AIM OF THE REVIEW: The present review aims to compile an up-to-date review of the progress made in the continuous pharmacological and phytochemistry investigation of K. africana and the corresponding commercial and pharmaceutical application of these findings with the ultimate objective of providing a guide for future research on this plant.
METHOD: The scholarly information needed for this paper were predominantly sourced from the electronic search engines such as Google, Google scholar; publishing sites such as Elsevier, scienceDirect, BMC, PubMed; other scientific database sites for chemicals such as ChemSpider, PubChem, and also from online books.
RESULTS: Pharmacological investigations conducted confirm the anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antioxidant and anticancer activity of the extract of different parts of the plant. Bioactive constituents are found to be present in all parts of the plant. So far, approximately 150 compounds have been characterized from different part of the plant. Iridoids, naphthoquinones, flavonoids, terpenes and phenylethanoglycosides are the major class of compounds isolated. Novel compounds with potent antioxidant, antimicrobial and anticancer effect such as verbascoside, verminoside and pinnatal among others, have been identified. Commercial trade of K. africana has boosted in the las few decades. Its effect in the maintenance of skin has been recognized resulting in a handful of skin formulations in the market.
CONCLUSIONS: The pharmaceutical potentials of K. africana has been recognized and have witness a surge in research interest. However, till date, many of its traditional medicinal uses has not been investigated scientifically. Further probing of the existential researches on its pharmacological activity is recommended with the end-goal of unravelling the pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, clinical relevance and possible toxicity and side effects of both the extract and the active ingredients isolated.
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine the quality of life (QOL) scores among breast cancer patients at a Malaysian public hospital.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study of breast cancer patients was conducted between March to June 2013. QOL scores were determined using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30) and its breast cancer supplementary measure (QLQ-BR23). Both the QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BR23 assess items from functional and symptom scales. The QLQ-C30 in addition also measures the Global Health Status (GHS). Systematic random sampling was used to recruit patients.
RESULTS: 223 breast cancer patients were recruited with a response rate of 92.1%. The mean age of the patients was 52.4 years (95% CI = 51.0, 53.7, SD=10.3). Majority of respondents are Malays (60.5%), followed by Chinese (19.3%), Indians (18.4%), and others (1.8%). More than 50% of respondents are at stage III and stage IV of malignancy. The mean Global Health Status was 65.7 (SD = 21.4). From the QLQ-C30, the mean score in the functioning scale was highest for 'cognitive functioning' (84.1, SD=18.0), while the mean score in the symptom scale was highest for 'financial difficulties' (40.1, SD=31.6). From the QLQ-BR23, the mean score for functioning scale was highest for 'body image' (80.0, SD=24.6) while the mean score in the symptom scale was highest for 'upset by hair loss' (36.2, SD=29.4). Two significant predictors for Global Health Status were age and employment. The predictors explained 10.6% of the variation of global health status (R2=0.106).
CONCLUSIONS: Age and employment were found to be significant predictors for Global Health Status (GHS). The Quality of Life among breast cancer patients reflected by the GHS improves as age and employment increases.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed genotyping for both SNPs for 250 GIC patients and 572 healthy volunteers using a polymerase chain reaction- restriction fragment length polymorphism approach. We validated heterozygosity and homozygosity for both SNPs using direct sequencing.
RESULTS: The presence of a variant 194Trp allele in the Arg194Trp SNP was significantly associated with a higher risk of GIC, especially with gastric and colorectal cancers. We additionally found that the variant 399Gln allele in Arg399Gln SNP was associated with a greater risk of developing gastric cancer. Our combined analysis revealed that inheritance of variant alleles in both SNPs increased the GIC risk in Sabah population. Based on our etiological analysis, we found that subjects ≥50 years and males who carrying the variant 194Trp allele, and Bajau subjects carrying the 399Gln allele had a significantly increased risk of GIC.
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that inheritance of variant alleles in XRCC1 Arg194Trp and Arg399Gln SNPs may act as biomarkers for the early detection of GIC, especially for gastric and colorectal cancers in the Sabah population.
METHODS: A systematic literature search for studies with the primary aim of using OSN to detect and track a pandemic was conducted. We conducted an electronic literature search for eligible English articles published between 2004 and 2015 using PUBMED, IEEExplore, ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar, and Web of Science. First, the articles were screened on the basis of titles and abstracts. Second, the full texts were reviewed. All included studies were subjected to quality assessment.
RESULT: OSNs have rich information that can be utilized to develop an almost real-time pandemic surveillance system. The outcomes of OSN surveillance systems have demonstrated high correlations with the findings of official surveillance systems. However, the limitation in using OSN to track pandemic is in collecting representative data with sufficient population coverage. This challenge is related to the characteristics of OSN data. The data are dynamic, large-sized, and unstructured, thus requiring advanced algorithms and computational linguistics.
CONCLUSIONS: OSN data contain significant information that can be used to track a pandemic. Different from traditional surveys and clinical reports, in which the data collection process is time consuming at costly rates, OSN data can be collected almost in real time at a cheaper cost. Additionally, the geographical and temporal information can provide exploratory analysis of spatiotemporal dynamics of infectious disease spread. However, on one hand, an OSN-based surveillance system requires comprehensive adoption, enhanced geographical identification system, and advanced algorithms and computational linguistics to eliminate its limitations and challenges. On the other hand, OSN is probably to never replace traditional surveillance, but it can offer complementary data that can work best when integrated with traditional data.