Level of polychlorinated biphenyls in tumor and blood serum of breast cancer patients and control subjects from Punjab, Pakistan

The current study examined the level of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in tumor and blood serum of female breast cancer patients and control individuals recruited from Punjab, Pakistan. Breast tumor and blood serum from 40 patients and only blood serum from ten control subjects were obtained and concentration of 32 PCB congeners was analyzed through Gas chromatography coupled with Mass spectrophotometry. Sociodemographic variables of the patients along with essential clinical and haematological parameters were taken as covariates. Tumor reflects the highest median (min-max) concentration (ng g-1 lw) of ƩPCBs at 115.94 (0.05-17.75) followed by 16.53 (0.09-2.94) and 5.24 (0.01-0.59) in blood serum of cancer patients and control group respectively. Median concentrations (ng g-1 lw) of non-dioxine like ƩPCBs were considerably higher at 83.04, 32.89 and 4.27 compared to 13.03 and 3.50 and 0.97 for dioxin like ƩPCBs in tumor, serum of breast cancer patients and control subjects respectively. PCB-87 was most dominant congeners in tumor followed by PCB-170 and -82 whereas PCB-28 and -52 reflected greatest contribution in serum of breast cancer patients. Blood haemoglobin, potassium and chloride ions showed significant positive whereas body mass index reflect inverse relationship when regressed with ƩPCBs in tumor. This pioneer study depicts elevated concentrations of PCBs in patients compared to control, reflecting potential positive association of PCBs with breast cancer which need further confirmation. We concluded that chronic exposure to PCBs might be associated with an increasing number of breast cancer incidences in developing countries like Pakistan, which should be further elucidated through detail in vitro and in vivo studies.

Quality assessment of nutrition coverage in the media: a 6-week survey of five popular UK newspapers

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the quality of nutrition articles in popular national daily newspapers in the UK and to identify important predictors of article quality.

SETTING

Newspapers are a primary source of nutrition information for the public.

DESIGN

Newspaper articles were collected on 6 days of the week (excluding Sunday) for 6 weeks in summer 2014. Predictors included food type and health outcome, size of article, whether the journalist was named and day of the week.

OUTCOME MEASURES

A validated quality assessment tool was used to assess each article, with a minimum possible score of -12 and a maximum score of 17. Newspapers were checked in duplicate for relevant articles. The association of each predictor on article quality score was analysed adjusting for remaining predictors. A logistic regression model was implemented with quality score as the binary outcome, categorised as poor (score less than zero) or satisfactory (score of zero or more).

RESULTS

Over 6 weeks, 141 nutrition articles were included across the five newspapers. The median quality score was 2 (IQR -2-6), and 44 (31%) articles were poor quality. There was no substantial variation in quality of reporting between newspapers once other factors such as anonymous publishing, health outcome, aspect of diet covered and day of the week were taken into account. Particularly low-quality scores were obtained for anonymously published articles with no named journalist, articles that focused on obesity and articles that reported on high fat and processed foods.

CONCLUSIONS

The general public are regularly exposed to poor quality information in newspapers about what to eat to promote health, particularly articles reporting on obesity. Journalists, researchers, university press officers and scientific journals need to work together more closely to ensure clear, consistent nutrition messages are communicated to the public in an engaging way.

Characterization of Polyhydroxyalkanoates Produced by Contaminated Soil Bacteria using Wastewater and Glucose as Carbon Sources

Purpose: To isolate polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA)-producing bacterial strains from contaminated soil using industrial wastewater and glucose as carbon soured by Macrogen sequencing. Two different sources, namely, glucose and wastewater were used to ces.Methods: The strains were isolated and identified as Pseudomonas, Bacillus, Enterobacter, Exiguobacterium and Stenotrophomonas using biochemical tests and further confirmevaluate and  compare the use of wastewater as a carbon source for PHA production. The biomass obtained was analyzed by Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) to identify the presence of PHA in it. Afterwards, PHA extraction was carried out and then gas chromatography (GC) performed to identify PHA monomers.Results: Utilization of glucose resulted in the production of PHB, while wastewater yielded copolymers poly-3 hydroxybutyrate-co-3hydroxyvalerate P(3HB-co-3HV) due to its content of volatile fatty acids such as acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid, which led to the production of different types of polymers. The maximum PHA production was 41 ± 0.22 % obtained for Stenotrophomonas (SM03) using 2 % glucose as carbon source while for wastewater, maximum production was achieved by the Pseudomonas strain (SM01).Conclusion: Wastewater is produced in large quantities daily during various activities and therefore can be used as a cheap carbon source for the production of valuable products such as PHA.Keywords: Polyhydroxyalkanoates, Wastewater, Glucose, Pseudomonas strain, Stenotrophomonas

Psychiatric morbidity and psychodynamics of patients with convulsive pseudoseizures

Forty-six female patients with pseudoseizures were compared with 50 female patients referred to a psychiatric outpatient clinic. Patients with convulsive pseudoseizures were more likely to be single and childless. An abnormal EEG was more frequently reported in patients with convulsive pseudoseizures, contributing to their earlier diagnosis of epilepsy. The defence mechanisms of patients with convulsive pseudoseizures using the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI) were particularly characterized by higher scores on the 'reversal' scale and lower scores on the 'turning against self' scale. Mood disorders were more common in general psychiatric patients, while one-third of convulsive pseudoseizure patients did not complain of psychiatric symptoms.

Correlation between c-erbB-2 amplification and risk of recurrent disease in node-negative breast cancer

Drawing upon the comprehensive population-based Northern Alberta Breast Cancer Registry containing 704 patients with histologically negative axillary lymph nodes who have been followed for 5-16 years, we have undertaken a retrospective case-control study to evaluate the utility of genomic amplification of specific protooncogenes [c-erbB-2 (nee HER-2/neu), c-erbA, c-myc, int-2, and hst-1] as predictive indicators of clinical outcome in node-negative disease. To this end, 115 women with node-negative breast cancer who had recurred at any time up to 16 years posttreatment (cases) were matched pairwise for appropriate clinicopathological variables (size of primary tumor, menopausal state, estrogen receptor status, anniversary year of treatment, and patient age) with a second group of 115 women (controls) selected from a cohort of 502 node-negative patients who had not relapsed during long-term follow-up. Tumor DNA extracted from archival formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue blocks were analyzed for protooncogene copy number by slot-blot hybridization. Taking a gene copy number of 3 as the cutoff, 27 of the 230 tumor samples examined contained from 3- to 22-fold elevation in c-erbB-2 genomic equivalents. Twenty-one of the 27 tumors amplified for c-erbB-2 were derived from cases and 6 from controls, signifying that 18% of the node-negative patients who had relapsed harbored excessive copies of the protooncogene in their malignant tissue compared to only 5% for the patients who had remained in remission. Accordingly, the occurrence of amplification of c-erbB-2 proved to be a statistically significant predictor of poor prognosis, especially disease-free interval (P = 0.006). Moreover, this genetic alteration appeared to be independent of and to have greater predictive power than most commonly used prognostic factors. Our findings also indicated that as a clinical test, measurement of c-erbB-2 amplification suffers from low sensitivity; however, when greater than 6 gene copies are present, the test has a positive predictive value for recurrence of 70%. Concurrent analysis of tumor DNA blots with probes for the other four protooncogenes examined revealed that their amplification, which others have reported to arise often, especially in node-positive disease, was seldom found even in our high-risk case group (2-3%). In short, our data strongly suggest that amplification of c-erbB-2 may contribute to the pathogenesis of some forms of node-negative breast cancer and thus may serve as a useful genetic marker to identify a subset of high-risk patients.

Studies on the photostability of reserpine in parenteral solutions

The photostability of reserpine in several parenteral formulations has been studied and the effects of some commonly used stabilizers have been evaluated. The kinetic data indicate that the photodegradation of reserpine follows zero order kinetics in all the formulations at pH = 2 and 3. The stability of reserpine appears to be higher at pH = 3 than at pH = 2. 3-dehydroreserpine, isoreserpine and lumireserpine were identified as the major photodegradation products by TLC, suggesting that the photodegradation in acidic solutions occurs initially via an oxidative mechanism. The combined effect of EDTA and PABA on the photostability of reserpine was more significant than their individual effect. The formulations in which benzyl alcohol was used as vehicle were found to be more stable than those having propylene glycol. Polyethylene glycol was found to be a better surfactant than Tween 80. The degree of stabilization in the presence of surface active agents has been explained in terms of micellar theory and the degree of hydration of micelles. A stable formula for parenteral solution of reserpine has been suggested.