Research Areas

Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies

Community Research

• Community mobilization and participatory research
• Research and community based-rehabilitation of differently-abled persons
• Community research among tribal groups on Antenatal care and post partum care using qualitative methods
• Qualitative research in chronic morbidity with special reference to Diabetes Mellitus

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

• Epidemiology of chronic diseases and their risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity
• Epidemiology of diabetes
• Quality of life in diabetes
• Measurement issues in health
• Validation of measurement tools in health research
• Sampling for statistical inference
• Advanced statistical analysis of bio-medical and public health data
• Secondary data analysis
• Epidemiology and surveillance of infectious diseases
• Infectious disease epidemiology - Tuberculosis control
• Environmental epidemiology
• Survival analysis
• Analysis of randomized control trial -Cervical cancer research

Ethics

• Bioethics in health research

Gender and Health

• Gender and health
• Sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Gender issues related to diabetes
• Gender and Maternal Mortality

Health Policy and Management

• Health Policy with special reference to underdevelopment
• Health Policy and Advocacy
• Policy research on intervention among children
• Health Planning and Management- Healthcare administration, Human Resource Management, workload research
• Project Management- Situational analysis, scheduling, project appraisal, programming, monitoring and evaluation
• Strategic Management- Strategic analysis
• Health systems and health financing
• Economics of Health- Economic appraisal, project planning
• Development Studies- Rural Development
• Demographic research in Public Health

Technology

• Geo-spatial analysis in public health
• Public health informatics
• Public Health and socio-cultural ramifications of technology adoption

Biomedical Technology Wing (BMT Wing)

The Biomedical Technology Wing (BMT Wing) consists of an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers with wide ranging research interests around the broad area of biomaterials, biomedical engineering and medical devices technology. The faculty, staff and students publish their work in refereed journals of national or international standing and actively pursue professional development through participating and organizing national and international conferences. Research faculties actively pursue research projects by seeking external funding from national funding agencies and also undertake collaborative projects with other institutions and industry.

In BIOMATERIALS RESEARCH the current strength is in Polymers and Ceramic materials. The areas of research focus include the following:

• Synthesis and characterizations of novel biocompatible polymers
• Polymers and polymer composites with tailor made properties and structure
• Polymers for drug delivery applications, sensor applications, coatings on medical devices
• Quantum dots for medical applications, Molecular imprinting techniques for sensor applications
• Ceramic nano particles development for drug delivery such as insulin/ heparin, gold nanoparticles for sensing of biomolecules and other applications in biomedical area
• Bioceramics based on hydroxyapatite and bioactive ceramic-glass composite platforms, Polymer ceramic composites
• Dental materials- synthesis and characterization of novel dental materials
• Chitosan research for applications in wound healing, drug delivery etc
• Reduction of latex allergy, coatings on latex products

In Biological research area, some of the areas of research focus includes,

• Tissue Engineering Research-corneal TE, hepatocytes and endothelial cells for bioartificial liver, scaffolds for cartilage, pancreas,
• Stem cell research-cell encapsulation,
• Tissue material interaction, developing an atlas of tissue response, study of retrieved human implants
• Blood Material interactions, Thrombosis research
• Decellularisation of animal tissues
• Developing alternate and new test systems for animal testing
• Development of growth factors such as Transformation growth factors (TGF-alpha) and Vascular Endothelial growth factor (VEGF)- D

In the Biomedical engineering domain, the areas of research interest includes,

• Designing, modeling, prototyping and testing of cardiovascular devices and implants
• Finite element modeling and analysis of medical devices, Blood flow studies, Computational Fluid dynamic studies
• Development of test systems such as accelerated wear tester, pulse duplicator, pressure calibrator etc for device evaluation
• Surface modification and applications of PET fabrics
• advanced coatings for improving biocompatibility and surface property in medical devices such as Diamond Like Coatings (DLC) and Titanium Nitride Coatings
• Laser deposition of ceramics on devices
• Electrical Impedance based pneumography
• Bioreactor development and Electro spinning stations for Tissue engineering

The broad areas of interest in product development include,

• Cardio-vascular Devices and Implants such as mechanical heart valves, tissue based valves, coronary stents, blood pumps, LVADs, blood oxygenators, vascular grafts, ECG electrodes, tissue based cardiac patch
• Neurological devices such as EMG electrodes, DBS implants
• Neurosurgical implants such as Hydrocephalus shunt, aneurysm clips/ coils
• Blood transfusion products such as blood bags, leukocyte filters etc
• Dental materials- composite based materials, titanium based dental implants
• Bioceramic materials and polymer ceramic composites for dental and orthopedic applications
• Hormone releasing Intrauterine devices
• Kits such as Urinary tract infection identification, Elisa based Pyrogen test kit
• Biologicals such as Fibrin glue, Anti-viper venom, fetal calf serum
• Chitosan based wound dressings
• Eco friendly animal bedding for laboratory animals

In medical device technology management, the interest is in medical device regulations, quality management, clinical engineering, IPR issues and industry issues related to medical devices technology in India

Detailed information and status of work undertaken, results and findings can be looked up at the annual report of the Institute

Areas of research in Hospital Wing

Department of Anesthesiology

• Intraoperative hemodynamic performance and echocardiographic characteristics
• Evaluation of Chitra heart valve prosthesis in the aortic and the mitral positions
• Comparison of effect of isoflurane and sevoflurane on left ventricular diastolic function in patients with ischemic heart disease undergoing CABG
• Intraoperative changes in pulmonary venous Doppler flow profile before and after surgical closure of atrial and ventricular septal defects.

Division of Biochemistry

Biochemical basis of diseases such as

• Identification of lipoprotein binding serum antibodies and characterization of polysaccharide antibody recognition.
• Studies on dysfunctional high density lipoprotein (HDL)
• Developing of a database of young CAD patients in Kerala

Experimental and clinical oncology research involving,

• Insidious role of nitric oxide in tumor cell aggressiveness
• Studies on characterizing gliomasphere forming cells
• Mechanisms of natural and synthetic chemical moieties as tentative antitumor agents

Department of Cardiology

• Cardiac electrophysiology in inherited and acquired forms of cardiac dysarrhythmias
• Functional assessment of coronary lesion in deciding intervention and long term follow up of device closure for cardio defects
• Community interventions for health: emphasis on calf length and circumference as a marker for adult onset risk factors and diseases
• Quit Tobacco India Indonesia project: training on behavioral methods at tobacco cessation

Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery

• Animal experiments [in pig] with Hydrogel coated large diameter Chitra Vascular graft
• Implantation of small diameter tissue engineered graft [in sheep].
• Studies on developing indigenous left ventricular assist device for endstage heart failure
• Stem cell treatment for patients with ischemic heart disease,
• Preclinical animal trial for stem cell therapy,
• Preclinical animal trial for modified Chitra heart valve prosthesis
• Mitochondrial metabolism and function in Type 2 diabetic heart

Division of Cellular and Molecular Cardiology

• Spontaneously hypertensive rat as an experimental model to identify metabolic modulators that prevent and/or regress cardiac hypertrophy.
• Molecular mechanisms involved in apoptosis resistance, cell cycle progression and collagen expression in cardiac fibroblasts under conditions of ambient stress
• Effect of oxidative stress and hypertrophy on cardiac stem cells
• Identification of allelic variants associated with coronary artery disease, hypertension and hypertrophy.

Department of Imaging Sciences and Interventional Radiology

• Development of realtime functional MRI based Brain computer interface for stroke rehabilitation
• Functional MRI of decision making, multimodality neuroimaging & advanced neuroimaging (fMRI, DTI, EEG correlated fMRI, SWI and perfusion imaging) for better patient management in epilepsy, brain tumors, movement disorders, stroke & dementia.
• Cerebral vaso-reactivity studies
• Multimodality evaluation of vulnerability of carotid plaques
• Cardiac MRI features in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
• Development of indigenous stent graft for endovascular aortic aneurysm repair

Division of Microbiology

• Antibiotic resistance mechanisms
• Surveillance on hospital acquired infections
• Screening of herbal extracts for Anti bacterial and Anti viral activity
• Studying possible role of microbial pathogens in causation of non-infectious disorders.
• Homograft Valve Bank.

Department of Neurology

• Deep Brain Stimulation surgery for Parkinson's disease (PD)
• Non-motor aspects of Parkinson's disease
• Motor physiology of Dystonia
• Pathophysiology and treatment of dyskinesia in PD
• Role of Alpha-Synuclein and genetics of movement disorders
• Studies on estimation of serum levels of amyloid-b in patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD)
• Tau and progranulin levels in patients with Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)
• long-term longitudinal study of Cognition in Older Adults in Trivandrum (COAT).
• Prevalence of sleep disorders in the general population
• Epworth sleepiness score standardization in Indian population
• Formulation of new sleep apnea clinical score
• Contribution of sleep apnea in the progression of CHF, systemic hypertension, isolated pulmonary hypertension, COPD and Type 2 DM
• Prediabetes and insulin resistance in patients with ischemic stroke and TIA, etiology, risk factors and long term outcome in young stroke patients
• Natural history of medically treated symptomatic intracranial atherosclerotic disease, prevalence of microbleeds and correlation with stroke subtypes and quality of life of stroke survivors
• Utilizing DTI with post-ictal diffusivity indices and fractional anisotropy values and DTI tractography to reduce perioperative neurological deficits
• Development of arterial spin-labeling technique (ASL) and standardize its use in patients with epilepsy to detect the flow changes post ictally,
• EEG-fMRI studies for identifying the epileptogenic zone in cryptogenic MRI negative focal epilepsies
• Epilepsy surgery outcome studies.
• Standard versus selective resective temporal lobe epilepsy surgeries
• Mortality on long-term following epilepsy surgery
• Why epilepsy surgery fails?
• Development of standard scores and percentile cut-offs for the scores in relation to verbal and non verbal memory performances in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE)
• Allelic, genotypic and haplotypic association in a cohort of pharmacoresistant and pharmacoresponsive patients and normal healthy controls
• Creation of a database for the pharmacogenomic profile of epilepsy patients from Kerala
• Studies on stigma, infertility and oxidative stress in women with epilepsy
• Sero-prevalence of Neurocysticercosis
• Estimation of autoantibodies to Voltage gated K+ channel in persons with epilepsy
• Pharmacogenetic study for evaluating the teratogenic effects of anti epileptic drugs
• The effects of maternal sleep deprivation (restriction) on cognition in the offspring in an animal model.
• To investigate the role of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep during development in regulation of sexual arousal and erectile events in adult rats.
• To investigate the effects of acute sleep restriction on sleep and body temperature interactions in different age groups of healthy subjects.
• To investigate the effects of short- and long-term administration of alpha-asarone on oxidative stress and anxiety alleviation in insomnia model in rats.
• Scientific evaluation of the sleep-wake altering property of a-asarone, an active principle of Acorus Calamus

Department of Neurosurgery

• Multicentric, multinational, randomized, controlled clinical/surgical trials
• Preclinical animal evaluation of decellularised bovine pericardium as Dura substitute

Department of Pathology

• Infectious diseases of the central nervous system
• Tumors of the central nervous system
• Muscular and neuromuscular diseases
• Demyelinating diseases, epilepsy and vascular diseases of the central nervous system.
• Nutritional Cardiovascular Diseases
• Mucoid Vasculopathy, Atherosclerosis, Metabolic Syndrome, associated Endocrinopathies Diabetes Mellitus, Goitre
• Low HDL-Cholesterol Dyslipidemia: Human & Primate model
• Endomyocardial Fibrosis: Human & Primate Model
• Rheumatic Heart Disease: Pathology and Etiopathogenesis revisited
• Idiopathic Pulmonary Hemorrhage and non-classical Hermansky Pudlak Syndrome
• Tumours of the Mediastinum, Chest and Lungs
• Food & Environmental Toxins, Food & Milk Dysbiosis and Human Health

Department of Transfusion Medicine

• Demographic risk factors associated with undetected hypertension among blood donors of Kerala
• Patient response to platelet transfusion
• Red cell antibody screening as a part of research.