Objective:Conventional antidepressants take two weeks before their therapeutic action begins. Recent studies have reported on the rapid antidepressant effect of ketamine when given as an intravenous (I.V.) infusion. Little is known about its intramuscular (I.M.) use in depression. Hence this study was conducted to compare the safety, tolerability and efficacy of I.M. versus. I.V. ketamine in Major Depression (ICD-10).Materials and Methods:It was a randomized open label parallel group study in a tertiary care teaching hospital. Study sample consisted of 27 subjects having major depression divided randomly into three groups of nine subjects each. Ketamine administered to each group in the dose of 0.5 mg/kg as an I.V. infusion, as 0.5 mg/kg I.M. or 0.25 mg/kg I.M. respectively. Depression rated on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) before the injection, two hours later, the next day, and after three days. Data analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).Results:Mean age of the sample was 36.81 years (SD 11.815). Two hours after the injection, HAM-D fell by 58.86%, 60.29% & 57.36% in each group respectively. The improvement was sustained for next three days. Adverse effects noticed were rare, of mild nature and transient, lasting less than an hour.Conclusions:Intramuscular ketamine in the dose of 0.25 mg/kg is as effective and safe as 0.5 mg/kg given either I.M. or I.V., substantially alleviating depressive symptoms within a few hours and sustained for 3 days.

Beauveria bassiana is being used as a biopesticide for many insect pests. Neem oil (azadirachtin) is an eco-safe popular botanical pesticide. A biopesticde with a neem compatible isolate of B. bassiana will enable their simultaneous use in pest management. A sample of 30 isolates of B. bassiana from culture collections was screened for compatibility with a commercial formulation of neem oil (Margoside † ) at the field recommended dose (0.3%, v/v). Compatibility was tested in vitro through germination and growth assays. In all isolates, conidial germination was delayed but not significantly decreased by neem. In the growth assays, 23 isolates were found compatible with neem. In the neem sensitive isolates, growth was decreased but not totally inhibited. The effect of combined treatment with B. bassiana and neem in comparison to single treatments with either of them on Spodoptera litura Fabricius was tested in laboratory bioassays. The combined treatment was found to have synergistic effect on insect mortality when a B. bassiana isolate compatible with neem was used, while, with an isolate sensitive to neem, an antagonistic effect was observed.

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Tinopal was found to be a suitable adjuvant for B. bassiana-based biopesticide formulations. It conferred tolerance to sunlight and caused stress in the insect, leading to a synergistic effect with B. bassiana.

We screened for the major essential single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variant that might be associated with the MSH2 gene based on the data available from three types of human tissue samples [156 lymphoblastoid cell variations (LCL), 160 epidermis, 166 fat]. An association analysis confirmed that the KCNK12 SNP variant (rs748780) was highly associated (p value 9 × 10(-4)) with the MSH2 gene for all three samples. Using SNP identification, we further found that the recognized SNP was also relevant among Hapmap populations. Techniques that display specific SNPs associated with the gene of interest or nearby genes provide more reliable genetic associations than techniques that rely on data from individual SNPs. We investigated the MSH2 gene regional linkage association with the determined SNP (rs748780), KCNK12 variant (Allele T>C) in the intronic region, in HapMap3 full dataset populations, Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria (YRI), Utah residents with ancestry from northern Europe (CEU), Han Chinese in Beijing, China (CHB), and a population of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles, California (MEX). A gene-based SNP association analysis analyzes the combined impact of every variant within the gene while creating referrals to linkage disequilibrium or connections between markers. Our results indicated that among the four populations studied, this association was highest in the MEX population based on the r(2) value; a similar pattern was also observed in the other three populations. The relevant SNP rs748780 in KCNK12 is related to a superfamily of potassium channel pore-forming P-domain proteins as well as to other non-pore-forming proteins and has been shown to be relevant to neurological disorder predisposition in MEX as well as in other populations.