scholarly journals Therapeutic potential of intranasal photobiomodulation therapy for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders: a narrative review

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farzad Salehpour ◽  
Sevda Gholipour-Khalili ◽  
Fereshteh Farajdokht ◽  
Farzin Kamari ◽  
Tomasz Walski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Flow ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Blood Rheology ◽  
Potential Method ◽  
Cerebrovascular Diseases ◽  
Photobiomodulation Therapy ◽  
Light Sources ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Wide Range

AbstractThe application of photobiomodulation therapy (PBMT) for neuronal stimulation is studied in different animal models and in humans, and has shown to improve cerebral metabolic activity and blood flow, and provide neuroprotection via anti-inflammatory and antioxidant pathways. Recently, intranasal PBMT (i-PBMT) has become an attractive and potential method for the treatment of brain conditions. Herein, we provide a summary of different intranasal light delivery approaches including a nostril-based portable method and implanted deep-nasal methods for the effective systemic or direct irradiation of the brain. Nostril-based i-PBMT devices are available, using either lasers or light emitting diodes (LEDs), and can be applied either alone or in combination to transcranial devices (the latter applied directly to the scalp) to treat a wide range of brain conditions such as mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cerebrovascular diseases, depression and anxiety as well as insomnia. Evidence shows that nostril-based i-PBMT improves blood rheology and cerebral blood flow, so that, without needing to puncture blood vessels, i-PBMT may have equivalent results to a peripheral intravenous laser irradiation procedure. Up to now, no studies were conducted to implant PBMT light sources deep within the nose in a clinical setting, but simulation studies suggest that deep-nasal PBMT via cribriform plate and sphenoid sinus might be an effective method to deliver light to the ventromedial part of the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex. Home-based i-PBMT, using inexpensive LED applicators, has potential as a novel approach for neurorehabilitation; comparative studies also testing sham, and transcranial PBMT are warranted.

scholarly journals Non-Newtonian Patient-specific Simulations of Left Atrial Hemodynamics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Gonzalo ◽  
Manuel Garcia-Villalba ◽  
Lorenzo Rossini ◽  
Eduardo Duran ◽  
David Vigneault ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Flow ◽  
Left Atrial ◽  
Flow Behavior ◽  
Blood Rheology ◽  
Patient Specific ◽  
Shear Rates ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Slow Blood Flow ◽  
Cell Aggregations

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia, affecting ~35M people worldwide. The irregular beating of the left atrial (LA) caused by AF impacts the LA hemodynamics increasing the risk of thrombosis and ischemic stroke. Most LA thrombi appear in its appendage (LAA), a narrow sac of varied morphology where blood is prone to stagnate. In the LAA, the combination of slow blood flow and low shear rates (<100 [1/s]) promotes the formation of red blood cell aggregations called rouleaux. Blood experiences a non-Newtonian behavior when rouleaux formed that has not been considered in previous CFD analysis of the LA. We model the anatomy and motion of the LA from 4D-CT images and solve the blood flow inside the LA geometry with our CFD in-house code, which models Non-Newtonian rheology with the shear-hematocrit-dependent Carreau-Yasuda equation. We cover a wide range of non-Newtonian effects considering a small and a large hematocrit, including an additional constitutive relation to account for themrouleaux formation time, and we compare our results with Newtonian simulations. Blood rheology influence in LAA hemostasis is studied in 6 patient-specific anatomies. Two subjects had an LAA thrombus (digitally removed before running the simulations), another had a history of TIAs, and the remaining three had normal atrial function. In our simulations, the shear rate remains below 50 [1/s] in the LAA for all non-Newtonian models considered. This triggers an increase of viscosity that alters the flow behavior in that site, which exhibits different flow patterns than Newtonian simulations. These hemodynamic changes translate into differences in the LAA hemostasis, calculated with the residence time.

scholarly journals Involvement of Astrocytes and microRNA Dysregulation in Neurodegenerative Diseases: From Pathogenesis to Therapeutic Potential

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Bai ◽  
Xing Su ◽  
Lianhua Piao ◽  
Zheng Jin ◽  
Rihua Jin
Keyword(s):  
Neurodegenerative Diseases ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Neuronal Loss ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Antigen Transfer ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
Microrna Dysregulation ◽  
Slow Onset

Astrocytes are the most widely distributed and abundant glial cells in the central nervous system (CNS). Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) are a class of diseases with a slow onset, progressive progression, and poor prognosis. Common clinical NDDs include Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Huntington’s disease (HD). Although these diseases have different etiologies, they are all associated with neuronal loss and pathological dysfunction. Accumulating evidence indicates that neurotransmitters, neurotrophic factors, and toxic metabolites that are produced and released by activated astrocytes affect and regulate the function of neurons at the receptor, ion channel, antigen transfer, and gene transcription levels in the pathogenesis of NDDs. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a group of small non-coding RNAs that play a wide range of biological roles by regulating the transcription and post-transcriptional translation of target mRNAs to induce target gene expression and silencing. Recent studies have shown that miRNAs participate in the pathogenesis of NDDs by regulating astrocyte function through different mechanisms and may be potential targets for the treatment of NDDs. Here, we review studies of the role of astrocytes in the pathogenesis of NDDs and discuss possible mechanisms of miRNAs in the regulation of astrocyte function, suggesting that miRNAs may be targeted as a novel approach for the treatment of NDDs.

Antineoplastic Activity, Structural Modification, Synthesis and Structure-activity Relationship of Dammarane-type Ginsenosides: An Overview

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 503-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
Xude Wang ◽  
Liyan Lv ◽  
Guangyue Su ◽  
Yuqing Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Structural Modification ◽  
Gastrointestinal Disease ◽  
Structure Activity Relationship ◽  
Cerebrovascular Diseases ◽  
Activity Relationship ◽  
Cycle Arrest ◽  
Structure Activity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Structural Association ◽  
Relationship Of

Dammarane-type ginsenosides are a class of tetracyclic triterpenoids with the same dammarane skeleton. These compounds have a wide range of pharmaceutical applications for neoplasms, diabetes mellitus and other metabolic syndromes, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, aging, neurodegenerative disease, bone disease, liver disease, kidney disease, gastrointestinal disease and other conditions. In order to develop new antineoplastic drugs, it is necessary to improve the bioactivity, solubility and bioavailability, and illuminate the mechanism of action of these compounds. A large number of ginsenosides and their derivatives have been separated from certain herbs or synthesized, and tested in various experiments, such as anti-proliferation, induction of apoptosis, cell cycle arrest and cancer-involved signaling pathways. In this review, we have summarized the progress in structural modification, shed light on the structure-activity relationship (SAR), and offered insights into biosynthesis-structural association. This review is expected to provide a preliminary guide for the modification and synthesis of ginsenosides.

Isoform-Selective PI3K Inhibitors for Various Diseases

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 1074-1092 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rammohan R.Y. Bheemanaboina
Keyword(s):  
Intracellular Signaling ◽  
Kinase Inhibitors ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Type I ◽  
Selective Inhibitors ◽  
Pi3k Inhibitors ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Lipid Kinases ◽  
Isoform Selectivity

Phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3Ks) are a family of ubiquitously distributed lipid kinases that control a wide variety of intracellular signaling pathways. Over the years, PI3K has emerged as an attractive target for the development of novel pharmaceuticals to treat cancer and various other diseases. In the last five years, four of the PI3K inhibitors viz. Idelalisib, Copanlisib, Duvelisib, and Alpelisib were approved by the FDA for the treatment of different types of cancer and several other PI3K inhibitors are currently under active clinical development. So far clinical candidates are non-selective kinase inhibitors with various off-target liabilities due to cross-reactivities. Hence, there is a need for the discovery of isoform-selective inhibitors with improved efficacy and fewer side-effects. The development of isoform-selective inhibitors is essential to reveal the unique functions of each isoform and its corresponding therapeutic potential. Although the clinical effect and relative benefit of pan and isoformselective inhibition will ultimately be determined, with the development of drug resistance and the demand for next-generation inhibitors, it will continue to be of great significance to understand the potential mechanism of isoform-selectivity. Because of the important role of type I PI3K family members in various pathophysiological processes, isoform-selective PI3K inhibitors may ultimately have considerable efficacy in a wide range of human diseases. This review summarizes the progress of isoformselective PI3K inhibitors in preclinical and early clinical studies for anticancer and other various diseases.

scholarly journals Mathematical Models for Some Aspects of Blood Microcirculation

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1020
Author(s):  
Angiolo Farina ◽  
Antonio Fasano ◽  
Fabio Rosso
Keyword(s):  
Blood Flow ◽  
Mathematical Models ◽  
Red Blood Cells ◽  
Blood Cells ◽  
Blood Rheology ◽  
Small Class ◽  
Small Vessels ◽  
Blood Microcirculation ◽  
Peculiar Behavior

Blood rheology is a challenging subject owing to the fact that blood is a mixture of a fluid (plasma) and of cells, among which red blood cells make about 50% of the total volume. It is precisely this circumstance that originates the peculiar behavior of blood flow in small vessels (i.e., roughly speaking, vessel with a diameter less than half a millimeter). In this class we find arteriolas, venules, and capillaries. The phenomena taking place in microcirculation are very important in supporting life. Everybody knows the importance of blood filtration in kidneys, but other phenomena, of not less importance, are known only to a small class of physicians. Overviewing such subjects reveals the fascinating complexity of microcirculation.

scholarly journals Responsive and Personalized Web Layouts with Integer Programming

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (EICS) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Markku Laine ◽  
Yu Zhang ◽  
Simo Santala ◽  
Jussi P. P. Jokinen ◽  
Antti Oulasvirta
Keyword(s):  
Integer Programming ◽  
Web Design ◽  
Web Pages ◽  
Web Page Design ◽  
Automated Generation ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Responsive Design ◽  
Responsive Web Design ◽  
Page Design

Over the past decade, responsive web design (RWD) has become the de facto standard for adapting web pages to a wide range of devices used for browsing. While RWD has improved the usability of web pages, it is not without drawbacks and limitations: designers and developers must manually design the web layouts for multiple screen sizes and implement associated adaptation rules, and its "one responsive design fits all" approach lacks support for personalization. This paper presents a novel approach for automated generation of responsive and personalized web layouts. Given an existing web page design and preferences related to design objectives, our integer programming -based optimizer generates a consistent set of web designs. Where relevant data is available, these can be further automatically personalized for the user and browsing device. The paper includes presentation of techniques for runtime adaptation of the designs generated into a fully responsive grid layout for web browsing. Results from our ratings-based online studies with end users (N = 86) and designers (N = 64) show that the proposed approach can automatically create high-quality responsive web layouts for a variety of real-world websites.

scholarly journals Bioactive potential of natural biomaterials: identification, retention and assessment of biological properties

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kieran Joyce ◽  
Georgina Targa Fabra ◽  
Yagmur Bozkurt ◽  
Abhay Pandit
Keyword(s):  
Tissue Engineering ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Biological Assessment ◽  
Cross Linking ◽  
Natural Polymers ◽  
Drug Delivery Device ◽  
Biomedical Device ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Bioactive Potential

AbstractBiomaterials have had an increasingly important role in recent decades, in biomedical device design and the development of tissue engineering solutions for cell delivery, drug delivery, device integration, tissue replacement, and more. There is an increasing trend in tissue engineering to use natural substrates, such as macromolecules native to plants and animals to improve the biocompatibility and biodegradability of delivered materials. At the same time, these materials have favourable mechanical properties and often considered to be biologically inert. More importantly, these macromolecules possess innate functions and properties due to their unique chemical composition and structure, which increase their bioactivity and therapeutic potential in a wide range of applications. While much focus has been on integrating these materials into these devices via a spectrum of cross-linking mechanisms, little attention is drawn to residual bioactivity that is often hampered during isolation, purification, and production processes. Herein, we discuss methods of initial material characterisation to determine innate bioactivity, means of material processing including cross-linking, decellularisation, and purification techniques and finally, a biological assessment of retained bioactivity of a final product. This review aims to address considerations for biomaterials design from natural polymers, through the optimisation and preservation of bioactive components that maximise the inherent bioactive potency of the substrate to promote tissue regeneration.

scholarly journals Density Guarantee on Finding Multiple Subgraphs and Subtensors

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Quang-huy Duong ◽  
Heri Ramampiaro ◽  
Kjetil Nørvåg ◽  
Thu-lan Dam
Keyword(s):  
Lower Bound ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Exact Methods ◽  
Practical Solution ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Real World Datasets ◽  
Tensor Data

Dense subregion (subgraph & subtensor) detection is a well-studied area, with a wide range of applications, and numerous efficient approaches and algorithms have been proposed. Approximation approaches are commonly used for detecting dense subregions due to the complexity of the exact methods. Existing algorithms are generally efficient for dense subtensor and subgraph detection, and can perform well in many applications. However, most of the existing works utilize the state-or-the-art greedy 2-approximation algorithm to capably provide solutions with a loose theoretical density guarantee. The main drawback of most of these algorithms is that they can estimate only one subtensor, or subgraph, at a time, with a low guarantee on its density. While some methods can, on the other hand, estimate multiple subtensors, they can give a guarantee on the density with respect to the input tensor for the first estimated subsensor only. We address these drawbacks by providing both theoretical and practical solution for estimating multiple dense subtensors in tensor data and giving a higher lower bound of the density. In particular, we guarantee and prove a higher bound of the lower-bound density of the estimated subgraph and subtensors. We also propose a novel approach to show that there are multiple dense subtensors with a guarantee on its density that is greater than the lower bound used in the state-of-the-art algorithms. We evaluate our approach with extensive experiments on several real-world datasets, which demonstrates its efficiency and feasibility.

scholarly journals Cardiac Rehabilitation Based on the Walking Test and Telerehabilitation Improved Cardiorespiratory Fitness in People Diagnosed with Coronary Heart Disease during the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 2241
Author(s):  
Ladislav Batalik ◽  
Vladimir Konecny ◽  
Filip Dosbaba ◽  
Daniela Vlazna ◽  
Kristian Brat
Keyword(s):  
Coronary Heart Disease ◽  
Heart Disease ◽  
Cardiac Rehabilitation ◽  
Cardiorespiratory Fitness ◽  
Test Time ◽  
Target Heart Rate ◽  
Walking Test ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Study Participants

This study investigated an alternative home-based cardiac telerehabilitation model in consideration of the recommendations for the COVID-19 quarantine of people diagnosed with coronary heart disease (CHD). We hypothesized that using a 200 m fast walking test (200 mFWT) and telerehabilitation would create an effective alternative cardiac rehabilitation (CR) intervention that could improve cardiorespiratory fitness. Participants (n = 19, mean age 60.4 ± 9.6) of the 8-week intervention performed regular physical exercise at the target heart rate zone determined by calculations based on the 200 mFWT results. In our study, the participants were supervised using telerehabilitation. A total of 84% of participants completed the 8-week intervention. No adverse events were reported during telerehabilitation. The study participants noted a significant improvement (p < 0.001) in cardiorespiratory fitness expressed by an 8% reduction in the walking test time (Δ 8.8 ± 5.9 s). Home-based telerehabilitation based on 200 mFWT effectively increased the cardiorespiratory fitness in people with CHD with a low to moderate cardiovascular risk. This was a novel approach in CR during the COVID-19 pandemic. As research in this area is justified, this paper may serve as an alternative method of providing healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic and as a basis for further upcoming randomized controlled trials.

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