Characterization of Physicochemical and Thermal Properties of Chitosan and Sodium Alginate after Biofield Treatment

What is it about?

Chitosan (CS) and sodium alginate (SA) are two widely popular biopolymers which are used for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications from many years. The objective of present study was to study the effect of biofield treatment on physical, chemical and thermal properties of CS and SA. The study was performed in two groups (control and treated). The control group remained as untreated, and biofield treatment was given to treated group. The control and treated polymers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, CHNSO analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), particle size analysis, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). FT-IR of treated chitosan showed increase in frequency of –CH stretching (2925→2979 cm-1) vibrations with respect to control. However, the treated SA showed increase in frequency of –OH stretching (3182→3284 cm-1) which may be correlated to increase in force constant or bond strength with respect to control. CHNSO results showed significant increase in percentage of oxygen and hydrogen of treated polymers (CS and SA) with respect to control. XRD studies revealed that crystallinity was improved in treated CS as compared to control. The percentage crystallite size was increased significantly by 69.59% in treated CS with respect to control. However, treated SA showed decrease in crystallite size by 41.04% as compared to control sample. The treated SA showed significant reduction in particle size (d50 and d99) with respect to control SA. DSC study showed changes in decomposition temperature in treated CS with respect to control. A significant change in enthalpy was observed in treated polymers (CS and CA) with respect to control. TGA results of treated CS showed decrease in Tmax with respect to control. Likewise, the treated SA also showed decrease in Tmax which could be correlated to reduction in thermal stability after biofield treatment. Overall, the results showed that biofield treatment has significantly changed the physical, chemical and thermal properties of CS and SA.

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Why is it important?

Pharmaceutical scientists have used polymers in every aspect of their work; for example polystyrene vials, rubber closures, plastic tubing for injection sets, and polyvinylchloride flexible bags to hold blood and intravenous solutions. The conventional use of polymers is often limited to packaging rather than drug delivery. Subsequently, the union of polymer and pharmaceutical sciences led to the introduction of polymer in the design and development of drug delivery systems [1]. Especially, targeted drug delivery is more promising approach where the drug can be transported more effectively from a dosage form to targeted organ in required concentration thereby minimizing the drug induced toxicity. As the oral route is most popular route of administration, a large emphasis has been devoted to the development of controlled oral drug delivery systems. However, the highly hydrophilic nature and short half-life (elimination half-life 2-3 hour) of drugs causes them to readily absorbed and eliminated [2]. This requires frequent dosing that lead to a decrease in patient compliance and further increase chances of severe side effects due to dose dumping [3]. This warrants extensive research to alleviate these drug side effects by fabricating novel polymer-based drug delivery devices. In general, polymers are classified in several ways; but according to the simplest classification used for pharmaceutical purposes they are divided into natural and synthetic polymers. Polysaccharides as natural polymers have been commonly used for the development of controlled release dosage forms and sustained release formulations [4-6]. Chitosan (CS) is an excellent cationic biopolymer which can interact effectively with negatively charged polymers, macromolecules, and poly ions. CS based matrices are extensively investigated for oral, transdermal, rectal, and ocular drug delivery systems [7]. CS can be used as an effective targeted delivery to the upper part of gastro intestinal tract and stomach to improve bioavailability. Recently CS and SA based matrix tablets were formulated for controlled delivery of trimetazidine hydrochloride [8]. Sodium alginate (SA) is a well-known natural polymer of plant origin; it is mainly composed of (1-4) linked β-D-manuronic acid and α-L-guluronic acid units [9,10]. It has outstanding gel forming ability, biocompatibility and biodegradability which makes it a suitable candidate for biomedical, controlled release applications and matrices for enzyme immobilization, etc. [11,12]. Moreover, SA can be cross linked with multivalent cations such as calcium ions which can lead to the formation of insoluble calcium alginate [13,14]. Due to this unique crosslinking nature SA shows reduced swelling in different solvents, resulting in minimized permeation of different solutes. This allows drug embedded alginate matrices to be used as sustained release formulations for controlled drug delivery applications [15-18]. Nevertheless, more hydrophilic nature of these polymers, sometime leads to premature release of the drugs leading to reduced bioavailability and efficacy. Therefore CS and SA polymer need to be properly modified in order to tailor its stability which can improve bioavailability of encapsulated drugs. Hence, in current research work an attempt was made to modify physicochemical properties of CS and SA through biofield treatment. Biofield is a cumulative effect of electric and magnetic field induced by a human body on external surroundings. Thus, human beings have the ability to harness the energy from environment/Universe and can transmit into any object (living or non-living) around the Globe. The object(s) always receive the energy and respond into a useful manner that is called biofield energy. This whole process is known as biofield treatment. Recently, it was reported that a robotic quad copter can be controlled through the power of thoughts [19]. Mr. Trivedi is known to transform the physical and structural properties at the atomic level of various living and non-living things through his biofield treatment (The Trivedi Effect®). The said treatment has substantially changed the atomic and thermal properties of metals [20-23]. The biofield treatment has significantly changed the energy in the crystal as well as crystallite size and distance between the atoms in a unit cell. Furthermore, when biofield was exposed to diamond, graphite and activated charcoal, the treatment has caused substantial elongation and fracture to smaller particles, which confirmed that the biofield energy has acted at the polycrystalline level causing deformation of metal particles [22]. It has been recently published that the effect of Mr Trivedi’s biofield treatment resulted in significant improvement of the yield and quality of various agriculture products [24-27]. It causes an increase in growth and anatomical characteristics of a herb Pogostemon cablin that is commonly used in perfumes, in incense/insect repellents, and alternative medicine [28]. Moreover, in microbiology, biofield treatment has also caused changes in the antibiotic susceptibility patterns and biochemical reactions that further induced changes in the characteristics of pathogenic microbes [29-31]. By considering above mentioned excellent outcomes from biofield treatment and properties of CS and SA, this work was undertaken to investigate the impact of biofield treatment on physical, chemical and thermal properties of CS and SA.

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