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Background: The burden of noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors has rapidly increased worldwide, including in India. Innovative management strategies with electronic decision support and task sharing have been assessed for hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and depression individually, but an integrated package for multiple chronic condition management in primary care has not been evaluated. Methods: In a prospective, multicenter, open-label, cluster-randomized controlled trial involving 40 community health centers, using hypertension and diabetes mellitus as entry points, we evaluated the effectiveness of mWellcare, an mHealth system consisting of electronic health record storage and an electronic decision support for the integrated management of 5 chronic conditions (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, current tobacco and alcohol use, and depression) versus enhanced usual care among patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus in India. At trial end (12-month follow-up), using intention-to-treat analysis, we examined the mean difference between arms in change in systolic blood pressure and glycated hemoglobin as primary outcomes and fasting blood glucose, total cholesterol, predicted 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease, depression score, and proportions reporting tobacco and alcohol use as secondary outcomes. Mixed-effects regression models were used to account for clustering and other confounding variables. Results: Among 3698 enrolled participants across 40 clusters (mean age, 55.1 years; SD, 11 years; 55.2% men), 3324 completed the trial. There was no evidence of difference between the 2 arms for systolic blood pressure (Δ=−0.98; 95% CI, −4.64 to 2.67) and glycated hemoglobin (Δ=0.11; 95% CI, −0.24 to 0.45) even after adjustment of several key variables (adjusted differences for systolic blood pressure: – 0.31 [95% CI, −3.91 to 3.29]; for glycated hemoglobin: 0.08 [95% CI, −0.27 to 0.44]). The mean within-group changes in systolic blood pressure in mWellcare and enhanced usual care were −13.65 mm Hg versus −12.66 mm Hg, respectively, and for glycated hemoglobin were −0.48% and −0.58%, respectively. Similarly, there were no differences in the changes between the 2 groups for tobacco and alcohol use or other secondary outcomes. Conclusions: We did not find an incremental benefit of mWellcare over enhanced usual care in the management of the chronic conditions studied. Clinical Trial Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov . Unique identifier: NCT02480062.

Thirteen parental lines were crossed in line X tester fashion comprising 10 lines and 3 testers at vegetable farm Banaras Hindu University Varanasi to estimate combining ability in tomato for fruit yield, yield components and fruit quality traits. F₁ and parents were grown in towards four and half meters in randomized block design with three replications during winter-2010 involvement of both additive and non additive gene action was operated for the control of fruits per plant, fruit weight and average fruit weight. All the fruit quality characters like, total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity, ascorbic acid and lycopene of the fruit were governed by non additive gene action. In most of the traits, over-dominance was predominant. The analysis of components of genetic variance for yield components showed that the main part of genetic variance was due to additive effect. Estimation of general combining ability (GCA) for yield and earliness showed that Pant T-3 had the highest GCA for increasing yield and Punjab Upma had the highest GCA for both earliness and average fruit weight. Cross combination CO-3 X Azad T-5 exhibit significant specific combining ability (SCA) for the most of desirable traits among all cross combinations

The pathogenesis-related proteins have a broad spectrum of roles, ranging from seed germination, development to resistance. The PR-10 is a multigene family differing from other PR proteins in being intracellular, small and acidic with similar 3D structures. We have isolated JcPR-10a cDNA with an ORF of 483 bp from J. curcas, an important biofuel crop grown in the wastelands of India. JcPR-10a gets clustered with dicots in phylogenetic tree. The genomic organisation analysis of JcPR-10a revealed the presence of an intron at conserved 185 bp position. Transcript expression of JcPR-10a was upregulated in response to different stimuli such as NaCl, salicylic acid, methyl jasmonate and M. phaseolina. In response to SA and Macrophomina the transcript was found increased at 48 h, however, in case of NaCl and MeJa a strong induction was observed at 12 h which decreased at 48 h. We first time report the transcript up regulation of PR-10 gene by Macrophomina, a pathogen causing collar rot in Jatropha. The recombinant E. coli cells showed better growth in LB medium supplemented with NaCl, whereas growth of recombinant cells was inhibited in LB medium supplemented with KCl, mannitol, sorbitol, methyl jasmonate and salicylic acid. The JcPR-10a protein was overexpressed in E. coli cells, and was purified to homogeneity, the purified protein exhibited RNase and DNase activity. Furthermore, the protein also showed antifungal activity against Macrophomina, indicating that JcPR-10a can serve as an important candidate to engineer stress tolerance in Jatropha as well as other plants susceptible to collar rot by Macrophomina.

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