Mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC) is a rare tumour of the trachea accounting for up to 0.2% of reported primary lung malignancy. We report a case of a 54-year-old man, ex-smoker, whose presentation mimicked adult onset asthma with cough and wheezing, which did not respond to conventional treatment. He had occasional haemoptysis and weight loss in which CT scan performed for malignancy screening showed a protruding mass in the distal trachea causing endobronchial obstruction. Bronchoscopic intervention was performed to relieve the obstruction that resulted in resolution of asthmatic symptoms. Histological diagnosis confirmed MEC. This case emphasised the importance of a high index of suspicion in an unusual presentation of a common disease and the pivotal role of bronchoscopic intervention in malignant central airway obstruction.
This study looked into the rate and pattern of neuropsychological impairment in patients with traumatic brain injury patients at three months post injury. Forty patients attending the neurosurgery outpatient clinic were included in the study. Benton visual retention test (BVRT), rey auditory verbal learning test (RAVLT), digit span test, trail making test (TMT) and mini mental state examination (MMSE) were used for assessment. Forty five percent (n=18) sustained moderate to severe head injury. Twenty five percent (n=10) have abnormal MMSE result. Forty two and a half percent (n=17) have abnormal BVRT result. Seventy five percent (n=30) have abnormal RAVLT result while 35% (n=14) have abnormal digit span test result. Seventy seven and a half percent (n=31) have at least one neurological deficit. There was significant association between severity of head injury (GCS score) and neuropsychological deficit. This study highlights the point that in post head injury patients, there are high occurrences of cognitive dysfunction. MMSE and GCS play a significant and important role in assessing cognitive dysfunction. Severity of head injury as determined by GCS scores also influence the outcome in patients with head injury
Acanthus ilicifolius, a mangrove medicinal plant, is traditionally used to treat a variety of diseases. The aim of this research is to assess the chemoprotective outcomes of A. ilicifolius ethanolic extract against azoxymethane (AOM) induced colonic aberrant crypt foci (ACF) in rats.
Goniothalamin, a natural compound extracted from Goniothalamus sp. belonging to the Annonacae family, possesses anticancer properties towards several tumor cell lines. This study focused on apoptosis induction by goniothalamin (GTN) in the Hela cervical cancer cell line. Cell growth inhibition was measured by MTT assay and the IC50 value of goniothalamin was 3.2 ± 0.72 μg/ml. Morphological changes and biochemical processes associated with apoptosis were evident on phase contrast microscopy and fluorescence microscopy. DNA fragmentation, DNA damage, caspase-9 activation and a large increase in the sub-G1 and S cell cycle phases confirmed the occurrence of apoptosis in a time-dependent manner. It could be concluded that goniothalamin show a promising cytotoxicity effect against cervical cancer cells (Hela) and the cell death mode induced by goniothalamin was apoptosis.
Glycyrrhiza glabra L. (Family: Fabaceae) is one of the important traditional medicinal plant used extensively in folk medicine. It is known for its ethnopharmacological value in curing a wide variety of ailments. Glycyrrhizin, an active compound of G. glabra, possesses anti-inflammatory activity due to which it is mostly used in traditional herbal medicine for the treatment and management of chronic diseases. The present review is focused extensively on the pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, toxicology, and potential effects of Glycyrrhizic Acid (GA). A thorough literature survey was conducted to identify various studies that reported on the GA on PubMed, Science Direct and Google Scholar.
Chemoprevention has become an important area in cancer research due to low success rate of current therapeutic modalities. Diet plays a vital role in the etiology of cancer. This research was carried out to study the chemopreventive properties of germinated rough rice (GRR) crude extract in Sprague-Dawley rats induced with azoxymethane. Germination of rough rice causes significant changes in several chemical compositions of presently bioactive compounds. These compounds may prevent or postpone the inception of cancer. Fifty male Sprague-Dawley rats (6 weeks of age) were randomly divided into 5 groups which were (G1) induced with azoxymethane (AOM) and not given GRR (positive control), (G2) induced with AOM and given 2000 mg/kg GRR, (G3) induced with AOM and given 1000 mg/kg GRR, (G4) induced with AOM and given 500 mg/kg GRR, and (G5) not induced with AOM and not given GRR crude extract (negative control). To induce colon cancer, rats received two IP injections of AOM in saline (15 mg/kg) for two subsequent weeks. Organs were removed and weighed. Aberrant crypt foci (ACF) were evaluated histopathologically. β-Catenin expressions were determined by Western blot. Treatment with 2000 mg/kg GRR crude extract not only resulted in the greatest reduction in the size and number of ACF but also displayed the highest percentage of nondysplastic ACF. Treatment with 2000 mg/kg GRR also gave the lowest level of expression in β-catenin. Thus, GRR could be a promising dietary supplement for prevention of CRC.
Neurodegenerative diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders that are incurable and characterized by the progressive degeneration of the function and structure of the central nervous system (CNS) for reasons that are not yet understood. Neurodegeneration is the umbrella term for the progressive death of nerve cells and loss of brain tissue. Because of their high energy requirements, neurons are especially vulnerable to injury and death from dysfunctional mitochondria. Widespread damage to mitochondria causes cells to die because they can no longer produce enough energy. Several lines of pathological and physiological evidence reveal that impaired mitochondrial function and dynamics play crucial roles in aging and pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. As mitochondria are the major intracellular organelles that regulate both cell survival and death, they are highly considered as a potential target for pharmacological-based therapies. The purpose of this review was to present the current status of our knowledge and understanding of the involvement of mitochondrial dysfunction in pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the importance of mitochondrial biogenesis as a potential novel therapeutic target for their treatment. Likewise, we highlight a concise overview of the key roles of mitochondrial electron transport chain (ETC.) complexes as well as mitochondrial biogenesis regulators regarding those diseases.
The study aims to analyze two objectives: first is to explore the non-linear relationship between tourism development, economic growth, urbanization, and environmental degradation, and also to analyze the threshold level of the contribution of tourism development on environmental degradation in top tourist arrival destinations. We applied the newly proposed econometric method panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) framework with two regimes on yearly panel data from 1995 to 2017. Findings suggest that the relationship between tourism development and environmental degradation is non-linear and regime dependent. Furthermore, the findings indicated that the relationship above the threshold level is negative and significant, while below the threshold, tourism development is positive and significant effect on environmental degradation. Tourism development and environmental degradation also exhibit the inverted U-shape relationship meaning that at a particular point, increase in tourism development increases in environmental degradation but after a particular point, increase in tourism development decreases the environmental degradation. The economic growth and urbanization also portray a non-linear and regime-dependent relationship with environmental degradation. The study assists policies and empirical information.
Financial development is identified as one of the significant factors that affect energy consumption and has been widely discussed in the literature. However, the association between financial development and renewable energy consumption is still at its earlier stage and is limitedly explored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the non-linear association between financial development and renewable energy consumption in the top renewable energy consumption countries. The study utilized the newly introduced econometric technique panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model with two regimes on annual panel data consisted of years 1997-2017. The result confirmed that all the financial development indicators increase renewable energy consumption but affect renewable energy consumption differently. Moreover, the economic growth and industrial structure showed a positive and significant association in both regimes, whereas the population showed a negative relationship with renewable energy consumption in a low growth regime but the association becomes positive in high growth regimes. The study suggested several policies for the top renewable consumption countries.
Numeral recognition is considered an essential preliminary step for optical character recognition, document understanding, and others. Although several handwritten numeral recognition algorithms have been proposed so far, achieving adequate recognition accuracy and execution time remain challenging to date. In particular, recognition accuracy depends on the features extraction mechanism. As such, a fast and robust numeral recognition method is essential, which meets the desired accuracy by extracting the features efficiently while maintaining fast implementation time. Furthermore, to date most of the existing studies are focused on evaluating their methods based on clean environments, thus limiting understanding of their potential application in more realistic noise environments. Therefore, finding a feasible and accurate handwritten numeral recognition method that is accurate in the more practical noisy environment is crucial. To this end, this paper proposes a new scheme for handwritten numeral recognition using Hybrid orthogonal polynomials. Gradient and smoothed features are extracted using the hybrid orthogonal polynomial. To reduce the complexity of feature extraction, the embedded image kernel technique has been adopted. In addition, support vector machine is used to classify the extracted features for the different numerals. The proposed scheme is evaluated under three different numeral recognition datasets: Roman, Arabic, and Devanagari. We compare the accuracy of the proposed numeral recognition method with the accuracy achieved by the state-of-the-art recognition methods. In addition, we compare the proposed method with the most updated method of a convolutional neural network. The results show that the proposed method achieves almost the highest recognition accuracy in comparison with the existing recognition methods in all the scenarios considered. Importantly, the results demonstrate that the proposed method is robust against the noise distortion and outperforms the convolutional neural network considerably, which signifies the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed approach in comparison to the state-of-the-art recognition methods under both clean noise and more realistic noise environments.
Newcastle disease virus (NDV) is used as an antineoplastic agent in clinical tumor therapy. It has prompted much interest as an anticancer agent because it can replicate up to 10,000 times better in human cancer cells than in most normal cells. This study was carried out to determine the oncolytic potential of NDV strain AF2240 and V4-UPM on WEHI-3B leukemia cell line. Results from MTT cytotoxicity assay showed that the CD(50) values for both strains were 2 and 8 HAU for AF2240 and V4-UPM, respectively. In addition, bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) and trypan blue dye exclusion assays showed inhibition in cell proliferation after different periods. Increase in the cellular level of caspase-3 and detection of DNA laddering using agarose gel electrophoresis on treated cells with NDV confirmed that the mode of cell death was apoptosis. In addition, flow-cytometry analysis of cellular DNA content showed that the virus caused an increase in the sub-G1 region (apoptosis peaks). In conclusion, NDV strains AF2240 and V4-UPM caused cytolytic effects against WEHI-3B leukemic cell line.
Newcastle disease virus (NDV) is a member of the Paramyxoviridae that has caused severe economic losses in poultry industry worldwide. Several strains of NDV were reported to induce cytolysis to cancerous cell lines. It has prompted much interest as anticancer agent because it can replicate up to 10,000 times better in human cancer cells than in most normal cells. In this study, two NDV strains, viserotropic-velogenic strain AF2240 and lentogenic strain V4-UPM, showed cytolytic activity and apoptosis induction against Mouse myelomoncytic leukemia (WEHI 3B). The cytolytic effects of NDV strains were determined using microtetrazolium (MTT) assay. The cytolytic dose - fifty percent (CD(50)) were 2 and 8HAU for AF2240 and V4-UPM strains, respectively. Cells treated with NDV strains showed apoptotic features compared to the untreated cells under fluorescence microscope. NDV induced activation of caspase-3 and DNA laddering in agarose gel electrophoresis which confirmed the apoptosis. The anti-leukemic activity of both strains was evaluated on myelomoncytic leukemia BALB/c mice. The results indicated that both NDV strains significantly decreased liver and spleen weights. It also decreased blasts cell percentage in blood, bone marrow and spleen smears of treated mice (p<0.05). Histopathological studies for spleen and liver confirmed the hematological results of blood and bone marrow. From the results obtained, the exposure to both NDV stains AF2240 and V4-UPM showed similar results for Ara-c. In conclusion NDV strains AF2240 and V4-UPM can affect WEHI 3B leukemia cells in vitro and in vivo.
The fluoroquinolone antibacterial drug ciprofloxacin (cip) has been used to cap metallic (silver and gold) nanoparticles by a robust one pot synthetic method under optimized conditions, using NaBH₄ as a mild reducing agent. Metallic nanoparticles (MNPs) showed constancy against variations in pH, table salt (NaCl) solution, and heat. Capping with metal ions (Ag/Au-cip) has significant implications for the solubility, pharmacokinetics and bioavailability of fluoroquinolone molecules. The metallic nanoparticles were characterized by several techniques such as ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV), atomic force microscopy (AFM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) methods. The nanoparticles synthesized using silver and gold were subjected to energy dispersive X-ray tests in order to show their metallic composition. The NH moiety of the piperazine group capped the Ag/Au surfaces, as revealed by spectroscopic studies. The synthesized nanoparticles were also assessed for urease inhibition potential. Fascinatingly, both Ag-cip and Au-cip NPs exhibited significant urease enzyme inhibitory potential, with IC50 = 1.181 ± 0.02 µg/mL and 52.55 ± 2.3 µg/mL, compared to ciprofloxacin (IC50 = 82.95 ± 1.62 µg/mL). MNPs also exhibited significant antibacterial activity against selected bacterial strains.
We report a case of a 21 years old female who presented with a history of anterior knee pain for previous 3 months. Pain was localized to the anteromedial aspect of the left knee and aggravated by flexion. Clinical examination revealed a 2x2cm painful lump on the anteromedial aspect of the left medial condyle with no effusion. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed an anterosuperior tear of the medial collateral ligament. The patient subsequently underwent left knee arthroscopic examination. Two yellowish pedunculated masses arising from the anteromedial portion of the synovium were discovered and completely excised. Histopathological examination of the excision biopsy revealed pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS) with marked central necrosis. One year post excision, she is well with no signs or symptoms of recurrence. This case highlights an uncommon cause of anterior knee pain. Localized PVNS typically presents with mechanical symptoms, however, pain could arise from pedicle torsion and necrosis.
The impact of dengue on liver function was studied on fifty serologically confirmed dengue cases admitted to Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (HUKM). Twenty-five of these patients had classic dengue fever (DF) and 25 had grade 1 or 2 dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). There were more (60%) DHF patients with hepatomegaly compared to DF (40%) but the difference was not statistically significant. Analysis of the liver profile showed that liver dysfunction was commoner in DHF compared to DF, indicating that the degree of liver impairment may be related to the severity of DHF. Hyperbilirubinemia was noted in 3 (12%) DHF and 2 (8%) DF patients. The mean (range) serum bilirubin was higher in DHF [14.2(5-50) micromol/l] compared to DF [10.9(5-30) micromol/l)] (p > 0.05). Elevated levels of serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) were observed more frequently in DHF (20 and 12 patients respectively) compared to DF (16 and 8 patients respectively). Nine (36%) DHF and 6 (24%) DF patients had concomitant elevation of ALT and ALP levels. The mean (range) serum ALT levels were 109.3(23-325) U/l in DHF and 90.8(13-352) U/l in DF (p > 0.05). The mean (range) serum ALP levels were 102.2(15-319) U/l in DHF and 93.3(34-258) U/l in DF (p > 0.05). The ALT and ALP levels were significantly higher in DHF patients with spontaneous bleeding than those without bleeding (p < 0.05) None of the patients developed fulminant hepatitis. The immunoregulatory cells, which include the T (CD3), B (CD 19), CD4, CD8, CD5 and natural killer (NK) cells were significantly lower in DHF compared to DF patients (p < 0.05). However, the reduction in these cell counts did not correlate with the liver dysfunction seen in DHF patients. In conclusion, hepatomegaly and liver dysfunction were commoner in DHF compared to DF.
Despite of the advancement of technology in the present internet age, many college students
lack the information and communication technology (ICT) literacy skills like evaluating those necessary
to navigate, as well as using the information available today. Evaluating the quality of information
sources encompasses students’ ability to determine relevance, accuracy, and overall credibility of
sources and information. Moreover, the quality of information found online is extremely variable
because anyone can post data on the internet, and not all online sources are equally reliable, valuable,
or accurate. From a study conducted on diploma students’ assignments using rubric at an international
university in Kuala Lumpur, it was found that there was a problem in digital information evaluation
skills and lack of ability in using evaluation criteria, including authority, accuracy, currency,
objectivity, and coverage on digital information, as well as sources among diploma students. The future
work of this study will be the use of mobile devices in collaborative and interactive learning to improve
digital information evaluation skills among diploma students. This approach does not only improve the
students’ learning attitude, but also enhances the effectiveness of learning.
Cancer is one of the major health problems worldwide and its current treatments have a number of undesired adverse side effects. Natural compounds may reduce these. Currently, a few plant products are being used to treat cancer. In this study, goniothalamin, a natural occurring styryl-lactone extracted from Goniothalamus macrophyllus, was investigated for cytotoxic properties against cervical cancer (HeLa), breast carcinoma (MCF-7) and colon cancer (HT29) cells as well as normal mouse fibroblast (3T3) using MTT assay. Fluorescence microscopy showed that GTN is able to induce apoptosis in HeLa cells in a time dependent manner. Flow cytometry further revealed HeLa cells treated with GTN to be arrested in the S phase. Phosphatidyl serine properties present during apoptosis enable early detection of the apoptosis in the cells. Using annexin V/PI double staining it could be shown that GTN induces early apoptosis on HeLa cells after 24, 48 and 72 h. It could be concluded that goniothalamin showing a promising cytotoxicity effect against several cancer cell lines including cervical cancer cells (HeLa) with apoptosis as the mode of cell death induced on HeLa cells by Goniothalamin was.
The essential oils from the leaves and rhizomes of Alpinia pahangensis Ridl., collected from Pahang, Peninsular Malaysia, were obtained by hydrodistillation, and their chemical compositions were determined by GC and GC/MS analyses. The major components of the rhizome oil were γ-selinene (11.60%), β-pinene (10.87%), (E,E)-farnesyl acetate (8.65%), and α-terpineol (6.38%), while those of the leaf oil were β-pinene (39.61%), α-pinene (7.55%), and limonene (4.89%). The investigation of the antimicrobial activity of the essential oils using the broth microdilution technique revealed that the rhizome oil of A. pahangensis inhibited five Staphylococcus aureus strains with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values between 0.08 and 0.31 μg/μl, and four selected fungi with MIC values between 1.25 and 2.50 μg/μl.
Group B streptococcus (GBS) is a rare cause of meningitis in adults that commonly affects patients with multiple underlying comorbidities. Although it is uncommon, it typically progresses very rapidly and has a high mortality rate as compared to other causes of bacterial meningitis. Here, we report a patient with GBS meningitis who had no underlying medical illness and presented with multiple episodes of seizure within hours of developing fever. Cerebrospinal fluid analysis results were consistent with bacterial meningitis, and blood cultures grew GBS. She was treated with intravenous ceftriaxone for 2 weeks and made a great recovery without any sequalae. In conclusion, although GBS meningitis is uncommon in adults, it is a serious medical disease and associated with a high mortality rate. To the best of our knowledge, this patient represents one of the few reported cases of GBS meningitis in a previously healthy young adult.