Introduction: Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is endemic especially in the under-developed and developing countries and is a major public health concern. Improving nutrition is one of the ways to alleviate this condition. Consumption of locally available and affordable food such as date palm and goat milk which are rich in iron is one of the ways to overcome IDA. This study is aimed at evaluating the effect of date palm and goat milk supplementation on hae- matological parameters and iron bioavailability in IDA rats. Methods: 24 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into normal control and IDA group. The normal control was fed with normal diet and water ad libitum while the IDA group were fed on iron-deficient diet for two weeks to induce iron deficiency. The IDA rats were further divided into subgroups; each being supplemented with date palm, goat milk, a combination of date palm and goat milk, and ferrous fumarate as positive control. Blood were collected after 28 days for haematological parameters and iron profile determination. Iron bioavailability was assessed using the haemoglobin regeneration efficiency (HRE) index. Data was analysed by Student T Test and ANOVA using SPSS 23.0 software with p value < 0.05 considered as sta- tistically significant. Results: Supplementation of date palm and goat milk for 28 days significantly improved Hb, RBC, PCV, MCV, MCH, serum iron and transferrin saturation (p
Recently, the contamination of heavy metals towards the environment especially in aquatic system has drastically increased. Heavy metals are able to transform into persistent metallic compound in which it can be accumulated within the organisms’ body system, disrupting the food chain and eventually threatened the human life. The occurrence of heavy metals spillage in the rivers and lakes are due to the careless disposal of excess heavy metals used for human activities. The accumulation of heavy metals in water system will affect all aquatic organisms especially fish. The toxicity of copper in fish can be determined by several changes in the fish under treatment with heavy metals sub-lethal concentration, LC50 within 96-hours period of acute exposure. Therefore, fish can be considered as a high potential biomarker for monitoring heavy metals pollution in aquatic system. Several selective organs are highly sensitive to the xenobiotic pollution and express changes to the exposure. One of the most potential biomarker is the biochemical biomarker of cholinesterase (ChE) inhibition by heavy metals in fish has been well studied in pollution monitoring recently. Thus, this paper gives an overview of the manipulation of fish as a biomarker of heavy metals through enzymatic reaction which have proven to be very useful in the environmental pollution monitoring.
The issue of heavy metal contamination and toxic xenobiotics has become a rapid global
concern. This has ensured that the bioremediation of these toxicants, which are being carried out
using novel microbes. A bacterium with the ability to reduce molybdenum has been isolated
from contaminated soils and identified as Serratia marcescens strain DR.Y10. The bacterium
reduced molybdenum (sodium molybdate) to molybdenum blue (Mo-blue) optimally at pHs of
between 6.0 and 6.5 and temperatures between 30°C and 37°C. Glucose was the best electron
donor for supporting molybdate reduction followed by sucrose, adonitol, mannose, maltose,
mannitol glycerol, salicin, myo-inositol, sorbitol and trehalose in descending order. Other
requirements include a phosphate concentration of 5 mM and a molybdate concentration of
between 10 and 30 mM. The absorption spectrum of the Mo-blue produced was similar to the
previously isolated Mo-reducing bacterium and closely resembles a reduced phosphomolybdate.
Molybdenum reduction was inhibited by Hg (ii), Ag (i), Cu (ii), and Cr (vi) at 78.9, 69.2, 59.5
and 40.1%, respectively. We also screen for the ability of the bacterium to use various organic
xenobiotics such as phenol, acrylamide, nicotinamide, acetamide, iodoacetamide, propionamide,
acetamide, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and diesel as electron donor sources for aiding
reduction. The bacterium was also able to grow using amides such as acrylamide, propionamide
and acetamide without molybdenum reduction. The unique ability of the bacterium to detoxify
many toxicants is much in demand, making this bacterium a vital means of bioremediation.