Metabolic Evaluation in Paediatric Urolithiasis: A 4-Year Open Prospective Study.

INTRODUCTION: Children with urolithiasis are associated with considerable morbidity and commonly associated with metabolic abnormalities. By treating these abnormalities stone formation is prevented. OBJECTIVES: To study the metabolic risk factors of urolithiasis in children and compare them with literature. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In open, prospective and observational study, 75 children were evaluated from August 2010 to June 2014. In all patients' dietary history, water intake and results of laboratory findings were recorded. All urine samples obtained from patients were without dietary restrictions. Reference paediatric 24 hour urinary parameter was used according to western literature. RESULTS: We investigated 75 patients with urolithiasis. Low urine volume was found in 49 patients which is comparable with previous studies indicating simple intervention as to increase water intake. Low calcium intake was found in 44 patients suggesting that low calcium intake is associated with higher incidence of urolithiasis due to increased intestinal oxalate absorption. Hypocalcaemia was found in 32 patients and 24 hour urinary abnormality was found in only 16 patients'. Both these finding does not support previous literature. Stone analysis finding does not correlate with urinary finding. CONCLUSIONS: Low urine volume secondary to low water intake is predominant finding. Hypocalcaemia is major metabolic abnormality in contradiction to western literature. There are no nomograms for urinary excretion of Calcium, uric acid, oxalate and citrate in Indian children. Keeping the optimum blood calcium level & increased fluid intake can prevent stone formation in children.

New 1,3-oxazolo[4,5-c]quinoline derivatives: synthesis and evaluation of antibacterial and antituberculosis properties.

A new class of fused oxazoloquinoline derivatives was synthesized starting from 2-bromo-1-phenylethanones 1a-b through multi-step reactions. The newly synthesized compounds were evaluated for their in vitro antibacterial against Escherichia coli (ATTC-25922), Staphylococcus aureus (ATTC-25923), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC-27853) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (recultured) and antituberculosis activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv (ATCC 27294). Preliminary results indicated that most of the compounds demonstrated very good antibacterial and antituberculosis activities which are comparable with the first line drugs. Compounds 6a, 6c, 6g, 6j, 6k and 6n emerged as the lead antitubercular agents with MIC, 1 microg/mL and 99% bacterial inhibition while eight compounds, viz., 5a, 15k, 6a, 6c, 6g, 6j, 6k and 6n were found to be more potent than INH (MIC: 1.5 microg/mL) with MIC 1 microg/mL.

Combined use of Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism and IS6110-RFLP in fingerprinting clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from Kerala, South India.

BACKGROUND: DNA fingerprinting by IS6110-RFLP has shown a high incidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates having no and low copies of the insertion sequence in Kerala, South India. Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) would scan the entire genome rather than a few repetitive elements, we thought that this technique would help us in differentiating the large reservoir of isolates from an endemic region. Here we evaluate the ability of Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) to type clinical isolates. METHODS: Fifty clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis were analysed by conventional radioactive AFLP and IS6110- RFLP. M. bovis, M. bovis BCG and two non tuberculous mycobacteria were also analysed to see species specific differences generated by AFLP. Cluster analysis was performed using the AFLP profile that showed the maximum polymorphism within M. tuberculosis and this was compared to the number of copies of IS6110 insertions. RESULTS: For AFLP, out of ten primer pairs tested, the EO/MC pair generated maximum polymorphism among the clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis. The similarity between the isolates ranged between 88 and 99.5%. Majority (nearly 85%) of the 'low copy' IS6110 isolates clustered together, while the rest clustered irrespective of the copy numbers. AFLP could show rare differences between isolates of M. tuberculosis, M. bovis and M. bovis BCG. The AFLP profiles for non-tuberculous mycobacteria were highly different from those of M. tuberculosis. CONCLUSION: Polymorphism generated by AFLP within the M. tuberculosis species is limited and hence AFLP alone seems to have limited use in fingerprinting the isolates in Kerala. The combined use of AFLP and IS6110-RFLP showed relatively better differentiation of 'high copy' IS6110 isolates, but failed to differentiate the 'low copy' isolates. However, the technique may be efficient in inter-species differentiation, and hence potentially useful in identifying and developing species-specific markers.

Left ventricular systolic dysfunction identification by motion analysis.

This paper presents a new technique for identification of regional dysfunctions in the left ventricle from 2-D echocardiography. It uses a novel left ventricular border tracking algorithm based on Fuzzy inference system. In this paper we show how the regional dysfunction present in the left ventricle can be identified by tracking the movement of centre of mass of left ventricle in a 2D space. The path pattern of that point traced over the cardiac cycles shows variation between the two groups. The main advantage of this proposed approach is the smaller date handling in regional dysfunction identifications unlike other existing methods. The method is illustrated on the real 2D echocardiograph dataset that includes patients having dysfunctions in the left ventricular wall. The diagnostic potential of this method is explained in detail.