Effect of Different Sugar Free Flavoured Chewing Gums on Salivary pH- a Double Blinded, Parallel Arm Randomized Clinical Trial.

Aim: To evaluate and compare the effect of four different sugar free chewing-gums on salivary pH at 0, 10, 20, 30 minutes. Study Design: Double blinded, parallel arm Randomized Clinical Trial. Place and Duration of the Study: Department of Public Health Dentistry, College Of Dental Sciences, Davangere, India. Jan-Feb 2015. Methodology: Forty healthy dental students, aged 21 -25 years, mean age- 20.3 years were randomly allocated into 4 different study groups: Licorice group, Ginger group, Cinnamon group, and Xylitol group. Unstimulated saliva was collected from the participants at baseline, following which the participants were given respective gums to chew and the subsequent salivary samples were collected at intervals of 10, 20 & 30 minutes and pH was analyzed using pH meter. Statistical analysis was done using repeated measures ANOVA and One way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s post-hoc test. Results: Intergroup comparison showed, statistically significant difference between the groups at ten minutes (P=0.025), twenty minutes (P=0.004) and thirty minutes (P=0.001). At the end of thirty minutes, Ginger group showed maximum increase in salivary pH followed by Xylitol. When intragroup analysis was done, there was statistically significant difference in Licorice (P=0.033), Cinnamon (P=0.034) and Xylitol group (P=0.041) at different time intervals. Conclusion: The above results showed that, Ginger flavoured gum followed by Xylitol gum significantly increases salivary pH, as a means of caries prevention; it can be a good way to promote dental health. Hence, it can be suggested that the ginger flavoured gums can be advised in the subjects who are more susceptible to salivary pH fall and dental caries.

Rules of Property of Drugs Used by State Medical Master Yan Zhenghua Based on Data Mining / 中国中医药信息杂志

Objective To analyze the rules of property of the drugs used by State Medical Master Yan Zhenghua in clinical.Methods The prescriptions used by Pro. Yan were collected to build a database, which was based on traditional Chinese medicine inheritance assistant software. After analyzed by the software, such as using the module to analyze the prescriptions, the medication characters of the prescriptions can be got from the database.Results Drugs of warm nature were used with the highest frequency 7998 times, followed by the cool 7866 times, leveling 6763 times, cold 3942 times, and hot 95 times. From the property of five flavors, the most used flavor of drugs was bitter 15260 times, followed by sweet 10810 times, pungent 10453 times, sour 2794 times, salty 1651 times, mild 1203 times, and astringency 186 times. In the frequency of the channel tropism involved, the highest is of liver channel 14237 times, followed by lung 10452 times and spleen 10061 times.Conclusion Pro. Yan was accustomed to using the drugs that were of warm and cool natures, and sweet and pungent flavors, and also the drugs that have action on the collateral channels of liver, lung and spleen, which were the same as the experience from Pro. Yan.

Cinnamic acid, ethanol and temperature interaction on coumarate decarboxylase activity and the relative expression of the putative cd gene in D. bruxellensis

Dekkera bruxellensis is one of the main contaminating yeasts in wine due to its ability to metabolize cinnamic acids into volatile phenols. This yeast metabolizes p-coumaric acid into 4-vinylphenol through a coumarate decarboxylase (CD) and then transforms it into to 4-ethylphenol (EF) through a vinylphenol reductase. In this work we investigated the influence of the interaction between the concentration of p-coumaric acid, ferulic acid and ethanol as well as growth temperature on the production of CD activity and the expression of a putative gene that codes for this enzymatic activity. For this, a Box Behnken experimental design was used. The concentration of p-coumaric acid (5-26 ppm) and ferulic acid (3-9 ppm) alone did not show any significant effect on any of the studied response variables. However, the interaction between (ethanol concentration * cinnamic acid concentration) and (ethanol concentration * temperature) had a significant statistical effect on the production of CD activity. Additionally, a higher growth temperature negatively affected the expression of the putative cd gene and the production of CD activity. This is the first work that studies the effect of cinnamic acids on the production of CD activity and the relative expression of its putative gene, using natural concentrations of cinnamic acid found in wine.

Reason,trouble and strategy of using true tastiness to mark five flavours of herbs / 中华中医药杂志

The five flavours of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)stand for five tastes,such as pungent,sweet,sour,bitter and salt.The five flavours not only stand for the actual tastiness of herbs,but also the effect characteristic of TCM according to traditional medical theory.So this kind of situation led to a disorder of the marking standardization of five flavours.So the authors think that we should mark herbs(or TCM)based on their true tastiness,and this way maybe help us to solve the problem and to research the relationship between the flavours and the effect of the herbs(or TCM).