Ocular Manifestations of ß -Thalassemia Patients with the Use of Oral Iron Chelating Agents

Background: Ocular involvement in β-thalassemia major is very common. Iron chelators like Desferrioxamine and Deferiprone avoid systemic complications but chelate metals in retina. Objectives: 1.To study the relation of oral iron chelator (Deferiprone) on various ocular manifestations in β-thalassemia major patients. 2. To study the relation of serum ferritin with various ocular manifestations. Methods: 100β-thalassemia major patients out of those attending our thalassemia clinic were selected for the study as per our inclusion and exclusion criteria. They were divided into two major groups based on whether they were taking oral iron chelator (Deferiprone) or not. Detailed history, examination and investigations were done and recorded. Results: The study revealed that 52% of the patients had ocular involvement with 86.5% of them taking Deferiprone (p<0.0001), 13% had retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) degeneration with 92.3% of them on Deferiprone (p=0.003) and 18% had RPE mottling with 88.8% of them taking Deferiprone (p=0.001). Other ocular changes like lens opacity, disc hyperemia, best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and venous tortuosity showed some difference between the two groups but that was insignificant. Further the study also showed that higher serum ferritin levels were significantly associated with ocular changes like decreased BCVA (p<0.001), RPE degeneration (p<0.001), RPE mottling (p<0.001) and venous tortuosity (p<0.025). Conclusion: Ocular changes in β-thalassemia major increases with greater duration of the disease and increased number of blood transfusions due to increased serum ferritin levels. Using iron chelators may reduce iron overload but they causechelator induced ocular involvement.

Correlation Between Blood Pressure Measurement by Non-invasive and Invasive Methods in Critically-ill Children

Objective: To determine the correlation of non-invasive blood pressure obtained byauscultatory and oscillometric methods, with invasive blood pressure in critically ill children.Methods: We compared invasive with auscultatory and oscillometric blood pressures usingpaired t-test, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman plot in 50 children (age 1-12y) admitted in Pediatric intensive care unit. Results: Systolic, diastolic, and mean arterialpressures of invasive methods significantly correlated with auscultatory and oscillometricmethods (P<0.001). Auscultatory and oscillometric measurements under-estimated systolicarterial pressures [mean (SD) difference 5.4 (12.2) mmHg and 6.3 (14.0) mmHg,respectively; P<0.001] and overestimated diastolic arterial pressures [-4.1 (5.8) mmHg and-3.6 (7.2) mmHg; P<0.001] compared to invasive blood pressure. Conclusion: Mean arterialpressure obtained by NIBP measurement is more closer than systolic or diastolic pressures,when compared with invasive blood pressure measurement.

CoMFA -3D QSAR approach in drug design.

Progress in medicinal chemistry and in drug design depends on our ability to understand the interactions of drugs with their biological targets. Classical QSAR studies describe biological activity in terms of physicochemical properties of substituents in certain positions of the drug molecules. The detailed discussion of the present state of the art should enable scientists to further develop and improve these powerful new tools. Comparative Molecular Field Analysis (CoMFA) is a mainstream and down-toearth 3D QSAR technique in the coverage of drug discovery and development. Even though CoMFA is remarkable for high predictive capacity, the intrinsic data-dependent characteristic still makes this methodology certainly be handicapped by noise. It's well known that the default settings in CoMFA can bring about predictive QSAR models, in the meanwhile optimized parameters was proven to provide more predictive results. Accordingly, so far numerous endeavors have been accomplished to ameliorate the CoMFA model’s robustness and predictive accuracy by considering various factors, including molecular conformation and alignment, field descriptors and grid spacing. In the present article we are going to discuss the basic approaches of CoMFA in drug design.