Acceptance and Impact of Millet-Based Mid-Day Meal on the Nutritional Status of Adolescent School Going Children in a Peri Urban Region of Karnataka State in India.

The study assessed the potential for use of millets in mid-day school meal programs for better nutritional outcomes of children in a peri-urban region of Karnataka, India, where children conventionally consumed a fortified rice-based mid-day meal. For a three-month period, millet-based mid-day meals were fed to 1500 adolescent children at two schools, of which 136 were studied as the intervention group and were compared with 107 other children in two other schools that did not receive the intervention. The intervention design was equivalent to the parallel group, two-arm, superiority trial with a 1:1 allocation ratio. The end line allocation ratio was 1.27:1 due to attrition. It was found that there was statistically significant improvement in stunting (p = 0.000) and the body mass index (p = 0.003) in the intervention group and not in the control group (p = 0.351 and p = 0.511, respectively). The sensory evaluation revealed that all the millet-based menu items had high acceptability, with the highest scores for the following three items: finger millet idli, a steam cooked fermented savory cake; little and pearl millet bisi belle bath, a millet-lentil hot meal; and upma, a pearl and little millet-vegetable meal. These results suggest significant potential for millets to replace or supplement rice in school feeding programs for improved nutritional outcomes of children.

Regioselective synthesis of polycyclic aza-oxa and aza-oxa-thia heteroarenes as Colo-205 and HepG2 carcinoma cells growth inhibitors.

An efficient regioselective synthesis of polycyclic diheteroaryl[b,d]pyrans and diheteroaryl[c,e][1,2]diazepines has been reported through ring transformation reactions of 2-oxo-2,5-dihydrothiochromeno[4,3-b]pyrans (3,4), 2-oxo-5,6-dihydro-2H-benzo[b]pyrano[2,3-d]oxepine/thiepine (8, 9) and 6-oxo-3,6-dihydro-2H-naphtho[1,2-b]pyrano[2,3-d]oxepine (15) by hydrazine, at ambient and reflux temperature. Nine compounds viz 5a,b; 10a,c,d; 12b; 13b; 16 and 1-methylthio-5,6-dihydrobenzo[f]quinoline (0.1-100 µM) were screened for their cytotoxicity in normal (IEC-6), carcinoma (Colo-205) and HepG2 cell lines. None of the compounds showed cytotoxicity in normal IEC-6 cells while 10a,d and 16 resulted in killing of Colo-205 cells with IC50 ranging 20-60 µM while 10c and 13b caused killing of HepG2 cells with IC50 values ranging 60-80 µM concentration. Further, 10a,d and 16 caused apoptosis through a cascade of mitochondrial pathway in Colo-205 cells indicating anticancerous potential against intestinal cancer. Interestingly, compounds 10c and 13b exhibited apoptosis through mitochondrial pathway in HepG2 cells suggesting anticancer activity against hepatic cancer.