Background Malaysia is on track towards malaria elimination. However, several cases of malaria still occur in the country. Contributing factors and communal aspects have noteworthy effects on any malaria elimination activities. Thus, assessing the community’s knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) towards malaria is essential. This study was performed to evaluate KAP regarding malaria among the indigenous people (i.e. Orang Asli) in Peninsular Malaysia. Methods A household-based cross-sectional study was conducted in five remote villages (clusters) of Orang Asli located in the State of Kelantan, a central region of the country. Community members aged six years and above were interviewed. Demographic, socio-economic and KAP data on malaria were collected using a structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics. Results Overall, 536 individuals from 208 households were interviewed. Household indoor residual spraying (IRS) coverage and bed net ownership were 100% and 89.2%, respectively. A majority of respondents used mosquito bed nets every night (95.1%), but only 50.2% were aware that bed nets were used to prevent malaria. Nevertheless, almost all of the respondents (97.9%) were aware that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes. Regarding practice for managing malaria, the most common practice adopted by the respondents was seeking treatment at the health facilities (70.9%), followed by self-purchase of medication from a local shop (12.7%), seeking treatment from a traditional healer (10.5%) and self-healing (5.9%). Concerning potential zoonotic malaria, about half of the respondents (47.2%) reported seeing monkeys from their houses and 20.1% reported entering nearby forests within the last 6 months. Conclusion This study found that most populations living in the villages have an acceptable level of knowledge and awareness about malaria. However, positive attitudes and practices concerning managing malaria require marked improvement.

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The present research has been performed on black pepper of two cultivars to evaluate their nutritional quality and safety issue on the basis of proximate, chemical and pharmacological properties. The proximate results were compiled with the standard USDA limits. K, Ca, Mg, Na, Fe, Al and Se were detected as major elements, whereas the toxic elements were found within the recommended limit. The GC‐MS analysis of the essential oils showed the presence of δ‐3‐carene (32.61%) as the major component in Kerala cultivar whereas β‐caryophyllene (18.39%) was the major components in Indigenous cultivar. The IC50 values of DPPH antioxidant activity of the essential oils were found to be 44.16 and 22.88 mg/mL in Indigenous and Kerala cultivars, respectively. The antimicrobial activity of the essential oils showed good activity in both cultivars. The LC50 values of the brine shrimp cytotoxic activity were 1.03 and 1.21 μg/mL in Indigenous and Kerala cultivars, respectively. Practical applications Spice quality is an important issue in the food industries as well as export markets. Due to the toxicological effect of imported spices, much attention has been paid to the safety issue especially on cytotoxicity and toxic metal contaminations. The present study reveals that both cultivars possess rich amount of nutritional components, essential minerals, phyto and flavouring components in their essential oils and recommended level of toxic elements as well as decent antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. This study promises to scaffold a new window for exportation of quality spice and confer potential for use in food, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries.

Background Malaysia has already achieved remarkable accomplishments in reaching zero indigenous human malaria cases in 2018. Prompt malaria diagnosis, surveillance and treatment played a key role in the country’s elimination success. Looking at the dynamics of malaria distribution during the last decades might provide important information regarding the potential challenges of such an elimination strategy. This study was performed to gather all data available in term of prevalence or incidence on Plasmodium infections in Malaysia over the last four decades. Methods A systematic review of the published English literature was conducted to identify malaria distribution from 1980 to June 2019 in Malaysia. Two investigators independently extracted data from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Elsevier databases for original papers. Results The review identified 46 epidemiological studies in Malaysia over the 39-year study period, on which sufficient information was available. The majority of studies were conducted in Malaysia Borneo (31/46; 67.4%), followed by Peninsular Malaysia (13/46; 28.3%) and in both areas (2/46; 4.3%). More than half of all studies (28/46; 60.9%) were assessed by both microscopy and PCR. Furthermore, there was a clear trend of decreases of all human malaria species with increasing Plasmodium knowlesi incidence rate throughout the year of sampling period. The summary estimates of sensitivity were higher for P. knowlesi than other Plasmodium species for both microscopy and PCR. Nevertheless, the specificities of summary estimates were similar for microscopy (40–43%), but varied for PCR (2–34%). Conclusions This study outlined the epidemiological changes in Plasmodium species distribution in Malaysia. Malaria cases shifted from predominantly caused by human malaria parasites to simian malaria parasites, which accounted for the majority of indigenous cases particularly in Malaysia Borneo. Therefore, malaria case notification and prompt malaria diagnosis in regions where health services are limited in Malaysia should be strengthened and reinforced to achieving the final goal of malaria elimination in the country.

The concentrations of organochlorine insecticides (DDT and heptachlor) were investigated to estimate the effect of various washing and boiling/cooking to elucidate the concentration level we intake actually. For this study five most popular dry fish samples namely bombay duck (loittya), ribbon fish (chhuri), shrimp (chingri), chinese pomfret (rupchanda) and Indian salmon (lakhua) were analyzed. The highest concentrations of DDT and heptachlor were found 737.2 ppb (Indian salmon, normal) and 44.8 ppb (shrimp, normal) respectively; after boiling treatment a big amount was washed out and remained only 135.5 and 16.9 ppb respectively. Boiling treatment was found more effective than the others.

BackgroundMedicinal herbs are used for the treatment of different ailments since antiquity. Different parts of Anethum sowa L. is used in folk medicine as a carminative for the treatment of flatulence, colic and hiccups of infants and children, antioxidant, antimicrobial and antispasmodic agent. The aim of our present study is to evaluate the chemical composition of the essential oil, proximate and elemental composition, amino acid, fatty acid profile and thermal behaviour of its root part as well as different pharmacological activities like antioxidant, antimicrobial and cytotoxicity of the root essential oil.MethodsThe air-dried roots of Anethum sowa L. were subjected to hydro-distillation to yield the essential oil. The antioxidant activity of the essential oil was studied by DPPH radical scavenging activity. The antimicrobial activity was tested against four Gram-positive, six Gram-negative bacteria and four fungi species. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and Minimum bacterial concentration (MBC) for each examined microorganism were determined using the micro-dilution method. The LC50 value of the oil was also evaluated by brine shrimp lethality assay. The subsequent proximate analysis was also done by AOAC methods. The elemental analysis of the root powder was analysed by ICP-MS, AAS and FP system. The fatty acid was extracted by hot and cold extraction method and the analyses were carried out by GC. The amino acid profile was done by the amino acid analyzer. The DTA, DTG and TG of the root powder were taken by the thermogravimetric analyzer.ResultsA total of 24 constituents was identified and quantified in the essential oil and its water extract portion by GC and GC-MS. Apiol (81.99 and 74.779%) was found the highest phenylpropanoid constituent followed by m-diaminobenzene (10.446 and 8.778%) in the essential oil and aqueous extract portion. On the other hand, β-butyrolactone (5.13%) and isobutyl acetone (3.73%) were found in the major constituents in the water extract part. The IC50 value of the essential oil was found to be 3.07 mg/mL by DPPH radical assay methods. The LC50 value of the brine shrimp cytotoxicity assay of the essential oil was observed at 0.81 μg/mL. The essential oil showed better activity on Gram-negative bacteria than Gram-positive bacteria and fungi. The proximate composition showed that root contained 5.29% ash, 2.01% protein, 54.09% crude fibre, 0.15% essential oil and 1.14% fatty oil for hot extract and 0.23% for cold extract on the dried basis. The palmitic (33.81 & 31.58%) and linoleic acid (30.03 & 23.79%) were the major saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in the cold and hot extracted root powder respectively. Ca (23,600 mg/kg), Mg (7620.33 mg/kg) and K (1286.15 mg/kg) were the most predominant elements followed by Ni (1187.30 mg/kg), Se (913.79 mg/kg), Li (317.84 mg/kg), Na (288.72 mg/kg) and Fe (206.88 mg/kg). The toxic elements were found to be within the permissible limit. Glutamic acid (19.37%), glycine (14.53%) and lysine (17.08%) were found as the major amino ...

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This investigation was aimed at exploring the genetic diversity and relationship among nine Brassica varieties, namely BARI Sharisha-12, Agrani, Sampad, BINA Sharisha-4, BINA Sharisha-5, BARI Sharisha-13, Daulot, Rai-5, Alboglabra using Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. In total, 59 reproducible DNA bands were generated by four arbitrary selected primers of which 58 (98.03%) bands were proved to be polymorphic. These bands ranged from 212 to 30686 bp in size. The highest proportion of polymorphic loci and gene diversity values were 37.29% and 0.1373, respectively, for BARI Sharisha-12 and the lowest proportion of polymorphic loci and gene diversity values were 8.47% and 0.0318, 8.47% and 0.0382 for BINA Sharisha-4 and Rai-5, respectively. A dendrogram was constructed using unweighted pair group method of arithmetic mean (UPGMA). The result of cluster analysis indicated that the 9 accessions were capable of being classified into 2 major groups. One group consists of BARI Sharisha-12, Agrani, Sampad, Daulot, Rai-5, Alboglabra. where Daulot and Rai-5 showed the lowest genetic distance of 0.049. And another group contains BINA Sharisha-4, BINA Sharisha-5, and BARI Sharisha-1 3, where BINA Sharisha-5 and BARI sharisha-13 showed genetic distance of 0.071.