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This study demonstrates that Ispaghula has a gut-stimulatory effect, mediated partially by muscarinic and 5-HT(4) receptor activation, which may complement the laxative effect of its fiber content, and a gut-inhibitory activity possibly mediated by blockade of Ca(2+) channels and activation of NO-cyclic guanosine monophosphate pathways. This may explain its medicinal use in diarrhea. It is, perhaps, also intended by nature to offset an excessive stimulant effect.

BackgroundMorinda citrifolia (Noni) is an edible plant with wide range of medicinal uses. It occurs exclusively in tropical climate zone from India through Southeast Asia and Australia to Eastern Polynesia and Hawaii. The objective of this study was to explore the possible mode(s) of action for its antispasmodic, vasodilator and cardio-suppressant effects to rationalize its medicinal use in gut and cardiovascular disorders.MethodsIsolated tissue preparations such as, rabbit jejunum, rat and rabbit aorta and guinea pig atria were used to test the antispasmodic and cardiovascular relaxant effects and the possible mode of action(s) of the 70% aqueous-ethanolic extract of Morinda citrifolia roots (Mc.Cr).ResultsThe Mc.Cr produced a concentration-dependent relaxation of spontaneous and high K+ induced contractions in isolated rabbit jejunum preparations. It also caused right ward shift in the concentration response curves of Ca++, similar to that of verapamil. In guinea-pig right atria, Mc.Cr caused inhibition of both atrial force and rate of spontaneous contractions. In rabbit thoracic aortic preparations, Mc.Cr also suppressed contractions induced by phenylephrine (1.0 μM) in normal- Ca++ and Ca++-free Kerb's solutions and by high K+, similar to that of verapamil. In rat thoracic aortic preparations, Mc.Cr also relaxed the phenylephrine (1.0 μM)-induced contractions. The vasodilatory responses were not altered in the presence of L-NAME (0.1 mM) or atropine (1.0 μM) and removal of endothelium.ConclusionsThese results suggest that the spasmolytic and vasodilator effects of Mc.Cr root extract are mediated possibly through blockade of voltage-dependent calcium channels and release of intracellular calcium, which may explain the medicinal use of Morinda citrifolia in diarrhea and hypertension. However, more detailed studies are required to assess the safety and efficacy of this plant.

Covid-19 pandemic has seriously affected the mankind with colossal loss of life around the world. There is a critical requirement for timely and reliable detection of Corona virus patients to give better and early treatment to prevent the spread of the infection. With that being said, current researches have revealed some critical benefits of utilizing complete blood count tests for early detection of COVID-19 positive individuals. In this research we employed different machine learning algorithms using full blood count for the prediction of COVID-19. These algorithms include: “K Nearest Neighbor, Radial Basis Function, Naive Bayes, kStar, PART, Random Forest, Decision Tree, OneR, Support Vector Machine and Multi-Layer Perceptron”. Further, “Accuracy, Recall, Precision, and F-Measure” are the performance evaluation measures that are utilized in this study.

The proper prognosis of treatment response is crucial in any medical therapy to reduce the effects of the disease and of the medication as well. The mortality rate due to hepatitis c virus (HCV) is high in Pakistan as well as all over the world. During the treatment of any disease, prediction of treatment response against any particular medicine is difficult. This paper focuses on predicting the treatment response of a drug: “L-ornithine L-Aspartate (LOLA)” in hepatitis c patients. We have used various machine learning techniques for the prediction of treatment response, including: “K Nearest Neighbor, kStar, Naive Bayes, Random Forest, Radial Basis Function, PART, Decision Tree, OneR, Support Vector Machine and Multi-Layer Perceptron”. Performance measures used to analyze the performance of used machine learning techniques include, “Accuracy, Recall, Precision, and F-Measure”.