ABSTRACT
Virgin Coconut oil (VCO), owing to its functional properties (important in COVID-19), is costly and, therefore, susceptible to adulteration with other cheaper oils like coconut oil. An enzyme-based biosensor confirmative test of VCO was constructed by co-immobilizing enzymes onto a glassy carbon electrode. The performance of the biosensor was optimized at a potential of +0.5 V with 45 mg gelatin, 30 mg BSA coupled with 2.5% glutaraldehyde at pH 7.0 with an incubation time of 1 hr. Adulterated samples of VCO with coconut oil (CO) were analyzed. The concentration of diglyceride (DG) was estimated from the empirical relation, which showed a linear increase with the increase in adulteration. The developed biosensor was validated using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods using a paired sample t test at a 5% significance level. The biosensor could detect adulteration in VCO with CO above 20% within 3-5 s and can be reused for 25 days.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: To evaluate the incidence of large-bore hemodialysis catheter thrombosis in the setting of COVID-19. Materials and Methods: A retrospective review was performed of all patients who underwent placement of a temporary hemodialysis catheter after developing kidney injury after COVID 19 infection at our institution. Data collected included demographic information, procedure related information, and incidence of replacement due to lumen thrombosis. Groups were compared using students t-test for continuous variables and Fisher’s exact test for nominal variables. Results: 64 patients (43M, mean age 63.2 ± 13.3) underwent placement of temporary hemodialysis catheter placement for kidney injury related to COVID 19 infection. 31 (48.4%) of catheters were placed via an internal jugular vein (IJV) access and 33 (52.6%) of catheters were placed via a common femoral vein (CFV) access. Overall, 15 (23.4%) catheters required replacement due to lumen thrombosis despite heplock. There were no difference in age or sex in patients who required replacement to those who did not (P.0.05) [sic]. Of the replacements, 5/31 (16%) were placed via an IJV access and 10/33 (30.3%) were placed via a CVF access, although this difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.18). The average time to malfunction/replacement was 7.8 ± 4.8 days for catheters placed via an IJ access versus 3.4 ± 3.3 days for catheters placed via a CFV access (P = 0.055), trending toward significance. Conclusions: A high incidence of temporary dialysis catheter lumen thrombosis was present in patients with COVID-19 infection. This may be due to COVID related thrombosis versus decreased level of catheter care. Catheters placed via a femoral vein access had more frequent malfunction and with shorter indwelling time, although not significant, which may be due to small sample size.
ABSTRACT
The major protease plays an important role in the development of the virus. [...]screening plant compounds which could inhibit this protease is of importance in new drug discovery. Protein The protein selected for molecular docking from corona virus is the main protease 6M03 which is a cysteine protease. 6M0310 crystal structure contains 306 amino acids with a molecular mass of 33825.547 Daltons. In this study, we have docked the crystal structure of main COVID-19 protease in apo form (PDB ID: 6M03, resolution: 2Å) obtained from RSCB protein data bank and the ligands are obtained from PubChem. [...]these two dietary flavonoids could act as competitive inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 major protease.