Background: Traditional medicine mainly of herbal origin is widely used all around the world. Heavy metal contamination in such products is frequently reported. Accumulation of heavy metals in the human body leads to various health hazards. Thus, precise determination for such contaminants is required for safety assurance. Sample preparation is a significant step in spectroscopic analysis to achieve reliable and accurate results. Wet digestion methods are basically used for the dissolution of herbal product samples prior to elemental analysis.

Heavy metal pollution is a serious environmental problem. The presence of such metals in different areas of an ecosystem subsequently leads to the contamination of consumable products such as dietary and processed materials. Accurate monitoring of metal concentrations in various samples is of importance in order to minimize health hazards resulting from exposure to such toxic substances. For this purpose, it is essential to have a general understanding of the basic principles for different methods of elemental analysis. This article provides an overview of the most sensitive techniques of elementalanalysis such as atomic absorption/emission spectrometry, mass spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence, voltametry, and nuclear techniques. In addition, the article addresses some applications in a range of sample matrices.

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Purpose: To determine the content of arsenic (As)

. The difference between the two methods was insignificant. A (P= 0.5), B (P=0.4) and C (P=0.88) Relative standard deviation (RSD) RSD, i.e., respectively. Recovery of arsenic in SRM was 98 and 102 % by GFAAS and HGAAS, respectively

Concentrations of heavy metals (HMs) in the tissues and saliva extracts of leeches (Hirudinaria manillensis) collected from Cheneh Lake, Terengganu, Malaysia were investigated. Concentrations of HMs like Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Iron (Fe), Manganese (Mn), Nickel (Ni), Lead (Pb), Selenium (Se) and Zinc (Zn) were revealed by utilising Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS). Nearly all the examined HMs concentrations in the lake water were noted to be higher compared to the Maximum Permissible Limits (MPL) as per Interim National Water Quality Standards for Malaysia (INWQS). Moreover, traces of HMs were discovered in tissues and saliva extracts of leeches. Such quantities may pose a health hazard to the patients upon an instant application of leeches on their skin. In this work, a novel technique was presented to decrease the level of metals in leech saliva by espousing a frequent washing process involving deionized or non-chlorinated water for three weeks. This process was extremely effectual in considerably decreasing HMs concentrations (P<0.05), particularly Cd level (up to 99.7%) in saliva and Pb level (up to 92.38%) in tissues. Thus, a constant washing process might aid in harmless utilization of leeches for different conventional biomedical practices.

Purpose: Olfactory receptors are G protein coupled surface receptors (GPCRs) of which their ectopic expression is currently of mounting interest to the development and metastasis of malignancies. These genes having a direct contact with the environment may probably be stimulated by various factors which can bring about methylation aberrations, including DNA hypo and hyper-methylation. Here we gather clues from epigenetic and phenotypic data in order to further our understanding of the potential association of the olfaction with oncogenesis.Methods: Whole methylome dataset of breast cancer series generated by Illumina Infinium Human Methylation 450 Bead Chip was interrogated for differentially methylated genes and further subject to network analysis using various search tools. Analysis of putative phenotypic trait in olfaction function was performed using smell detection and smell identification tests and data was analyzed using Mann-Whitney test.Results: Sixty-eight differentially methylated ORs were enriched mainly on chromosomes 1q23, and 11p15, specifically 1q44 (P value 6.867e-20). Amongst the disease signatures of these hypomethylation events was breast cancer itself (P value 0.004437). Network analysis suggests the interaction of differentially hypo and hyper methylated olfactory receptor genes might be pivotal in stimulating several important biological pathways including circadian genes and pathways potentially associated with metastasis. Phenotypic smell test shows a generalized impairment of smell capability in breast cancer patients as compared to controls (Mann-Whitney Test P=0.0001), an effect that is independent of chemotherapyConclusions: The olfaction appears as a crucial element in carcinogenesis, evident by both phenotypic and genotypic (epigenetic) data in a well characterized breast cancer subset.