristic approach is found to quickly provide the better order of mixer assignment in order to achieve highly reliable mixture after sample preparation.

In recent years, microfluidic biochips are being dominantly used for implementing a wide range of biochemical laboratory protocols (bioprotocols) on hand-held devices. Accurate preparation of fluid-samples is a fundamental preprocessing step that is needed in many bioprotocols. Oftentimes, for point-of-service microfluidic devices, the number of reservoirs built on-chip may be far less than that of the reactant fluids to be used in an assay. Hence, during the execution of an assay, several fluids are to be unloaded from the reservoirs to make room for loading new fluids stored off-line. Such unload-wash-load steps (switching) may be required several times, and these steps, being manual, significantly impact assay-completion time. In this paper, we address the problem of biochemical mixture preparation and propose Reservoir- and Mixer-constrained Scheduling (RMS) algorithm that executes a given mixing tree aiming to minimize the number of reactant-switching from input reservoirs. We also consider certain constraints on the availability of concurrent mixing modules. The proposed scheduling scheme can not only be applied to a number of mixture preparation algorithms but also to a general class of microfluidic devices such as digital, paper-based, and flow-based biochips. Simulation results over a large number of target ratios show that given the mixing trees obtained by standard mixing algorithms such as MinMix/RMA/CoDOS, RMS reduces switching steps (on average by 40.3%/41.9%/33%) at the cost of increasing mixing time (by only 3.5%/6.2%/4.8%), compared to an existing scheduling scheme invoked with reservoir constraints.

Healthcare is becoming the largest growing sector of India because of its huge coverage, providing services and investment by public and private players. In India growth of private hospitals have totally changed the scenario of health care delivery. This study explores the effectiveness of the strategies to provide quality health care and thereby improving the service delivery in Private Hospitals. In total 122 responses were collected after administering the questionnaires. The findings of this study reveals that quality health care strategies has positive impact on service delivery. Quality health care strategies showed a different kind of associations with three measures of quality namely structure, process and outcome measures. The implications from the study provides the need of multifaceted approach for implementing quality improvement strategies and adoption of the model for the same. This study recommends a blend of quality improvement programs with increased ICT (Information and Communication Technology) applications for enhancing the turnaround time. Further study can be conducted on other healthcare quality dimensions and strategic interventions that can enhance the quality of health care and clinical outcomes in Private Hospitals in India.

Inflammatory processes are involved in the pathogenesis and/or progression of acute central nervous system (CNS) infection, traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative disorders among others indicating the need for novel strategies to limit neuroinflammation. Eicosanoids including leukotrienes, particularly leukotriene B(4) (LTB(4)) are principle mediator(s) of inflammatory response, initiating and amplifying the generation of cytokines and chemokines. Cytochrome P450 (Cyp), a family of heme proteins mediate metabolism of xenobiotics and endogenous compounds, such as eicosanoids and leukotrienes. Cytochrome P4504F (Cyp4f) subfamily includes five functional enzymes in mouse. We cloned and expressed the mouse Cyp4f enzymes, assayed their relative expression in brain and examined their ability to hydroxylate the inflammatory cascade prompt LTB(4) to its inactive 20-hydroxylated product. We then examined the role of Cyp4fs in regulating inflammatory response in vitro, in microglial cells and in vivo, in mouse brain using lipopolysacharide (LPS), as a model compound to generate inflammatory response. We demonstrate that mouse brain Cyp4fs are expressed ubiquitously in several cell types in the brain, including neurons and microglia, and modulate inflammatory response triggered by LPS, in vivo and in microglial cells, in vitro through metabolism of LTB(4) to the inactive 20-hydroxy LTB(4). Chemical inhibitor or shRNA to Cyp4fs enhance and inducer of Cyp4fs attenuates inflammatory response. Further, induction of Cyp4f expression lowers LTB(4) levels and affords neuroprotection in microglial cells or mice exposed to LPS. Thus, catalytic activity of Cyp4fs is a novel target for modulating neuroinflammation through hydroxylation of LTB(4).

Parkinson's disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder, causes severe motor impairment due to loss of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc). MPTP, a neurotoxin that causes dopaminergic cell loss in mice, was used in an animal model to study the pathogenic mechanisms leading to neurodegeneration. We observed the activation of apoptosis signal regulating kinase (ASK1, MAPKKK) and phosphorylation of its downstream targets MKK4 and JNK, 12 h after administration of a single dose of MPTP. Further, Daxx, the death-associated protein, translocated to the cytosol selectively in SNpc neurons seemingly due to MPTP mediated down-regulation of DJ-1, the redox-sensitive protein that binds Daxx in the nucleus. Coadministration of alpha-lipoic acid (ALA), a thiol antioxidant, abolished the activation of ASK1 and phosphorylation of downstream kinases, MKK4, and JNK and prevented the down-regulation of DJ-1 and translocation of Daxx to the cytosol seen after MPTP. ALA also attenuated dopaminergic cell loss in SNpc seen after subchronic MPTP treatment. Our studies demonstrate for the first time that MPTP triggers death signaling pathway by activating ASK1 and translocating Daxx, in vivo, in dopaminergic neurons in SNpc of mice and thiol antioxidants, such as ALA terminate this cascade and afford neuroprotection.

Buccoadhesive compacts (BCs) of pentazocine (PZ) were prepared by the direct compression method using polymers like carbopol 974P (CP 974P) and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC K4M) in ratios of 1:0 (batch B1), 1:1 (B2), 1:2 (B3), 1:4 (B4), and 0:1 (B5). The compacts were evaluated for thickness uniformity, weight variation, drug content uniformity, and swelling index. Swelling was increased with an increase in HPMC K4M content in the compacts. An in vitro assembly was developed to measure and compare the bioadhesive strength of compacts. The maximum bioadhesive strength was observed in compacts formulated with a combination of CP 974P and HPMC K4M. The compacts were evaluated in vitro for 24 hr in pH 6.6 phosphate buffer using a standardized dissolution apparatus. The data were evaluated by a simple power equation (Mt/M infinity = Ktn); it was observed that all the compacts followed non-Fickian release kinetics. Some of the buccoadhesive compacts were evaluated in vivo in rabbits. The compacts gave controlled blood level profiles with a twofold to threefold increase in area-under-the-curve (AUC) values in comparison to oral administration of aqueous drug solution.

Aim: To investigate the prevalence of microscopic colitis among patients presenting with chronic watery diarrhea. Material and Methods: Colonic biopsies from 400 patients presenting with chronic watery diarrhea and other symptoms pertaining to lower gastrointestinal tract were studied. After a detailed clinical history and thorough physical examination full length colonoscopy was done using flexible colonoscope. Colonic biopsies were taken from abnormal and normal areas. Three to five micron thick sections were cut and stained with hematoxylin and eosin and Masson′s trichrome stain to highlight sub epithelial collagen. Results: Fifteen out of 400 (3.7%) colonic biopsies from patients presenting with chronic diarrhea had evidence of microscopic colitis. Five out of fifteen biopsies (33%) were diagnosed as collagenous colitis, 10 biopsies (67%) had evidence of lymphocytic colitis; 14/400(3.5%) histologically normal biopsies were taken as controls to compare various demographic and risk factors. Ten out of 15 patients (67%) were clinically diagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome. In the remaining five an infective etiology was suspected. On colonoscopy12/15 (80%) had no abnormality and 3/15 (20%) had mild hyperemia. Conclusion: A possibility of microscopic colitis should be considered while examining colonoscopic biopsy of a patient with chronic watery diarrhea and normal colonoscopy to avoid the misdiagnosis that may affect the treatment of patients