Background: In the life of a female, menarche denotes the beginning of her reproductive capacity. Menstrual hygiene is an issue that every girl has to deal with in her life, but there is lack of awareness on the process of menstruation, the physical and psychological changes associated with puberty and proper requirement for managing menstruation.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from October 2016 to December 2016 in the urban field practice area of SCB Medical College. One government high school and one private high school were selected purposively. A purposeful convenience sampling was done to select the girls who were studying in 8th, 9th and 10th standard. Data collected from 165 adolescent school girls using a predesigned, pretested and structured questionnaire. The objective of the present study is to assess the knowledge and practices regarding menstrual hygiene among school going adolescent girls and to know about the restrictions imposed upon them during menstruation.Results: Most of the adolescent girls (61.82%) had attained menarche between 13-15 years of age. 59.39% girls were aware about menstruation before menarche. The source of information about menstruation was the mother or elder sister in most of the girls (81.21 %), followed by teachers/friends in case of 18.79 % girls. 84.85% of the girls used only sanitary pad, 4.24% used only cloth and the rest 10.91% used both sanitary pad and cloth during menstruation.Conclusions: Maintenance of menstrual hygiene was better in private school girls as compared to government school girls. Health education sessions about menstrual hygiene should be conducted in the schools for spreading awareness regarding menstruation and menstrual hygiene.

Background: Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide, causing 6.2 million deaths in 2011. Serum Gamma-Glutamyl Transferase (GGT) has been conventionally considered as a marker of excessive alcohol intake and/or liver dysfunction. There are accumulating evidences suggesting association of raised serum GGT level in stroke. So, this study was conducted to determine the association between the serum GGT level and stroke in population without history of alcohol consumption.Methods: This cross-sectional comparative study was carried out at Department of General medicine, Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VIMSAR), Burla from November 2016 to October 2018. 100 cases and 100 controls were included in this study. Cases were the patients admitted to Department of General Medicine, VIMSAR, Burla, presenting within 24 hours of first episode of stroke. Controls were the age (+/-5 years) and sex matched healthy attendants of the patients. Alcoholics or patients suffering from hepatitis, cirrhosis of liver, cholestasis or patients taking drugs like Phenytoin, Valproic acid, Carbamazepine etc or patients with past episode of stroke were excluded from this study. Serum GGT level of both cases and controls were measured and compared.Results: In stroke patients, the mean serum GGT level was 54.95 IU/L with standard deviation of 20.54. In controls, the mean serum GGT level was 32.14 IU/L with standard deviation of 5.07. The p-value was less than 0.0001 i.e. highly significant.Conclusions: Serum GGT level is significantly increased in stroke patients than healthy persons without stroke.

Breast cancer is the most prevalent form of cancer in women globally, and MDA-MB-231 or TNBC (Triple-negative breast cancer) is its aggressive type since it lacks the usual targets. JAK2/STAT3 pathway can be an important lead in anticancer drug discovery, as restraining the downstream signalling of this pathway results in the induction of cell apoptosis. Moreover, various limitations associated with chemotherapy are the reason to find an alternative herbal-based therapy. For this study, we collected Urtica dioica, and U. parviflora from different regions of Uttarakhand, followed by preparation of their leaf and stem extracts in different solvents. The GC-MS analysis of these extracts revealed a total of 173 compounds to be present in them. Further, by molecular docking approach, we studied the interaction between these compounds and JAK2, and 12 major compounds with better binding energy than the control Paclitaxel were identified. In addition, the selected hits were also reported to display better pharmacokinetic properties. The anticancer potential of these extracts was also evaluated by in vitro approach in the MDA-MB-231 cell line, and both extracts displayed significant anticancer activity. Hence, the findings in our study can be crucial in the area of herbal-based target-specific drug development against breast cancer.