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Abhay Chowdhary

Bio: Abhay Chowdhary is an academic researcher from Haffkine Institute. The author has contributed to research in topics: Virus & Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The author has an hindex of 18, co-authored 146 publications receiving 1223 citations. Previous affiliations of Abhay Chowdhary include Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram & Grant Medical College and Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy Group of Hospitals.


Papers
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TL;DR: The increase in duration of surgery was associated with a significant rise in the rate of surgical site infection, and the most common isolate was Staphylococcus aureus followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

159 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The most important factors influencing mortality from intracranial abscess were the age and neurological condition of the patient at the time of admission and chronic suppurative otitis media, which was the most common predisposing factor for temporal lobe infections.
Abstract: Intracranial abscesses remain a significant health-care problem in developing countries. In view of this, we undertook a comprehensive study to determine the demographics and bacteriological spectrum of brain abscesses in our hospital. Bacteriological profiles and antibiograms were studied by conventional microbiological methods. Seventy-five patients were admitted with brain abscesses over a 5 year period (2001-2005). There was 9.5% mortality in patients included in this study. The most important factors influencing mortality from intracranial abscess were the age and neurological condition of the patient at the time of admission. Brain abscess could develop at any age but there was a preponderance of males over females. Chronic suppurative otitis media was the most common predisposing factor for temporal lobe infections. Forty-one (54.70%) abscesses were found to be due to pyogenic organisms, 4% due to Mycobacterium tuberculosis and 1.3% were due to Cladophialophora bantiana. The majority of microbial isolates were sensitive to the therapeutic regime adopted in our neurosurgery unit (cefotaxime, gentamicin and metronidazole). Chloramphenicol is another antibiotic with in vitro activity against the isolates.

94 citations

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TL;DR: Comparison of the overall performance of all the feature classifiers concluded that “mixed feature set” is the best feature set and showed an excellent rate of accuracy for the training data set.
Abstract: The preliminary study presented within this paper shows a comparative study of various texture features extracted from liver ultrasonic images by employing Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), a type of artificial neural network, to study the presence of disease conditions. An ultrasound (US) image shows echo-texture patterns, which defines the organ characteristics. Ultrasound images of liver disease conditions such as “fatty liver,” “cirrhosis,” and “hepatomegaly” produce distinctive echo patterns. However, various ultrasound imaging artifacts and speckle noise make these echo-texture patterns difficult to identify and often hard to distinguish visually. Here, based on the extracted features from the ultrasonic images, we employed an artificial neural network for the diagnosis of disease conditions in liver and finding of the best classifier that distinguishes between abnormal and normal conditions of the liver. Comparison of the overall performance of all the feature classifiers concluded that “mixed feature set” is the best feature set. It showed an excellent rate of accuracy for the training data set. The gray level run length matrix (GLRLM) feature shows better results when the network was tested against unknown data.

82 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The presence of different parasites in 56.4% of stool specimens of patients with AIDS indicates that their specific diagnosis is essential and will help initiate therapy to reduce the morbidity and mortality among such patients due to these pathogens.
Abstract: Background. Diarrhoeais a common clinicalmanifestation of HIV infection regardless of whether or not patients have AIDS. Two newly recognizedopportunistic coccidialprotozoa are parasitic pathogens in AIDS patients. We attempted to determine the common parasitesin Indian patients with AIDS. Hethods. BetweenOctober 1994 and December 1996, a total of 110 stool specimensfrom 94 AIDSpatients with acute or chronic diarrhoea were examined by microscopy of wet mounts and smearsstainedby a modifiedZiehl-Neelsen's (cold) stainingmethod. Results. Isosporabelli was the most frequently encountered parasitein 17% of patients, followedby Entamoeba histolyticain 14.9% and Cryptosporidium in 8.5%. Strongyloidesstercoralis and Giardialambliawere detected in 5.3% and 4.3% of patients, respectively. Conclusion. The presence of different parasites in 56.4% of stool specimens of patients with AIDS indicates that their specific diagnosisis essential. This will help initiate therapy to

67 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Overall, low levels of ART knowledge and access were observed among HIV infected patients, with access to ART being particularly low among patients attending public clinics.
Abstract: India has approximately 5.2 million persons infected with HIV. Although antiretroviral therapy (ART) is being widely introduced in public clinics, many HIV-infected persons still seek care via the private sector. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2004 at six public and private sites to characterize the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of ART among patients with HIV receiving care in India. Of 1667 persons surveyed, 609 (36%) had heard of ART and 19% of these persons reported that ART could cure HIV. Twenty-four percent reported that they were currently taking ART, with 18% of these patients not actually on ART according to their provider. Major barriers to taking ART were cost (33%), lack of knowledge of ART (41%), and deferral by physician (30%). More than half of all public and private patients had not heard of CD4 (57%) or viral load testing (80%), and even fewer had received these tests (32% and 11%, respectively). Private clinic attendees were almost 4 times more likely to be on ART ...

61 citations


Cited by
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01 May 1949-Nature
TL;DR: The Wealth of India: A Dictionary of Indian Raw Materials and Industrial Products as mentioned in this paper is a dictionary of the economic products of India that was published during the years 1889-99 by the Government of India.
Abstract: IT may occasion some surprise to those men of science who are ill-acquainted with India, and who so frequently express the view that Governments are unappreciative of the importance of science to learn that as far back as 1886 the Government of India arranged for Dr. George (later Sir George) Watt, professor of botany in the Presidency College, Calcutta, to prepare a "Dictionary of the Economic Products of India". The six volumes of this standard work were published during the years 1889-99. In 1908 Sir George Watt published a condensed version, "The Commercial Products of India". Whatever the defects of these 'dictionaries', they have been of inestimable value to all interested in Indian natural products. The Wealth of India A Dictionary of Indian Raw Materials and Industrial Products. Raw Materials, Vol. 1. Pp. xxvii+254+39 plates. 15 rupees ; 24s. Industrial Products, Part 1. Pp. xii+182+8 plates. 8 rupees ; 12s. (New Delhi : Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1948.)

694 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a review of different methods of nanoparticle preparations and its advantages, disadvantages, and applications is presented, which is categorized into two main types on as bottom up methods and top down methods depending on starting material of nanoparticles preparation.

573 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This comprehensive review will benefit researchers who wish to explore the potential of essential oils in the development of novel broad-spectrum key molecules against a broad range of drug-resistant pathogenic microbes.
Abstract: A wide range of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) have been explored for their essential oils in the past few decades. Essential oils are complex volatile compounds, synthesized naturally in different plant parts during the process of secondary metabolism. Essential oils have great potential in the field of biomedicine as they effectively destroy several bacterial, fungal, and viral pathogens. The presence of different types of aldehydes, phenolics, terpenes, and other antimicrobial compounds means that the essential oils are effective against a diverse range of pathogens. The reactivity of essential oil depends upon the nature, composition, and orientation of its functional groups. The aim of this article is to review the antimicrobial potential of essential oils secreted from MAPs and their possible mechanisms of action against human pathogens. This comprehensive review will benefit researchers who wish to explore the potential of essential oils in the development of novel broad-spectrum key molecules against a broad range of drug-resistant pathogenic microbes.

568 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a review of Japanese encephalitis (JE) in Asia, focusing on rural and suburban areas where rice culture and pig farming coexist.
Abstract: Introduction Japanese encephalitis (JE) is among the most important viral encephalitides in Asia, especially in rural and suburban areas where rice culture and pig farming coexist. (1-3) It has also occurred rarely and sporadically in northern Australia and parts of the Western Pacific. (4-6) JE is due to infection with the JE virus (JEV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus. The main JEV transmission cycle involves Culex tritaeniorhynchus mosquitoes and similar species that lay eggs in rice paddies and other open water sources, with pigs and aquatic birds as principal vertebrate amplifying hosts. (1,2,7) Humans are generally thought to be dead-end JEV hosts, i.e. they seldom develop enough viremia to infect feeding mosquitoes. Fewer than 1% of human JEV infections result in JE. Approximately 20-30% of JE cases are fatal and 30-50% of survivors have significant neurologic sequelae. (8) JE is primarily a disease of children and most adults in endemic countries have natural immunity after childhood infection, but all age groups are affected. In most temperate areas of Asia, JEV is transmitted mainly during the warm season, when large epidemics can occur. In the tropics and subtropics, transmission can occur year-round but often intensifes during the rainy season. (1-3) The global incidence of JE is unknown because the intensity and quality of JE surveillance and the availability of diagnostic laboratory testing vary throughout the world. Countries that have implemented high-quality childhood JE vaccination programmes have seen a dramatic decline in JE incidence. Although JE is reportable to the World Health Organization (WHO) by its Member States, reporting is highly variable and incomplete. In the late 1980s, Burke and Leake estimated that 50 000 new cases of JE occurred annually among the 2.4 billion people living in the 16 Asian countries considered endemic at the time (approximate overall annual incidence: 2 per 100 000). (2) In the intervening two decades, despite major population growth, urbanization, changes in agricultural practices and increased use of the JE vaccine in many countries, this figure has been widely quoted, including very recently. (9-13) In 2000, assuming an annual, age-group-specific incidence of 25 cases per 100 000, Tsai estimated that in the absence of vaccination 175 000 cases of JE would occur annually among Asian children aged 0-14 years living in rural areas. (14) The current study used more recent, published, local or national incidence estimates and current population data to produce an updated estimate of the annual global incidence of JE. Methods We approximated the JE-affected territory of each of the 24 countries endemic for JE using a recent update (15) of an earlier approximation by Tsai (16) with some modifications (Table 1, available at: http://www.who.int/bulletin/ volumes/89/10/10-085233). Based on these same approximations, (15,16) we then stratified the JE-affected territory of some countries (e.g. China excluding Taiwan, India and Nepal) into two or more incidence strata. Because suitable studies of JE incidence were not available for every endemic country or incidence stratum, we sorted JE-endemic countries and incidence strata into 10 incidence groups (A, B, C1, C2 and D through I) based primarily on geographic proximity, ecologic similarity, vaccine programme similarity. Table 1 briefly describes the status of each endemic country's JE vaccination programme as of 2009, according to recent publications and unpublished sources. (8,17-20) Incidence data We identified studies that contained potentially useful data on the incidence of JE in Asia in a manner similar to the one used in a recent study of global typhoid fever incidence. (21) Whenever possible, this review followed the relevant guidelines for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA). (22) The review process is described as follows and no protocol is available. …

539 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The structure of virus; varying symptoms among COVID-19, SARS, MERS and common flu; the probable mechanism behind the infection and its immune response; and traditional Indian medicinal plants as possible novel therapeutic approaches, exclusively targeting SARS-CoV-2 and its pathways are discussed.

478 citations