Diluted benznidazole decreases side effects in animals infected by Trypanosoma cruzi and treated with benznidazole in ponderal dose

Background: The infection caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi affects millions of people around the world and the benznidazole is the only drug available for the etiological treatment, despite the fact that its adverse effect makes the adherence to treatment more difficult. Taking advantage of the antiparasitic effect of benznidazole and minimizing its side effects, without causing discomfort symptoms to the patient, would be an important progress in the health care of individuals infected with T. cruzi. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of different treatment regimens using diluted and ponderal benznidazole, associated or not, in murine infection with T. cruzi. Methodology: A hundred male Swiss mice 28 – year – old infected with 1400 blood trypomastigotes of the Y strain of T. cruzi, were used in the experiment, divided into groups according to the treatment: Control (CI) - infected animals treated orally with 7% hydroalcoholic solution (vehicle of product preparation highly diluted) (N = 20); BZp - infected animals treated with BZ in ponderal dose (100 mg/kg/20days) from the detection of the infection (N = 20); BZh - infected animals treated with BZ highly diluted (30x) from the detection of the infection (N = 20), BZp+h - infected animals treated with a combination of BZ highly diluted (30x) + BZ in ponderal dose (100 mg / kg), from the detection of the infection (n= 20); BZp+hT4A - infected animals treated with the association of BZ in ponderal dose (100 mg / kg ) from the detection of the infection and BZ highly diluted (30x) four days after starting the treatment with BZp (N = 20). Clinical (body weight, water and food intake, amount of feces, temperature, aspect of the fur, mortality and survival time) and parasitological (total parasitemia and area under the parasitemia curve) parameters were evaluated. Results: It was observed a reduction of side effects associated with clinical improvement of the animals treated with the combination of BZ in ponderal dose and highly diluted given 4 days after (BZp+hT4A) or concurrently (BZp+h) with the beginning of the treatment with benznidazole in ponderal dose, with results statistically better than those observed in groups BZp, BZh e CI (p0.05). In the group treated only with the BZ ultradiluted (BZh) the parasitemia remained high, resulting in the death of all animals within a period of 20 days as observed in the CI. Conclusions: The reduction of side effects, the improvement of the clinical evolution and non-compromising the parasiticide effect, show that the association of the benznidazole medication in ponderal dose and highly diluted should be further explored. Keywords: Homeopathy, Trypanosoma cruzi, Side effects, Benznidazole References MINISTÉRIO DA SAÁDE. Secretaria de Vigilância em Saúde. Brazilian Consensus on Chagas Disease. Rev. Soc. Bras. Med. Trop. 2005; 38:7-29. WHO. World Health Organization. Sixty-third World Healthy. Assembly. Chagas disease: control and elimination. 2010.

Gut Microbiota–Medication Interaction in Rheumatic Diseases

Besides its contribution to the development of rheumatic diseases, the gut microbiota interact with anti-rheumatic drugs. The intestinal microbiota can directly metabolize many drugs and indirectly change drug metabolism through a complex multi-dimensional interaction with the host, thus affecting individual response to drug therapy and adverse effects. The focus of the current review is to address recent advances and important progress in our understanding of how the gut microbiota interact with anti-rheumatic drugs and provide perspectives on promoting precision treatment, drug discovery, and better therapy for rheumatic diseases.

Evolutionary Approaches to Innovation, the Firm, and the Dynamics of Industries

We examine the progress of the evolutionary research on innovation, the firm, and the dynamics of industries in the last four decades. The paper acknowledges that the themes related to knowledge and technological regimes, the evolutionary processes leading to innovation, and the long-term dynamics of technologies have generated, and still remain, relevant research trajectories. The same can be said for the research trajectories on organizational and dynamic capabilities, evolutionary strategies, vertical integration, diversification, niche construction, and authority and power in organizations. Important progress has also been made in understanding the evolutionary trajectories of industries, the link between industry architecture and industry dynamics, the types of knowledge of entrants, the role of focal and vertical spinouts, the relevance of institutions and sectoral innovation systems in industry dynamics, and the catch-up process by firms from latecomer countries. We argue that future developments in the evolutionary camp should continue to be characterized by eclecticism and multidisciplinarity, as well as by the integration of different methodologies from cases to stylized facts, quantitative analyses, appreciative theorizing, and formal modelling. We conclude with an analysis of the main methodologies used by evolutionary scholars and a discussion of the road ahead.

RESTRAINING ORDER IN THE ROMANIAN LEGISLATION AND PRACTICE

The protection of the family (especially women and children) consists of important provision in both the international and internal laws of the states. Unfortunately, in Romania, the incidence of domestic violence is high, an aspect that we will highlight in our paper. In this article we aim to analyse the latest legislative changes in the field of protection order, with reference to the provisional protection order. Regarding the temporary restraining order, it is regulated by Order no. 146/2578/2018 (Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of Labor and Social Justice, 2018) on how to manage cases of domestic violence by police officers. Through this normative act, the necessary framework was created so that the police can intervene quickly when phenomena of domestic violence are registered and to ensure the immediate protection of the victims of aggressors. The police officers assess the risk situation in each case, and it may be ordered to issue a temporary restraining order until the competent court rules on the situation created for a longer period of up to 6 months, with the possibility of extending it. We will also present some relevant cases. Over the last 10 years, the protection of the family (especially women and children) has made some important progress both in terms of legislation and practice. Unfortunately, the level of domestic violence is still significant and, in addition to the legislative measures we will refer to in the article, more measures are needed to educate the population and raise awareness of the severity of this phenomenon that affects the integrity and physical and mental development of victims.

Drug Design: Where We Are and Future Prospects

Medicinal chemistry is facing new challenges in approaching precision medicine. Several powerful new tools or improvements of already used tools are now available to medicinal chemists to help in the process of drug discovery, from a hit molecule to a clinically used drug. Among the new tools, the possibility of considering folding intermediates or the catalytic process of a protein as a target for discovering new hits has emerged. In addition, machine learning is a new valuable approach helping medicinal chemists to discover new hits. Other abilities, ranging from the better understanding of the time evolution of biochemical processes to the comprehension of the biological meaning of the data originated from genetic analyses, are on their way to progress further in the drug discovery field toward improved patient care. In this sense, the new approaches to the delivery of drugs targeted to the central nervous system, together with the advancements in understanding the metabolic pathways for a growing number of drugs and relating them to the genetic characteristics of patients, constitute important progress in the field.

Integration of Core Mechanisms Underlying Plant Aerial Architecture

Over the last decade or so important progress has been made in identifying and understanding a set of patterning mechanisms that have the potential to explain many aspects of plant morphology. These include the feedback loop between mechanical stresses and interphase microtubules, the regulation of plant cell polarity and the role of adaxial and abaxial cell type boundaries. What is perhaps most intriguing is how these mechanisms integrate in a combinatorial manner that provides a means to generate a large variety of commonly seen plant morphologies. Here, I review our current understanding of these mechanisms and discuss the links between them.

Exceptional points of all-dielectric nanoresonators

In the recent years, all-dielectric nanophotonics has been showing promising potential for biotechnology, with important progress in the development of efficient all-optical, all-dielectric nanosensing devices overcoming the ohmic losses inherently present in their plasmonic counterparts. In the quest to achieve single molecule sensitivities, a judicious design of the optical response of the nanoantennas is required. Here, we approach this problem from the perspective of non-Hermitian physics and investigate the interaction of two finite nanorods supporting Mie resonances, with the aim of maximizing the frequency detuning induced by a perturbation of the structure. We develop a simple semi-analytical technique to efficiently investigate the coupled system, and we find that Coulomb interactions, together with mutual interference induced by breaking the dimer symmetry, can effectively bring the structure towards a non-Hermitian singularity, an exceptional point, that can potentially increase the sensitivity. The results of this work are expected to lead to novel developments in all-optical single molecule detection, and merge for the first time all-dielectric nanophotonics with exceptional point physics.

Circuits and Synapses: Hypothesis, Observation, Controversy and Serendipity – An Opinion Piece

More than a century of dedicated research has resulted in what we now know, and what we think we know, about synapses and neural circuits. This piece asks to what extent some of the major advances – both theoretical and practical – have resulted from carefully considered theory, or experimental design: endeavors that aim to address a question, or to refute an existing hypothesis. It also, however, addresses the important part that serendipity and chance have played. There are cases where hypothesis driven research has resulted in important progress. There are also examples where a hypothesis, a model, or even an experimental approach – particularly one that seems to provide welcome simplification – has become so popular that it becomes dogma and stifles advance in other directions. The nervous system rejoices in complexity, which should neither be ignored, nor run from. The emergence of testable “rules” that can simplify our understanding of neuronal circuits has required the collection of large amounts of data that were difficult to obtain. And although those collecting these data have been criticized for not advancing hypotheses while they were “collecting butterflies,” the beauty of the butterflies always enticed us toward further exploration.

The Nutritional Value and Application of Black Rice-A Review

Black rice is the main member of the special rice family, and it is also a rare grain and oil crop resource in China. Black rice has special medicinal components and high nutritional value. In recent years, the research on the nutritional value and application of black rice has become an important direction, and a series of important progress has been made. In this paper, the nutrition and its influencing factors of black rice, the main ways to improve eating quality, the health care and medical functions of black rice were reviewed. Meanwhile, the application prospect of black rice has also been prospected. Therefore, this review will provide an important theoretical basis for genetic improvement and breeding of new varieties of black rice.

Tunable multichannel Photonic spin Hall effect in metal-dielectric-metal waveguide

The discovery of Photonic spin Hall effect (PSHE) on surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) is an important progress in photonics. In this paper, a method of realizing multi-channel PSHE in two-dimensional metal-air-metal waveguide is proposed. By modulating the phase difference $$\phi$$ ϕ and polar angle $$\theta$$ θ of the dipole source, the SPP can propagate along a specific channel. We further prove that PSHE results from the component wave interference theory. We believe that our findings will rich the application of SPPs in optical devices.