...Abstract Plant-based antimicrobials represent a vast untapped source of medicines and further exploration of plant antimicrobials needs to occur. Antimicrobials of plant origin have enormous therapeutic potential. . Antimicrobials of plant origin have enormous therapeutic potential. They are effective un treatment of infectious disease while simultaneously mitigating many of the side effects that are often associated with synthetic antimicrobials. Present study was executed to mainly investigate the anti-inflammatory and antibacterial efficacy of Muntingia calabura Linn against Staphylococcus aureaus. This study is done to provide people with an inexpensive, natural and safe anti inflammatory agent. In addition, it may ease the pain of arthritis. The output of this study will help to make anti inflammatory products out of aratilis (Muntingia calabura linn) flowers and leaves. This study might also provide new knowledge about the properties of aratilis (Muntingia calabura Linn). Extracts of aratilis leaves are subjected to several solutions of oil, water and ethanol at 1:1 ratio. Antibacterial efficacy is done using cup cylinder assay by measuring the diameter (mm) of the clear zone around the cup. The results showed that the oil solution showed an average value of 9.03mm, the ethanol solution showed an average value of 18.27 mm and the water solution with an average of 20.10 mm. The negative controls – oil, ethanol and water – exhibited an average of inhibition with...
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...November 21, 2015, Reference Fisher, L. E., Hook, A. L., Ashraf, W., Yousef, A., Barrett, D. A., Scurr, D. J., … Bayston, R. (2015). Biomaterial modification of urinary catheters with antimicrobials to give long-term broadspectrum antibiofilm activity. Journal of Controlled Release, 202, 57-64. doi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2015.01.037.Epub Retrieved November 15,2015, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Since urinary catheter infections are so prevalent in hospitalized patients; short-term bladder drainage or long-term management of bladder dysfunction can posed serious infections. The purpose of this research is to see, if applying Biomaterial modification to urinary catheters such as anti-microbial agents will prevent foley catheters related infections. The aim is to try to keep the indwelling catheter as long as possible without the development of catheter related infection.(Fisher et.al,2015). The questions to keep in mind are that is it effective to apply the Biomaterial agent in reducing catheter related infection? What is the objective of patients who has an indwelling catheter with anti-microbial agent? Applicability The variables used in this study are silicone catheters. The independent variable used to run this test are pathogens such as Esherichia Coli, Proteus Mirabis, and Klebsiella Pneumaniae and anti-microbial agents are 0.2% Rifampin, 1% Triclosan, and 1% Sparloxacin.(Fisher et al,2015) In this study, there were no actual people samples, but the specimens of...
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...Mohammad Abu Basma Rajeh 1, Zakaria Zuraini 1, Sreenivasan Sasidharan 2, Lachimanan Yoga Latha 2 and Santhanam Amutha 2,3,* 1 2 3 School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia; E-Mail: zuraini@usm.my (Z.Z) Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia; E-Mail: srisasidharan@yahoo.com (S.S) School of Biotechnology, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai 625021, India * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: amutha_santhanam@yahoo.com; Tel.: 00604-6534818; Fax: 00604-6534803. Received: 25 July 2010; in revised form: 7 August 2010 / Accepted: 20 August 2010 / Published: 31 August 2010 Abstract: The antimicrobial activities of the methanolic extracts of Euphorbia hirta L leaves, flowers, stems and roots were evaluated against some medically important bacteria and yeast using the agar disc diffusion method. Four Gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Micrococcus sp., Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus thuringensis), four Gram negative (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Salmonella typhi and P. mirabilis) and one yeast (Candida albicans) species were screened. Inhibition zones ranged between 16–29 mm. Leaves extract inhibited the growth of all tested microorganisms with large zones of inhibition, followed by that of flowers, which also inhibited all the bacteria except C. albicans. The most susceptible microbes to all extracts were S. aureus and...
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...metabolites, are produced by plants as part of their defence mechanism in response to microbial infection7. Plants such as lemon (Citrus limon)2, mint (Mentha piperita)8, garlic (Allium sativum)3, and roots such as ginger (Zingiber officinale)3 produce active compounds which have demonstrated antimicrobial activity and are commonly used in commercially available remedies to treat microbial infections of the upper respiratory tract7. These compounds include nitrogenous alkaloids, flavonoides5 and polypeptides7. Common causative agents of bacterial upper respiratory tract infections (URT) include Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus pyogenes and Klebsiella pneumoniae 4. This study aims to look at the antimicrobial effect of commercially altered natural products: a capsule containing allium sativum oil 1 mg (equiv. to 3 grams fresh bulb ) and a peppermint dried leaf infusion to determine their efficacy against the test bacteria. Antimicrobial activity of freshly prepared substances (garlic, ginger, mint and lemon) was compared to the commercially prepared substances using disc diffusion assays. Minimum inhibitory concentrations were then determined from products that displayed antimicrobial activity. Fig 3. Streptococcus pyogenes Fig 2. Streptococcus pneumoniae Fig 1. Klebsiella pneumoniae Materials and Method Initial Screening Each substance was prepared to desired consistency appropriate for disc diffusion assay Two horse blood agar (HBA) and two nutrient agar plates...
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...their sustainability principles and broad plans for implementation. In the 1980s the environmental concerns were primarily pollution control and prevention with a focus on reducing emissions from existing manufacturing processes. During this period the company made significant improvement in pollution control and prevention, risk management, and facility improvements such as reducing toxic materials and emissions. In the 1990s the focus shifted to product stewardship, which emphasizes earlier intervention to minimize environmental impacts associated with the full life cycle of a product. The product stewardship function focused on developing global processes for tracking and managing regulatory compliance issues, customer inquiry response systems, information management, public policy shaping, product take-back programs, green packaging, and integrating “design for the environment” and life cycle analysis into product development processes. Today the company realizes that pollution prevention and product stewardship have become baseline market expectations and that to be an environmental leader in this century, a company needs to integrate environmental sustainability into its fundamental business strategy. This company realizes that it must redefine its core business utilizing the principles of the 3 “E’s”: Environmental, Economic and Equitable (social) sustainability. The reasons...
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...e-store and was the first ladies footwear and accessories retailer to launch an online shop in Singapore. The brand remains committed to Corporate Social Responsibility, supporting Humanitarian Causes, Human Excellence and Environmental Initiatives. Collaborations with international charities through the years include World Vision, Meat Free Monday and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality (UNWOMEN) and Breast Cancer Foundation. Charles and Keith had several fund raising for women relating aid. This shoes that Charles and Keith probably wants to reach to the women by supporting them and in return gain their favor and buy their products. Since 2010, the brand has also taken steps to reduce their carbon footprint by using Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper for all their shopping bags and...
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...Ikea, the international retailer of furniture and household goods, has a reputation for low prices and fresh, innovative design. However, it is also keen to develop a reputation for environmental stewardship and sensitivity to social issues. The Ikea Group of Companies has around 150 stores in 22 countries. It was founded in 1943, and in 2001 had a turnover of 11.3 billion euros. It employs 70,000 people, and purchases its raw materials from more than 50 countries, principally China, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Italy. Most of Ikea's sales take place in Germany (21%), the USA (13%), the UK (12%), France (9%) and Sweden (7%). In September 2000, Ikea launched The Ikea way on purchasing home furnishing products, a three-page 'code of conduct' for its 2,000 suppliers, focusing on working conditions and environmental impacts (see below). As a first step, suppliers were asked to return a questionnaire to ascertain how well they already complied with the code. External auditors have been appointed to carry out more detailed reviews and to verify the information provided by Ikea's suppliers. Where shortcomings are identified, the companies will be asked to put in place an action plan to remedy them. The code warns suppliers: 'Repeated violations of IKEA's requirements will result in the termination of co-operation.' Ikea has also shown itself not to be shy of working with lobby groups. As long ago as 1991, it collaborated with Greenpeace to find a way of printing its catalogues on...
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...Deforestation Mitigation Strategy SCI/275 10/12/2010 Joanne Massi There is a global issue at hand relating to our environment. It is one that tends to get overlooked due to issues like global warming, oil spills, water related issues, etc. It is forest destruction, or Deforestation, as it is often referred to. Simply put, Deforestation is the clearing of the Earths forests on a very large scale. This is a worldwide epidemic, and generally in mainstream society, it is an issue that is largely put aside in its importance. While over 30% of the worlds land mass is still covered by forested areas (National Geographic.com), the rate in which the trees are being devoured is alarming. According to an article in the magazine, National Geographic, an area the size of Panama is cleared each and every year. Strategies must be developed to help control the amount of this precious resource that are stripped from the people and many different that rely on the forest for survival. To first understand and formulate a mitigation plan, one must first know the purposes behind Deforestation. There are many reasons behind why humans strip the forest of its trees. These reasons can vary, depending on the country we are talking about. They almost all come down to economics. For example, in many South American countries, poverty and lack of food sources cause people to clear land for the purpose of agriculture. The unavailability of jobs and a need to provide for their families results...
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...“ADDING VALUE TO NICARAGUAN FORESTRY” ASSET RICH BUT CAPITAL POOR! VALERIA ZELAYA Background During the 70’s and 80’s, Nicaragua suffered from civil and political unrest. In 1990, the country had its first democratic elections in 30 years, which lead to a process of slow political depolarization, and economic recovery. Nicaragua’s Northern Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) is the largest block of tropical forest in Central America and a key source of high value timber for local and international markets. Land classified as suitable for forestry usage occupies about 6.2 million hectares; divided as 1.8 million ha for conservation and 4.4 million ha for sustainable use1. Despite this endowment, Nicaragua’s annual wood exports are only US$15M2, representing 1.75% of Nicaragua’s total export. From these exports, 95% is unprocessed wood and 5% is manufactured goods, indicating a feeble commercialization of value-added wood products. Other neighboring countries with less forest area and potential have much greater export income from wood products. Additionally, private sector investment is limited and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the wood sector have difficulty in accessing legal and certified raw material creating inefficiencies in the wood value chain due to a lack of integration and coordination of the value chain. The LAC Facility identified the wood sector as one of the potential sectors for growth due to the availability of hardwood species and a significant number...
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...to add onto their current supply to keep up with the expansion. Ikea alone uses almost 1% of all wood used commercially around the world. The company said it plans on becoming “forest positive” by 2020, meaning that, despite its continuing high demand for timber, it intends its business to have overall positive effect on the world’s forest. What does this mean? The commitment of this approach means it will be growing at least as many trees as it uses to make products by 2020. Ikea also intend to become of the biggest and most certified wood user and recycled wood products. The largest challenge to this strategy is that the company is dependent on this strategy entirely on its relationship with one global certification scheme, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Also, many environmental groups are claiming that Ikea is willfully deceiving its customers and...
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...and find solutions that are ethical, sustainable or user-friendly, thus convince societies to adopt these steps. Every leading social entrepreneur (Bill Gates/ Richard Bronson) are visionaries that are concerned with profit maximization but also the welfare of the public. Social entrepreneurship shapes the frontiers between the profit- oriented sectors and the non-profit oriented sectors as social enterprises can vary from for-profit community development organizations such as hybrid organizations which have both profit and non-profit elements. This is so because of the different traditions of social entrepreneurship in different parts of the world. Some examples of non-profit social enterprises are the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), BRAC (NGO) or the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and some examples of profit oriented social enterprises are the Grameen bank in Bangladesh and SELCO. A good example of a social entrepreneur is Jordan Kassalow. He is the CEO and founder of VisionSpring. VisionSpring is a non-profit organization which was founded in 2001and its aim is to reduce poverty, provide job opportunities to the poor and provide affordable and low price eyeglasses in developing countries such as Bangladesh, India and Mexico. Currently, VisionSpring helps thousands of poor people by providing jobs and create access to vision...
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...An APIC Guide 2008 Guide to the Elimination of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTIs) Developing and Applying Facility-Based Prevention Interventions in Acute and Long-Term Care Settings About APIC APIC’s mission is to improve health and patient safety by reducing risks of infection and other adverse outcomes. The Association’s more than 12,000 members have primary responsibility for infection prevention, control and hospital epidemiology in healthcare settings around the globe. APIC’s members are nurses, epidemiologists, physicians, microbiologists, clinical pathologists, laboratory technologists and public health professionals. APIC advances its mission through education, research, consultation, collaboration, public policy, practice guidance and credentialing. Look for other topics in APIC’s Elimination Guide Series, including: • • • • Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections Clostridium difficile Mediastinitis MRSA in Long-Term Care Copyright © 2008 by APIC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. All inquires about this document or other APIC products and services may be addressed to: APIC Headquarters 1275 K Street, NW Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 Phone: 202.789.1890 Email: APICinfo@apic.org Web: www.apic.org ISBN: 1-933013-39-7 ...
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...infection control and hospital epidemiology march 2014, vol. 35, no. 3 original article Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia: Overdiagnosis and Treatment Are Common in Medical and Surgical Intensive Care Units Veronique Nussenblatt, MD, MHS;1 Edina Avdic, PharmD, MBA;2 Sean Berenholtz, MD, MHS;3,4 Elizabeth Daugherty, MD, MPH;5 Eric Hadhazy, MS;1 Pamela A. Lipsett, MD, MHPE;3,4 Lisa L. Maragakis, MD, MPH;1 Trish M. Perl, MD, MSc;1 Kathleen Speck, MPH;3 Sandra M. Swoboda, RN, MS;3 Wendy Ziai, MD;3,6 Sara E. Cosgrove, MD, MS1 objective. Diagnosing ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is difficult, and misdiagnosis can lead to unnecessary and prolonged antibiotic treatment. We sought to quantify and characterize unjustified antimicrobial use for VAP and identify risk factors for continuation of antibiotics in patients without VAP after 3 days. methods. Patients suspected of having VAP were identified in 6 adult intensive care units (ICUs) over 1 year. A multidisciplinary adjudication committee determined whether the ICU team’s VAP diagnosis and therapy were justified, using clinical, microbiologic, and radiographic data at diagnosis and on day 3. Outcomes included the proportion of VAP events misdiagnosed as and treated for VAP on days 1 and 3 and risk factors for the continuation of antibiotics in patients without VAP after day 3. results. Two hundred thirty-one events were identified as possible VAP by the ICUs. On day 1, 135 (58.4%) of them were determined to not have VAP...
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...Result: Out of the 140 isolates, 62.14% were resistance to amikacin, 80% to gentamicin, 77.86% to netilmicin and 72.86% to tobramycin. Synergy was observed in ceftazidime-amikacin (80%) and ceftazidime-gentamicin combination (60%). 76.43% isolates were found to carry AMEs-coding genes on their plasmid. aac(6’)-I was the most frequently encountered gene (58.57%) followed by ant(2”)-I (50%) and aph(3’)-I (32.14%). Discussion: Markedly high resistance was observed against all aminoglycoside tested along with high prevalence of AMEs-coding genes. These isolates may represent as potential reservoirs of aminoglycoside resistance in hospitals, having on their plasmids combinations of AMEs-coding genes. Good infection control and antibiotic stewardship is very important to prevent spread of infections. Key word: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method, Micro-Broth dilution, Aminoglycoside Modifying enzyme, Multiplex PCR, Sequencing Manuscript Introduction Hospital acquired infections (HAI) are a major threat to patients admitted in the acute care units. It is one of the important public health problems around the world. In association with increased morbidity and mortality, HAI are important cause of prolonged hospital stay, inconvenience to the patients and an economic burden on health care. [1] Decreased immunity, increasing numbers of invasive techniques, critical life saving operations and immunosuppressive therapies are frequently associated with transmission...
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...PURPOSE To prevent the transmission of C.difficile associated disease in the hospital and outpatient settings. SUPPORTIVE DATA * C.difficile has been a known cause of healthcare associated diarrhea for over 30 years. It can be acquired in both hospital and community settings. C.difficile exists in the environment and colonizes a small percentage of people without causing any symptoms. * C.difficile produces spores that are resistant to most environmental cleaners and disinfectants with the exception of buffered sodium hypochlorite (bleach). Spread of C.difficile has been attributed to inadequate hand hygiene and environmental cleaning. Transmission prevention and control is achieved though consistent hand hygiene and thorough environment cleaning. * Addendum A – EVS Terminal Cleaning after Discharge * Addendum B – Contact Enteric Precautions Signs BACKGROUND Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March 2012 released the Vital Signs report showing that Clostridium difficile is a patient safety concern in all types of health care facilities, not just hospitals. The CDC has recommended six steps to prevent C. difficile and the spread of the bacteria: * Prescribe and use antibiotics carefully. About 50% of all antibiotics given are not needed, unnecessarily raising the risk of C. difficile infections. * Test for C. difficile when patients have diarrhea while on antibiotics or within several months of taking them. * ...
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