The symptom called ‘Jaundice’ refer to yellow appearance of the skin, sclera and the mucous membranes resulting from the increased bilirubin concentration in body fluids. It is detectable while the plasma bilirubin exceeds 50µm o1/1(3mg/dl). The internal tissues and the body fluids are colored yellow but not the brain since bilirubin does not cross blood-brain barrier other than in immediate neonatal period.
Cholestasis is the failure of bile flow, and the cause may lie anywhere between hepatocyte and duodenum. The jaundice becomes gradually severe in the unrelieved cholestasis because the conjugated bilirubin is unable to enter bile canaliculi and passes back into blood. It happens also because there is the failure of the clearance of un-conjugated bilirubin arriving in liver cells.
Aetiology: - Cholestasis may be because of failure of the hepatocytes to generate the bile flow, to the obstruction to bile flow in bile ducts in portal tracks, or to the obstruction to bile flow in extra-hepatic bile ducts between porta hepatic and papilla of Vater. The cause of cholestasis may operate at more than one of these levels. Those confined to extra-hepatic bile ducts can be amenable to the surgical correction.
Clinical Feature: - The clinical features in the cholestasic jaundice include those to the cholestasis itself and to the development of the cholangitis consequent on biliary obstruction. Jaundice is very variable. It may be static or may fluctuate. If it is prolonged and severer; it may give the skin a greenish look. Stools are pale or clay colored for the deficiency of pigment derived from bilirubin. The urine is dark from renal excretion of conjugated bilirubin. Many patients may have pruritus generated and the accessible parts of the body may also show scratch marks. The lipid deposits may develop in skin during prolonged cholestatic jaundice. Most of them are xanthelasmas on eyelids but sometimes xanthomas also occur. Prolonged cholestasis may also cause marked mal absorption leading to weight loss, severe steatorrhoea, and hemorrhagic tendency because of Vitamin K deficiency associated with the calcium and vitamin D deficiency. Clinical and biochemical evidence of the biliary cirrhosis and hepatocellular failure occur eventually. Cholangitis, due to the infection with or without rigors and the coincident pain and the hepatic tenderness may indicate the development of the hepatic abscess. None of the features are pathognomonic of any particular cause, but are more likely to be in some diseases than the others. Read more…
With the immense success of Ayurveda and Yoga, India is taking a proactive lead in creating a healthcare system with the potential to bring affordable modern pharmaceutical products to every ailing person whatever financial status he/she has. The new initiative is called “Open Source Drug Discovery”. The term gained popularity with the rise of LINUX operating System and more recently, in Biology with the Human Genome Sequencing Project (HUGO initiative). Open Source is expected to providing better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost. It will bring an end to closed-door activities that substantially increase cost of drug discovery.
Open Source Drug Discovery is an initiative led by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The new method believes that drug discovery needs to move out from behind the closed doors of pharmaceutical companies to the open minds of the younger generations. It delivers the power of genomics and computational technologies into the hands of the young, the capable and motivated, enabling students, scientists, technocrats, universities, and corporations to work together. It is a de-centralized web-based global community-wide effort. The thrust is to bring down the cost of drug discovery significantly by knowledge sharing and constructive collaboration and to establish a novel open source platform for both computational and experimental technologies. By making drug discovery for infectious diseases, cost effective and affordable, OSDD could grow into a program that seeks to find cures for diseases that affect the world’s poorest of the poor.
The entire process of drug discovery is resource-extensive and the necessity of safeguarding Intellectual Property Rights, maintaining confidentially of drug development and overheads, etc substantially raises costs. Any pharmaceutical company seeking to launch a new drug therefore actively works to guarantee profitable sales. So pharmaceutical companies lend to favor the disorders and disease that state the affluent countries. Very few companies venture into the realm of diseases of the poverty stricken third world. They turn to diseases like malaria, leishmaniasis, and tuberculosis. Currently, there are only a fraction of drugs under clinical testing for TB as compared to those for cancer. Actually pharmaceutical companies hesitate in investing in diseases of the third world primarily due to the small market size represented by potential buyers. The discovery of development of a new drug costs approximately USD 250-800 million and takes about 12 years on an average. Developing economies simply don’t represent the market. These companies seek for a profitable return of their investments. For infectious diseases like TB, the market size is only about USD 300m – not a lucrative enough margin of profit. However, TB patients still await a good fast acting drug, or even a vaccine that confers long lasting protection. There are still far too few compounds that represent new chemical classes with novel mechanisms of action and a low probability of encountering drug resistance. The lack of drugs exacerbates an already desperate situation. Read more…
I have been trying for long to try and release a Word Press Theme for Free to the health blogging fraternity. Finally, I could lay my hand on one of the themes that I think is dedicated especially to the health industry and caters to health blogs.
The theme is very simple and contains most Web2 blogging characteristics such as -
* Valid XHTML and CSS
* adsense Ready
* social bookmarking ready
* Fixed width
* 3 column
* Chrome 0.3, Firefox 3.0.1, MSIE 7.0
* White and Blue
* customizable header
Indian and other overseas doctors working in the United Kingdom ( UK ) will no longer be able to have their specialist medical training funded by the government under a new plan to be unveiled soon. A UK ministerial group is preparing a move to impose the ban on training posts on all foreign doctors from outside the European Union ( EU ) in a bid to prevent thousands of British medics from facing unemployment.
Foreign doctors from outside the European Union, who account for half of all applicans for this year, are apprehending a ban on their specialist medical training that is paid by tax payers. It has been known that the British Government and British doctors have been very upset after the High Court struc the Department of Health ( DoH ) guidance issued last year that foreign doctors could only be considered for a training post if there was no suitable candidate from Britain or the EU. But this was successfully challenged in court by the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin(BAPIO), that claimed it was unfairly discriminatory.
Indian and other overseas doctors working in the United Kingdom ( UK ) will no longer be able to have their specialist medical training funded by the government under a new plan to be unveiled soon. A UK ministerial group is preparing a move to impose the ban on training posts on all foreign doctors from outside the European Union ( EU ) in a bid to prevent thousands of British medics from facing unemployment.
Foreign doctors from outside the European Union, who account for half of all applicans for this year, are apprehending a ban on their specialist medical training that is paid by tax payers. It has been known that the British Government and British doctors have been very upset after the High Court struc the Department of Health ( DoH ) guidance issued last year that foreign doctors could only be considered for a training post if there was no suitable candidate from Britain or the EU. But this was successfully challenged in court by the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin(BAPIO), that claimed it was unfairly discriminatory.
