Antimicrobial activity of prunella vulgaris extracts against multi-drug resistant escherichia coli from patients of urinary tract infection

Background and Objective: Escherichia Coli is the most common etiological agent of UTI and accounts for more then 100, 0000 hospitalization annually. The objective of this study was to investigate the antimicrobial activity of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Prunella vulgaris against E. coli from urinary tract infection patients

Methods: Urine samples of forty four suspected patients from Tertiary Care Hospital Faisalabad were used in this study. Ethanolic and aqueous extracts of Prunella vulgris [PV], a medicinal plant was evaluated for its ability to inhibit the growth of 38 resistant isolates of Escherichia coli strains and compared to Ciprofloxacin, Ofloxacin, Cefixime and Tobramycin by well diffusion method. Minimum inhibitory concentration was measured by using broth micro dilution method

Results: PV showed antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli strains, however Tobramycin at 10 microgram [10?g] inhibited the resistant E. coli to a greater extent as compared to other antibiotics and was resistant to twice less number of strains, about 82% of E. coli isolates have MDR pattern

Conclusion: Ciprofloxacin has more efficacy than PV and no synergistic effect with extracts of PV. Cefixime is least efficacious against resistant E. coli, however it has synergistic effect with extracts of PV

Teaching microscopy effectively through a combined Peyton's fourstep approach and Gagne's instructional model

Objective: To design a lesson plan for teaching microscopy using a combined Peyton's and Gagne's model

Study Design: Qualitative study with scoping review

Place and Duration of Study: Khyber Medical University, Peshawar from April-September 2017

Material and Methods: We searched Pub Med through a variety of search strategies. The purpose of the search was to identify relevant articles [using an inclusion and exclusion criteria] on making a lesson plan for a psychomotor skill. After selection of articles, the evidence was synthesized including author's name, year of publication, country, key findings, model used to make a lesson plan and limitations of the study. From the synthesised evidence, a lesson plan was designed on microscopy. This is a qualitative study with scoping review, therefore, no quantitative analysis or software was used

Results: In total, 130 articles were identified but after screening and assessment for eligibility five articles were selected. The synthesized evidence suggested that four articles had used Gagne's model, while one article had used a combined Gagne's and Peyton's model to design a lesson plan to teach psychomotor skills. We used the combined model to design a lesson plan for pathology students on microscopy. The microscopy skill was broken down into different parts and each learning step was integrated into the nine events of Gagne's model. The Peyton's model was combined to teach the actual microscopy skill for better learning and executing the skill

Conclusion: The model combined Gagne's and Peyton's model, which was used to design an effective lesson plan to teach microscopy. This model could also help in delivering better teaching sessions for other psychomotor skills

In vitro activity of ciprofloxacin and sparfioxacin against Streptococcus pneumonia

The in vitro activity of ciprofloxacin and sparfloxacin was compared against seventy clinical isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae from Rawalpindi/Islamabad region. The Minimum Inhibitory Concentrations [MICs] of the isolates were determined by agar dilution method. All the isolates were susceptible to sparfioxacin while 48% of the isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin. The antibacterial concentration of sparfloxacin [MIC90 0.25 microg/ml] was significantly lower than that of ciprofloxacin [MIC90, 2 microg/ml]. Sparfloxacin has excellent in vitro activity against Streptococcus pneumoniae