Posted by admin on May 1, 2011 in |
Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death in most industrialized countries. Therefore, finding ways to reduce the mortality of cardiovascular disease remains an important public health goal. This review deals with medicinal plants possessing cardioprotective and cardiotonic activity. This review work explains chemical and pharmacological status of various cardioprotective plants including phytoconstituents responsible for cardioprotection, extract employed, dosage, pharmacological screening model and mechanism involved in cardioprotection. This review work definitely potentiates the work on cardioprotective plants....
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Posted by admin on May 1, 2011 in |
Stress undoubtedly has become an integral part of human life. Stressful conditions have a derogative effect on normal physiological functions leading to a variety of disease states. Many of the most prevalent diseases of the modern era like hypertension, diabetes, behavioral disorders, etc. have been implicated as one of the many ill-effects of chronic stress. Experimental models are required to better understand the progression of the disease and elaborate new therapy. Therefore a need to develop animal models of stress has always been realized. An ideal model should be able to reproduce each of the aspects of stress response and should be able to mimic the natural progression of the disease. Unfortunately different models of stress that have been used are able to evaluate some of the many biochemical or physiological parameters that get altered as a response to stress but are unable to fully mimic the patho-physiological changes caused by...
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Posted by admin on May 1, 2011 in |
Momordica charantia Linn. which has been used mainly for edible purposes at different countries of the world including South East Asia and has also been extensively used in traditional medicines for the cure of various ailments. M. charantia belongs to the cucurbitaceae family. Extensive research has been carried out on the fruit, leaves, and seeds of the plant. Most importantly, all these research works have shown its efficacy on various cancer cell lines like lymphoid leukemia, lymphoma, choriocarcinoma, melanoma, breast cancer, skin tumor, prostatic cancer, squamous carcinoma of tongue and larynx, human bladder carcinomas and on Hodgkin’s disease. Clinical reports of some research on the use of M. charantia in diabetes and cancer patients showed promising results. The main active constituents of M. charantia are cucurbitane type triterpenoids which have some potent biological and pharmacological activities including antidiabetic, anti-obesity, anticancer, anti-HIV, anti-feedant and anti-oviposition activities. Since in the early 1960’s the constituents of M. charantia have been investigated and several classes of secondary metabolites including cucurbitane-type triterpenoids, glycosides and...
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Posted by admin on May 1, 2011 in |
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an aggressive disease that needs to be treated effectively if subsequent deformity and disability are to be reduced. A recent advance in the management of RA is the use of biological agents which block certain key molecules involved in the pathogenesis of the illness. They include tumor necrosis factor (TNF-a) – blocking agents, Anti-Interleukin-1receptor (IL-1) antagonist, anti-CD-20 agents, CTLA-4 Ig, anti IL-6 etc. These newer agents proved to be useful for alleviating symptoms and slowing the disease progression in the patients with RA who have failed to respond to conventional disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). DMARDs are nonspecific immunomodulators, each of which has substantial drawbacks in terms of effectiveness or adverse effects (AEs). The development of biologic agents has provided more effective therapeutic options. The terms biologic therapies and biologics have emerged to describe agents with biologic properties, including monoclonal antibodies and soluble cytokine receptors etc. The advent of effective biological agents has certainly been a major advance in the treatment of inflammatory arthritis, heralding...
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Posted by admin on May 1, 2011 in |
The manufacture of bi-layer tablets, produced by the sequential compaction of loose powder layers has recently become of increased interest within the pharmaceutical industry due to the tailored release profiles of active ingredients that may be obtained. In a bi-layer configuration, the immediate release layer of the bi-layer tablet has worked as the loading dose and the sustained release layer has maintained the therapeutic plasma drug concentration for prolonged time. Several pharmaceutical companies are currently developing bi-layer tablets, for a variety of reasons: patent extension, therapeutic, marketing to name a few. To reduce capital investment, quite often existing but modified tablet presses are used to develop and produce such tablets. This article explains why the development and production of quality bi-layer tablets needs to be carried out on purpose-built tablet presses to overcome common bi-layer problems, such as layer-separation, insufficient hardness, inaccurate individual layer weight control, cross-contamination between the layers, reduced yield, etc. Using a modified tablet press may therefore not be your best approach in producing a quality...
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