Resveratrol treatment reduces expression of MCP-1, IL-6, IL-8 and RANTES in endometriotic stromal cells

Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease affecting reproductive-aged women. Immunologic disturbance, as well as inflammation, have crucial roles in the pathogenesis of endometriosis. In this study, we evaluated the effects of resveratrol treatment on expression of monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1), interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-8, and regulated upon activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted (RANTES) in endometrial stromal cells from patients with endometriosis compared with non-endometriotic controls. Thirteen eutopic (EuESCs) and nine ectopic (EESCs) endometrial stromal cells from endometriotic patients as well as eleven endometrial stromal cells from non-endometriotic controls (CESCs) were treated with resveratrol (100 μmol/L) or ethanol, and gene and/or protein expression of MCP-1, IL-6, IL-8 and RANTES was examined at 6, 24 and 48 hours following treatment in the cells from all origins. Resveratrol treatment significantly reduced gene and protein expression of MCP-1, IL-6, and IL-8 in EuESCs and EESCs compared with CESCs (P < .05-.001, P < .05-.001 and P < .05-<.01, respectively), and this reduction was more noticeable in EESCs than EuESCs (P < .05-<.001). Besides, resveratrol treatment significantly reduced RANTES protein expression in EESCs in all time intervals (P < .05). Resveratrol treatment significantly reduced the expression of MCP-1, IL-6, IL-8 and RANTES in EESCs.     

Designing Alginate/Chitosan Nanoparticles Containing Echinacea angustifolia: A Novel Candidate for Combating Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Nanoparticles (NPs) may help treat multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MDR). This study prepared and evaluated chitosan/alginate-encapsulated Echinacea angustifolia extract against MDR strains. Evaluating synthesized NPs with SEM, DLS, and FT-IR. Congo red agar and colorimetric plate techniques examined isolate biofilm formation. NP antibacterial power was assessed using well diffusion. Real-time PCR assessed biofilm-forming genes. MTT assessed the synthesized NPs′ toxicity. According to DLS measurements, spherical E. angustifolia NPs had a diameter of 335.3±1.43 nm. The PDI was 0.681, and the entrapment effectiveness (EE%) of the E. angustifolia extract reached 83.45 %. Synthesized NPs were most antimicrobial. S. aureus resistant to several treatments was 80 percent of 100 clinical samples. Biofilm production was linked to MDR in all strains. The ALG/CS-encapsulated extract had a 4 to 32-fold lower MIC than the free extract, which had no bactericidal action. They also significantly decreased the expression of genes involved in biofilm formation. E. angustifolia-encapsulated ALG/CS decreased IcaD, IcaA, and IcaC gene expression in all MDR strains (***p<0.001). Free extract, free NPs, and E. angustifolia-NPs had 57.5 %, 85.5 %, and 90.0 % cell viability at 256 μg/ml. These discoveries could assist generate stable plant extracts by releasing natural-derived substances under controlled conditions.     

Temperature adaptation analysis of a psychrophilic mannanase through structural,functional and molecular dynamics simulation

The present paper reports structure prediction and analysis of a psychrophilic β-mannanase from Glaciozyma antarctica PI12 yeast. A threading method was used for 3D structure prediction of the enzyme using the MODELLER 9v12 program regarding its low sequence identity (<30%). The constructed model has been used in a comparative study to analyse its cold adaptation mechanism using other mesophilic, thermophilic, and hyperthermophilic mannanases. The structural and molecular dynamics analysis suggests that flexibility of the enzyme is increased through different structural characteristics, and therefore, the possibility of efficient catalytic reactions is provided at cold environment. These characteristics are the presence of longer loops, broken or shorter strands and helices, a lower number of salt bridges and hydrogen bonds, a higher exposure of the hydrophobic side chains to the solvent and an increased total solvent accessible surface area. Furthermore, the high catalytic efficiency and structural flexibility of the psychrophilic mannanase was supported by the results of principal component analysis.     

Automatic Region-Based Brain Classification of MRI-T1 Data

Image segmentation of medical images is a challenging problem with several still not totally solved issues, such as noise interference and image artifacts. Region-based and histogram-based segmentation methods have been widely used in image segmentation. Problems arise when we use these methods, such as the selection of a suitable threshold value for the histogram-based method and the over-segmentation followed by the time-consuming merge processing in the region-based algorithm. To provide an efficient approach that not only produce better results, but also maintain low computational complexity, a new region dividing based technique is developed for image segmentation, which combines the advantages of both regions-based and histogram-based methods. The proposed method is applied to the challenging applications: Gray matter (GM), White matter (WM) and cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF) segmentation in brain MR Images. The method is evaluated on both simulated and real data, and compared with other segmentation techniques. The obtained results have demonstrated its improved performance and robustness.     

The economic benefits of malaria elimination: do they include increases in tourism?

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Policy makers have speculated that one of the economic benefits of malaria elimination includes increases in foreign direct investment, particularly tourism. METHODS: The study examines the empirical relationship between the demand for travel and malaria cases in two countries with large tourism industries around the time in which they carried out malaria-elimination campaigns. In Mauritius, this analysis examines historical yearly tourist arrivals and malaria cases from 1978-1999, accounting for the background secular trend of increasing international travel. In Dominican Republic, a country embarking upon malaria elimination, it employs a time-series analyses of the monthly, international, tourist arrivals from 1998-2010 to determine whether the timing of significant deviations in tourist arrivals coincides with malaria outbreaks. RESULTS: While naive relationships exist in both cases, the results show that the relationships between tourist arrival and malaria cases are relatively weak and statistically insignificant once secular confounders are accounted for. CONCLUSIONS: This suggests that any economic benefits from tourism that may be derived from actively pursuing elimination in countries that may have high tourism potential are likely to be small when measured at a national level. Rather, tourism benefits are likely to be experienced with greater impact in more concentrated tourist areas within countries, and future studies should seek to assess this relationship at a regional or local level.     

Current approaches in identification and isolation of cancer stem cells

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are tumor cells with initiating ability, self-renewal potential, and intrinsic resistance to conventional therapeutics. Efficient isolation and characterization of CSCs pave the way for more comprehensive knowledge about tumorigenesis, heterogeneity, and chemoresistance. Also a better understanding of CSCs will lead to novel era of both basic and clinical cancer research, reclassification of human tumors, and development of innovative therapeutic strategies. Finding novel diagnostic and effective therapeutic strategies also enhance the success of treatment in cancer patients. There are various methods based on the characteristics of the CSCs to detect and isolate these cells, some of which have recently developed. This review summarized current techniques for effective isolation and characterization of CSCs with a focus on advantages and limitations of each method with clinical applications.     

New mononuclear mercury(II) complexes of a bifunctionalized ylide containing five-membered chelate ring: Spectral and structural characterization

The reaction of a new bifunctionalized ylide, Ph₂PCH₂PPh₂C(H)C(O)(C₆H₄Cl) (2) with mercury(II) halides in equimolar ratios using dry methanol as solvent yielded the P, C-chelated complexes, {HgX₂[Ph₂PCH₂PPh₂C(H)C(O)(C₆H₄Cl)]} where X = Cl (3), Br (4), I (5). The structures of complexes 4 and 5 have been characterized crystallographically. Single crystal X-ray analyses reveal the presence of mononuclear complexes containing Hg atom in a distorted tetrahedral environment. Characterization of the obtained compounds was also performed by elemental analysis, IR, ¹H, ³¹P, and ¹³C NMR. A theoretical study at DFT (B3LYP) level using standard CEP-31G basis set showed that the experimentally determined structure of the complex 5 is about 0.6-15.75 kcal mol⁻¹ more stable than its other bonding modes.