Polyacrylamide gel electrophoretic study of protein spectra in human, sheep and rabbit platelets.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to K Roy.
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OBJECTIVE: To look for links between 'acting out' and 'acting in' behavioural stress responses with anxiety and disordered personality function. METHOD: Depressed patients completed a self-report measure of behavioural responses to stress 1 year after baseline assessment of anxiety levels, personality functioning and other study variables. RESULTS: Patients were assigned to four factorial groups on the basis of variable 'acting out' and 'acting in' scale scores, and effects of individual scale scores also examined. 'Acting in' styles were indicative of high trait anxiety, disordered personality functioning and, in particular, a Cluster C personality disorder style. 'Acting out' was linked most clearly with a Cluster B personality disorder style. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate links between behavioural stress responses and anxiety levels and disordered personality functioning. Assessing behavioural stresses responses may shape the clinical expression of some depressive disorders and inform the clinician about the likely salience of anxiety and personality styles.
BACKGROUND: We pursue a 'lock and key' hypothesis which posits that early adverse events ('locks') create an increased vulnerability to depression in the face of mirroring life events ('keys') in adulthood. Here we examine whether any such vulnerability links are cognitively mediated. METHODS: We study a sample of 96 clinically depressed patients who reported an identifiable 'cognitive schema' being activated when depressed. We examine for significant associations between early adverse events and later precipitants to the patients' depression, and then assess the extent to which any identified links are cognitively mediated. RESULTS: Qualitative analyses suggested quite strong associations between early childhood experiences and identified schemas, while the quantitative analyses identified few links. LIMITATIONS: These contrasting results may present a challenge to the hypothesis or reflect methodological limitations, and we therefore detail some of the complexities involved in identifying cognitive schemas.
Transforming growth factor-beta1 is a well-known fibrogenic cytokine produced by many types of cells including dermal fibroblasts. To investigate whether this fibrogenic cytokine is involved in development of hypertrophic scar, transforming growth factor-beta1 gene expression was evaluated in small skin samples. Because a sufficient quantity of normal skin from patients with hypertrophic scar is not readily available, a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction technique was used. Quantitation of gene expression by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction is difficult partly due to the lack of suitable complementary RNA standards. We have established a convenient, reliable procedure to construct an internal standard for transforming growth factor-beta1 starting with a gene specific polymerase chain reaction product. After digestion of the polymerase chain reaction product with endonuclease, a small piece of cDNA from human procollagen alpha1(I) cDNA with compatible ends was inserted into the polymerase chain reaction-DNA fragment. The recombinant cDNA was re-amplified by polymerase chain reaction and subcloned into a plasmid containing bacteriophage T7 and T3 promoters. Complementary RNA was prepared from the recombinant plasmid and amplified by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction together with the tissue or cellular RNA. After amplification, the products were electrophoresed in an agarose gel containing ethidium bromide. The bands for internal standard and transforming growth factor-beta1 mRNA were scanned, digitized, and plotted against the amount of internal standard complementary RNA added in the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The number of mRNA molecules/cell was calculated. We examined the transforming growth factor-beta1 mRNA in hypertrophic scar tissue and in normal skin and found that hypertrophic scar tissues expressed five-fold more transforming growth factor-beta1 mRNA than normal skin per unit of wet weight. We used this procedure to quantitate transforming growth factor-beta1 mRNA expression in 5 pairs of fibroblast cultures derived from hypertrophic scar and normal skin. The results showed that hypertrophic scar fibroblast cultures contain significantly more molecules of mRNA for transforming growth factor-beta1 than normal cells (116 +/- 6 vs. 97 +/- 7, p = 0.017, n = 5). These results were supported by Northern analysis for transforming growth factor-beta1 mRNA in the cells and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for TGF-beta1 protein in fibroblast-conditioned medium. In conclusion, hypertrophic scar tissue and fibroblasts produce more mRNA and protein for transforming growth factor-beta1, which may be important in hypertrophic scar formation. The construction of the gene specific internal standard for reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction is a simple and reliable procedure useful to quantitate gene expression in a small amount of tissue or number of cells.
Vanadium, as ammonium monovanadate, has been found to stimulate tumour cell proliferation in mice bearing a transplantable ascitic lymphoma. Markers including microsomal cytochrome P-450, UDP-glucuronyltransferase and cytosolic glutathione-S-transferase showed substantial alterations in a dose-responsive manner with vanadium administration when compared to the controls. Stimulation of tumour progression is also reflected by increased tumour cell count and decreased survival of the host.
BACKGROUND: There is an increasing trend of risk behaviour in adolescents worldwide but very little literature is available in India on this important subject. We surveyed an urban male adolescent population and a comparable rural population to determine the difference in their risk behaviour. METHODS: A comparative cross-sectional study was conducted among 199 and 152 male adolescents from an urban village of south Delhi and a rural village in Uttar Pradesh. A pretested semi-structured interview schedule with 36 items was applied on all subjects by trained interviewers. RESULTS: Consuming alcohol, smoking, pre-marital sexual intercourse and consuming bhang (cannabis) were present in 32.2%, 25.1%, 12.5% and 11.5% of the urban village adolescents and in 1.3%, 48.7%, 11.2%, and 16.5% of those residing in the rural village, respectively. About 66.8% of urban and 51.3% of rural adolescents had indulged in physical fights and 12.5% of urban and 6.6% of rural adolescents were in possession of assault weapons such as iron rods, chains or knives sometime in the 30 days prior to the interview. CONCLUSION: The results of our study indicate that there is a high prevalence of risk behaviour in both urban and rural adolescents. However, except for smoking which was more common amongst rural adolescents all the other risk behaviours were more in those residing in urban areas. The reasons for this need to be ascertained, taking the geographical and socio-cultural factors into account, prior to considering the introduction of behaviour modification programmes.
Exploratory studies on drug induced lipid peroxidation in goat whole blood and its inhibition with antioxidants were carried out using sodium ceftriaxone (CTS) as the representative drug and glutathione and probucol as the representative antioxidants. The studies showed that CTS could induce lipid peroxidation to a significant extent. Lipid peroxidation is a toxicity mediating process, this finding may be correlated with the toxic potential of the drug. It was further found that glutathione and probucol caused significant suppression of CTS induced lipid peroxidation. The results suggest that glutathione and probucol merit further assessment to explore their potential to reduce drug induced lipid peroxidation and thus to increase therapeutic index of the drug by way of reducing toxicity that may be mediated through free radical mechanism.
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To study the trends of beneficiary coverage (pregnant and lactating women and children less than two years of age) for utilization of supplementary nutrition and health services in a rural block before and after the launch of a strategy to converge Health & Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) on a single day christened "Nutrition and Health Day" (NHD). It is a before and after intervention design in rural ICDS block Amarwada in district Chhindwada. As a part of intervention, NHD were organised on which convergent services of Health & ICDS were made available to the beneficiaries. On the weekly NHDs, uncooked supplementary nutrition for the week was distributed to pregnant and lactating mothers and children under two. The Health worker visited the Anganwadi Centre (AWC) and immunized children and pregnant women, distributed IFA, Vitamin A and provided health and nutrition education. The study assessed the impact of these interventions on the coverage rates of the services. Study was conducted between May 97 and March 98. The routine monitoring reports of the ICDS and Health System of the state government were used as study tools. The study sample comprised of AWC beneficiaries in the project area. The total population of the block was 89,476. Participation in the supplementary nutrition program (SNP) increased two to three folds in all categories of the target population. Immunization and Vitamin A coverage levels for children also showed an increase of about 3 and 5-8 times from baseline status respectively in a year's time. Among pregnant women, Tetanus Toxoid (TT) and Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) utilization rates have also shown two and five fold increase respectively.
Considering importance of the lipophilicity of norethindrone (log P=2.97), a significant contributor to its mechanism of action, interaction of the drug with total lipids of goat whole blood have been investigated using phospholipid binding, fatty acid composition and peroxidation phenomena as the parameters under investigation. The objective was to derive an insight into the pharmacodynamic behavior of the drug by correlating biological activity with drug induced changes in lipid constituents. Significant loss in phospholipid along with changes in fatty acid cotmposition was observed after incubation of whole blood with norethindrone at 56 ng/ml (effective contraceptive concentration in blood) in varying periods of time. This may be ascribed to binding affinity of norethindrone with lipid constituents in blood. Lipid binding potential of the drug may have a role in its therapeutic effect. Lipid peroxidation induction potential of norethindrone was quantitatively measured in the context of its toxicity. The results reveal that northindrone caused significant extent of lipid peroxidation. Ascorbic acid, a promising antioxidant, at equivalent human dose levels of 250 mg and 500 mg could significantly reduce norethindrone induced lipid peroxidation.
Protective effects of three free radical scavengers, tocopherol (TOC), probucol (PR) and ascorbic acid (AA), on cardiotonic glycoside digoxin (DIG) induced lipid peroxidation in goat liver homogenate, have been studied by measuring malondialdehyde and glutathione contents as indicator parameters. The level of reduced glutathione decreased vis-a-vis malondialdehyde content increased in the drug treated samples in comparison with the controls. This suggests that DIG may have significant lipid peroxidation induction capacity. Considering lipid peroxidation as a toxicity mediating process, this may be related to the toxic potential of the drug. When the liver homogenate samples were incubated with antioxidant (TOC/PR/AA) in conjunction with the drug (DIG), lipid peroxidation was suppressed as indicated by increased level of reduced glutathione and decreased level of malondialdehyde in comparison with those of drug treated samples. This indicates that TOC, PR and AA may have considerable suppressive action on DIG induced lipid peroxidation. Thus, these antioxidants merit further extensive study to explore their potential in reducing DIG induced toxicity that may be mediated by free radical mediated process.
As a part of our ongoing effort to explore drug-induced lipid peroxidation in relation to drug-induced toxicity, our recent observations on lipid peroxidation induction potential of dexamethasone, a commonly used glucocorticoid compound in inflammatory and allergic conditions, has been presented considering lipid peroxidation a possible mediator of toxicity. An attempt was made to see the suppressive actions of some conventional antioxidant compounds, viz, ascorbic acid, alpha-tocopherol and probucol on dexamethasone-induced lipid peroxidation. It was found from the study that dexamethasone increased malondialdehyde content vis-a-vas decreased the level of reduced glutathione significantly in the liver homogenate. This suggests that dexamethasone caused a significant extent of lipid peroxidation which may be related to the toxic potential of the drug. It was further found all of the above antioxidants could suppress dexamethasone-induced lipid peroxidation to the significant extent.
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