Evidence, Efficasy and Safety of the Chondroprotective Parapharmaceuticals in Treatment of the Early Stages of Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease that significantly affects the patients’ quality of life and requires significant medical and social investments for treatment and rehabilitation. There are no therapeutic agents which would be able to regenerate lost or damaged hyaline cartilage. The objective: to assess the efficacy and safety of the chondroprotective parapharmaceutical agent Flexogial in the complex treatment of patients with initial stages of the knee ОА. Materials and methods. 12-weeks study was conducted with the participation of 60 patients with knee OA aged 53,7±2,9 years, women – 36 (60%), men – 24 (40%) with the initial stages of the disease (I–II radiological stage). The main clinical group consisted of 30 patients who took the chondroprotective complex agent Flexogial 15 ml once a day; the comparison group included 30 patients who were administered glucosamine sulfate 1500 mg in a monopreparation taken once a day. Efficacy of the treatment was evaluated using the VAS scale, Tegner’s scale, Lisholm scale at the beginning of treatment, after 6 and 12 weeks in dynamics with subsequent statistical processing of the results. Results. The study demonstrated better indicators of functional activity and less pain intensity in the affected joints in patients of the main group who took the parapharmaceutical agent Flexogial compared to the group of patients who took glucosamine monopreparation with the same number of registered adverse events in both groups of patients (5%). Conclusions. The results of the presented clinical study proved the advantage of use of the combined chondroprotective drinking complex Flexogial in comparison with the monopharmaceutical preparation glucosamine sulfate in the treatment of patients with early stages knee OA in terms of the effect on the intensity of pain and improvement in the parameters of the functional activity of patients after 6 and 12 weeks with the same frequency of registered adverse events.

DETERMINATION OF THE OPTIMAL DOSE OF THE COMPLEX AGENT Z-88

The article is devoted to determining the optimal dose of the complex agent Z-88. The ex-periments were conducted on young mongrel white rats. It was found that intramuscular injections of the drug at a dose of 5.0 ml/kg of body weight inhibited the growth and development of experi-mental animals. The best growth and development indicators were established in the second exper-imental group when using the drug, the share of which was 1/20 of the maximum introduced in the experiment for determining the parameters of acute toxicity. In this group, the average daily weight gain at the end of the experiment was 2.23 g. with 1.67 g. in the control; a relative increase of 95.2 %, for the entire period, the body weight reached 121.0 g., which is 18.3% higher than the control.

Parthanatos-inducing zinc agent C010DS-Zn elicits anti-tumor immune responses involving T cells and macrophages in vivo

Immune checkpoint inhibitors opened a new horizon in cancer therapy by enabling durable and complete responses in patients, but their wider application against general solid cancers has been hampered by the lack of a broadly acting anti-cancer immune response initiating agents. Parthanatos is a previously unexplored immunogenic programmed necrosis mechanism that is triggered by the hyperactivation of PARP DNA repair and executed by an efficient DNA-fragmentation mechanism. We developed a proprietary macromolecular zinc complex agent C010DS-Zn that efficiently induced parthanatos against 4T1 murine cancer cells in vitro, which was characterized as PARP-mediated necrotic death with massive DNA damages. Ex vivo screening of its cytotoxicity against a panel of 53 low-passage human solid cancer PDX tumor fragments demonstrated its consistent delivery of characteristically DNA-damaging cell death that was unseen in the corresponding apoptosis positive controls. Further characterization of its in vivo treatment effects versus the immunosuppressive 4T1-Balb/c and immunogenic CT26-Balb/c syngeneic cancer models showed that sufficiently high intravenous C010DS-Zn treatments led to robust initiation of the tumor-suppressed antitumor immune compartments such as T cells and macrophages. At lower non-anticancer doses, C010DS-Zn treatment still led to significantly reduced macrophage content and inflammation in the 4T1 tumor, suggesting its potential utility against macrophage-mediated inflammations such as those seen in MAS or COVID19. Given the observation of its low serum bioavailability in a rat pharmacokinetic study, these results suggest potential development opportunities for C010DS-Zn to become a widely applicable immune initiation agent with chemo-like broad applicability upon its pharmacokinetic improvements.

The Good, the Bad and the Stochastic: How Living in Groups Innately Supports Cooperation

Based on theoretical considerations and computer simulations, I show that living in groups brings advantages for cooperative traits through purely stochastic effects that result from the division of a population into groups. These advantages can be sufficient to compensate individual selection pressures that may be associated with the cooperative traits. In more complex agent-based simulation models, this effect combined with some migration between the groups leads to stable dynamic equilibria between cooperative and defective replicators in the population.

Effect of glycine as a complex agent on the surface and corrosion properties of Ni-P and Ni-P/Al2O3 electroless coating

Purpose The ability to produce a uniform composition, high corrosion resistance with a hard coating layer during the electroless coating techniques are mainly based on the plating bath composition. The complexing agent is one of the most important components that control the coating layer properties. This paper aims to investigate the effect of the glycine as a complex agent on the surface and corrosion properties of Ni-P and Ni-P/Al2O3 electroless coating. Design/methodology/approach In this study, the effect of glycine as a complexing agent on the final surface and corrosion properties of the Ni-P and Ni-P/Al2O3 coatings has been investigated. The surface morphology and composition of the coated samples were investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM) imaging and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analysis. Linear polarization scan and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy techniques were used to investigate the corrosion properties of the coating layer. Findings The results clarify that, glycine has a remarkable effect on the porosity content of Ni-P and Ni-P/Al2O3. It was found that increasing of glycine concentration results in higher porosity content in the coating layers. Also, the porosity in the coating layers minimizes the protectability of the coating against corrosion. The results also show that adding nano-alumina (Al2O3) to the coating path has improved the corrosion properties by decreasing the porosity in the coating layer. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) images showed that the concentration of glycine affects the content and distribution of alumina nanoparticles embedded in the coating layer. Also, it was observed that using a high concentration of glycine (0.4 M glycine), the alumina tends to agglomerate and the final alumina content in the coating was decreased. Originality/value The present study reveals that the quality of the final coating plays a major role in the corrosion performance of the steel substrate. The coating quality can by improve remarkably by optimization of the complexing agent used in the plating bath, to minimize the porosity involve in the coating layer.

L-CARNITINE IN MEDICAL PRACTICE: NEW VIEWS ON THE USE IN THE CURRENT REALITY AND FOR THE FUTURE (LITERATURE REVIEW AND OWN DATA)

Keywords: L-carnitine, poly- and comorbidity, postcoid syndrome, application prospects. Purpose – to analyze scientific data on the use of drugs with L-carnitine in medical practice and the prospects for its use in patients with poly- and comorbidity. Material and methods. Conducted scientific search in printed and electronic publications, search scientific databases using methods of analysis, comparison and generalization. Preliminary results of the use of one of the L-carnitine agents in patients with postcoid syndrome are presented. Results. Information material testifies to a wide range of applications of drugs with L-carnitine in various fields of medicine, age groups from newborns to old age, with the most common lesions of almost all organs and systems. The thorough mechanisms of the positive effect of L-carnitine , including dysfunctions of cellular mitochondria, have been disclosed and give grounds for widespread use in patients with poly- and comorbidity or other systemic diseases.In this aspect, the use of multicomponent preparations based on L-carnitine with qualities complementary to its properties seems promising. The authors used a complex agent of L-carnitine, zinc and selenium in patients with postcovid syndrome and obtained significant positive results. Conclusion. Mono- and multi-component L-carnitine agents, reinforced by other active factors, are promising in the complex treatment of patients with poly- and comorbidity, symptoms of postcoid syndrome as adjuvants.

An Architecture to Implement the Internet-of-Things using the Prometheus Methodology

The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) will generate a diverse range of data types that needs to be handled, processed and stored. This paper aims to create a multi-agent system that suits the needs introduced by the IoT expansion, thus being able to oversee the Big Data collection and processing and also to maintain the semantic links between the data sources and data consumers. In order to build a complex agent oriented architecture, we have assessed the existing agent oriented methodologies searching for the best solution that is not bound to a specific programming language of framework, and it is flexible enough to be applied in such a divers domain like IoT. As complex scenario, the proposed approach has been applied to medical diagnosis and motoring of mental disorders.