Impact of an Alcohol-based hand sanitizer usage during COVID-19 pandemic on disulfiram treatment: A South Indian psychiatrist's practice experiences

Background: Alcohol-based hand sanitizer (ABHS) usage has become one of the COVID-19 pandemic-related adapted responses. Some disulfiram-ethanol reactions are reported in people who use alcohol-based hand rub/sanitizer and take Disulfiram as a treatment for their alcohol use disorders. Aim & Objective: To determine the practice experiences of psychiatrists on disulfiram prescription to alcohol use disorder victims. Methodology: A cross-sectional study on the psychiatrists to find the experiences of disulfiram prescription to their clients with alcohol use disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Nearly 84 (51%) were reverted with a completed questionnaire. Among the respondents, 28 (33.3%) of the respondents decreased to prescribe Disulfiram, 48 (57.1%) reported that their patients stopped using ABHS due to fear of Disulfiram-Ethanol Reaction (DER), and 20 (23.8%) responders notified that their patients were expressed their worry on DER with Disulfiram and ABHS. Conclusion: Disulfiram prescribed for alcohol use disorders; treatment got peculiar experiences with the incidences of DER reported with Alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Many practitioners were scared to prescribe disulfiram due to DER with ABHS. The prevailing evidence that there is no possibility of cutaneous application of ABHS producing enough significant DER. Hence using ABHS is not a contraindication for disulfiram prescription.

Total Phenolics and Antioxidant Potentials of Rotula aquatica Lour.

Rotula aquatica Lour is a small branched shrub that grows characteristically among rocks and trailing over gravel in stream beds. It belongs to the family Boraginaceae and widely distributed throughout India. It is commonly called as Pasanabheda. The present study was aimed to evaluate the total phenolics and in vitro antioxidant activity in root and leaf extracts of Rotula aquatica Lour. The dried roots and leaves were subjected to soxhlet extraction utilizing chloroform and methanol followed by preliminary qualitative phytochemical analysis. Total phenolic content was estimated by Folin-Ciocalteu method and in vitro antioxidant assays were performed using various radical scavenging activities viz. DPPH, superoxide anion, nitric oxide, hydroxyl and iron chelating activities at different concentrations. The results of the total phenolic content estimation was expressed in terms of equivalence with standard and the antioxidant potentiality of various scavenging and chelating activity were expressed in terms of IC50 values. The results showed that both root and leaves possess significant antioxidant activity even though the former was found to be superior than the latter in terms of parameters assessed. Further the methanol extracts were proved to be an ideal for the materials subjected to investigation.