We found that almost half of our under five children are underweight, girl child being affected more. For attainment of best possible nutrition and growth in children, targeted short-term strategies addressing underlying risk factors and more long-term poverty alleviation strategies may be needed.

No abstract

Periodontitis is a biofilm-associated irreversible inflammation of the periodontal tissues.

the upsurge of multidrug resistant bacterial infections with declining pipeline of newer antibiotics has made it imperative to develop newer molecules or tailor the existing molecules for more effective antimicrobial therapies. Since antiquity, the use of curcumin, in the form of Curcuma longa paste, to treat infectious lesions is unperturbed despite its grave limitations like instability and aqueous insolubility. Here, we utilized "click" chemistry to address both the issues along with improvisation of its antibacterial and antibiofilm profile. We show that soluble curcumin disrupts several bacterial cellular processes leading to the fenton's chemistry mediated increased production of reactive oxygen species and increased membrane permeability of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. We here report that its ability to induce oxidative stress can be harnessed to potentiate activities of ciprofloxacin, meropenem, and vancomycin. In addition, we demonstrated that the soluble curcumin reported herein even sensitizes resistant Gram-negative clinical isolates to the Gram-positive specific antibiotic vancomycin, thereby expanding the antibacterial spectrum of this drug. This work shows that the soluble curcumin can be used to enhance the action of existing antimicrobials against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria thus strengthening the antibiotic arsenal for fighting resistant bacterial infections for many years to come. There is a coercing need to find new drug alternatives for the treatment of multidrug resistant (MDR) bacterial infections, which presently affects almost 180 million people across the globe and is anticipated to increase up to 225 million by 2030 1,2. A number of drugs, which has been introduced in last 2 decades for the treatment of MDR infections helped only for short term in managing infections due to acquisition and dissemination of the newer resistance 3. As per the recent data mining, the current assessment of the pipeline shows about 42 new antibiotics in development among which 11 are in Phase I clinical trials, 13 in Phase II, 13 in Phase III, four have submitted marketing authorization applications, and only one drug has received a complete response letter. However, given the irrevocability that some of these "in development" antibiotics will be declined for approval, and that resistance will eventually develop with time to those that will be consented for use, it is unblemished that we will have too few drugs to meet current and anticipated patient needs 4. The global menace of resistance can be understood with the fact that we are helpless against carbapenem-resistant/extended spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus as they are resistant to all or nearly all of the antibiotics available today whom the World Health Organization considers critical threats 5. The studies indicate that the upsurge of resistant strains can only