Student’s perception of creative study guide posters in pharmacology: The Kurukshetra model

Background: One of the major challenges for pharmacology teachers is how to capture students’ interests and engage them in the subject, to create an engaging and enjoyable learning process. “Creative study guide posters” is one such novel educational tool that can help achieve these goals. Aims and Objectives: The authors tried to recreate visual artwork in the subject of pharmacology to engage students and at the same time make learning easy and fun-filled. Materials and Methods: In this study, 2nd year medical students participated and prepared creative study guide posters on antimicrobials and microbes in the form of two armies. On the one hand, antimicrobial drugs depicted the good army, consisting of the name of the drug, drug group, and mechanism of action, while on the other hand, the microorganisms depicted the evil army, consisting of the names of the common microbes, representing the battle of Kurukshetra as in the Indian epic of Mahabharata. Results: The majority of the students found this model interesting and useful for revising antimicrobials. About 82.3% of students agreed that their concepts of antimicrobials improved after this activity. About 86.46% of students believed that this model would foster interactive learning. Only 65.63% of students felt that the traditional methods of revising topics were better than this activity. Conclusion: Creative instruction encourages students to think independently, paricipate actively, and express themselves freely. Creative study guide poster activities help with better student engagement, reinforcing concepts, and better retention than just passing information passively in classrooms.

Disseminated histoplasmosis with reactive haemophagocytosis presenting as PUO in an immunocompetent host.

Disseminated histoplasmosis (DH) with reactive haemophagocytosis has been described in literature mainly in immunocompromised hosts. Only sporadic case reports exist in immunocompetent hosts. Here, we present a rare case of DH with reactive haemophagocytosis in an immunocompetent host presenting as PUO.

Chemotherapy-induced palmer planter erythrodysesthesia.

We report a case of palmar plantar erythrodysesthesia (PPE) in a case of acute lymphoblastic leukemia treated with VALP regime. The treating physician must be aware of this uncommon complication of chemotherapeutic agents to avoid unnecessary investigations.

A peptide inhibitor of HIV-1 protease using alpha, beta- dehydro residues: a structure based computer model.

HIV-1 encodes an aspartic protease, an enzyme crucial to viral maturation and infectivity. It is responsible for the cleavage of various protein precursors into viral proteins. Inhibition of this enzyme prevents the formation of mature, infective viral particles and therefore, it is a potential target for therapeutic intervention following infection. Several drugs that inhibit the action of this enzyme have been discovered. These include peptidomimetic inhibitors such as ABT-538 and saquinavir, and structure based inhibitors such as indinavir and nelfinavir. Several of these have been tested in human clinical trials and have demonstrated significant reduction in viral load. However, most of them have been found to be of limited clinical utility because of their poor pharmacological properties and also because the viral protease becomes rapidly resistant to these drugs on account of mutations in the enzyme. One way to overcome these limitations is to design an inhibitor that interacts mainly with the conserved residues of HIV-1 protease. By a rational drug design approach based on the high resolution X-ray crystal structure of the HIV-1 protease with--MVT 101 (a substrate based inhibitor) and the specific design principles of peptides containing dehydro-Alanine (delta Ala) derived from our earlier studies, we have designed a tetrapeptide with the sequence: NH2-Thr-delta Ala-delta Ala-Gln-COOH. Energy minimization and molecular modelling of the interaction of the designed tetrapeptide with the inhibitor binding site indicate that the inhibitor is in an extended conformation and makes excessive contacts with the viral enzyme at the interface between the protein subunits. The designed inhibitor has 33% of its interaction with the conserved region of HIV-1 protease which is of the same order as that of MVT 101 with the enzyme.

Hormone profile & polycystic ovaries in acne vulgaris.

Thirty women with acne vulgaris, 20 of whom had moderate/severe acne and ten mild acne, and ten controls matched for age were studied. Grade of hirsutism and menstrual irregularities, if any, were recorded. Hormonal measurements included gonadotropins, LH/FSH, prolactin, testosterone and androstenedione in the early follicular phase and progesterone in the luteal phase to assess ovulation. Pelvic ultrasound examination for polycystic ovaries (PCO) was done in all subjects. Sixteen patients with moderate/severe acne and one with mild acne had polycystic ovaries on ultrasound. Patients with moderate/severe acne with polycystic ovaries had high luteinizing hormone, prolactin, testosterone and androstenedione and LH/FSH ratio of more than three. Patients with polycystic ovaries were detected to have at least one hormonal abnormality.

Enuresis: analysis of 100 cases.

One hundred children with enuresis were studied to find out various factors responsible for this condition. Enuresis was more frequent in first born, service class and bottle fed children. There was a significant role of stress factors in causation of enuresis. We found a higher frequency of behavioral symptoms among children with enuresis. There was no significant correlation between enuresis and sex, education of parents, social class, sleep patterns, age of mother at marriage and intellectual grades of the children. Worm infestations, giardiasis, amebiasis and urinary infection were seen in 70% of cases. General body weakness, cold and nervousness were the common causes of enuresis in the parents' opinion. The main reason for not seeking the treatment at an early stage in view of parents' was that they thought enuresis a normal variant.