Role of Urinary Biomarkers (Transforming Growth Factor ß1, Neutrophil Gelatinase-Associated Lipocalin, and Cystatin C) as a Prognostic Factor of Renal Outcome in the Posterior Urethral Valve.

Background: The urinary biomarker response precedes the appearance of any renal structural or functional derangement. Transforming growth factor-ß1 (TGF-ß1), neutrophil gelatinase associated lipocalin (NGAL), and Cystatin C (CysC) can act as the early prognostic markers in posterior urethral valve (PUV) patients. Aim: To compare the urinary levels of TGF-ß1, NGAL, and CysC between PUV cases and age matched controls and to correlate these with renal structural and functional parameters. Materials and Methods: This prospective study included children with PUV diagnosed using the standard investigations and an equal number of age-matched controls with nonurological problems. For the study subjects, the urinary samples were collected at three different time points (pre- and postoperatively at 3 and 6 months), whereas for controls, only single-voided samples were studied. The urinary levels of TGF-ß1, NGAL, and CysC were estimated by the standardized techniques using the ELISA kits. Statistical methods were used to drive the comparisons between cases and controls. Results: Fifteen children with a median age of 10 (5-48) months were enrolled in each of the two groups. The mean uTGF-ß1 in the case group was significantly higher at all three time points (43.20 ± 6.13 pg/ml, 43.33 ± 11.89 pg/ml and 40.71 ± 9.01 pg/ml) as compared to the control group (29.12 ± 8.31 pg/ml) (P ≤ 0.001). The median uNGAL in the case group was also higher (17.78 ng/ml, 2.35 ng/ml and 2.536 ng/ml) as compared to the control group (1.31 ng/ml). However, the difference was significant only preoperatively (P = 0.02). The median uCysC in case group was similarly higher (0.347 µg/ml, 0.439 µg/ml, and 0.382 µg/ml) than the control group (0.243 µg/ml) (P > 0.05). Serum creatinine in the case group (0.49 mg/dl) showed no significant rise above that of control (0.24 mg/dl). A cutoff value of uTGF-ß1 = 36.55 pg/ml (P < 0.001), uNGAL = 0.879 ng/ml (P = 0.02), and uCysC = 0.25 µg/ml (P = 0.22) was found to be associated with renal damage in PUV. A significant correlation was found between uNGAL and S. creatinine at 3 months (r = 0.43, P = 0.017) and 6 months (r = 0.47, P = 0.08). Conclusion: The elevated uTGF-ß1, a decline in uNGAL and an increase in uCysC suggests ongoing inflammation, improvement in hydronephrosis and a prolonged proximal tubular dysfunction in PUV patients, respectively.

Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards COVID-19 Pandemic among Patients Attending Dental Outpatient Department of M.G.M. Medical College and Hospital, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.

Background: The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an extremely contagious illness that spreads mostly via the dentistry practice. Patients in need of dental care are at a higher risk of becoming infected with and becoming carriers of the illness. Aim: To assess the COVID-19-related knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of patients visiting dental outpatient department of M.G.M. Medical College and Hospital, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, patients visiting dental outpatient department of M.G.M. Medical College and Hospital, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India were included. The questionnaire had four sections including demographic information, knowledge, attitudes, and practice in relation to COVID-19. Along with computation of descriptive statistics, data analysis was performed using unpaired t-test. Results: A total of 332 people took part in the research. The female respondents were higher in number (53.01%) and the highest percentage of the respondents belongs to the age group 18-40 years (55.72%). Nearly, 98% of respondents were vaccinated. The highest percentage of KAP level was recorded for knowledge (74.95%) followed by that of attitude (50.84%) and practices (37.05%). Conclusion: While respondents' overall knowledge was high but their enthusiasm for taking preventative measures was low, and their efforts to stem the pandemic were lagging at best. Future campaigns should focus more on reaching out to marginalized populations, such as those with less education or higher poverty rates.

The Genomic Landscape of Colorectal Cancer in the Saudi Arabian Population Using a Comprehensive Genomic Panel.

PURPOSE: Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology detects specific mutations that can provide treatment opportunities for colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We analyzed the mutation frequencies of common actionable genes and their association with clinicopathological characteristics and oncologic outcomes using targeted NGS in 107 Saudi Arabian patients without a family history of CRC. RESULTS: Approximately 98% of patients had genetic alterations. Frequent mutations were observed in BRCA2 (79%), CHEK1 (78%), ATM (76%), PMS2 (76%), ATR (74%), and MYCL (73%). The APC gene was not included in the panel. Statistical analysis using the Cox proportional hazards model revealed an unusual positive association between poorly differentiated tumors and survival rates (p = 0.025). Although no significant univariate associations between specific mutations or overall mutation rate and overall survival were found, our preliminary analysis of the molecular markers for CRC in a predominantly Arab population can provide insights into the molecular pathways that play a significant role in the underlying disease progression. CONCLUSIONS: These results may help optimize personalized therapy when drugs specific to a patient's mutation profile have already been developed.

Genome-Wide Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism-Based Genomic Diversity and Runs of Homozygosity for Selection Signatures in Equine Breeds.

The horse, one of the most domesticated animals, has been used for several purposes, like transportation, hunting, in sport, or for agriculture-related works. Kathiawari, Marwari, Manipuri, Zanskari, Bhutia, Spiti, and Thoroughbred are the main breeds of horses, particularly due to their agroclimatic adaptation and role in any kind of strong physical activity, and these characteristics are majorly governed by genetic factors. The genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship of these Indian equine breeds using microsatellite markers have been reported, but further studies exploring the SNP diversity and runs of homozygosity revealing the selection signature of breeds are still warranted. In our study, the identification of genes that play a vital role in muscle development is performed through SNP detection via the whole-genome sequencing approach. A total of 96 samples, categorized under seven breeds, and 620,721 SNPs were considered to ascertain the ROH patterns amongst all the seven breeds. Over 5444 ROH islands were mined, and the maximum number of ROHs was found to be present in Zanskari, while Thoroughbred was confined to the lowest number of ROHs. Gene enrichment of these ROH islands produced 6757 functional genes, with AGPAT1, CLEC4, and CFAP20 as important gene families. However, QTL annotation revealed that the maximum QTLs were associated with Wither's height trait ontology that falls under the growth trait in all seven breeds. An Equine SNP marker database (EqSNPDb) was developed to catalogue ROHs for all these equine breeds for the flexible and easy chromosome-wise retrieval of ROH along with the genotype details of all the SNPs. Such a study can reveal breed divergence in different climatic and ecological conditions.

Analytical code sharing practices in biomedical research.

Data-driven computational analysis is becoming increasingly important in biomedical research, as the amount of data being generated continues to grow. However, the lack of practices of sharing research outputs, such as data, source code and methods, affects transparency and reproducibility of studies, which are critical to the advancement of science. Many published studies are not reproducible due to insufficient documentation, code, and data being shared. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of 453 manuscripts published between 2016-2021 and found that 50.1% of them fail to share the analytical code. Even among those that did disclose their code, a vast majority failed to offer additional research outputs, such as data. Furthermore, only one in ten papers organized their code in a structured and reproducible manner. We discovered a significant association between the presence of code availability statements and increased code availability (p=2.71×10-9). Additionally, a greater proportion of studies conducting secondary analyses were inclined to share their code compared to those conducting primary analyses (p=1.15*10-07). In light of our findings, we propose raising awareness of code sharing practices and taking immediate steps to enhance code availability to improve reproducibility in biomedical research. By increasing transparency and reproducibility, we can promote scientific rigor, encourage collaboration, and accelerate scientific discoveries. We must prioritize open science practices, including sharing code, data, and other research products, to ensure that biomedical research can be replicated and built upon by others in the scientific community.

Comparative evaluation of periodontal health status of pre and postmenopausal females.

BACKGROUND: Menopause in females is a corporeal stage that gives rise to a number of adaptive changes both at systemic and oral levels, prototypically occurring in the late fourth or fifth decade of life. Though physiological aging affects the oral tissue, the hormonal changes due to menopause also act as a major contributing factor in deteriorating the health of oral tissues. Thus, the main aim of our study was to compare the overall periodontal status and alkaline phosphatase levels in the saliva of females in their pre and postmenopausal ages. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study was conducted on 200 female subjects coming to the Department of Periodontology at Rajendra Institute of Medical Science for oral prophylaxis. The subjects were arbitrarily selected in the age group ranging from 15 to 70 years and were further divided based on the inclusion criteria. Group A included 100 subjects with age ranging from 15 to 45 years, and group B, 100 subjects with age 54 to 70 years. Signs of periodontitis including clinical attachment loss, furcation involvement, and probing depth and salivary alkaline levels were obtained, evaluated, compared, and analyzed. RESULTS: In group A 65% of patients had grade 0 and 28% had grade 1 of clinical attachment level. Similarly in group B, 44% of the total had grade 0 of clinical attachment loss, 38% had grade 1, and 18% were of grade 2. On evaluating grades of furcation involvement, around 45% of the total patients in group A were grade 1 (incipient, pocket formation), while in group B, 51% of the total patients were grade 1. At least 46% in group A and only 20% in group B had no signs of furcation involvement. Salivary alkaline phosphatase levels in pre and postmenopausal patients showed a significant difference between the two groups was obtained. CONCLUSION: The study concluded a major difference in the periodontal health of pre and postmenopausal women with many influencing factors apart from menopause itself.

DBPMod: a supervised learning model for computational recognition of DNA-binding proteins in model organisms.

DNA-binding proteins (DBPs) play critical roles in many biological processes, including gene expression, DNA replication, recombination and repair. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying these processes depends on the precise identification of DBPs. In recent times, several computational methods have been developed to identify DBPs. However, because of the generic nature of the models, these models are unable to identify species-specific DBPs with higher accuracy. Therefore, a species-specific computational model is needed to predict species-specific DBPs. In this paper, we introduce the computational DBPMod method, which makes use of a machine learning approach to identify species-specific DBPs. For prediction, both shallow learning algorithms and deep learning models were used, with shallow learning models achieving higher accuracy. Additionally, the evolutionary features outperformed sequence-derived features in terms of accuracy. Five model organisms, including Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, Escherichia coli, Homo sapiens and Mus musculus, were used to assess the performance of DBPMod. Five-fold cross-validation and independent test set analyses were used to evaluate the prediction accuracy in terms of area under receiver operating characteristic curve (auROC) and area under precision-recall curve (auPRC), which was found to be ~89-92% and ~89-95%, respectively. The comparative results demonstrate that the DBPMod outperforms 12 current state-of-the-art computational approaches in identifying the DBPs for all five model organisms. We further developed the web server of DBPMod to make it easier for researchers to detect DBPs and is publicly available at https://iasri-sg.icar.gov.in/dbpmod/. DBPMod is expected to be an invaluable tool for discovering DBPs, supplementing the current experimental and computational methods.

DeepPlnc: Bi-modal deep learning for highly accurate plant lncRNA discovery.

We present here a bi-modal CNN based deep-learning system, DeepPlnc, to identify plant lncRNAs with high accuracy while using sequence and structural properties. Unlike most of the existing software, it works accurately even in conditions with ambiguity of boundaries and incomplete sequences. It scored consistently high for performance metrics while breaching accuracy of >98% when tested across a large number of validated instances. During multiple benchmarkings DeepPlnc consistently outperformed all the compared tools and maintained a highly significant lead in the range of 2.5%- 4.6% from the second best performing tool (p-value << 0.01). DeepPlnc was used to annotate a de novo assembled transcriptome of a himalayan species where again it suggested its much better suitability for genome and transcriptome annotation purposes than the existing tools. DeepPlnc has been made freely available as a web-server and stand-alone program at https://scbb.ihbt.res.in/DeepPlnc/.

Effect of Yoga on the Stress, Anxiety, and Depression of COVID-19-Positive Patients: A Quasi-Randomized Controlled Study.

The spread of COVID-19 has resulted in reports of increase in stress, anxiety, and depression across society, especially in people who have tested positive for COVID-19, which affects their mental health and well-being. This article reports a quasi-randomized controlled study conducted in the COVID wards of a hospital to examine the efficacy of add-on yoga intervention in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression in COVID-affected patients under quarantine. The peripheral capillary oxygen saturation level and heart rate of the COVID-19-affected patients were also measured. A total of 62 COVID-19-positive patients participated in the study. The participants were randomized into a control group (n = 31), which received conventional medical treatment alone, and a yoga intervention group (n = 31), which received 50 minutes of yoga intervention along with the conventional medical treatment. Standardized Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 Item, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and Perceived Stress Scale were administered at the beginning and end of the quarantine period. A significant decrease in stress, anxiety, and depression was observed in the patients who undertook the add-on yoga intervention. There was also a significant decrease in anxiety in the control group, but the intervention group had a larger decrease compared to the control group. Further significant improvements in oxygen saturation and heart rate levels were observed in the group of patients who were practicing yoga, but no significant improvement was observed in the control group. Findings of this study suggest that yoga intervention can be an effective add-on practice in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression levels of COVID-19 patients.

Metabolic Reprogramming and Cell Adhesion in Acute Leukemia Adaptation to the CNS Niche.

Involvement of the Central Nervous System (CNS) in acute leukemia confers poor prognosis and lower overall survival. Existing CNS-directed therapies are associated with a significant risk of short- or long-term toxicities. Leukemic cells can metabolically adapt and survive in the microenvironment of the CNS. The supporting role of the CNS microenvironment in leukemia progression and dissemination has not received sufficient attention. Understanding the mechanism by which leukemic cells survive in the nutrient-poor and oxygen-deprived CNS microenvironment will lead to the development of more specific and less toxic therapies. Here, we review the current literature regarding the roles of metabolic reprogramming in leukemic cell adhesion and survival in the CNS.

RBPSpot: Learning on appropriate contextual information for RBP binding sites discovery.

Identifying the factors determining the RBP-RNA interactions remains a big challenge. It involves sparse binding motifs and a suitable sequence context for binding. The present work describes an approach to detect RBP binding sites in RNAs using an ultra-fast inexact k-mers search for statistically significant seeds. The seeds work as an anchor to evaluate the context and binding potential using flanking region information while leveraging from Deep Feed-forward Neural Network. The developed models also received support from MD-simulation studies. The implemented software, RBPSpot, scored consistently high for all the performance metrics including average accuracy of ∼90% across a large number of validated datasets. It outperformed the compared tools, including some with much complex deep-learning models, during a comprehensive benchmarking process. RBPSpot can identify RBP binding sites in the human system and can also be used to develop new models, making it a valuable resource in the area of regulatory system studies.

miRbiom: Machine-learning on Bayesian causal nets of RBP-miRNA interactions successfully predicts miRNA profiles.

Formation of mature miRNAs and their expression is a highly controlled process. It is very much dependent upon the post-transcriptional regulatory events. Recent findings suggest that several RNA binding proteins beyond Drosha/Dicer are involved in the processing of miRNAs. Deciphering of conditional networks for these RBP-miRNA interactions may help to reason the spatio-temporal nature of miRNAs which can also be used to predict miRNA profiles. In this direction, >25TB of data from different platforms were studied (CLIP-seq/RNA-seq/miRNA-seq) to develop Bayesian causal networks capable of reasoning miRNA biogenesis. The networks ably explained the miRNA formation when tested across a large number of conditions and experimentally validated data. The networks were modeled into an XGBoost machine learning system where expression information of the network components was found capable to quantitatively explain the miRNAs formation levels and their profiles. The models were developed for 1,204 human miRNAs whose accurate expression level could be detected directly from the RNA-seq data alone without any need of doing separate miRNA profiling experiments like miRNA-seq or arrays. A first of its kind, miRbiom performed consistently well with high average accuracy (91%) when tested across a large number of experimentally established data from several conditions. It has been implemented as an interactive open access web-server where besides finding the profiles of miRNAs, their downstream functional analysis can also be done. miRbiom will help to get an accurate prediction of human miRNAs profiles in the absence of profiling experiments and will be an asset for regulatory research areas. The study also shows the importance of having RBP interaction information in better understanding the miRNAs and their functional projectiles where it also lays the foundation of such studies and software in future.

The first draft genome of Picrorhiza kurrooa, an endangered medicinal herb from Himalayas.

Picrorhiza kurrooa is an endangered medicinal herb which is distributed across the Himalayan region at an altitude between 3000-5000 m above mean sea level. The medicinal properties of P. kurrooa are attributed to monoterpenoid picrosides present in leaf, rhizome and root of the plant. However, no genomic information is currently available for P. kurrooa, which limits our understanding about its molecular systems and associated responses. The present study brings the first assembled draft genome of P. kurrooa by using 227 Gb of raw data generated by Illumina and PacBio RS II sequencing platforms. The assembled genome has a size of n = ~ 1.7 Gb with 12,924 scaffolds. Four pronged assembly quality validations studies, including experimentally reported ESTs mapping and directed sequencing of the assembled contigs, confirmed high reliability of the assembly. About 76% of the genome is covered by complex repeats alone. Annotation revealed 24,798 protein coding and 9789 non-coding genes. Using the assembled genome, a total of 710 miRNAs were discovered, many of which were found responsible for molecular response against temperature changes. The miRNAs and targets were validated experimentally. The availability of draft genome sequence will aid in genetic improvement and conservation of P. kurrooa. Also, this study provided an efficient approach for assembling complex genomes while dealing with repeats when regular assemblers failed to progress due to repeats.

First wave of covid-19 in India using IoT for identification of virus.

Internet of Things (IoT) are evolving rapidly and making it possible for many uses, such as manufacturing, military, education and health, to link different intelligent objects. Coronavirus has recently spread widely around the globe and no effective therapies are currently available. It is also very necessary to avoid infection and to control the symptoms, such as fever and shortness of breath. As Coronavirus is a disease that is circulating very rapidly and the social distancing to deter an outbreak is very significant, it is essential to provide a system that is intelligent enough to monitor the effects of individuals with little direct contact. This document contains an IoT-based and wireless sensor network architecture and simulation of the COVID-19 Monitoring Mechanism (CSMM) for the monitoring of people in their quarantine, particularly the elderly who are living under chronic diseases and immune failure, and are therefore more likely to contract severe diseases. The mechanism relies on patient health data remotely. A doctor or care practitioner may carry out the monitoring process. For starters, where there is high fire or trouble breathing, this can conveniently be used for a detected urgent or irregular situation. The process will then give a warning to the health care provider or practitioner, sending urgent SMS with time and condition to act without any delays to save the patient's life.

RUNX2 regulates leukemic cell metabolism and chemotaxis in high-risk T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is an aggressive hematologic malignancy with inferior outcome compared with that of B cell ALL. Here, we show that Runt-related transcription factor 2 (RUNX2) was upregulated in high-risk T-ALL with KMT2A rearrangements (KMT2A-R) or an immature immunophenotype. In KMT2A-R cells, we identified RUNX2 as a direct target of the KMT2A chimeras, where it reciprocally bound the KMT2A promoter, establishing a regulatory feed-forward mechanism. Notably, RUNX2 was required for survival of immature and KMT2A-R T-ALL cells in vitro and in vivo. We report direct transcriptional regulation of CXCR4 signaling by RUNX2, thereby promoting chemotaxis, adhesion, and homing to medullary and extramedullary sites. RUNX2 enabled these energy-demanding processes by increasing metabolic activity in T-ALL cells through positive regulation of both glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation. Concurrently, RUNX2 upregulation increased mitochondrial dynamics and biogenesis in T-ALL cells. Finally, as a proof of concept, we demonstrate that immature and KMT2A-R T-ALL cells were vulnerable to pharmacological targeting of the interaction between RUNX2 and its cofactor CBFß. In conclusion, we show that RUNX2 acts as a dependency factor in high-risk subtypes of human T-ALL through concomitant regulation of tumor metabolism and leukemic cell migration.

Yoga an effective strategy for self-management of stress-related problems and wellbeing during COVID19 lockdown: A cross-sectional study.

This cross-sectional research aims to study the effect of yoga practice on the illness perception, and wellbeing of healthy adults during 4-10 weeks of lockdown due to COVID19 outbreak. A total of 668 adults (64.7% males, M = 28.12 years, SD = 9.09 years) participated in the online survey. The participants were grouped as; yoga practitioners, other spiritual practitioners, and non-practitioners based on their responses to daily practices that they follow. Yoga practitioners were further examined based on the duration of practice as; long-term, mid-term and beginners. Multivariate analysis indicates that yoga practitioners had significantly lower depression, anxiety, & stress (DASS), and higher general wellbeing (SWGB) as well as higher peace of mind (POMS) than the other two groups. The results further revealed that the yoga practitioners significantly differed in the perception of personal control, illness concern and emotional impact of COVID19. However, there was no significant difference found for the measure of resilience (BRS) in this study. Yoga practitioners also significantly differed in the cognitive reappraisal strategy for regulating their emotions than the other two groups. Interestingly, it was found that beginners -those who had started practicing yoga only during the lockdown period reported no significant difference for general wellbeing and peace of mind when compared to the mid- term practitioner. Evidence supports that yoga was found as an effective self- management strategy to cope with stress, anxiety and depression, and maintain wellbeing during COVID19 lockdown.

Comparative transcriptome analysis of Rheum australe, an endangered medicinal herb, growing in its natural habitat and those grown in controlled growth chambers.

Rheum australe is an endangered medicinal herb of high altitude alpine region of Himalayas and is known to possess anti-cancerous properties. Unlike many herbs of the region, R. australe has broad leaves. The species thrives well under the environmental extremes in its niche habitat, therefore an understanding of transcriptome of R. australe to environmental cues was of significance. Since, temperature is one of the major environmental variables in the niche of R. australe, transcriptome was studied in the species growing in natural habitat and those grown in growth chambers maintained at 4 °C and 25 °C to understand genes associated with different temperatures. A total of 39,136 primarily assembled transcripts were obtained from 10,17,74,336 clean read, and 21,303 unigenes could match to public databases. An analysis of transcriptome by fragments per kilobase of transcript per million, followed by validation through qRT-PCR showed 22.4% up- and 22.5% down-regulated common differentially expressed genes in the species growing under natural habitat and at 4 °C as compared to those at 25 °C. These genes largely belonged to signaling pathway, transporters, secondary metabolites, phytohormones, and those associated with cellular protection, suggesting their importance in imparting adaptive advantage to R. australe in its niche.

Effect of bidi cigarette smoking on interleukin-1ß and 8 levels in chronic periodontitis patient.

INTRODUCTION: Bidi, a leaf rolled cigarette, is the most popular form of smoking in India. Bidi cigarette contains higher tar, ammonia, and nicotine content than a conventional cigarette and is more hazardous. AIM OF STUDY: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of bidi smoking on periodontitis by assessing the interleukin (IL)-1ß and IL-8 from a gingival crevicular fluid (GCF). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 60 patients were selected, which included 40 patients diagnosed with chronic periodontitis (20 bidi smokers and 20 non-bidi smokers) and 20 periodontal healthy controls. Diseased and healthy sites were selected from each of the chronic periodontitis subjects. Clinical parameters assessed were plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), periodontal probing depth (PPD), recession (RC), and clinical attachment level (CAL). Pooled GCF samples were taken from the same site and analyzed for IL-1ß and IL-8 using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS: Bidi smokers displayed decreased levels of IL-1ß and IL-8 than non-bidi smokers for both healthy and diseased sites and significantly reduced IL-8 levels among bidi smokers when compared to controls. Among bidi smokers, the diseased site had significantly higher levels of IL-8 than the healthy site. Non-smoker subjects with chronic periodontitis especially diseased sites contained significantly higher amounts of IL-1ß and IL-8 than smokers and controls. The PI scores were highest among bidi smokers with reduced BOP and GI scores. CONCLUSIONS: Bidi smoking influenced the cytokine profile among periodontitis patients exhibiting decreased levels of IL-1ß and IL-8.

Comparison of different tooth brushes on the degree of plaque removal.

BACKGROUND: At present, different designs of tooth brushes are available, each one is being claimed to be the best by their manufacturers. There is a need to compare the plaque removal efficacy of the most popular designs. AIM: The aim of the present study was to compare the degree ofplaque removal obtained with the use of two commercially available tooth brushes with round ended and thinner tip bristles. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study involved 60 subjects within age range 18-40 years, randomly distributed into 2 groups, 30 in each: Group A- round ended bristle, Group B- thinner tip bristle. Turesky, Gilmore, Glickman Modification of Quigley-Hein Plaque Index, (1970), (PI) was assessed at baseline, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 6 weeks; and Muhlemann and Son, (1971), Sulcus bleeding index (SBI) at baseline and 2 weeks were assessed in each subject. Scaling was done at 2nd week, 4th week, and 6th week after assessment of parameter. At 4th week the subjects were switched over to another type of brush for crossover evaluation. RESULTS: Over 2 weeks, both the groups showed significant (P < 0.05) reduction in plaque score, better reduction in Group A with mean differences of 0.48 than 0.41 in Group B, though it was insignificant on intergroup comparison (P = 0.09). There was reduction in SBI in both groups with mean difference of 0.50 in Group A and 0.11 in Group B and this was statically insignificant. But on comparison, between the two groups at 2 weeks, statically significant reduction was there in Group A. Brushing with specified brush, after scaling, at 4th week Group A had significantly better plaque control (P < 0.01). Upon crossover analysis, better efficiency of round ended bristles was observed but it did not reach the significance level (P = 0.126). CONCLUSION: Within the limitations of the study, the data derived from the study show that both the toothbrushes had shown decrease in plaque scores. Round ended bristles were more efficient.

Primary closure after surgical extraction of mandibular third molar with or without tube drain: A prospective study.

INTRODUCTION: The surgical removal of impacted third molars is considered one of the most frequent procedures in oral and maxillofacial surgery. The utilization of drain is suggested for the reduction of postoperative complications, because it permits the drainage of the fluids located in the tissue spaces. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A prospective randomized clinical study was conducted with 30 patients each in two groups undergoing surgical extraction of mandibular third molars with and without drain. For the group with drain, a small no. 8 size rubber drain was used. Patients were evaluated for postoperative pain, swelling, and trismus. RESULT: The trismus was greater (highly significant with P < 0.001) on the first, third, and seventh postoperative days in the control group. When swelling was being evaluated, highly significant statistical difference was observed between the two groups on the first and third postoperative days (P < 0.001), but on the seventh postoperative day, there was no statistically significance (P > 0.05). On comparison of postoperative pain, there was no statistically significant difference between any follow up days. CONCLUSION: Use of tube drain is effective in reducing the postoperative discomfort in terms of pain, swelling and trismus after surgical removal of impacted mandibular third molar.