Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology

Problem statement: Both M. genitalium and T. vaginalis were recognized as important cause of sexually transmitted infections in developed countries. This study investigated the prevalence of M. genitalium and T. vaginalis in general Jordanian patients and their role of causing genitourinary tract diseases. Approach: A cross sectional study of 383 Jordanian adult patients aged between 19-78 years were investigated for presence of M. genitalium and T. vaginalis at the urology and obstetric-gynecology clinics at the Jordan University Hospital in Amman. First voided urine specimens were tested using urine microscopy, PCR for M. genitalium and T. vaginalis as well as culture for T. vaginalis. Results: The incidence of M. genitalium was higher and statistically significant (17/188, 9%, p = 0.022) than T. vaginalis (3/188; 1.6%) among patients diagnosed with specific urinary symptoms and signs, while this incidence was less but also significant in asymptomatic patients (7/195, 3.6% versus 1/195, 0.5%, p = 0.031), respectively. M. genitalium infection was frequently observed with urinary frequency (76%) and dysuria (59%) among symptomatic patients and more common in men than women (65% versus 35%, p = 0.51) and in married than singles (76% versus 24%, p = 0.59). Dual infection with both organisms was not recognized. Conclusion: Infection caused by M. genitalium and T. vaginalis was associated with higher incidence rate in patients with symptomatic genitourinary disease. Therefore, screening for their occurrence in such patients is important.

Background: Staphylococcus aureus is a major cause of nosocomial and community-acquired infections. Despite the predominance of two capsular polysaccharides, types 5 and 8, on the surface of clinical isolates, molecular and epidemiological variations have been reported among various geographical areas in addition to various clinical outcomes of S. aureus increasing the challenge for preventive and control measurements against staphylococcal infections and diseases. Materials and Methods: A total of 315 S. aureus isolates of various clinical conditions comprised both hospital and community-acquired infections between 2009 and 2011 in Amman and Gaza were studied. All S. aureus clinical isolates included in the present study have been investigated by PCR method to determine the distribution and diversity of capsule polysaccharide expression. Results: Most of the clinical isolates (90%) expressedeither capsular polysaccharide genotypes CP5 (37%) andCP8 (53%), whereas 10% were nontypeable by PCR. Significant predominance of CP8 genotype was reported in clinical isolates of S. aureus from infections in comparison to those which are commonly colonising various normal body sites.

Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the occurrence of potential efflux pump inhibitor (EPI) against AcrAB-TolC efflux pump in the methanol extract of Hibiscus sabdariffa. Materials and Methods: Calyces of H. sabdariffa were purchased from the local market in April 2014, used in methanol extraction. The methanol extract of H. sabdariffa was subjected to agar plate diffusion against Escherichia coli TG1 and its ∆acrB-∆tolC followed by a thin layer chromatography (TLC) bioassay. The fraction corresponding to EPI fraction was eluted from the silica gel by methanol. The synergistic effect of antimicrobials and EPI fraction was measured by minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination for E. coli and Erwinia amylovora strains. The ability of EPI fraction to enhance ethidium bromide (EtBr) accumulation was conducted. Results: E. coli TG1 was more sensitive to the methanol extracts of H. sabdariffa than E. coli ∆acrB-∆tolC. Inhibition zone corresponding to flavones on TLC bioassay plate has been formed which might be related to the fraction of potential EPI. The MIC values revealed that EPI fraction enhanced the activity of the used antimicrobials by 4-8 folds in E. coli TG1 and by 4-10 folds in E. amylovora 1189. Addition of EPI fraction in a dose-dependent manner increased the intercellular accumulation of EtBr in the wild type stains of E. coli TG1 and E. amylovora 1189. Conclusion: An EPI fraction behaves like a multidrug EPI, and further investigation should be conducted for determination the structure of chemical constituents in EPI fraction.

Background and objectives: Proper diagnosis of clinical conditions is a major goal of clinical and biochemical analyses. Recently, increasing efforts have been put on the use of less invasive sampling techniques with optimal sensitivity and specificity. The aim of this study was to investigate the applicability of saliva instead of blood for measuring biochemical parameters of liver and kidney function in healthy individuals. Methods: Plasma and saliva samples were collected from 100 healthy volunteers to measure level of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), total bilirubin, gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT), urea and creatinine using a fully automated chemistry analyzer (ACE Alera) with ready to use validated kits. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was carried out using MediCal program to calculate sensitivity and specificity and area under ROC (AUC). Results: The mean (standard deviation) salivary level of ALP, AST, ALT, GGT, total bilirubin, creatinine and urea was 20.9

Background and Aim: Bovine mastitis has long been considered the most important cause of economic losses in the dairy industry. Staphylococcus aureus is the most frequently isolated pathogen from bovine mastitis cases worldwide. Capsular polysaccharides (CPs) of serotype 5 (CP5) or serotype 8 (CP8) are the most prevalent capsule genotypes related to infections associated with S. aureus in humans. However, a variety of CPs has been reported in ruminants and other hosts. Information regarding the relationship between genotypic and phenotypic capsule variation and bovine mastitis in Jordan is scarce. Thus, we aimed to determine the prevalence of S. aureus capsule genotypes CP5 and CP8 in milk from bovine mastitis cases and the antimicrobial susceptibility profile of the recovered isolates in 27 dairy farms in Jordan. Materials and Methods: Staphylococcus aureus strains were isolated from bovine mastitis cases in two districts of Jordan. All S. aureus isolates were initially identified ...

The present study is conducted to investigatethe relatedness and genomic variability between strains of methicillin-resistant and methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus.A total of 100 isolatescollected from different human skin infection and used a combination of morphological and molecular techniques to identify ten of these as Methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA), and ten as Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). The MRSA and MSSA samples were subjected to genetic characterization with the use of the Random Amplificationof Polymorphic DNA technique (RAPD) using 10 primers.The DNA profile of the samples wereobtained and showed that the number of the bands and banding patterns varied depending upon the primers used. A two-dimensional binary matrix was constructed through scoring the presence or absence of a band at any position on the gel. A total of 142 bands were generated per the 10 primers, of which 141 ranged between 3100-100 bp. Primers OPJ-13 and OPE-16 exhibited the largest number of bands (20) with a 100% polymorphism and the greatest discriminatory index power (DI, 14.1), while primer OPI-06 produced the lowest number of bandsand a comparably lower level of discrimination (DI, 7.09).Data in this study demonstrate the ability of the RAPD analysis to differentiate between strains at the intraspecies level. Data also suggest that this technique can be applied successfully to assess the genetic backgrounds among isolates.

Background: Since high-throughput protein-protein interaction (PPI) data has recently become available for humans, there has been a growing interest in combining PPI data with other genomewide data. In particular, the identification of phenotype-related PPI subnetworks using gene expression data has been of great concern. Successful integration for the identification of significant subnetworks requires the use of a search algorithm with a proper scoring method. Here we propose a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA)-based scoring method with a greedy search for identifying differentially expressed PPI subnetworks. Results: Given the MANOVA-based scoring method, we performed a greedy search to identify the subnetworks with the maximum scores in the PPI network. Our approach was successfully applied to human microarray datasets. Each identified subnetwork was annotated with the Gene Ontology (GO) term, resulting in the phenotype-related functional pathway or complex. We also compared these results with those of other scoring methods such as t statistic-and mutual information-based scoring methods. The MANOVA-based method produced subnetworks with a larger number of proteins than the other methods. Furthermore, the subnetworks identified by the MANOVA-based method tended to consist of highly correlated proteins. Conclusion: This article proposes a MANOVA-based scoring method to combine PPI data with expression data using a greedy search. This method is recommended for the highly sensitive detection of large subnetworks.

The Punica granatum L. (pomegranate) fruit juice contains large amounts of polyphenols, mainly tannins such as ellagitannin, punicalagin, and punicalin, and flavonoids such as anthocyanins, flavan-3-ols, and flavonols. These constituents have high antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, anti-obesity, and anticancer activities. Because of these activities, many patients may consume pomegranate juice (PJ) with or without their doctor’s knowledge. This may raise any significant medication errors or benefits because of food-drug interactions that modulate the drug’s pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics. It has been shown that some drugs exhibited no interaction with pomegranate, such as theophylline. On the other hand, observational studies reported that PJ prolonged the pharmacodynamics of warfarin and sildenafil. Furthermore, since it has been shown that pomegranate constituents inhibit cytochrome P450 (CYP450) activities such as CYP3A4 and CYP2C9, PJ may affect intestinal and ...

Recently, Helicobacter pylori has been connected to more than 80% of chronic active gastritis and other gastroduodenal diseases worldwide. Treatment of H. pylori is routinely dependent on the use of multiple antimicrobial agents however, recent data showed the emergence of resistance among clinical strains especially against metronidazole and clarithromycin. This study was conducted to investigate the rate of resistance to different antibiotics that are routinely used in the first line and second line therapies including ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin, tetracycline, amoxicillin, clarithromycin and metronidazole among H. pylori strains isolated from patients with gastroduodenal diseases in Jordan. Both antral and corpus mucosal biopsies from the stomach of patients with positive results of H. pylori stool antigen and urease breath tests were used for the isolation of H. pylori on selective culture media. The standard agar diffusion method was performed to determine the sensitivity of...

A new rapid, simple, sensitive, and accurate spectrophotometric method have been developed, to determine of esomeprazole (EMZ) in its dosage forms. The method was based on the formation of a charge-transfer complexe between chloranilic acid (CAA) as a π-acceptor and EMZ as an ndonor in methanol-acetonitril medium. The maximum absorbance of the coloured complex occurred at 521-525 nm and the molar absorptivity 4.932x10 3 L.mol -1 .cm -1 . The molar combining ratio and the optimum assay conditions were studied. Under optimum conditions, the stoichiometry of the reactions between EMZ and the CAA was found to be 1:2 and 1:4. The linear ranges for the proposed method were 1.250-150.00 μgmL −1 .The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) was found to be 0.156μg.mL -1 and 0.473 μg.mL -1 respectively, with RSD was 4.6% . The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of esomeprazole magnesium in pure and pharmaceutical dosage forms with average recovery of 98.26-100.12% .The results obtained agree well with the contents stated on the labels.