ABSTRACT
Background: Rational use of drugs had been great concern by the government as well as public during the past several years. Monitoring of prescriptions studies could identify the associated problems and provide feedback to the prescribers, so as to create awareness about the irrational use of drugs. This study was conducted to evaluate the prescribing pattern of Vitamins/Tonics in government sector and private sector.Methods: This prospective study was designed to obtain statistical data on the prescribing pattern of Vitamins/tonics in patients of S.V.B.P. Hospital Meerut and other associated hospital/ clinics. The total study sample size was of 614 prescriptions. Out of these 439 prescriptions were from government sector, 175 prescriptions from private sectors.Results: Percentages of prescription with Vitamins/ Tonics were 35.76 and 48.57 in government and private sectors respectively and these differences are statistically significant. Percentage of drug prescribed as Vitamins/ Tonics of the total drugs was 8.68 and 10.19, in government and private sector respectively and these differences are statistically not significant. Vitamins/ Tonics were the most frequently prescribed drugs 16.52% and 17.14% in obs./ Gynae in both the sectors respectively, and least number of Vitamins/ Tonics 1.06% and 3.2% were prescribed in cardiology in both the sectors.Conclusions: The study indicates a big scope for enhancing the prescribing pattern of Vitamins/Tonics and minimizing the use of irrational Vitamins/Tonics, due to the fact most of the times it抯 not needed, and it only put financial burden on Patients.
ABSTRACT
Objective/background: There is an urgent need for a more effective vaccine against Mycobacterium tuberculosis [Mtb]. Although CD4+ T cells play a central role in host immunity to Mtb, recent evidence suggests a critical role of CD8+ T cells in combating Mtb. In the present study, we have predicted HLA antigen class I binding peptides of DosR operon using an in-silico approach. This method is useful as an initial computational filtration of probable epitopes based on their binding ability and antigenicity
Methods: CD8+ epitopes were predicted by software NetMHC 3.4 and BIMAS. Self-peptides were found and excluded by indigenously developed Perl script. Antigenicity of promiscuous peptides was predicted using a Vaxijen server. The top Vaxijen scoring antigenic peptides were docked to globally relevant HLA allele using CABS dock and Hex program
Results: A total of 1436 overlapping nonamer peptides were generated which gave 46 promiscuous epitopes, 25 were predicted to be antigenic. Rv2627 epitope "SAFRPPLV" which gave the highest Vaxijen score of 1.9157 and showed binding to all the three HLA loci. The top Vaxijen scoring antigenic peptides were docked and had significant interactions with residues of the HLA class I molecule indicating them to be good cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitopes
Conclusion: Our study has generated several promiscuous antigenic peptides capable of binding to major histocompatibility complex class I with high affinity. These epitopes can become part of a postexposure multivalent subunit vaccine upon experimental validation
Subject(s)
Bacterial Proteins , Regulon , Protein Kinases , Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte , Immunotherapy, Active , CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes , Mycobacterium tuberculosis , TuberculosisABSTRACT
In earlier studies, it was shown that ex vivo Mycobacterium tuberculosis-infected type II alveolar epithelial cells generate de novo nitric oxide [NO], but the mycobactericidal quantity of NO was released only by stimulation of these cells with proinflammatory cytokines, i.e. IFN-gamma, TNF-alpha and IL-1beta. In the present communication, it was demonstrated that M. tuberculosis-infected/mycobacterial antigens stimulated cells utilize both, JAK-STAT and NF-kappaB pathways for the induction of inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase [iNOS] mRNA and NO production. Alveolar epithelial cell line A549 were either infected with M. tuberculosis or stimulated with M. tuberculosis components. Confocal microscopy, NO estimation and EMSA were performed on the infected/stimulated A549 cells. Nuclear extracts prepared from M. tuberculosis infected A549 cells alone or stimulated with IFN-gamma or a combination of three cytokines [IFN-gamma, TNF-alpha and IL-1beta] formed DNA protein complexes with probes from both -5.2 kb region [specific for binding of STAT-1 protein] and -5.8 kb region [specific for binding of both STAT-1 and NF-kappaB] of the iNOS promoter. However, TNF-alpha or IL-1beta stimulated M. tuberculosis-infected A549 cells showed no protein DNA complexes with construct from -5.2 kb region. This differential response indicated that TNF-alpha/IL-1beta does not allow STAT-1 production or its translocation to nucleus in M. tuberculosis-infected A549 cells in the absence of IFN-gamma. This differential signaling of iNOS induction in M. tuberculosis-infected alveolar epithelial cells by cytokines may be responsible for controlled production of NO intracellularly.