The Public Perceptions on Wet Cupping Therapy (Hijama) in Saudi Arabia.

Background: : Wet cupping (Hijama), a form of alternative medicine, is widely practiced in Middle Eastern countries, especially Saudi Arabia. Although considerable effort has been put into increasing public awareness about the safe and proper practice of wet cupping, studies on the attitudes, knowledge, and awareness levels of the Saudi Arabian public are lacking.

Objectives: : This study evaluated public attitudes toward the effectiveness, safety, and expected standards of practicing wet cupping.

Investigating Variation in Compressional Behavior of a Ternary Mixture from a Plastic, Elastic and Brittle Fracture Perspective in the Context of Optimum Composition of a Pharmaceutical Blend.

The choice of optimum composition of a mixture of binary and ternary excipients for optimum compressional properties was investigated in this work. Excipients were chosen based on three types of excipients: plastic, elastic, and brittle fracture. Mixture compositions were selected based on a one-factor experimental design using the response surface methodology technique.

Antifungal compounds from the rhizome and roots of Ferula hermonis.

The antifungal activity of hexane, dichloromethane, methanol and aqueous extracts from the rhizome and root of Ferula hermonis was assayed in vitro by the agar disk diffusion method against a panel of human opportunistic and pathogenic fungi. Among them, the hexane and dichloromethane extracts showed the highest activity particularly against the dermatophytes Microsporum gypseum and Tricophyton mentagrophytes as well as the yeast Candida lactis-condensi. Activity-guided fractionation of both extracts using an agar overlay bioautographic method led to the isolation of two antifungal compounds which were identified as the daucane aryl esters jaeschkeanadiol p-hydroxybenzoate (ferutinin) and jaeschkeanadiol benzoate (teferidin).

Composition and antifungal activity of the essential oil from the rhizome and roots of Ferula hermonis.

The analysis of the essential oil from rhizome and roots of Ferula hermonis Boiss. (Apiaceae) by GC-FID, GC-MS and ¹³C NMR allowed the identification of 79 constituents, more than 90% of the oil, the major one being α-pinene (43.3%), followed by α-bisabolol (11.