Role of serum C-reactive protein (CRP)/Albumin ratio in predicting the severity of acute pancreatitis: A retrospective cohort.

Acute pancreatitis is a disease with a wide spectrum of severity, complications, and outcome with severe life-threatening complications develop in patients leading to high mortality in severe acute pancreatitis. The rationale of this study is to diagnose the severity of acute pancreatitis using a single test ratio, i.e., CRP/albumin ratio which is a combination of markers for systemic inflammation and nutritional status. All those patients with age group 16-80 years who were diagnosed with acute pancreatitis and admitted subsequently to ICU were included. Severe pancreatitis was determined as CT severity score above 7. About 41% patients out of total 225 had severe pancreatitis. CRP/albumin ratio >4.35 had a sensitivity of 87% and accuracy of 76% to predict acute severe pancreatitis. Elevated CRP/albumin ratio was also associated with complications like multi-organ failure OR: 2.31 [1.3-4.2], duodenal thickening OR: 2.25 [1.2-4.2], and ascites OR: 2.90 [1.5-5.6]. Although, the severity of this elevation varied with different age groups, such non-invasive and readily available parameters should be relied upon admission to risk stratify the patients suffering from pancreatitis. CRP/albumin ratio has higher sensitivity and negative predictive value to predict severe pancreatitis than CRP alone and hence give additional advantage as a prognostic marker, although Delong's test to compare AUROC was indifferent (P-value: 0.22).

Comparative study of antioxidant, metal chelating and antiglycation activities of Momordica charantia flesh and pulp fractions.

Momordica charantia is commonly used as a vegetable and folk medicine in most parts of South Asia. This study aims to determine and compare the antioxidant, metal chelating and antiglycation activities of aqueous extracts of M. charantia fruit flesh (MCF) and fruit pulp (MCP) fractions. Our results show that MCP has pronounced DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging potential compared to MCF. In the antiglycation assay both fractions illustrated considerable inhibitory activities against the formation of AGEs induced by glucose with an efficacy of 75 and 67% with 150 µl of MCP and MCF extracts respectively, almost equal to 0.3mM amino guanidine. Results for metal catalysed protein fragmentation and autoxidative and glycoxidation assays demonstrate that MCF and MCP inhibited metal catalysed protein fragmentation. The percentage of relative standard deviation for three replicate measurements of 150 µl of MCF and MCP was < 3.0% for antiglycation. The antioxidant assays with regression values of MCP (0.981 and 0.991) and MCF (0.967 and 0.999) were also recorded. We conclude that both extracts possess high antioxidant and antiglycation activities and are equally good sources of antioxidant and antiglycating agents.