Curcumin Suppresses the Production of Pro-inflammatory Cytokine Interleukin-18 in Lipopolysaccharide Stimulated Murine Macrophage-Like Cells

Curcumin is a major bioactive compound of turmeric that exerts its anti-inflammatory effects by suppressing the many pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines in a number of cell types and pathologic conditions. Interleukin-18 (IL-18) is a novel pro-inflammatory cytokine which plays an important role not only in generating Th1 responses but also in inducing severe inflammatory reactions. As curcumin induced inhibition of IL-18 production in keratinocytes and mice is well known, effect of curcumin on IL-18 release in macrophages remains unknown. Hence, this present study has been designed to evaluate the effect of curcumin on IL-18 production and necrotic cell death in murine macrophages-like cells treated with or without lipopolysaccharide (LPS). The IL-18 secretion in cell culture supernatants was assayed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and cytotoxicity was determined by lactate dehydrogenase release assay. Our results demonstrate that curcumin significantly inhibited the production of pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-18 in E.coli LPS stimulated murine macrophage-like cells RAW264.7 in a concentration-dependent manner. Interestingly, curcumin had no cytotoxic effect on murine macrophage-like cells. Our findings suggest that curcumin may be used as a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of inflammatory diseases.     

The Equation: -2 = (-8)1/3 = (-8)2/6 = [(-8)2]1/6 = 2

In an article in the July 1995 issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics, Even and Tirosh claim that the quantity (-8)^1/3 is undefined. We present arguments to show why the reasoning given by them is flawed.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Frame loss error concealment for SVC

INTRODUCTION Real-time transmission of video data in network environments, such as wireless and Internet, is a challenging task, as it requires coding efficiency, network friendliness and error robustness. Scalability is a possible solution for network adaptive applica- tions. The Scalable Extension of H.264/AVC (SVC) (JVT of ISO/IEC MPEG & ITU-T VCEG, 2005b) aims at achieving both high compression performance and adaptivity for video delivery over heterogeneous networks. SVC…     

A sensitive and economical modified method for estimation of cerebrospinal fluid proteins

Cerebrospinal fluid protein estimation is a routine diagnostic tool for various diseases. The proposed modified bromocresol green (BCG) method is applicable to automated as well as manual measurements. Protein concentrations and absorbance at 600 nm are linearly related throughout a wide range of concentrations from 10 mg % to 2000 mg %. Ninety C.S.F. samples were analyzed and results obtained by both the modified BCG method and routine pyrogallol red method were compared. An excellent co-relation was observed (n=90, g=0.996, P<0.001).     

Antioxidant effect ofPhyllanthus emblica fruits on healing of indomethacin induced gastric ulcer in rats

Post-treatment of the indomethacin induced ulcerated rats at the optimal dose of 100 mg/kg body-wt. orally for 7 consecutive days with the lyophilized aqueous extract of the fruits ofPhyllanthus emblica L. syn.Emblica officinalis Gaertn. (Euphorbiaceae) exhibited highly significant (p<0.001) enhancement of secretion of catalase, reduced glutathione and decrease in malonyldialdehyde (MDA). Furthermore, the gross morphological observation and highly significant (p<0.001) decrease of ulcer index (81.43%) indicated healing effect of the extract on gastric ulcer.