scholarly journals Assessment of the Biocompatibility of Cucurbiturils in Blood Cells

Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1356
Author(s):  
Alina Aktanova ◽  
Tatjana Abramova ◽  
Ekaterina Pashkina ◽  
Olga Boeva ◽  
Lyubov Grishina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Cells ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Biologically Relevant ◽  
Polymer Nanostructures ◽  
The World ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
High Concentrations ◽  
The Stability

Currently, cucurbiturils are being actively researched all over the world. Research is focused on the ways of improving the solubility and selectivity of cucurbiturils, increasing the stability of the complexes with other particles in various media and enhancing their ability to bind and release various substances. The most significant area of our research is the assessment of safety, studying the biological properties and synergistic effects of cucurbiturils during complexation with drugs. In this article, the hemocompatibility of erythrocytes and leukocytes with cucurbiturils was investigated. We demonstrated that cucurbiturils have no cytotoxic effect, even at high concentrations (1 mM) and do not affect the viability of PBMCs. However, cucurbiturils can increase the level of the early apoptosis of lymphocytes and cucurbit[7]uril enhances hemolysis in biologically relevant media. Despite this, cucurbiturils are fairly safe organic molecules in concentrations up to 0.3 mM. Thus, we believe that it will become possible to use polymer nanostructures as drug delivery systems in clinical practice, since cucurbiturils can be modified to improve pharmacological properties.

scholarly journals Lipid peroxidation and haemoglobin degradation in red blood cells exposed to t-butyl hydroperoxide. Effects of the hexose monophosphate shunt as mediated by glutathione and ascorbate

1982 ◽  
Vol 204 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
R J Trotta ◽  
S G Sullivan ◽  
A Stern
Keyword(s):  
Lipid Peroxidation ◽  
Blood Cells ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
Red Cells ◽  
Hexose Monophosphate ◽  
Butyl Hydroperoxide ◽  
Hexose Monophosphate Shunt ◽  
Low Concentrations ◽  
Exact Position ◽  
High Concentrations

Lipid peroxidation and haemoglobin degradation were the two extremes of a spectrum of oxidative damage in red cells exposed to t-butyl hydroperoxide. The exact position in this spectrum depended on the availability of glucose and the ligand state of haemoglobin. In red cells containing oxy- or carbonmono-oxy-haemoglobin, hexose monophosphate-shunt activity was mainly responsible for metabolism of t-butyl hydroperoxide; haem groups were the main scavengers in red cells containing methaemoglobin. Glutathione, via glutathione peroxidase, accounted for nearly all of the hydroperoxide metabolizing activity of the hexose monophosphate shunt. Glucose protection against lipid peroxidation was almost entirely mediated by glutathione, whereas glucose protection of haemoglobin was only partly mediated by glutathione. Physiological concentrations of intracellular or extracellular ascorbate had no effect on consumption of t-butyl hydroperoxide or oxidation of haemoglobin. Ascorbate was mainly involved in scavenging chain-propagating species involved in lipid peroxidation. The protective effect of intracellular ascorbate against lipid peroxidation was about 100% glucose-dependent and about 50% glutathione-dependent. Extracellular ascorbate functioned largely without a requirement for glucose metabolism, although some synergistic effects between extracellular ascorbate and glutathione were observed. Lipid peroxidation was not dependent on the rate or completion of t-butyl hydroperoxide consumption but rather on the route of consumption. Lipid peroxidation appears to depend on the balance between the presence of initiators of lipid peroxidation (oxyhaemoglobin and low concentrations of methaemoglobin) and terminators of lipid peroxidation (glutathione, ascorbate, high concentrations of methaemoglobin).

scholarly journals Detection and Characterization of Placental MicroRNAs in Maternal Plasma

2008 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 482-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen S C Chim ◽  
Tristan K F Shing ◽  
Emily C W Hung ◽  
Tak-yeung Leung ◽  
Tze-kin Lau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nucleic Acids ◽  
Blood Cells ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Maternal Blood ◽  
Maternal Plasma ◽  
Placental Lactogen ◽  
Detection Rates ◽  
New Class ◽  
High Concentrations ◽  
The Stability

Abstract Background: The discovery of circulating fetal nucleic acids in maternal plasma has opened up new possibilities for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small RNAs, have been intensely investigated recently because of their important regulatory role in gene expression. Because nucleic acids of placental origin are released into maternal plasma, we hypothesized that miRNAs produced by the placenta would also be released into maternal plasma. Methods: We systematically searched for placental miRNAs in maternal plasma to identify miRNAs that were at high concentrations in placentas compared with maternal blood cells and then investigated the stability and filterability of this novel class of pregnancy-associated markers in maternal plasma. Results: In a panel of TaqMan MicroRNA Assays available for 157 well-established miRNAs, 17 occurred at concentrations >10-fold higher in the placentas than in maternal blood cells and were undetectable in postdelivery maternal plasma. The 4 most abundant of these placental miRNAs (miR-141, miR-149, miR-299-5p, and miR-135b) were detectable in maternal plasma during pregnancy and showed reduced detection rates in postdelivery plasma. The plasma concentration of miR-141 increased as pregnancy progressed into the third trimester. Compared with mRNA encoded by CSH1 [chorionic somatomammotropin hormone 1 (placental lactogen)], miR-141 was even more stable in maternal plasma, and its concentration did not decrease after filtration. Conclusion: We have demonstrated the existence of placental miRNAs in maternal plasma and provide some information on their stability and physical nature. These findings open up a new class of molecular markers for pregnancy monitoring.

Unveiling the Theoretical Mistakes in the World Bank Formation and its Implication on Survival of Africa Monetary Union

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-124
Author(s):  
Olatunji Abdul Shobande ◽  
Kingsley Chinonso Mark
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Monetary Union ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
World Bank Group ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Bank Group ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Developed Nations

Abstract The quest for urgent solution to resolve the world liquidity problem has continued to generate enthusiastic debates among political economists, policy makers and the academia. The argument has focused on whether the World Bank Group was established to enhance the stability of international financial system or meant to enrich the developed nations. This study argues that the existing political interest of the World Bank Group in Africa may serve as lesson learned to other ambitious African Monetary Union.

The Undiscovered Potential of Essential Oils for Treating SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (41) ◽  
pp. 5261-5277
Author(s):  
Peter J. Wilkin ◽  
Minnatallah Al-Yozbaki ◽  
Alex George ◽  
Girish K. Gupta ◽  
Cornelia M. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Essential Oils ◽  
Clinical Symptoms ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
World Health Organisation ◽  
Diagnostic Techniques ◽  
World Health ◽  
Clinical Aspects ◽  
Traditional Use ◽  
In Silico Studies ◽  
The World

On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced a pandemic caused by a novel beta-coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, designated COVID-19. The virus emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, has spread across the world as a global pandemic. The traditional use of medicines from plants can be traced back to 60,000 years. Global interest in the development of drugs from natural products has increased greatly during the last few decades. Essential oils (EOs) have been studied through the centuries and are known to possess various pharmaceutical properties. In the present review, we have highlighted the current biology, epidemiology, various clinical aspects, different diagnostic techniques, clinical symptoms, and management of COVID-19. An overview of the antiviral action of EOs, along with their proposed mechanism of action and in silico studies conducted, is described. The reported studies of EOs' antiviral activity highlight the baseline data about the additive and/or synergistic effects among primary or secondary phytoconstituents found in individual oils, combinations or blends of oils and between EOs and antiviral drugs. It is hoped that further research will provide better insights into EOs' potential to limit viral infection and aid in providing solutions through natural, therapeutically active agents.

scholarly journals Deep Malaria Parasite Detection in Thin Blood Smear Microscopic Images

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2284
Author(s):  
Asma Maqsood ◽  
Muhammad Shahid Farid ◽  
Muhammad Hassan Khan ◽  
Marcin Grzegorzek
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Deep Learning ◽  
Red Blood Cells ◽  
Convolutional Neural Networks ◽  
Blood Cells ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Learning Models ◽  
Infected Female ◽  
The World ◽  
Augmentation Techniques

Malaria is a disease activated by a type of microscopic parasite transmitted from infected female mosquito bites to humans. Malaria is a fatal disease that is endemic in many regions of the world. Quick diagnosis of this disease will be very valuable for patients, as traditional methods require tedious work for its detection. Recently, some automated methods have been proposed that exploit hand-crafted feature extraction techniques however, their accuracies are not reliable. Deep learning approaches modernize the world with their superior performance. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are vastly scalable for image classification tasks that extract features through hidden layers of the model without any handcrafting. The detection of malaria-infected red blood cells from segmented microscopic blood images using convolutional neural networks can assist in quick diagnosis, and this will be useful for regions with fewer healthcare experts. The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, we evaluate the performance of different existing deep learning models for efficient malaria detection. Second, we propose a customized CNN model that outperforms all observed deep learning models. It exploits the bilateral filtering and image augmentation techniques for highlighting features of red blood cells before training the model. Due to image augmentation techniques, the customized CNN model is generalized and avoids over-fitting. All experimental evaluations are performed on the benchmark NIH Malaria Dataset, and the results reveal that the proposed algorithm is 96.82% accurate in detecting malaria from the microscopic blood smears.

scholarly journals Anthocyanins Recovered from Agri-Food By-Products Using Innovative Processes: Trends, Challenges, and Perspectives for Their Application in Food Systems

Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 2632
Author(s):  
Henrique Silvano Arruda ◽  
Eric Keven Silva ◽  
Nayara Macêdo Peixoto Araujo ◽  
Gustavo Araujo Pereira ◽  
Glaucia Maria Pastore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Extraction Techniques ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Current Review ◽  
Natural Colorants ◽  
Conventional Extraction ◽  
The Stability ◽  
By Products

Anthocyanins are naturally occurring phytochemicals that have attracted growing interest from consumers and the food industry due to their multiple biological properties and technological applications. Nevertheless, conventional extraction techniques based on thermal technologies can compromise both the recovery and stability of anthocyanins, reducing their global yield and/or limiting their application in food systems. The current review provides an overview of the main innovative processes (e.g., pulsed electric field, microwave, and ultrasound) used to recover anthocyanins from agri-food waste/by-products and the mechanisms involved in anthocyanin extraction and their impacts on the stability of these compounds. Moreover, trends and perspectives of anthocyanins’ applications in food systems, such as antioxidants, natural colorants, preservatives, and active and smart packaging components, are addressed. Challenges behind anthocyanin implementation in food systems are displayed and potential solutions to overcome these drawbacks are proposed.

scholarly journals Bioactive Compounds in Salicornia patula Duval-Jouve: A Mediterranean Edible Euhalophyte

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 410
Author(s):  
Irene Sánchez-Gavilán ◽  
Esteban Ramírez ◽  
Vicenta de la Fuente
Keyword(s):  
Fatty Acids ◽  
Bioactive Compounds ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Total Phenolic ◽  
Tinto River ◽  
New Findings ◽  
High Concentrations ◽  
Salicornia Patula ◽  
First Time

Many halophytes have great nutritional and functional potential, providing chemical compounds with biological properties. Salicornia patula Duval-Jouve is a common euhalophyte from saline Mediterranean territories (Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy). In the present work we quantified for the first time the bioactive compounds in S. patula (total phenolic compounds and fatty acids), from Iberian Peninsula localities: littoral-coastal Tinto River basin areas (southwest Spain, the Huelva province), and mainland continental territories (northwest and central Spain, the Valladolid and Madrid provinces). Five phenolic acids including caffeic, coumaric, veratric, salicylic, and transcinnamic have been found with differences between mainland and coastal saltmarshes. S. patula contain four flavonoids: quercetin-3-O-rutinoside, kaempferol/luteolin, apigenin 7-glucoside, and pelargonidin-3-O-rutinoside. These last two glycosylated compounds are described for the first time in this genus of Chenopodiaceae. The fatty acid profile described in S. patula stems contains palmitic, oleic, and linoleic acids in high concentrations, while stearic and long-chain fatty acids were detected in low amounts. These new findings confirm that S. patula is a valuable source of bioactive compounds from Mediterranean area.

scholarly journals Biological Properties and Prospects for the Application of Eugenol—A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 3671
Author(s):  
Magdalena Ulanowska ◽  
Beata Olas
Keyword(s):  
Body Weight ◽  
Aromatic Compound ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Antioxidant Properties ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Clove Oil ◽  
Current State ◽  
Potential Component ◽  
Anti Inflammatory ◽  
High Concentrations

Eugenol is a phenolic aromatic compound obtained mainly from clove oil. Due to its known antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, it has long been used in various areas, such as cosmetology, medicine, and pharmacology. However, high concentrations can be toxic. A dose of 2.5 mg/kg body weight is regarded as safe. This paper reviews the current state of knowledge regarding the activities and application of eugenol and its derivatives and recent research of these compounds. This review is based on information concerning eugenol characteristics and recent research from articles in PubMed. Eugenol remains of great interest to researchers, since its multidirectional action allows it to be a potential component of drugs and other products with therapeutic potential against a range of diseases.

Four Conceptions of Authority in International Relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Jorg Kustermans ◽  
Rikkert Horemans
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
International Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
Authority Relations ◽  
The Stability

Abstract There is increasing agreement that states and other political actors on the world stage sometimes achieve international authority. However, there is less agreement about the nature and functioning of international authority relations. What determines whether an actor will be recognized as an authoritative actor? And what are the effects thereof? In this essay, we identify four distinct conceptions of authority in the study of international relations: authority as contract, authority as domination, authority as impression, and authority as consecration. Consideration of the typology leads to two important insights. First, the phenomenon of authority has an essentially experiential dimension. Subordinate actors’ emotional experience of authority determines their response to authority and thus also has a fundamental impact on the stability of authority. Second, the emergence of forms of international authority does not entail, at least not necessarily, the weakening of the sovereignty of states, but can equally be argued to strengthen it.

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