Synthesis of fluorene and/or benzophenone O-oxime ethers containing amino acid residues and study of their cardiovascular and antibacterial effects

The syntheses and biological studies of O-oxime ethers having α-amino acid residues as new analogs of IPS-339 have been described. In this synthesis, the reaction of fluorene and/or benzophenone O-oxime with epichlorohydrin or epibromohydrin afforded the corresponding O-oxime ether adducts. The N-alkylation of amino acid with O-oxime ether adducts led to synthesis of new analogs of IPS-339. The products were examined for their cardiovascular property. It was demonstrated that 2-(3-(9H-fluoren-9-ylideneaminooxy)-2-hydroxypropylamino)-3-methyl-butanoic acid as the most potent compound substantially reduces the heart rate of dogs. Compounds were also evaluated for their in vitro antibacterial activity against some Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. The antibacterial screening proved the considerable antibacterial activity against both groups of bacteria. The docking analysis demonstrated the appropriate fitting of 2-(3-(9H-fluoren-9-ylideneaminooxy)-2-hydroxy-propylamino)-3-methyl-butanoic acid in human β₂-adrenergic receptor active site. Potential drug toxicity for some active compounds has also been predicted.     

Radioprotective Effect of Achillea millefolium L Against Genotoxicity Induced by Ionizing Radiation in Human Normal Lymphocytes

The radioprotective effect of Achillea millefolium L (ACM) extract was investigated against genotoxicity induced by ionizing radiation (IR) in human lymphocytes. Peripheral blood samples were collected from human volunteers and incubated with the methanolic extract of ACM at different concentrations (10, 50, 100, and 200 μg/mL) for 2 hours. At each dose point, the whole blood was exposed in vitro to 2.5 Gy of X-ray and then the lymphocytes were cultured with mitogenic stimulation to determine the micronuclei in cytokinesis-blocked binucleated cell. Antioxidant capacity of the extract was determined using free radical-scavenging method. The treatment of lymphocytes with the extract showed a significant decrease in the incidence of micronuclei binucleated cells, as compared with similarly irradiated lymphocytes without any extract treatment. The maximum protection and decrease in frequency of micronuclei were observed at 200 μg/mL of ACM extract which completely protected genotoxicity induced by IR in human lymphocytes. Achillea millefolium extract exhibited concentration-dependent radical-scavenging activity on 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl free radicals. These data suggest that the methanolic extract of ACM may play an important role in the protection of normal tissues against genetic damage induced by IR.     

Automated sleep staging of OSAs based on ICA preprocessing and consolidation of temporal correlations

An automated sleep staging based on analyzing long-range time correlations in EEG is proposed. These correlations, indicating time-scale invariant property or self-similarity at different time scales, are known to be salient dynamical characteristics of stage succession for a sleeping brain even when the subject suffers a destructive disorder such as Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). The goal is to extract a set of complementary features from cerebral sources mapped onto the scalp electrodes or from a number of denoised EEG channels. For this purpose, source localization/extraction and noise reduction approaches based on Independent Component Analysis were used prior to correlation analysis. Feature extracted segments were then classified in one of the five classes including WAKE, STAGE1, STAGE2, SWS and REM via an ensemble neuro-fuzzy classifier. Some techniques were employed to improve the classifier’s performance including Scaled Conjugate Gradient Method to speed up learning the ANFIS classifiers, a pruning algorithm to eliminate irrelevant fuzzy rules and the 10-fold cross-validation technique to train and test the system more efficiently. The performance of classification for two strategies including (1) feature extraction from effective cerebral sources and (2) feature extraction from selected channels of denoised EEG signals was compared and contrasted in terms of training errors and test accuracies. The first and second strategies achieved 92.23 and 88.74% agreement with human expert respectively which indicates the effectiveness of the staging system based on cerebral sources of activity. Our results further indicate that the misclassification rates were almost below 10%. The proposed automated sleep staging system is reliable due to the fact that it is based on the underlying dynamics of sleep staging which is less likely to be affected by sleep fragmentations occurred repeatedly in OSA.     

Stem cell therapy in treatment of different diseases

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells with the ability of proliferation, regeneration, conversion to differentiated cells and producing various tissues. Stem cells are divided into two categories of embryonic and adult. In another categorization stem cells are divided to Totipotent, Multipotent and Unipotent cells.So far usage of stem cells in treatment of various blood diseases has been studied (such as lymphoblastic leukemia, myeloid leukemia, thalassemia, multiple myeloma and cycle cell anemia). In this paper the goal is evaluation of cell therapy in treatment of Parkinson's disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer, Stroke, Spinal Cord Injury, Multiple Sclerosis, Radiation Induced Intestinal Injury, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Liver Disease, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Bone Disease, Renal Disease, Chronic Wounds, Graft-Versus-Host Disease, Sepsis and Respiratory diseases. It should be mentioned that some disease that are the target of cell therapy are discussed in this article.     

Cultural competence dimensions and outcomes: a systematic review of the literature

It has been widely suggested that cultural competence is an individual's core requirement for working effectively with culturally diverse people. However, there is no consensus regarding the definition or the components of this concept and there is a dearth of empirical proof indicating the benefits of cultural competence. Therefore, a systematic review was conducted to identify the most common cultural competence dimensions proposed in recent publications and to identify whether sufficient evidence exists regarding the efficacy of cultural competence in the healthcare context. A total of 1204 citations were identified through an electronic search of databases, of which 18 publications included cultural competence frameworks, and 13 studies contained empirical data on cultural competence outcomes. The overarching themes of the review were centred around the challenges faced by the healthcare sector in many countries due to growing cultural diversity, but lack of cultural competence, leading to predicaments that arise during intercultural interactions between patients and clinicians. This review will benefit researchers exploring cultural competence as one of the research variables impacting research outcomes.     

Labeling and evaluation of 99mTc‐tricarbonyl‐meloxicam as a preferential COX‐2 inhibitor for inflammation imaging

Imaging of inflammation has an important role in dissolving problems in diagnosis and therapy of patients with inflammatory disorders. In this study meloxican as a nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drug (NSAID) has been labeled with thechnetium‐99m‐tricarbonyl core ([^99mTc (CO)₃ (H₂O)₃]⁺) in order to evaluate its feasibility as an inflammation imaging agent for in vivo use. ^99mTc‐tricabonyl labeling of meloxicam was performed by its incubation with prepared precursor ^99mTc‐tricabonyl and heating in a boiling water bath for 30 min while various range of pH (1–9) was adjusted. The stability of ^99mTc‐tricarbonyl‐Meloxicam was checked in human serum at 37 °C, and biodistribution was studied in mice. Labeling yield of 98.1 ± 0.4% was obtained corresponding to a specific activity of 0.14 GBq/µmol. The radioconjugate showed good stability in human serum. Our main achievement was high accumulation of ^99mTc‐tricarbonyl‐Meloxicam in the inflammated muscle in mice (T/NT = 3.90 at 4 h post injection) which may diagnostically be beneficial for distinguish sites of inflammation.     

Enhanced delivery of gentamicin to infection foci due to Staphylococcus aureus using gold nanorods

Bacterial infections continue to be one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality. Although many methods for diagnosing and treating of infectious diseases currently exist, there is an urgent need for new and improved approaches for bacterial destruction. The present study focuses on the conjugation of gold nanorods (GNRs) with gentamicin via the Nanothink acid linker and its application in delivery of gentamicin to infection foci due to Staphylococcus aureus. The interaction between gentamicin and gold nanorods was confirmed by FT-IR spectroscopy. The high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and atomic absorption spectroscopy analyses showed that 2050 gentamicin molecules were attached to each gold nanorod. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) values of gentamicin–GNRs conjugate showed the enhancement of antibacterial effect of gentamicin. The biodistribution study demonstrated localization of the complex at the site of Staphylococcal infection with high sensitivity in mouse model.     

Temporal PCB and mercury trends in Lake Erie fish communities: a dynamic linear modeling analysis

We performed dynamic linear modeling analysis on fish contaminant data collected from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Environment Canada to examine long-term trends of total mercury (THg) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in Lake Erie. Several sport fish species (walleye, smallmouth bass, rainbow trout) with differences in their diet habits, food competition strategies and foraging patterns are characterized by weakly increasing trends of their THg levels in Lake Erie after the mid- or late 1990s. Similarly, our analysis shows that the decline rates of the PCB body burdens in white bass, smallmouth bass, freshwater drum and whitefish have slowed down or have switched to weakly increasing rates over the last decade. Our analysis also provides evidence that the rainbow trout and coho salmon PCB concentrations have been decreasing steadily but the associated rates were fairly weak. The systematic shifts in energy trophodynamics along with the food web alterations induced from the introduction of non-native species, the new role of the sediments as a net contaminant source, and the potentially significant fluxes from the atmosphere stand out as some of the hypotheses proposed to explain the limited Lake Erie response in recent years to the various contamination mitigation strategies.     

Ethnobotanical survey of herbal remedies traditionally used in Kohghiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad province of Iran

Ethnopharmacological relevance

Medicinal plants are an important element of medical system. These resources are usually regarded as part of cultural traditional knowledge. We present for the first time the results of an ethnobotanical survey in Kohghiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad province of Iran, conducted between 2008 and 2010. This information could be the basis of an evidence based investigation to discover new drugs.

Materials and methods

Ethnobotanical data were analyzed by use-reports in addition important indices like relative frequency of citation (RFC) and cultural importance index (CI) were calculated. Totally 23 informants were interviewed.

Results

Our study reports 138 traditionally used plant species, belonging to 52 plant families from this province. Asteraceae and Lamiaceae are the dominant locally used families. The highest number of species and application were reported for digestive system disorder, metabolic disorder and respiratory system, respectively. The part of the plant most frequently used was the aerial part (31.9%), leaves (14.8%) and fruits (11.7%). The plants are used both for medicinal and non-medicinal purposes. Daphne mucronata Royle. and Teucrium polium L. have the largest value of relative frequency of citation and cultural importance index, respectively.

Conclusion

Kohghiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad has good ethnobotanical potential for medicinal plants. This study is the first contribution to the ethnobotany of this region. We have gathered from this province some considerable knowledge about local medicinal plants for treating common health problem that is ready to be further investigated in the laboratory.     

A systematic review and meta-analysis on the antibiotic resistance of Neisseria meningitidis in the last 20 years in the world

BackgroundNeisseria meningitidis is one of the most important causes of meningitis and pathogens-associated deaths in developing and developed countries. Effective anti-microbial agents are pivotal to treat and control N. meningitidis infections. The aim of the present study was to systematically review published studies on the antibiotic resistance of N. meningitidis in the last 20 years (2000–2020) in the world.MethodsPublished researches were identified through a literature search using reputable databases including PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Finally, 24 studies were included for a random-effects model meta-analysis.ResultsThe overall resistance to most commonly used antibiotics such as ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin and rifampin was low, ranging from 1 to 3.4%. However, non-sensitivity to penicillin, as the first-line antibiotic against N. meningitidis, was higher (27.2%). Altogether, the resistance to the first-line antibiotics (except penicillin) is still low indicating these drugs are effective against meningococcal meningitis. We also found a significant gap between MIC and disk diffusion for evaluating resistance to antibiotics in which disk diffusion overestimate the resistance rate.ConclusionsTo properly management and prevent the spread of N. miningitidis isolates resistant antibiotics, it is necessary to monitor the pattern of antibiotic susceptibility regionally and globally using the MIC methods.