This cross-sectional study was carried out to estimate the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus and its' risk factors in an urbanizing rural community of Bangladesh. Two villages were randomly selected from the rural areas of Gazipur district and total 975 subjects (>20 years), were included following simple random procedure. Capillary blood glucose levels, fasting blood glucose (FBG) levels and 2-hour after 75 g oral glucose load (OGTT) were measured. Height, weight, waist and hip circumferences and blood pressure were measured. The study population was lean with mean body mass index (BMI) of 20.48. The total prevalence of type 2 diabetes was 8.5%, men showed higher prevalence (9.4%) compare to women (8.0%). Increasing age and higher BMI were found to be significant risk factors following both FBG and OGTT. The study has shown that prevalence of diabetes has increased in the populations who are in transitional stage of urbanization, and may indicate an epidemiological transition due to fast expanding urbanization.

The genetic divergence was assessed in 60 mango genotypes through D 2 -statistics and principal component analysis. The genotypes under study were grouped into eight clusters and the diversity was influenced by the morphological characters, not by the geographical distribution of the genotypes. The clustering pattern revealed that the genotypes collected from the same region did not fall in the single cluster. The maximum inter cluster distance was noticed between cluster II and cluster VIII, and the lowest between clusters VII and cluster VIII. From the cluster means, cluster I was high yielding and ranked first in terms of number of secondary branches per inflorescence, percent fruit set per inflorescence, and yield per plant. Cluster VIII had only one genotype which produced the highest percentage of flowering shoots, % perfect flowers, number of fruits per plant, and %TSS. The genotypes of cluster VII produced the biggest sized fruits. The first nine characters of the principal component axes with eigen values above unity accounted for 88.3% of the total variation among the fifteen characters. Weight of harvested fruits per plant (0.990 and 0.181), number of fruits per plant (0.101 and 0.607) and individual fruit weight (0.027 and 0.107) for both the vectors were positive across two axes indicating the important components of genetic divergence. The genotypes belonging to clusters I, VII and VIII with high to moderate genetic distances might be recommended for use in crossing programs to produce new recombinants with desired traits.

No abstract

Microwave (MW) assisted synthetic technique was applied for the preparation of chalcone derivatives 5-7 employing Claisen-Schmidt condensation between 2-hydroxyacetophenone and aromatic aldehydes. These chalcones were further subjected to oxidative cyclization via MW irradiation and furnished the related flavones 8-10 which were characterized by FT-IR, 1H and 13CNMR spectra. The use of these MW assisted reactions provided higher productivity (92-98%) in shorter reaction time (2-6 min) with eco-friendly mild reaction conditions and hence found to be a convenient method as compared to conventional synthesis. These chalcones 5-7, and flavones 8-10 were screened for in vitro antimicrobial activities against five bacterial and three fungal pathogens. The study indicated that they were more active against fungal pathogens than that of bacterial organisms and comparable to the standard antifungal antibiotic nystatin. Interestingly, the prediction of activity spectra for substances (PASS) was also found in agreement with the in vitro results. Some of the compounds were found to have good ADMET properties.

The prevalence of metabolic syndrome was determined in clinic-based 1,517 hypertensive patients. All traits were present in 1.1% men and 12.8% women. Combination of different three traits were present as follows; hypertension with high triglyceride and low HDL (men 29.4% vs. women 51.8%), hypertension with high blood glucose and low HDL (men 13.5% vs. women 29.8%), hypertension with high glucose and high triglyceride (men 18.1% vs. women 18.1%), hypertension with high blood glucose and large waist (men 2.7% vs. women 25.7%), hypertension with high triglyceride and large waist (men 3.4% vs. women 39.3%) and hypertension with low HDL and large waist (men 2.5% vs. women 70.6%). This study shows that the metabolic syndrome is highly prevalent among hypertensive patients especially women.

No abstract

The treatment of S- [3,3-bis(phenylthio)propyl] thioalkanoates with the low-valent titanium species Cp 2 Ti[P(OEt) 3 ] 2 in THF produced 5-substituted 2,3-dihydrothiophenes in good yields. These thiophene derivatives were found to be susceptible to photoirradiation and easily isomerized into 2-alkylidenetetrahydrothiophenes.2,3-Dihydrothiophene is one of the most fundamental sulfur-containing heterocycles and is employed for protection of hydroxy group, 1 the synthesis of certain 2,3-dispirocyclohexanones containing tetrahydrothiophene rings, 2 and the preparation of 4-thio-1,2-dideoxy-ribose. 3 The chemistry of this reactive compound and its derivatives is, however, relatively unexplored. This is apparently due to the lack of appropriate method for their preparation, and the instability of the compounds. As for the preparation of unsubstituted 2,3-dihydrothiophene, several methods including the thermal decomposition of 2-acyloxytetrahydrothiophene have been developed. 1,4 Although Paquette et al. reported the preparation of 5-substituted derivatives by the reaction of 5-lithio-2,3-dihydrothiophene with aldehydes, 2 the yields of adducts were only moderate. The improved procedure using 5-tributylstannyl-2,3-dihydrothiophene was reported by O'Neil and co-workers. 3 However the preparation of the requisite starting material is rather complicated.Recently we developed a new method for the carbonyl olefination using a thioacetal-Cp 2 Ti[P(OEt) 3 ] 2 system. We tentatively assume that the key intermediate of this transformation is a titanium-carbene complex. 5 Then we have investigated the preparation of 5-substituted 2,3-dihydrothiophenes 1 by the intramolecular carbonyl olefination of thiol esters 2 outlined in Scheme 1. Scheme 1The starting thiol esters possessing a diphenyl thioacetal moiety 2 were easily prepared by the reaction of the corresponding acyl chlorides with 3,3-bis(phenylthio) propanethiol 4 or 4,4-bis(phenylthio)-2-butanethiol 5 (1.1 equiv/triethylamine; 1.1 equiv/THF/0°C-room temperature/15-30 min) (2a; quant, 2b; 92%, 2c; 82%, 2d; 85%, 2e; 88%, 2f; 82%, 2g; 87%, 2h; 78%). The thiol 4 was prepared from commercially available 3,3-dimethoxypropionic acid methyl ester (6) (Scheme 2). The ester 6 was treated with thiophenol (2 equiv) in the presence of BF 3 ◊OEt 2 (2 equiv) in CHCl 3 (0°C-room temperature/1 h) to produce the thioacetal which was then reduced with lithium aluminum hydride (0.5 equiv/THF/ 0°C/1 h) to give the alcohol 7. The transformation of 7 to the tosylate (TsCl; 1.1 equiv/pyridine/0°C/overnight) followed by the reaction with thiourea (1.5 equiv/methanol/ reflux/3 h) and the hydrolysis of the resulting S-thiouronium salt (10% NH 4 OH/reflux/1.5 h) gave the thiol 4. The secondary thiol 5 was prepared according to the method reported by Fochi et al. 6 using the tosylate prepared from the alcohol 8 (TsCl; 1.1 equiv/pyridine/0°C-room temperature/overnight). The alcohol 8 was obtained by the reaction of bis(phenylthio)methyllithium with propylene oxide (1 equiv/THF/0°C/15 min) (Scheme 3).

The reaction between potassium (or sodium) phenoxide and carbon dioxide at room temperature forms salicylic acid and p-hydroxybenzoic acid at the same time besides the complex, [alkali metal phenoxideÁCO 2 ]. The complex had been thought an intermediate of the Kolbe-Schmitt reaction but is found inactive to the carboxylation at terrestrial temperatures.