About important health facts, health diseases ,symptoms and techniques

Introduction to Nervous System

jayaraman — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:39:07 +0000

Divisions of Nervous System

Nervous system controls all the activities of the body. It is quicker than the other control system in the body namely, the endocrine system. Primarily, the nervous system is divided into two parts.
1. Central nervous system and
2. Peripheral nervous system. (more…)

Cardiac murmurs

jayaraman — Sun, 04 May 2008 06:08:47 +0000

Introduction

Abnormal heart sounds are called cardiac murmurs or bruits. The abnormal sounds are produced because of the change in the pattern of blood flow. Normally, blood flows in stream line through heart or the blood vessels. However, during the abnormal conditions like valvular diseases, the blood flow becomes turbulent. This produces the cardiac murmurs. (more…)

IMMUNITY IN HEALTH AND DISEASE

jayaraman — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:53:59 +0000

The prime function of immune system is to protect the host against the invading pathogens. The body tries its best to overcome various strategies of infectious agents (bacteria, viruses), and provides immunity. Some of the important immunological aspects in human health and disease are briefly described. (more…)

HPLC Has Permitted Greatly Improved Separations

jayaraman — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:50:31 +0000

The separations are greatly improved, however, through the use of high-resolution columns and the column retentions times are much reduced. The narrow and relatively long columns are packed with a noncompressible matrix of fine glass or plastic beads coated with a thin layer of the stationary phase. Alternatively, matrix may consist of silica whose available hydroxyl groups can be derivatives with many of the commonly used functional groups of ion exchange chromatography, RPC, HIC, or affinity chromatography. (more…)

HPLC Chromatographic Techniques Separate Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins

jayaraman — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:33:40 +0000

In high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a liquid solvent containing a mixture of molecules to be identified is passed through a column densely packed with a small-diameter insoluble bead-like resin. In column chromatography, the smaller and more tightly packed the resin beads, the greater the resolution of the separation technique. In HPLC, the resin is so tightly packed that the liquid must be pumped through the column at high pressure. Therefore HPLC uses precise high-pressure pumps with metal plumbing and columns rather than glass and plastics used in gravity chromatography. Resin beads are coated with charged groups to separate compounds by ion exchange or with hydrophobic groups to retard hydrophobic nonpolar molecules. In hydrophobic chromatography, tightly associated nonpolar compounds are eluted from the hydrophobic beads in aqueous solvents containing various percentage of an organic reagent. The higher the percentage of organic solvent in the effluent, the faster the nonpolar component is eluted from the hydrophobic resin. This latter type of chromatography over nonpolar resin beads is called reverse-phase HPLC. HPLC separations have extremely high resolution and reproducibility. (more…)

The Human Genome Project

jayaraman — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:33:27 +0000

The Human Genome Project is a large international effort aimed at determining the sequence of the entire human genome of 3,200,000,000 base pair. But it is much more. Other aims include the creation of physical and genetic maps of the genome, sequencing the genomes of model organisms, developing technology for sequencing and informatics for understanding the sequence, training of scientists in use of these data, and exploring the ethical, legal, and social implications of the data. (more…)

Immunochemical techniques can readily detect small quantities of specific proteins

jayaraman — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:33:56 +0000

Immunochemical procedures provide protein assay techniques of high sensitivity and discrimination. These methods employ antibodies, proteins produced by an animal’s immune system in response to the introduction of a foreign protein and which specifically bind to this foreign protein. (more…)

Immunoelectrophoresis

jayaraman — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:37:14 +0000

The technique exploits the specificity of reaction between an antigen and antibody and molecular sieving of the gel in which this reaction is taking place for analysis of components of a given sample. The technique was developed by Grabar and Williams and is actually a modification of Ouchterlony double diffusion technique. To understand the technique better a brief discussion of Ouchterlony double diffusion technique is given below. (more…)

Ovarian Cancer

jayaraman — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:29:22 +0000

Primary ovarian cancer ranks as one of the common causes of cancer deaths in women. Carcinomas are more common in single women and in nulliparous married women. Tumors of germ cell origin are seen in children and teenagers. Women with breast cancer have an increased incidence of ovarian cancer. The symptoms of early cancer are non-specific, hence the majority present with advanced disease. Prognosis varies with the histologic type and staging of the disease, but is generally poor because ovarian tumors tend to progress rapidly. (more…)

Examples of tumor markers used in clinical practice

jayaraman — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 07:04:51 +0000

Germ-cell tumors

Patients presenting with a lump in the testes or a malignancy of unknown origin should have plasma (AFP) and (hCG) measured. If raised due to secretion by the tumor, these measurements can also be used to monitor treatment. However, only about 75% of non-seminomatous germ-cell tumors and a minority of patients with seminoma or dysgerminoma secrete these markers. (more…)