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The combination of deworming and improved sanitation or hygiene may result in greater reductions in soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infection than any single intervention on its own. We measured STH prevalence in rural Bangladesh and assessed potential interactions among deworming, hygienic latrines, and household finished floors.

Background: Typhoid fever is an infectious disease of serious public health concern. The anti-typhoid efficacy and safety of Ximenia americana stem bark extracts on the nephrocytes, hepatocytes, and haematological parameters of Salmonella typhi infected Wistar albino rats was evaluated. Methodology: Experimental rats in their respective groups were infected with S. typhi via oral administration of infective dose (0.5 ml of 1.5 × 104 cfu/ml) of cultured S. typhi, while group 1 were uninfected. Group 2 were untreated, group 3 were treated with the standard drug (ciprofloxacin), while groups 4, 5, 6 were treated with (100, 200, 300 mg/kg) body weight of the methanol extract of X. americana stem bark, and groups 7, 8 and 9 were treated with (100, 200, 300 mg/kg) body weight of the ethyl-acetate fraction of X. americana stem bark administered orally for 7 days. Acute toxicity test was carried out using standard methods and signs accompanying toxicity such as drowsiness, respiratory distress, diarrhoea, and possible death of animals were monitored for 24 h in an interval of 2 h. Physical parameters were also monitored to check symptom amelioration as the treatment progresses. Results: Acute toxicity test showed that experimental rats administered the methanol extract and ethyl-acetate fraction of X. americana had no clinical signs of toxicity such as drowsiness, respiratory distress, diarrhoea, and death. The Physical examination of rats in all the treatment groups showed improvement in symptoms following Salmonella infection as treatment progressed when compared to the untreated group. Salmonella infection led to a significant (p < 0.05) increase in serum urea, sodium, chloride levels, bilirubin concentration, total white cell count and activities of the liver enzymes as compared to normal and apparently healthy rats. A significant (p < 0.05) decrease in PCV, haemoglobin concentration, RBC count, serum potassium, total protein and creatinine levels of the infected groups was observed as compared to the normal uninfected group. The methanol extract at the dose of 300 mg/kg body weight had 15%, 37%, 52% reduction in sodium, urea, and alkaline phosphatase respectively and 57% increase in potassium while the ethyl-acetate fraction (300 mg/kg body weight) had 46% and 47% increase in PCV and haemoglobin and 36% reduction in ALT. Conclusion: The administration of the methanol extract and ethyl-acetate fraction of X. americana was accompanied by a significant (p

Due to low numbers of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in liquid biopsies, there is much interest in enrichment of alternative circulating-like mesenchymal cancer cell subpopulations from in vitro tumor cultures for utilization within molecular profiling and drug screening. Viable cancer cells that are released into the media of drug-treated adherent cancer cell cultures exhibit anoikis resistance or anchorage-independent survival away from their extracellular matrix with nutrient sources and waste sinks, which serves as a pre-requisite for metastasis. The enrichment of these cell subpopulations from tumor cultures can potentially serve as an in vitro source of circulating-like cancer cells with greater potential for scale-up in comparison with CTCs. However, these live circulating-like cancer cell subpopulations exhibit size overlaps with necrotic and apoptotic cells in the culture media, which makes it challenging to selectively enrich them, while maintaining them in their suspended state. We present optimization of a flowthrough high frequency (1 MHz) positive dielectrophoresis (pDEP) device with sequential 3D field non-uniformities that enables enrichment of the live chemo-resistant circulating cancer cell subpopulation from an in vitro culture of metastatic patient-derived pancreatic tumor cells. Central to this strategy is the utilization of single-cell impedance cytometry with gates set by supervised machine learning, to optimize the frequency for pDEP, so that live circulating cells are selected based on multiple biophysical metrics, including membrane physiology, cytoplasmic conductivity and cell size, which is not possible using deterministic lateral displacement that is solely based on cell size. Using typical drug-treated samples with low levels of live circulating cells (<3%), we present pDEP enrichment of the target subpopulation to ∼44% levels within 20 minutes, while rejecting >90% of dead cells. This strategy of utilizing single-cell impedance cytometry to guide the optimization of dielectrophoresis has implications for other complex biological samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the use of Ceiba pentandra (C. pentandra) as a glucose lowering agent and the attendant physiological changes in albino rats. Methods: Acute oral toxicity study of the extract was carried out by the administration of 10, 100, 1000, 1600, 2900, and 5000 mg/kg body weight of C. pentandra to rats in their respective groups. Twenty healthy albino rats weighing between 140 and 150 g were randomly allotted to five groups of four rats each. 100 mg/kg body weight of alloxan monohydrate was i.p. administered to rats and rats with blood glucose ≥ 200 mg/dL were considered diabetic. 5 mg/kg body weight of standard drug, 200 and 400 mg/kg body weight of ethanol extract of C. pentandra were orally administered to diabetic rats in their respective groups once daily for 12 days while the control groups received 0.1 mL of normal saline for the same period. The blood glucose was checked after every 4 days and the experiment was terminated on the 17th day. Results: The safe dose (LD50) of the extract was greater than 5000 mg/kg body weight. The extract treated groups exhibited a remarkable reduction in blood glucose [(87.72 ± 7.67) mg/dL for 200 mg/kg body weight dose and (86.33 ± 4.54) mg/dL for 400 mg/kg body weight dose] competitively with the normoglycemic group [(88.71 ± 4.56) mg/dL]. The body weight of the extract and standard drug treated groups appreciated significantly (P

Objective: To evaluate the acute and sub-acute toxicity of aqueous and methanol extracts of Nelsonia campestris (N. campestris) in rats. Methods: Acute oral toxicity study of aqueous and methanol extracts was carried out by administration of 10, 100, 1000, 1600, 2900 and 5000 mg/kg body weight of N. campestris extracts to rats in the respective groups. Sub-acute toxicity study was conducted by oral administration of the extracts at daily doses of 100, 300 and 600 mg/kg body weight to another group of rats for 28 days, while rats in the control group received 0.5 mL of normal saline. Results: The LD50 of the N. campestris extracts in rats was determined to be greater than 5000 mg/kg body weight. There was no significant difference (P > 0.05) between the test groups administered with aqueous and methanol extracts in relation to the control group for serum electrolytes (Na+, K+, Cl−, HCO3−), serum albumin, total and conjugated bilirubin. Similarly, mean organ-to-body weight ratio and all haematological parameters (white blood cell, red blood cell, mean cell volume, mean corpuscular haemoglobin, mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration, packed cell volume) evaluated were not significantly different (P > 0.05) from the control. There was a significant increase (P