Free radicals and oxidative damage caused by them have being suggested to be involved in the pathogenesis of migraine. These may result from distorted equilibrium of pro-oxidant/anti-oxidant system that continuously generates and detoxifies oxidants during normal aerobic metabolism. Escape of such system from equilibrium leads to damage of cellular elements with the depletion of cellular stores of anti-oxidants material such as glutathione and vitamin E. Therefore, free radical scavengers (vitamin E or melatonin) seems to be of potential benefit as prophylactic anti-migraine therapy by neutralizing free radicals overproduction and possibly preventing formation of highly toxic intermediates (such as nitric oxide). In addition of being powerful antioxidant, melatonin was shown to possess promising effects in modulating severity, frequency and duration of migraine attacks. For this reason the present study was conducted to investigate the involvement of changed anti-oxidant defense (measured as total antioxidant status “TASâ€) during migraine attack and the possible modulation of such status by classical anti-migraine therapy (ergotamine), antioxidants (vitamin E and melatonin) and their combination. 23 normal subjects and 21 migraine patients with age range of (17-45) years were enrolled in the study. Patients were diagnosed according to neurologist decision to have migraine with and without aura. Migraine patients were divided into three treatment groups; first group treated with ergotamine alone, second group with ergotamine /vitamin E and third group with ergotamine /melatonin. All groups were advised to take their treatments during attacks. Blood samples were drawn from migraine patients and normal subjects before initiation of therapy and after pain has been relived (from migraine patients only) for the investigation of TAS . The results of the study showed that TAS was significantly lower in migraine patients in comparison to control healthy subjects (P<0.05) with a percent reduction ranged from 35.46% to 43.97%. However, there is no significant difference in the level of TAS among migraine patients (P>0.05). Treatment with ergotamine raised significantly the level of TAS by 157%. The addition of vitamin E or melatonin greatly raised TAS by 179% and 176% respectively. The addition of vitamin E to ergotamine showed superior effect to that when melatonin was added. The greater reduction in TAS seen in this study among migraine patients in comparison to control healthy subjects suggests the presence of generalized decrease in antioxidant defense elements. Elevation of TAS by all treatments was very clear. In conclusion the decrease in TAS can be implicated in the pathophysiology of migraine and enhancement of antioxidant system can add a beneficial effect for the management of migraine headache with the use of antioxidants (vitamin E or melatonin) with classical anti-migraine drug.
Biologically active natural compounds are molecules produced by plants or plant-related microbes, such as endophytes. Many of these metabolites have a wide range of antimicrobial activities and other pharmaceutical properties. This study aimed to evaluate (in vitro) the antifungal activities of the secondary metabolites obtained from Paecilomyces sp. against the pathogenic fungus Rhizoctonia solani. The endophytic fungus Paecilomyces was isolated from Moringa oleifera leaves and cultured on potato dextrose broth for the production of the fungal metabolites. The activity of Paecilomyces filtrate against the radial growth of Rhizoctonia solani was tested by mixing the filtrate with potato dextrose agar medium at concentrations of 15%,
... Show MoreThe temperature control process of electric heating furnace (EHF) systems is a quite difficult and changeable task owing to non-linearity, time delay, time-varying parameters, and the harsh environment of the furnace. In this paper, a robust temperature control scheme for an EHF system is developed using an adaptive active disturbance rejection control (AADRC) technique with a continuous sliding-mode based component. First, a comprehensive dynamic model is established by using convection laws, in which the EHF systems can be characterized as an uncertain second order system. Second, an adaptive extended state observer (AESO) is utilized to estimate the states of the EHF system and total disturbances, in which the observer gains are updated
... Show MoreIn this study, the photodegradation of Congo red dye (CR) in aqueous solution was investigated using Au-Pd/TiO2 as photocatalyst. The concentration of dye, dosage of photocatalyst, amount of H2O2, pH of the medium and temperature were examined to find the optimum values of these parameters. It has been found that 28 ppm was the best dye concentration. The optimum amount of photocatalyst was 0.09 g/75 mL of dye solution when the degradation percent was ~ 96 % after irradiation time of 12 hours, while the best amount of hydrogen peroxide was 7μl/75 mL of dye solution at degradation percent ~97 % after irradiation time of 10 hours, whereas pH 5 was the best value to carry out the reaction at the highest deg
... Show MoreIn this study used three methods such as Williamson-hall, size-strain Plot, and Halder-Wagner to analysis x-ray diffraction lines to determine the crystallite size and the lattice strain of the nickel oxide nanoparticles and then compare the results of these methods with two other methods. The results were calculated for each of these methods to the crystallite size are (0.42554) nm, (1.04462) nm, and (3.60880) nm, and lattice strain are (0.56603), (1.11978), and (0.64606) respectively were compared with the result of Scherrer method (0.29598) nm,(0.34245),and the Modified Scherrer (0.97497). The difference in calculated results Observed for each of these methods in this study.