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Idiopathic retinal vasculitis is a chronic disease of unknown aetiology which results in ocular morbidity in patients of productive age group. Homocysteine has been implicated in various ocular conditions like age-related macular degeneration, retinal vein occlusions, diabetic retinopathy, and optic nerve diseases. We conducted a study to investigate the relation between serum homocysteine levels and retinal vasculitis at a tertiary care centre in North India. In this case-control study, 32 cases and 64 controls were included and the duration was from June 2017 to March 2019. Serum homocysteine of cases and controls was detected by reflectance photometry using VITROS Chemistry Products HCY 2 (Homocysteine) and the normal range of serum homocysteine as per this method was 6.60 to 14.80 micro mol per litre. Our study found that of the total 32 retinal vasculitis patients, serum homocysteine was raised in 65.62% (21 cases out of 32) and in 70.31% of control group (45 out of 64). Chi square test results showed that there was no significant association found between S. homocysteine levels and Reticular vasculitis (P: 0.64). The two groups were comparable in terms of the age with mean ± SD in cases being 33.47 ± 8.336 years and controls being 35.16 ± 8.568 years with a P value of 0.37 being statistically insignificant. The data collected was analysed using SSPS-16 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 16) software and test of association was Odd's ratio. Power of study was 80% and P < 0.05 is considered statistically significant. We found that there is no significant association between raised serum homocysteine and retinal vasculitis (with P < 0.64). Odds ratio was 0.80(0.33-1.99) implying that the cases and controls were statistically significantly different with respect to homocysteine levels.
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Background: Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) is a phase II metabolite of ethanol and is an upcoming biomarker for recent alcohol intake. Monitoring of alcohol intake in case of alcohol-dependent syndrome is very useful for early intervention and preventing harmful effects. EtG has also been identified as a very useful marker in differentiating antemortem ingestion of alcohol from postmortem production of alcohol. This study was undertaken with an objective of developing a sensitive and specific method for determination of EtG in urine. Methods: Triple quadruple Liquid Chromatography (LC)-Mass Spectrometry (MS) with Electrospray Ionization (ESI) negative mode has been used for developing the multiple reaction monitoring method by using the Polaris 3 C 18-Ether analytical column. A simple sample preparation method was adopted using the Bond Elute Plexa PAX SPE cartridge. The developed method was also tested on actual urine samples from 15 individuals after consumption of 60 and 90 ml of whiskey at different time intervals. Results: A simple method was developed for determination of EtG in urine, with a sensitivity of 100 ppb and a recovery of 75%. Validation of the method on urine samples revealed that EtG could be detected for up to 18 h in individuals who ingested 60 ml of whiskey and up to 24 h in those who ingested 90 ml of whiskey. Conclusion: The simple method was developed for determination of EtG in urine and validated on actual urine samples. This method can now be used in aircraft accident investigation to differentiate postmortem production of alcohol, and the method is also a very useful tool to monitor Alcohol dependent Syndrome (ADS) cases.
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BACKGROUND: MicroRNAs are abundant in serum and have emerged as important regulators of gene expression, implicating them in a wide range of diseases. The purpose of this study was to discover and validate serum miRNAs in prediabetes associated with alcohol dependence syndrome (ADS). METHOD: Serum samples from ADS patients with or without prediabetes and normoglycemic controls were subjected to microarray. Validation of identified candidate miRNAs was performed by RT-qPCR. Additionally, GO and KEGG pathway analyses were carried out to uncover target genes anticipated to be controlled by the candidate miRNAs. RESULTS: Notably, 198, and 172 miRNAs were differentially expressed in ADS-patients with or without prediabetes compared to healthy controls, and 7 miRNAs in ADS-patients with prediabetes compared to ADS-normoglycemic patients, respectively. Furthermore, hsa-miR-320b and hsa-miR-3135b were differentially expressed exclusively in ADS-patients with prediabetes, and this was further validated. Interestingly, GO and KEGG pathway analysis revealed that genes predicted to be modulated by the candidates were considerably enriched in numerous diabetes-related biological processes and pathways. CONCLUSION: Our findings revealed that ADS-patients with or without prediabetes have different sets of miRNAs compared to normoglycemic healthy subjects. We propose serum hsa-miR-320b and hsa-miR-3135b as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of prediabetes in ADS-patients.
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BACKGROUND: The mortality and morbidity rates are two to fourfold higher among Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). American Diabetes Association (ADA) and World Health Organization (WHO) define different criteria for the diagnosis of glucose intolerance. This study compares the available diagnostic criteria for DM in Indian men and their importance in CAD patients. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was done on 794 male volunteers; 483 individuals from general population and 311 patients undergoing angiography for evaluation of CAD. Individuals with previous clinical history of diabetes mellitus were excluded. RESULTS: More than 90% of diabetics by ADA criteria could be diagnosed by Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and HbA1c criteria while FPG and pg2h plasma glucose (WHO criteria) could detect only 74%. Impaired Fasting Glucose (IFG) or Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT) was present in 36.7% of individuals diagnosed to be diabetic based on HbA1c; more in CAD +ve group (53.8%) than in general population (23.6%). ROC analysis suggests >121 mg/dl of FPG or >6.2% of HbA1c as optimum cut-off for the diagnosis of DM. FPG and HbA1c criteria have higher Relative Risk for presence of coronary artery occlusion and HOMA-IR. CONCLUSION: Inclusion of HbA1c in the criteria for diagnosis of DM (ADA criteria) can detect large number of cases with persistent hyperglycemia in the non-diagnostic range of DM (IFG or IGT) among general population and CAD patients. This has special relevance to epidemiological studies as the diagnosis of DM can be made on single fasting blood sample.
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Early diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients is essential to control the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic. We develop a rapid and accurate one-step multiplex TaqMan probe-based real-time RT-PCR assay, along with a computational tool to systematically analyse the data. Our assay could detect to a limit of 15 copies of SARS-CoV-2 transcripts-based on experiments performed by spiking total human RNA with in vitro synthesized viral transcripts. The assay was evaluated by performing 184 validations for the SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid gene and human RNase P as an internal control reference gene with dilutions ranging from 1-100 ng for human RNA on a cohort of 26 clinical samples. 5 of 26 patients were confirmed to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, while 21 tested negative, consistent with the standards. The accuracy of the assay was found to be 100% sensitive and 100% specific based on the 26 clinical samples that need to be further verified using a large number of clinical samples. In summary, we present a rapid, easy to implement real-time PCR based assay with automated analysis using a novel COVID qPCR Analyzer tool with graphical user interface (GUI) to analyze the raw qRT-PCR data in an unbiased manner at a cost of under $3 per reaction and turnaround time of less than 2h, to enable in-house SARS-CoV-2 testing across laboratories.