Determination of carnosic acid in Rosmarinus officinalis L. using square wave voltammetry and electrochemical behavior.

A new, fast, sensitive and simple voltammetric method is established for the direct determination of carnosic acid (CA). And the electroreduction of carnosic acid (CA) was studied using electrochemical methods. The number of electrons transferred in electrode mechanisms were calculated for reversible and adsorption-controlled electrochemical reduction of CA at 17 mV versus Ag/AgCl at pH 7.0 in Britton-Robinson buffer (BR) on a hanging mercury drop electrode. Square-wave voltammetry was developed and validated for direct determination of CA. Square-wave parameters were optimized as accumulation potential = 0.0 mV, accumulation time = 5 s, frequency = 50 Hz, pulse amplitude = 50 mV, and staircase step potential = 5 mV. The developed method displays three linear responses from 2 to 9 µM, 10 to 30 and 40 to 90 µM for carnosic acid with a correlation coefficient of 0.996, 0.999 and 0.999. The detection limits were found to be 1.5 µM, 4.0 µM and 40.1 µM, respectively. The interference effect of most common organic and inorganic species was investigated. Proposed method was successfully applied for determination of CA in natural extract of rosemary and the average content was determined as 11.9 ± 1.0 (µg CA/1 g rosemary). The results were in agreement with that obtained by HPLC-UV comparison method. The developed method can be widely used in routine quality control of herbal materials as well as other in foods, medicinal, pharmaceutical and environmental analysis.

Development of a medical module for disaster information systems.

This study aims to improve a medical module which provides a real-time medical information flow about pre-hospital processes that gives health care in disasters; transferring, storing and processing the records that are in electronic media and over internet as a part of disaster information systems. In this study which is handled within the frame of providing information flow among professionals in a disaster case, to supply the coordination of healthcare team and transferring complete information to specified people at real time, Microsoft Access database and SQL query language were used to inform database applications. System was prepared on Microsoft .Net platform using C# language. Disaster information system-medical module was designed to be used in disaster area, field hospital, nearby hospitals, temporary inhabiting areas like tent city, vehicles that are used for dispatch, and providing information flow between medical officials and data centres. For fast recording of the disaster victim data, accessing to database which was used by health care professionals was provided (or granted) among analysing process steps and creating minimal datasets. Database fields were created in the manner of giving opportunity to enter new data and search old data which is recorded before disaster. Web application which provides access such as data entry to the database and searching towards the designed interfaces according to the login credentials access level. In this study, homepage and users' interfaces which were built on database in consequence of system analyses were provided with www.afmedinfo.com web site to the user access. With this study, a recommendation was made about how to use disaster-based information systems in the field of health. Awareness has been developed about the fact that disaster information system should not be perceived only as an early warning system. Contents and the differences of the health care practices of disaster information systems were revealed. A web application was developed supplying a link between the user and the database to make date entry and data query practices by the help of the developed interfaces.

Prevalence of dysmenorrhea and its effect on quality of life among a group of female university students.

The objective was to evaluate the prevalence of dysmenorrhea and determine its effect on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among a group of female university students. This cross-sectional study was conducted between 15 March and 15 April 2009 at Dumlupinar University, Kutahya, Health High School, Western Turkey. The study group included 623 female students. The severity of dysmenorrhea was determined with a 10-point visual analog scale. The Short Form-36 (SF-36) form was used to determinate HRQoL. Chi-square test, Student's t test, and logistic regression and variance analyses (ANOVA) were used for statistical analyses. The average age of the study group was 20.8 +/- 1.8 years (range 17-30). Prevalence of dysmenorrhea was found to be 72.7% and was significantly higher in coffee consumers, females with menstrual bleeding duration > or =7 days, and those who had a positive family history of dysmenorrhea when compared to the others (P < 0.05, for each one). By multivariate analysis, coffee consumption (OR 2.084), menstrual bleeding duration > or =7 days (OR 1.590), and positive family history of dysmenorrhea (OR 3.043) were important risk factors for dysmenorrhea. Except for social functioning, role-emotional, and mental health domains, the SF-36 points received from the other domains were higher in females with dysmenorrhea (for each one P < 0.05). With the exception of the scores received from physical functioning and role-emotional domains, the scores received from the other domains of the SF-36 scale showed a decrease with increasing severity of dysmenorrhea (P < 0.05, for each one). Dysmenorrhea is a common health problem, having negative effects on the HRQoL among university female students.