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Catalog of Herbs
Published in James A. Duke, Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, 2018
Apricots are cultivated for the fruit, eaten fresh out of hand, or dried, made into conserves or alcoholic beverages. Kernels produce a sweet edible oil sometimes used as substitute for almond oil. Chinese almonds are the seed kernels of several sweet varieties of apricot, used for almond cookies, eaten salted and blanched, or made into gruel or flour. Afghans also use the seeds as almonds. Bitter apricot kernel is highly toxic because of prussic acid present. Expressed oil, known as persic oil or apricot oil, is used as a pharmaceutical vehicle; it is obtained by the same process as bitter almond oil. Pit shells have been used to prepare activated charcoal, via destructive distillation.38
Badam
Published in H.S. Puri, Rasayana, 2002
It is light yellow in colour, with a mild, pleasing odour and a bland taste. It is known as Roghan Badam in India. It is extracted by a cold process. Adulterations in the oil can be detected by subjecting it to cold temperature; it is clear at −10°C but congeals at −20°C. The oil is commonly adulterated or substituted with peach and apricot oil, and, as a matter of fact, most of the oil sold as bitter almond oil is from the bitter kernels of apricot. To detect any adulterations, shake 2 parts of oil with one part of fuming nitric acid and one part distilled water. The mixture should not have any colour (peach and apricot oil will give a red colour, while sesame and cottonseed oil will give brown colour) (Culbreth, 1927).
Low-intensity light-induced paclitaxel release from lipid-based nano-delivery systems
Published in Journal of Drug Targeting, 2019
Igor Meerovich, Michael G. Nichols, Alekha K. Dash
Preliminary studies on proposed light-induced release approach involved choosing a suitable emulsifier, screening a variety of mono- and polyunsaturated lipids or lipid mixtures for optimal photosensitised oxidation, choosing a cryoprotectant and an antioxidant. Polyvinyl alcohol used to stabilise the nanoemulsion for the reported lipid nanoparticles [30] was found to be unsuitable for the photosensitizer in the formulation. This was successfully replaced with pluronic F-68. During the preliminarily studies, variety of mono and polyunsaturated lipids or lipid mixtures were tested to provide a matrix with relatively low melting range (within 40–50 °C) but solidifying below 37 °C and suitable for photosensitised release of a drug from the SLN. The choice included glyceryl monooleate used in previously reported SLN [30], Maisine 35–1 (glyceryl monolioneate), Olicine (mixture of peanut oil glycerides) as well as mixture of different ratios of SPC with apricot oil, olive oil, or OA. Some of them showed minor enhancement of release under illumination but far from the desired extent. Successful results were obtained with SLN based on a mixture of OA and SPC at 4:1 w/w ratio. Additional modification included optimisation of chitosan content, choice of cryoprotectant and antioxidant. Sucrose at 5% (w/v) concentration was chosen as a primary cryoprotectant based on its previous use with liposomes with the same photosensitizer [43]. Use of various amount of chitosan between 0 and 6% (w/w) resulted in an increase in the size of nanoparticles from 209.2 ± 3.2 to 360.8 ± 4.2 nm, respectively and decrease the burst release of PTS from the SLN from 39 to 20% (w/w). The chitosan content of 3.7% (w/v) was chosen as optimal and used for further optimisation of dextrose as a cryoprotectant providing the least increase in size of SLN after freeze drying and antioxidant. The process of emulsification and ratios of components chosen from preliminary experiments allowed the preparation of SLN with acceptable sizes around 200 nm. The particle size, zeta potential, and drug load of SLN formulations are provided in Table 1.