ABSTRACT
Background: Acute poisoning in children is most commonly encountered in day to day practice which contributes a major part of admissions in pediatric intensive units and ward. It is a preventable public health problem. There are limited community based data available because of several reasons including lack of standard case definition, regional variability, poor functioning regulatory and surveillance system. Therefore, authors carried out this study in present set-up.Methods: A prospective observational study carried out at a tertiary care hospital which included all children within the age of 12 years presenting with history and symptoms and signs suggestive of acute poisoning over a period of 1 year after getting consent from parents.Results: Incidence of acute poisoning among children was 4.7%. Maximum cases were in the age group of 1-5 years (79.85%). Among the 278 cases, male children were 154(55.4%) and female were 124(44.6%). Majority of cases were observed in upper lower (43.1%) socio-economic group of Modified Kuppusamy scale. Based on locality, majority of cases were from rural area (66.9%). Accidental poisoning was the most common cause including 88.5% cases. In our study, we found that hydrocarbons were the most common substance of poisoning (58%). The most common clinical presentation in our study was vomiting (24.5%).Conclusions: Incidence of acute poisoning among children is high in our set-up. Lower socio-economic class, rural populations are important epidemiological factors which influences the poisoning event in children.
ABSTRACT
Azo, anthroquinone and triphenylmethane dyes are the major classes of synthetic colourants, which are difficult to degrade and have received considerable attention. Congo red, a diazo dye, is considered as a xenobiotic compound, and is recalcitrant to biodegradative processes. Nevertheless, during the last few years it has been demonstrated that several fungi, under certain environmental conditions, are able to transfer azo dyes to non toxic products using laccases. The aim of this work was to study the factors influencing mycoremediation of Congo red. Several basidiomycetes and deuteromycetes species were tested for the decolourisation of Congo red (0.05 g/l) in a semi synthetic broth at static and shaking conditions. Poor decolourisation was observed when the dye acted as the sole source of nitrogen, whereas semi synthetic broth supplemented with fertilizer resulted in better decolourisation. Decolourisation of Congo red was checked in the presence of salts of heavy metals such as mercuric chloride, lead acetate and zinc sulphate. Decolourisation parameters such as temperature, pH, and rpm were optimized and the decolourisation obtained at optimized conditions varied between 29.25- 97.28 percent at static condition and 82.1- 100 percent at shaking condition. Sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoretic analysis revealed bands with molecular weights ranging between 66.5 to 71 kDa, a characteristic of the fungal laccases. High efficiency decolourisation of Congo red makes these fungal forms a promising choice in biological treatment of waste water containing Congo red.