ABSTRACT
@#Introduction: The prospect of public accessing community pharmacies for minor ailment advice or treatment highly depends on the pharmacy attributes and their staff. This study aimed to investigate the extent to which community pharmacies are used as a source of minor illness management and the public’s relative preferences for pharmacy features. Methods: A cross-sectional survey among the public in Malaysia was carried out between August and December 2020. The validated self-administered questionnaires were distributed at several pharmacies and shared via email, Whatsapp group, and Facebook. Results: A total of 141 from 153 public respondents completed the survey. From the descriptive and inferential analysis, it was found that about a third of the public goes to a pharmacy for advice or treatment for minor illnesses. The vast majority of respondents had positive perceptions that community pharmacists are knowledgeable and qualified to offer advice or treatment for minor diseases. A significant positive relationship was observed between pharmacy characteristics’ scores and pharmacy staff and pharmacy services’ scores (p<0.001). The increase in pharmacy staff score significantly increased the pharmacy services’ score (p<0.001). Conclusion: The implications of the public acknowledging specific attributes were crucial in further supporting community pharmacists’ services, especially in the private practice setting.
ABSTRACT
Perception of molecular mechanism would provide potent additional knowledge on mammalian membrane proteins involved in causing diseases. In human, syntaxin-3 (STX3) is a significant apical targeting protein in the epithelial membrane and in exocytosis process; it also acts as a vesicle transporter by cellular receptor in neutrophils, which is crucial for protein trafficking event. Structurally, syntaxin-3 has hydrophobic domain at carboxyl terminus that directs itself to intra-cellular compartments. In addition, the experimental structure of STX3 is not available and no mutational study has been carried out with natural variants of proteins. Moreover, there is no evidence so far for the natural variant Val286 of STX3 causing any diseases. Hence, in the present study, analyses of residue-based properties of the homology model STX3 were carried out along with mutations at carboxyl terminus of STX3 by implementing protein engineering and in silico approaches. The model structure of STX3 was constructed adopting Modeller v9.11 and the aggregation propensity was analyzed with BioLuminate tool. The results showed that there was reduction in aggregation propensity with point mutation at Val286, instead of Ile, resulting into increasing the structural stability of STX3. In conclusion, the Ccap exposed residue would be a suitable position for further mutational studies, particularly with Val286 of STX3 in human. This approach could gainfully be applied to STX3 for efficient drug designing which would be a valuable target in the cancer treatment.