BACKGROUND Sclerocarya birrea (Anacardiaceae) is traditionally used for treating hypertension. The pharmacological effects of S birrea leaf aqueous extract (SBE) on rabbit and rat vascular smooth muscles were investigated in this study. METHODS Fresh S birrea leaves (1 kg) were air dried at 26 ± 1°C, milled, macerated in 2.5 l of distilled water for 48 hours, filtered, and the filtrate was co...

BACKGROUND Ovarian cancer is one of the major causes of death among females in worldwide. Cisplatin is a primary anti-cancer drug against ovarian cancer, but the recurrent tumors after treatment frequently show acquired chemoresistance. Extract of Scutellaria baicalensis (SbE) has been reported to have functional compounds including baicalin, which has anti-cancer effects. However, the anti-can...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to characterize and quantify metabolic acidosis that was caused by initial volume expansion during the reanimation of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. METHODS A blood sample was drawn for physicochemical characterization of the patient's acid-base equilibrium both before and after volume expansion using 30 mL/kg 0.9% saline solution. The diagno...

Scutellaria barbata has been used to treat cancer in Chinese medicine. The responsible anticancer mechanism, however, is not clear. Here we demonstrated an inhibitory mechanism due to a Scutellaria barbata extract (SBE) on a human promyelocytic leukemia cell line (HL-60) that has a mutation in the tumor suppressor gene p53. HL-60 cells were incubated with various concentrations of SBE. After a ...

The competition of hydrophobic molecules for the cyclodextrin (CD) cavity is well known and reported in the literature. However, it is not so trivial, how inorganic salts, small cations and anions may affect the inclusion complex formation, and thereby the functional properties of CDs. This topic is recently of particular interest for formulators since there are several granted patents and publ...

Shea butter is traditionally used in Africa for its anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. In this study we explored the anti-inflammatory activities of the methanolic extract of shea butter (SBE) using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced murine macrophage cell line J774. It was observed that SBE significantly reduced the levels of LPS-induced nitric oxide, Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), inter...

INTRODUCTION Sulfobutylether-β-cyclodextrin (SBE-CD) is a pharmaceutical excipient known to bind verapamil. Following intravenous administration, clearance of SBE-CD approximates glomerular filtration rate. We hypothesized that infusion of SBE-CD would increase time to asystole in a rat model of verapamil toxicity in a dose-dependent manner. The objective was to demonstrate the effect of a rang...

Background Debriefing is a significant component of simulation-based education (SBE). Regardless of how and where immersive simulation is used to support learning, debriefing has a critical role to optimise learning outcomes. Although the literature describes different debriefing methods and approaches that constitute effective debriefing, there are discrepancies as to what is actually practise...