Development of perceived prenatal maternal stress scale.

BACKGROUND: Pregnancy is a state, which is often associated with extreme joy and happiness. Women undergo a number of physiological and psychological changes during pregnancy, which are often stressful if aligned with other adverse life events, compromising their health and well-being. However, there exists no comprehensive psychological instruments for measuring this stress. OBJECTIVES: The study was conducted to develop a multidimensional scale to assess prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) comprehensively. METHODS: The initial phase of the study focuses on developing items and assessing the content validity of these items. The second phase focuses on pilot-testing and field-testing the newly developed perceived PNMS scale (PPNMSS) among 356 pregnant women belonging to different parity and trimester from November 2015 to October 2016. RESULTS: The underlying factor structure of the 28-item PPNMSS had explored using exploratory factor analysis. The final scale is retained with 15 items having considerable item loading under four major factors as follows: perceived social support, pregnancy-specific concerns, intimate partner relations, and financial concerns. Reliability of each of these dimensions was assessed using Cronbach's alpha. Convergent and divergent validity of the scale was assessed by correlating the scores with perceived stress scale and the World Health Organization (five) well-being index (1998 version). CONCLUSIONS: As a comprehensive scale, PPNMSS is efficient to measure PNMS, which facilitates an early detection of stress and depression among pregnant women and timely intervention by health care professionals.

Characterization of insecticidal metabolite oosporein in Lecanicillium saksenae (Kushwaha) Kurihara and Sukarno, a geographically distinct isolate from Kerala, India.

Lecanicillium saksenae, an indigenous isolate from Kerala, India is a potent entomopathogen against hemipteran pests. The wine-red pigmentation produced by this isolate distinguishes it from many other isolates of L. saksenae reported across the globe. This study, therefore, sought to isolate and characterize the pigment molecule. The wine-red pigment extracted through liquid - liquid partition of the fungal culture was subjected to structural characterization and identification through UV spectrometry, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR), High Resolution Liquid Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry (HR-LCMS) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometry (NMR). It was unambiguously identified as a dibenzoquinone compound, oosporein, a known bioactive insecticidal metabolite. The empirical formula of which was confirmed as C14H10O8 and molecular weight, m/z 306.22. The dose dependent bioefficacy of oosporein with 1000 ppm at 96 h recorded a mortality of 60.25 per cent in nymphs of brinjal mealybug, Coccidohystrix insolita, while it was still lower (51.00%) in adults. In this study, we could identify that L. saksenae reported from Kerala, India was geographically distinct. Sequence analysis based on 18srDNA and phylogenetic analysis confirmed the species identity of this indigenous isolate with that of L. saksenae documented in NCBI. This finding paves the way for the possibilities of tapping the potential of bioactive metabolites for pest management and uplifting the species as a potent bioagent in insect pest management programmes.

Investigations on the Functional connectivity disruptive patterns of progressive neurodegenerative disorders.

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Parkinson's Disease (PD) are neurodegenerative diseases of the brain that affects the memory and motor regions respectively. Neurological disorders are the result of alterations at molecular level due to complex mechanisms between genetic and environmental factors. Classical approaches are focused on determining how disruptions in functional connectivity occur in the memory regions of AD and motor regions of PD. There have been studies stating that in addition to dementia, motor abnormalities may also be observed in Alzheimer's patients and on the other hand, dementia may occur in Parkinson's patients a year or more after the onset of motor symptoms. In this work, to substantiate this hypothesis the brain connectivity patterns and functional topology of motor and memory regions in AD and PD patients were analyzed and compared. Resting state functional connectivity (rs-fMRI) has been found to demonstrate the brain networks in both AD and PD. Graph theoretical modelling is being significantly used in studying the topology of the brain networks. The results show the disruption of connectivity in motor regions in later stages of AD in addition to memory regions and conversely in PD the memory regions were found to have disrupted connectivity in addition to the motor regions. Further, the Z scores of intra and inter hemispheric regions in AD and PD also indicate the disruption in connectivity as the disease progresses.