Introduction: Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is the most common cause of anaemia worldwide. Determination of body iron status is necessary to diagnose IDA. This can be measured using a biochemistry assessment of the serum/ plasma. Plasma/serum iron quantitation is also important in diagnosing iron overload disorders. However, iron studies are limited due to high cost and lack of access to biochemical analysers. Therefore, a cost- and technical-ef- fective method is needed to measure human plasma iron concentration. Plasma iron is mainly transferrin-bound and an acidic plasmic condition is necessary to release the iron. This study investigated various candidate acid salts to achieve the acidic condition needed for plasma iron release. Method: Ten powdered or crystallised acid salts were studied for their water solubility as well as their pH reduction capability in revised simulated body fluid (r-SBF) and commercially available human plasma without any change in colour or form. Results: Six acid salts studied were discontinued from further investigation because they were insoluble in water. Another two candidates were unsuitable as they precipitated in r-SBF and human plasma. Maleic acid formed a jelly-like texture after a certain amount of time in human plasma. Only citric acid met all the criteria of a suitable acid salt to be investigated further as part of the reagent for a spontaneous plasma iron measurement. Conclusion: Citric acid, which is a colourless and odourless acid salt, was selected to lower the human plasma pH to an acidic condition for transferrin-bound iron release.
Plants are primary source of natural product drugs. However, with every new bioactive molecule reported from a plant source, there follows reports of endangered status or even extinction of a medicinally important plant due to over-harvesting. Hence, the attention turned towards fungi namely the endophytes, which reside within medicinally important plants and thus may have acquired their medicinal properties. Strobilanthes crispus is a traditional medicinal plant which has been used traditionally to treat kidney stones, diabetes, hypertension and cancer as well as having antimicrobial activities. In our efforts to bioprospect for anticancer and antimicrobial metabolites, two fungal endophytes most closely related to the Sordariomycetes sp. showed promising results. Sample (PDA)BL3 showed highest significant antimicrobial activity against 6 bacteria at 200 µg/disc whereas sample (PDA)BL5 has highest significant anticancer activity against all 5 cancer cell lines at concentrations ranging from 30 to 300 μg/ml. As for the gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) results, a total of 20 volatile metabolites identified from sample (PDA)BL3 and 21 volatile metabolites identified from sample (PDA)BL5 having more than 1% abundance. Both GC-MS analysis showed that compound Pyrrolo[1,2-a]pyrazine-1,4-dione, hexahydro-3-(2-methylpropyl) has the highest abundance at 15.10% abundance for sample (PDA)BL3 and 19.00% abundance for sample (PDA)BL5 respectively. In conclusion, these results have shown bio-prospecting potential of endophytic fungi having antimicrobial and anticancer activities as well as its potential secondary metabolites of interest. Therefore, this work has further indicated the medicinal and industrial potential of endophytic fungi.