Stressful life events, hopelessness, and suicidal intent in patients admitted with attempted suicide in a tertiary care general hospital.

BACKGROUND: Suicide is a psychiatric emergency. Stressors in life and social variables (like marital status, family, and social support) are among the determinants of suicide. Hopelessness and suicidal intent are among the psychological variables that have shown promise in the prediction of suicide. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To assess stressful life events, hopelessness, suicidal intent, and sociodemographic variables in patients of attempted suicide. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty consecutive patients admitted with attempted suicide were interviewed. Presumptive Stressful Life Event Scale, Beck Hopelessness Scale, and Beck Suicidal Intent Scale were used along with a semistructured pro forma for interview. Data were analyzed with statistical tests. RESULTS: Sixty-six percent of the participants were females, 72% were less than 30 years of age. Sixty-six percent of the patients had stressful life event score between 101 and 200 with the mean score of 127. The stressful life event score in those who considered they are in need of psychiatric help was significantly high. Most of the patients had mild (34%) and moderate (40%) degrees of hopelessness, and the mean score was 9.64. The mean suicidal intent in the participants was 25.14, when correlated with hopelessness score significant positive correlation was found. CONCLUSION: Lethality of the attempt increases with the increase in hopelessness.

PDBe: Protein Data Bank in Europe.

The Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe; pdbe.org) is a partner in the Worldwide PDB organization (wwPDB; wwpdb.org) and as such actively involved in managing the single global archive of biomacromolecular structure data, the PDB. In addition, PDBe develops tools, services and resources to make structure-related data more accessible to the biomedical community. Here we describe recently developed, extended or improved services, including an animated structure-presentation widget (PDBportfolio), a widget to graphically display the coverage of any UniProt sequence in the PDB (UniPDB), chemistry- and taxonomy-based PDB-archive browsers (PDBeXplore), and a tool for interactive visualization of NMR structures, corresponding experimental data as well as validation and analysis results (Vivaldi).

High performance thin layer chromatographic determination of nifedipine from bulk drug and from pharmaceuticals.

A stability indicating high performance thin layer chromatographic (HPTLC) method for quantification of nifedipine, as bulk drug and from solid oral dosage forms has been developed. The extraction solvent was methanol and the mobile phase was chloroform:ethyl acetate:cyclohexane (19:2:2, v/v/v). The calibration curve of nifedipine in methanol was linear in the concentration range of 180-720 ng. The mean values of correlation coefficient, slope and intercept were 0.995 +/- 1.02, 1.467 +/- 0.56 and 184.16 +/- 2.15. The limit of detection for nifedipine was 20 ng and limit of quantification was 40 ng. No interference was found from photodecomposition products. The percent recovery of nifedipine using the described procedure was 99.08 +/- 1.51. The coefficient of variation for within day and between day analysis was 0.60 and 0.84% for 480 ng and 0.47 and 0.25% for 720 ng nifedipine concentration. The method was utilized to monitor concentration of nifedipine from sustained release marketed solid oral dosage forms as also from the developed sustained release liquid filled and multi unit hard gelatin capsules.

HPTLC determination of ketorolac tromethamine.

A High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) method for quantification of ketorolac tromethamine, a non-narcotic and non-steroidal agent was developed. The mobile phase composition was chloroform-ethyl acetate-glacial acetic acid (3:8:0.1, v/v/v). Spectrodensitometric analysis of ketorolac tromethamine was carried out at 323 nm. The calibration curve was linear in the range of 200-700 ng. The mean values of slope, intercept and correlation coefficient were, 2941, 749583, 0.99. The method was validated for method precision, system precision, marketed sample analysis and recovery studies. The % CV for method precision studies was 1.98 (n = 6) and system precision study was 1.83 (n = 6). The average recovery was found to be 99.2%. Acid and base degraded products were adequately separated from the drug. The method was successfully used for the determination of drug from saliva. The results indicate that the method is simple, specific, selective and reliable for quantitative analysis of ketorolac tromethamine as bulk drug and from formulations. It can also be applied for the stability study of the drug and analysis of drug in biological fluids.