Displaying publications 121 - 140 of 339 in total

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  1. Jothy SL, Zakaria Z, Chen Y, Lau YL, Latha LY, Shin LN, et al.
    Molecules, 2011 Sep 05;16(9):7583-92.
    PMID: 21894090 DOI: 10.3390/molecules16097583
    BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Cassia fistula L belongs to the family Leguminosae, and it is one of the most popular herbal products in tropical countries. C. fistula seeds have been used as a herbal medicine and have pharmacological activity which includes anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and antioxidant properties. The goal of this study was to identify compounds from C. fistula seeds which are responsible for anti-Candida albicans activity using bioassay-directed isolation.

    RESULTS: The preliminary phytochemical screening of the plant seed revealed the presence of anthraquinones, flavonoids, saponins, tannins and terpenoids. The isolation of active compounds was carried out in four steps: multiple extractions, fractionation using column chromatography and purification using preparative thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS). The structure of separated compounds was determined on the basis of mass spectrometry data. One compound was identified is roseanone.

    CONCLUSIONS: The MS analysis on the active fraction from seed extract of C. fistula confirmed the presence of roseanone with antiyeast activity.

  2. Jothy SL, Zakaria Z, Chen Y, Lau YL, Latha LY, Sasidharan S
    Molecules, 2011 Jun 23;16(6):5268-82.
    PMID: 21701437 DOI: 10.3390/molecules16065268
    BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Cassia fistula is widely used in traditional medicine to treat various types of ailments. The evaluation of toxic properties of C. fistula is crucial when considering public health protection because exposure to plant extracts can result in undesirable effects on consumers. Hence, in this study the acute oral toxicity of C. fistula seeds extract was investigated in mice.

    RESULTS: Oral administration of crude extract at the highest dose of 5000 mg/kg resulted in no mortalities or evidence of adverse effects, implying that C. fistula in nontoxic. Throughout 14 days of the treatment no changes in behavioural pattern, clinical sign and body weight of mice in both control and treatment groups. Also there were no any significant elevations observed in the biochemical analysis of the blood serum. Further, histopathological examination revealed normal architecture and no significant adverse effects observed on the kidney, heart, liver, lung and spleen.

    CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the results suggest that, the oral administration of C. fistula methanolic seeds extract did not produce any significant toxic effect in mice. Hence, the extract can be utilized for pharmaceutical formulations.

  3. Zakaria ZA, Rofiee MS, Mohamed AM, Teh LK, Salleh MZ
    J Acupunct Meridian Stud, 2011 Dec;4(4):248-56.
    PMID: 22196508 DOI: 10.1016/j.jams.2011.09.016
    The present study aims to determine the in vitro antiproliferative and antioxidant activities of various extracts from the leaves of Melastoma malabathricum using various established in vitro assays. The aqueous extract inhibited the proliferation of Caov-3 and HL-60 cell lines, while the chloroform extract exhibited antiproliferative activity against the Caov-3, HL-60, and CEM-SS cell lines. The methanol extract demonstrated antiproliferative activity against more cell lines, including the MCF-7, HeLa, Caov-3, HL-60, CEM-SS, and MDA-MB-231 cancer cell lines. Interestingly, all extracts did not inhibit the proliferation of 3T3 cells, thus indicating their noncytotoxic properties. Unlike the chloroform extracts, the aqueous and methanol extracts of M malabathricum (20, 100, and 500 μg/ml) produced high antioxidant activity for the superoxide scavenging assay with only the 500 μg/ml aqueous and methanol extracts exhibited high activity for the 2,2-diphenyl -1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging assay. The total phenolic content recorded for the aqueous, methanol, and chloroform extracts were 3344.2 ± 19.1, 3055.1 ± 8.7, and 92.5 ± 7.3 mg/100 g of gallic acid, respectively. The M malabathricum leaves possessed potential antiproliferative and antioxidant activities that could be attributed to its high content of phenolic compounds.
  4. Zakaria ZA, Abdul Hisam EE, Rofiee MS, Norhafizah M, Somchit MN, Teh LK, et al.
    J Ethnopharmacol, 2011 Sep 2;137(2):1047-54.
    PMID: 21802502 DOI: 10.1016/j.jep.2011.07.038
    Bauhinia purpurea (Fabaceae) is a medicinal plant traditionally used to treat various ailments, including ulcers. In order to establish pharmacological properties of the leaf of Bauhinia purpurea, studies were performed on antiulcer activity of the plant's aqueous extract.
  5. Zakaria ZA, Somchit MN, Mat Jais AM, Teh LK, Salleh MZ, Long K
    Med Princ Pract, 2011;20(3):231-6.
    PMID: 21454992 DOI: 10.1159/000323756
    The present study was carried out to investigate the antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities of virgin coconut oil (VCO) produced by the Malaysian Agriculture Research and Development Institute (MARDI) using various in vivo models.
  6. Bong PN, Zakaria Z, Muhammad R, Abdullah N, Ibrahim N, Emran NA, et al.
    Malays J Pathol, 2010 Dec;32(2):117-22.
    PMID: 21329183 MyJurnal
    The GATA3 gene is a potential tumour marker and putative tumour suppressor gene in breast cancer. Its expression is associated with better prognosis and disease free survival in breast cancer patients. We aimed to evaluate GATA3 transcriptome expression and mutation in breast carcinomas and correlate its expression with oestrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), lymph node (LN) status, tumour grade and c-erbB-2 expression. Twenty-two breast infiltrating ductal carcinomas and paired normal tissues were used in Branch DNA assay to detect GATA3 mRNA expression. Normalized data for GATA3 mRNA expression were grouped according to the ER, PR and LN status, tumour grade and c-erbB-2 expression of the tumours. Statistical significance was tested using t-test and ANOVA at 95% confidence interval level. Mutational analysis of GATA3 was performed by direct sequencing of the coding regions of GATA3 mRNA. Our findings showed that GATA3 gene were over-expressed and under-expressed by > 2 fold change in 12 and 4 tested samples, respectively. Eighty per cent of ER positive breast carcinomas were GATA3 positive. There was a statistically significant correlation between GATA3 expression and ER at 95% confidence interval level between the study groups. On the contrary, GATA3 expression was not statistically significant with PR, LN, tumour grade and c-erbB-2 expression in our study. In addition, we observed that there was no mutation in mRNA coding region in 16 breast carcinomas that showed GATA3 differential gene expression. Our preliminary results suggested that GATA3 is linked to the ER. This scenario suggests that GATA3 may play a crucial role in oestrogen receptor positive breast cancer patients. Whether GATA3 expression is involved in regulating tumour cell growth in oestrogen responsive breast cancer is a key question that remains to be answered.
  7. Zakaria ZA, Mohamad AS, Ahmad MS, Mokhtar AF, Israf DA, Lajis NH, et al.
    Biol Res Nurs, 2011 Oct;13(4):425-32.
    PMID: 21112917 DOI: 10.1177/1099800410386590
    Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have been widely used for the treatment of inflammation. However, despite their effectiveness, most NSAIDs cause various side effects that negatively affect the management of inflammation and, in part, pain. Thus, there is a need to search for new anti-inflammatory agents with few, or no, side effects. Natural products of plant, animal, or microorganism origin have been good sources of new bioactive compounds. The present study was carried out to evaluate the acute and chronic anti-inflammatory activities of the essential oil of the rhizomes of Zingiber zerumbet (Zingiberaceae) using the carrageenan-induced paw edema and cotton pellet-induced granuloma tests, respectively. The effect of the essential oil on inflammatory- and noninflammatory-mediated pain was also assessed using the formalin test. Essential oil of Z. zerumbet, at doses of 30, 100, and 300 mg/kg, was administered intraperitoneally to rats. The substance exhibited significant anti-inflammatory activity both in acute and chronic animal models. The essential oil also inhibited inflammatory- and noninflammatory-mediated pain when assessed using the formalin test. In conclusion, the essential oil of Z. zerumbet possessed anti-inflammatory activity, in addition to its antinociceptive activity, which may explain its traditional uses to treat inflammatory-related ailments.
  8. Khoo TL, Halim AS, Zakaria Z, Mat Saad AZ, Wu LY, Lau HY
    J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg, 2011 Jun;64(6):e137-45.
    PMID: 20869928 DOI: 10.1016/j.bjps.2010.08.029
    Despite widespread beliefs regarding the use of topical tocotrienol in the prevention of hypertrophic scars, there is very little evidence from well controlled and randomised clinical trials to justify its benefits for surgical scars.
  9. Sulaiman MR, Zakaria ZA, Mohamad AS, Ismail M, Hidayat MT, Israf DA, et al.
    Pharm Biol, 2010 Aug;48(8):861-8.
    PMID: 20673172 DOI: 10.3109/13880200903302820
    Alpinia conchigera Griff. (Zingiberaceae), locally known to the Malays as "lengkuas ranting", is native to Peninsular Malaysia. The Malays traditionally used it to treat infection and rashes, and as a health drink. This study evaluated the analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities of the ethanol extract of A. conchigera rhizomes in mice and rats, respectively. The analgesic activity was elucidated using the acetic acid-induced writhing test, hot plate test, and formalin test, while the anti-inflammatory activity was determined using carrageenan-induced paw edema. The extract (30, 100, and 300 mg/kg) given intraperitoneally (i.p.) exhibited antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities in all tests used. The range of percentage of analgesia obtained for all doses of extract in the writhing test was 50-92%, and in the early and late phases of the formalin test was 25-62% and 63-98%, respectively. In addition, naloxone (5 mg/kg) given subcutaneously (s.c.) was found to reverse the extract (300 mg/kg)-induced antinociceptive activity in the writhing, hot plate, and formalin tests. Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that the ethanol extract of A. conchigera rhizomes possessed a peripheral and central antinociceptive activity that was mediated, in part, via the opioid receptor, as well as anti-inflammatory activity.
  10. Shuib S, Abdul Latif Z, Abidin NZ, Akmal SN, Zakaria Z
    Malays J Pathol, 2009 Dec;31(2):133-6.
    PMID: 20514857 MyJurnal
    DiGeorge syndrome is associated with microdeletion of chromosome 22q11.2. Most cases occur sporadically although vertical transmission has been documented. We report a rare case of DiGeorge syndrome in an 8-year-old girl. Blood sample of the patient was cultured and harvested following standard procedure. All of the 20 cells analysed showed a karyotype of 45, XX, -22, t (9;22) (p23; q11.2). Cytogenetic investigation done on the patient's mother revealed that she was the carrier for the translocation. Her karyotype was 46, XX, t (9;22) (p23; q11.2). Fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) analysis using TUPLE1 and N25 (Vysis, USA) probes showed deletion of the 22q11.2 region in the patient, confirming the diagnosis of DiGeorge syndrome. FISH analysis showed no deletion of the region in the mother.
  11. Nadarajan VS, Phan CL, Ang CH, Liang KL, Gan GG, Bee PC, et al.
    Int J Hematol, 2011 Apr;93(4):465-473.
    PMID: 21387093 DOI: 10.1007/s12185-011-0796-9
    The outcome of treating chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) with imatinib mesylate (IM) is inferior when therapy is commenced in late chronic or accelerated phase as compared to early chronic phase. This may be attributed to additional genomic alterations that accumulate during disease progression. We sought to identify such lesions in patients showing suboptimal response to IM by performing array-CGH analysis on 39 sequential samples from 15 CML patients. Seventy-four cumulative copy number alterations (CNAs) consisting of 35 losses and 39 gains were identified. Alterations flanking the ABL1 and BCR genes on chromosomes 9 and 22, respectively, were the most common identified lesions with 5 patients losing variable portions of 9q34.11 proximal to ABL1. Losses involving 1p36, 5q31, 17q25, Y and gains of 3q21, 8q24, 22q11, Xp11 were among other recurrent lesions identified. Aberrations were also observed in individual patients, involving regions containing known leukemia-associated genes; CDKN2A/2B, IKZF1, RB1, TLX1, AFF4. CML patients in late stages of their disease, harbor pre-existing and evolving sub-microscopic CNAs that may influence disease progression and IM response.
  12. Zakaria ZA, Hussain MK, Mohamad AS, Abdullah FC, Sulaiman MR
    Biol Res Nurs, 2012 Jan;14(1):90-7.
    PMID: 21278166 DOI: 10.1177/1099800410395378
    Ficus deltoidea (Family Moraceae) leaves have been used traditionally by the Malays to treat ailments such as wounds, sores, and rheumatism. The aim of the present study was to determine the anti-inflammatory activity of the aqueous extract of F. deltoidea leaf (FDA) using acute and chronic inflammatory models. FDA, in the doses of 30, 100, and 300 mg/kg, was administered intraperitoneally in rats (n = 6) before the animals were subjected to the carrageenan-induced paw edema test, cotton pellet-induced granuloma test, and formalin test. The first two tests represent acute and chronic models of inflammation, respectively. The first and second phases of the formalin test represent neurogenic pain and inflammatory-mediated pain, respectively; thus, only the second phase was measured in the present study. Results showed that FDA exerted significant (p < .05) anti-inflammatory activity in all assays, with dose-response effects seen in the paw edema and formalin tests. In conclusion, the leaf of F. deltoidea possesses anti-inflammatory activity against acute and chronic inflammatory responses and against pain-associated inflammatory response. These findings justify the traditional uses of F. deltoidea leaves for treatment of inflammatory-mediated ailments.
  13. Israf DA, Tham CL, Syahida A, Lajis NH, Sulaiman MR, Mohamad AS, et al.
    Phytomedicine, 2010 Aug;17(10):732-9.
    PMID: 20378317 DOI: 10.1016/j.phymed.2010.02.006
    In a previous communication we showed that atrovirinone, a 1,4-benzoquinone isolated from the roots of Garcinia atroviridis, was able to inhibit several major proinflammatory mediators of inflammation. In this report we show that atrovirinone inhibits NO and PGE(2) synthesis through inhibition of iNOS and COX-2 expression. We also show that atrovirinone inhibits the secretion of IL-1beta and IL-6 in a dose dependent fashion whereas the secretion of IL-10, the anti-inflammatory cytokine, was enhanced. Subsequently we determined that the inhibition of proinflammatory cytokine synthesis and inducible enzyme expression was due to a dose-dependent inhibition of phosphorylation of p38 and ERK1/2. We also showed that atrovirinone prevented phosphorylation of I-kappaBalpha, which resulted in a reduction of p65NF-kappaB nuclear translocation as demonstrated by expression analysis. We conclude that atrovirinone is a potential anti-inflammatory drug lead that targets both the MAPK and NF-kappaB pathway.
  14. Ponto T, Ismail NI, Abdul Majeed AB, Marmaya NH, Zakaria ZA
    Methods Find Exp Clin Pharmacol, 2010 Jul-Aug;32(6):427-32.
    PMID: 20852752 DOI: 10.1358/mf.2010.32.6.1477907
    Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder and pharmacotherapy plays a major role in its management. The 1950s and early 1960s saw milestones in the introduction of psychotropic drugs in clinical practice. A review of drug prescriptions in different settings provides an insight into the pattern of drug use, identifies drug-related problems and may be used to compare recommended guidelines with actual practice. This effort led to the evaluation of the drug prescribing pattern of antipsychotics in patients attending the psychiatric clinic at a government hospital. The data from 371 antipsychotic medication prescriptions that included 200 prescriptions for schizophrenia were collected during one month (1rst-31rst August 2008) at the outpatient pharmacy department. The mean age of patients was 35.0 years (SD = 1.131), with a male to female ratio of 2:1. The most widely used oral antipsychotic was haloperidol (16.3%) while the most common depot preparation prescribed was zuclopenthixol decanoate (8.8%). The daily dose of the average antipsychotic prescribed in this clinic was 342.06 mg equivalent of chlorpromazine. There was no relation between the doses received and ethnicity of the patient (Malay, Chinese or Indian). However, there was a significant relationship between the prescribed dose and patient age (P < 0.042). Nearly 32% of the schizophrenia patients were prescribed with atypical antipsychotics such as olanzapine (10.8%), risperidone (10.0%), quetiapine (7.6%) and clozapine (3.2%). Monotherapy was given to 73.0% of the schizophrenia patients. The majority of patients also received antidepressants. To conclude, this study gave evidence that physicians had a strong preference for monotherapy with conventional antipsychotic drugs while the use of atypical drugs was less prevalent.
  15. Roslan R, Othman RM, Shah ZA, Kasim S, Asmuni H, Taliba J, et al.
    Comput Biol Med, 2010 Jun;40(6):555-64.
    PMID: 20417930 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2010.03.009
    Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) play a significant role in many crucial cellular operations such as metabolism, signaling and regulations. The computational methods for predicting PPIs have shown tremendous growth in recent years, but problem such as huge false positive rates has contributed to the lack of solid PPI information. We aimed at enhancing the overlap between computational predictions and experimental results in an effort to partially remove PPIs falsely predicted. The use of protein function predictor named PFP() that are based on shared interacting domain patterns is introduced in this study with the purpose of aiding the Gene Ontology Annotations (GOA). We used GOA and PFP() as agents in a filtering process to reduce false positive pairs in the computationally predicted PPI datasets. The functions predicted by PFP() were extracted from cross-species PPI data in order to assign novel functional annotations for the uncharacterized proteins and also as additional functions for those that are already characterized by the GO (Gene Ontology). The implementation of PFP() managed to increase the chances of finding matching function annotation for the first rule in the filtration process as much as 20%. To assess the capability of the proposed framework in filtering false PPIs, we applied it on the available S. cerevisiae PPIs and measured the performance in two aspects, the improvement made indicated as Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the strength of improvement, respectively. The proposed filtering framework significantly achieved better performance than without it in both metrics.
  16. Sulaiman MR, Zakaria ZA, Chiong HS, Lai SK, Israf DA, Azam Shah TM
    Med Princ Pract, 2009;18(4):272-9.
    PMID: 19494533 DOI: 10.1159/000215723
    The present study was carried out to explore the antinociceptive as well as the anti-inflammatory effects of an ethanol extract of Stachytarpheta jamaicensis (L.) Vahl (EESJ) using 3 models of nociception and 2 models of inflammation in experimental animals.
  17. Kalsum HU, Shah ZA, Othman RM, Hassan R, Rahim SM, Asmuni H, et al.
    Comput Biol Med, 2009 Nov;39(11):1013-9.
    PMID: 19720371 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2009.08.002
    Protein domains contain information about the prediction of protein structure, function, evolution and design since the protein sequence may contain several domains with different or the same copies of the protein domain. In this study, we proposed an algorithm named SplitSSI-SVM that works with the following steps. First, the training and testing datasets are generated to test the SplitSSI-SVM. Second, the protein sequence is split into subsequence based on order and disorder regions. The protein sequence that is more than 600 residues is split into subsequences to investigate the effectiveness of the protein domain prediction based on subsequence. Third, multiple sequence alignment is performed to predict the secondary structure using bidirectional recurrent neural networks (BRNN) where BRNN considers the interaction between amino acids. The information of about protein secondary structure is used to increase the protein domain boundaries signal. Lastly, support vector machines (SVM) are used to classify the protein domain into single-domain, two-domain and multiple-domain. The SplitSSI-SVM is developed to reduce misleading signal, lower protein domain signal caused by primary structure of protein sequence and to provide accurate classification of the protein domain. The performance of SplitSSI-SVM is evaluated using sensitivity and specificity on single-domain, two-domain and multiple-domain. The evaluation shows that the SplitSSI-SVM achieved better results compared with other protein domain predictors such as DOMpro, GlobPlot, Dompred-DPS, Mateo, Biozon, Armadillo, KemaDom, SBASE, HMMPfam and HMMSMART especially in two-domain and multiple-domain.
  18. Sulaiman MR, Perimal EK, Zakaria ZA, Mokhtar F, Akhtar MN, Lajis NH, et al.
    Fitoterapia, 2009 Jun;80(4):230-2.
    PMID: 19535012 DOI: 10.1016/j.fitote.2009.02.002
    We have investigated the antinociceptive activity of zerumbone (1), a natural cyclic sesquiterpene isolated from Zingiber zerumbet Smith, in acetic acid-induced abdominal writhing test and hot plate test in mice. 1 given by intraperitoneal route produced significant dose-dependent antinociceptive effect in all the test models used. In addition, the antinociceptive effect of 1 in the hot plate test was reversed by the non-selective opioid receptor antagonist naloxone, suggesting that the opioid system is involved in its analgesic mechanism of action.
  19. Zakaria ZA, Sulaiman MR, Morsid NA, Aris A, Zainal H, Pojan NH, et al.
    Methods Find Exp Clin Pharmacol, 2009 Mar;31(2):81-8.
    PMID: 19455262 DOI: 10.1358/mf.2009.31.2.1353876
    The present study was carried out to evaluate the antinociceptive, anti-inflammatory and antipyretic effects of the aqueous extract of Solanum nigrum leaves using various animal models. The extract, at concentrations of 10, 50 and 100%, was prepared by soaking (1:20; w/v) air-dried powdered leaves (20 g) in distilled water (dH2O) for 72 h. The extract solutions were administered subcutaneously in mice/rats 30 min prior to the tests. The extract exhibited significant (P < 0.05) antinociceptive activity when assessed using the abdominal constriction, hot plate and formalin tests. The extract also produced significant (P < 0.05) anti-inflammatory and antipyretic activities when assessed using the carrageenan-induced paw edema and brewer's yeast-induced pyrexia tests, respectively. Overall, these activities occurred in a concentration-dependent manner, except for the 50% concentration of the extract, which was not effective in the abdominal constriction test. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that S. nigrum leaves possessed antinociceptive, anti-inflammatory and antipyretic effects and thus supported traditional claims of its medicinal uses.
  20. Gan GG, Zakaria Z, Sangkar JV, Haris AR, Bee PC, Chin E, et al.
    Med J Malaysia, 2008 Oct;63(4):281-7.
    PMID: 19385485 MyJurnal
    We analysed the outcome of 104 patients from a single institution who underwent allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) from their HLA-identical siblings between 1993 and 2006. Sixty-nine percent of patients had peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) as the stem cell source and the remaining had bone marrow (BM). The majority of patients are Chinese (60%) followed by Malays (24%) and Indians (14%). The median time to reach white cell counts of >1 x 10(9)/L and platelet counts of >30 x 10(9)/L was 13 and 15 days, respectively in patients who had PBSC transplantation compared with 16 and 25 days in patients who had BM transplantation, (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.001). Acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) of grade II to IV was observed in 34% of patients and chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) in 38% of patients. Although not statistically significant, there was a higher incidence of overall aGVHD in Indian patients (73%) compared to Chinese and Malays (57% and 56% respectively). There was no significant difference in the incidence of aGVHD and cGVHD with the source of stem cells. Overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS) was 50% and 60% at five years respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that patients transplanted in standard risk and those who had limited cGVHD had a significant better OS, (p = 0.05 and p = 0.05). Patients who had cGVHD and transplanted in standard risk had a better DFS, (p = 0.002 and p < 0.001). In summary, AHSCT in standard risk patients is associated with a better outcome than those transplanted in high risk and although not statistically significant, there is a higher incidence of aGVHD in Indian patients.
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