Drug Encapsulated Nanomaterials as Carriers Used in Cardiology Field

Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a disorder of high mortality being described by a progressive increase in pulmonary vascular strength leading to right ventricular damage and death. Endotelin-1 (ET-1) has an important pathogenic fuction in pulmonary hypertension. Bosentan is an oral ET-1 receptor antagonist that proved to be efficient at exercise tolerance in patients with pulmonary hypertension in functional class III and IV. The early trial registered for functional class II patients and evaluated hemodynamic at 6 month. Considerable side effects of bosentan comprise anemia, edema, and transaminase raise. Further studies were developed to determine optimum treatment strategy by eliminating adverse effects of bosentan. The major aim of this work was to prepare bosentan loaded nanoparticles by solvent evaporation technique for a sustained release of the drug by using ethyl cellulose as polymer. Drug and polymer were dissolved in ethanol at different drug-polymer ratios i.e. 1:2 and 1:3. Among the two formulations, 1:3 formulations were appreciated as the best formulation with better drug content (97.5%) and incorporation efficiency (95.5%).

Surgical Resection of Metachronous Lymph Node Metastasis From Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Three Case Reports and Review of the Literature

The prognosis for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with lymph node (LN) metastasis is generally poor, and no consensus has yet been reached on the optimum treatment strategy. We observed 3 cases involving patients with HCC and associated metachronous LN metastasis, who benefited from surgical resection of the metastatic LNs. Each of the 3 patients had solitary LN metastasis for which selective LN resection was performed, and all had C-type cirrhosis as a background disease. There were no other uncontrolled lesions at the time of LN resection. However, additional treatments were required in cases 1 and 3 to control intrahepatic lesions that recurred following the lymphadenectomy. The overall survival in cases 1 and 3 has been >5 years, with case 1 still under observation. Case 2 also remains under follow-up at 6 months after surgery. Surgical resection could be a beneficial strategy for treatment of metachronous LN metastasis arising from HCC in some cases, particularly those involving a solitary LN metastasis with no other uncontrolled lesions.