Remarks on “Tinospora cordifolia: One plant, many roles”
Sir, We read an article entitled “Tinospora cordifolia: One plant, many roles,” with great interest and would like to place few remarks on this.[1] The article is aptly written, informative and seems to be a product of a sincere effort of the researcher. The authors have aimed at encompassing the genetic diversity of the plant and they were also able to present the scarcity of reports on conservation strategies, propagation of the germplasm, morphological and physiological characters, and other characteristics of the plant. Unfortunately however, nothing has been discussed much about genetic diversity with special reference to Tinospora. Authors could have compiled reported studies on male and female varieties of Tinospora.[2,3]
Remarks on “Herbal Immune Booster-Induced Liver Injury in the COVID-19 Pandemic - A Case Series”
1. There is published evidence in animal models and clinical studies suggesting TC as a safe and natural remedy for hepatoprotection. 2. Nagral et al. do not clarify from the patient’s history, which variety of Tinospora was consumed by the patient, as the two varieties (T. cordifolia and T. crispa) look similar in themorphology, and peoplemaymistake T. crispa for T. cordifolia. T. cordifolia is referred to as Giloy in Ayurveda; however, T. crispa is known to be hepatotoxic. The same concern about the nature of the prescribed medicine has also been raised by Ministry of AYUSH in a press release. 3. Case 1 may have self-consumed TC in excess. The reported findings of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) are further weakened as the patient took two additional herbs in an undefined dosage. Cases 2 and 4 were diabetic, Case 3 had beta-thalassemia minor, while Cases 5 and 6 had hypothyroidism, which are also confounders. Therefore, presenting TC as a sole factor for autoimmunity development in these patients has confounding factors. Further, the authors have mentioned that certain non-hepatotropic viruses were not tested in the study, which could alter the findings. 4. Cases 2 to 6 might be taking some concomitant conventional medications (unclear from the publication) e.g. for diabetes and hypothyroidism, which may be associated with DILI as confounders. Effect of all drugs and drug-drug interactions on liver health should have been discussed. 5. All cases had a history of unsupervised consumption of TC. Four cases consumed twigs (undefined amount), while Ayurveda clearly advocates using thumb-sized mature stems. Two cases consumed commercial syrup and tablet with TC as one of the ingredients where a chance of adulteration is possible. Excessive, prolonged, and unscrupulous use of any herb could be dangerous. Ayurveda does not recommend the continuous unsupervised use of TC for several months.
Detection and Counting of On-Tree Citrus Fruit for Crop Yield Estimation
In this paper, we present a technique to estimate citrus fruit yield from the tree images. Manually counting the fruit for yield estimation for marketing and other managerial tasks is time consuming and requires human resources, which do not always come cheap. Different approaches have been used for the said purpose, yet separation of fruit from its background poses challenges, and renders the exercise inaccurate. In this paper, we use k-means segmentation for recognition of fruit, which segments the image accurately thus enabling more accurate yield estimation. We created a dataset containing 83 tree images with 4001 citrus fruits from three different fields. We are able to detect the on-tree fruits with an accuracy of 91.3%. In addition, we find a strong correlation between the manual and the automated fruit count by getting coefficients of determination R2 up to 0.99.