Explore the vast range of titles available.

Babchi (Psoralea corylifolia) oil is an important essential oil used in several traditional medicines to cure various disorders. This phytotherapeutic agent possesses a number of pharmacological activities including antibacterial, antifungal, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, and antitumor factors. However, volatile nature, poor stability, and solubility of babchi oil (BO) restrict its pharmaceutical applications. Therefore, the aim of the present work was to encapsulate this oil in β-cyclodextrin nanosponges (NS) in order to overcome the above limitations. To fabricate nanosponges, β-cyclodextrin was cross-linked with diphenyl carbonate in different molar ratios viz. 1:2, 1:4, 1:6, 1:8, and 1:10. The blank nanosponges were loaded with BO using the freeze-drying method. The particle size of the BO loaded nanosponges was found to lie between 200 and 500 nm with low polydispersity index. Furthermore, the zeta potential, the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermal analysis, and electron microscopy were carried out for characterization of BO nanosponges. Results obtained from spectral analysis ascertained the formation of inclusion complexes. Additionally, solubilisation efficiency of BO was checked in distilled water and found enhanced by 4.95 times with optimized β-cyclodextrin nanosponges. The cytotoxicity study was carried out by the MTT assay using HaCaT cell lines. A significant improvement in photo-stability of essential oil was also observed by inclusion innanosponges. Lastly, the optimized formulation was tested for antibacterial activity using Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli. Therefore, encapsulation of BO in nanosponges resulted in efficacious carrier system in terms of solubility, photo-stability, and safety of this oil along with handling benefits.

As the most common cancer in women, efforts have been made to develop novel nanomedicine-based therapeutics for breast cancer. In the present study, the in silico curcumin (Cur) properties were investigated, and we found some important drawbacks of Cur. To enhance cancer therapeutics of Cur, three different nonionic surfactants (span 20, 60, and 80) were used to prepare various Cur-loaded niosomes (Nio-Cur). Then, fabricated Nio-Cur were decorated with folic acid (FA) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) for breast cancer suppression. For PEG-FA@Nio-Cur, the gene expression levels of Bax and p53 were higher compared to free drug and Nio-Cur. With PEG-FA-decorated Nio-Cur, levels of Bcl2 were lower than the free drug and Nio-Cur. When MCF7 and 4T1 cell uptake tests of PEG-FA@Nio-Cur and Nio-Cur were investigated, the results showed that the PEG-FA-modified niosomes exhibited the most preponderant endocytosis. In vitro experiments demonstrate that PEG-FA@Nio-Cur is a promising strategy for the delivery of Cur in breast cancer therapy. Breast cancer cells absorbed the prepared nanoformulations and exhibited sustained drug release characteristics.

Melatonin (MT) is a molecule of paramount importance in all living organisms, due to its presence in many biological activities, such as circadian (sleep–wake cycle) and seasonal rhythms (reproduction, fattening, molting, etc.). Unfortunately, it suffers from poor solubility and, to be used as a drug, an appropriate transport vehicle has to be developed, in order to optimize its release in the human tissues. As a possible drug-delivery system, β-cyclodextrin (βCD) represents a promising scaffold which can encapsulate the melatonin, releasing when needed. In this work, we present a computational study supported by experimental IR spectra on inclusion MT/βCD complexes. The aim is to provide a robust, accurate and, at the same time, low-cost methodology to investigate these inclusion complexes both with static and dynamic simulations, in order to study the main actors that drive the interactions of melatonin with β-cyclodextrin and, therefore, to understand its release mechanism.

Background: Cyclodextrin based nanosponge (CDNS) as a novel delivery system has not been compared in terms of antioxidant and cytotoxicity potentials with its individual components. Given that oxidative stress and cytotoxicity play pivotal roles in various diseases, the authors sought to evaluate the properties of the synthesized CDNSs and their components, β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) and carbonyldiimidazole (CDI). These carriers have been widely used in pharmaceutical sciences for various purposes. Demonstrating their remarkable characteristics can guide researchers in making accurate applications and selections. Methods: Two types of CDNSs were synthesized with different cross-linker ratios. The analysis involved dynamic light scattering (DLS), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and solid-state NMR methods. The antioxidant activity was determined through DPPH scavenging activity, glutathione peroxidase assay, and detection of reactive oxygen species levels. Additionally, the cellular cytotoxicity of the materials was characterized using the MTT test. Results: The results confirmed the synthesis of CDNSs with 1:2 and 1:4 β-CD:CDI molar ratios. The antioxidant results revealed that β-CD and CDI exhibited higher antioxidant activity compared to CDNSs with 1:2 and 1:4 ratios. Based on the MTT results, all four compounds demonstrated almost complete cytocompatibility with at least 50% cell viability. Conclusion: Following the successful synthesis of CDNSs, it can be inferred that these materials are non-toxic. However, the process of nanosponging did not enhance the antioxidant activity of β-CD and CDI.

Background There is a global perception that psychotropic utilization in children and adolescents is increasing, especially with the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. Available literature data on paediatric psychotropic medication prescriptions in Italy are limited to one or few regions and not updated. The aim of this study was to provide updated data on psychotropic prescriptions referred to the whole Italian paediatric population, as overall and by subgroups of medications and to evaluate if the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020 had an impact on prescription rates. Methods A descriptive study on psychotropic drug utilization in children and adolescents (< 18 years) resident in all Italian regions during 2020 was performed. Patients registered in the Pharmaceutical Prescriptions database with at least one prescription/dispensing of a psychotropic medication (antipsychotics-N05A), (antidepressants-N06A) and (psychostimulants-N06BA) during the study period were considered. The indicators used were the prescription rate (number of prescriptions per 1000 children) and prevalence of use (proportion of the paediatric population with at least one prescription in the relevant year). Results During the 2020 the prevalence of psychotropic drug use in the paediatric population was 0.3%, increased of 7.8% if compared to 2019. The same trend was observed for the prescription rate, which recorded an average of 28.2 per 1000 children with an increase of 11.6% if compared to previous year, representing the 0.6% of the overall drug use in this age group. The data showed a growing trend prescription by age, reaching the peak in adolescents aged 12–17 years old, with a prescription rate of 65 per 1000 children and a prevalence of 0.71%. Considering the subgroups of psychotropic medications, the highest prevalence of use was found for antipsychotic drugs, received by the 0.19% of the paediatric population during 2020. Conclusions Psychotropic drug utilization in children and adolescents has grown during 2020 in Italy and worldwide, raising alarms from health care clinicians and patient advocates about the increase of burden of mental diseases in paediatric population during the COVID-19 pandemic. A more systematic monitoring of the use of psychotropic medications should be implemented in all countries for collecting relevant information about children and adolescents taking psychotropic drugs, in order to address the present and the future of the mental health of the paediatric population.

This study aimed to design and fabricate novel hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin-based hypercrosslinked polymers, called nanosponges, as carriers for anticancer hydrophobic agents and compare them with host–guest complexes of hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin, a remarkable solubilizer, to investigate their application in improving the pharmaceutical properties of the flavonoid naringenin, a model hydrophobic nutraceutical with versatile anticancer effects. For this purpose, three new nanosponges, crosslinked with pyromellitic dianhydride, citric acid, and carbonyldiimidazole, were fabricated. The carbonate nanosponge synthesized by carbonyldiimidazole presented the highest naringenin loading capacity (≈19.42%) and exerted significantly higher antiproliferative effects against MCF-7 cancer cells compared to free naringenin. Additionally, this carbonate nanosponge formed a stable nanosuspension, providing several advantages over the naringenin/hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin host–guest complex, including an increase of about 3.62-fold in the loading capacity percentage, sustained released pattern (versus the burst pattern of host–guest complex), and up to an 8.3-fold increase in antiproliferative effects against MCF-7 cancer cells. Both naringenin-loaded carriers were less toxic to L929 murine fibroblast normal cells than MCF-7 cancer cells. These findings suggest that hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin-based carbonate nanosponges could be a good candidate as a drug delivery system with potential applications in cancer treatment.

Due to their high energy and power density, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have gained popularity in response to the demand for effective energy storage solutions. The importance of the electrode architecture in determining battery performance highlights the demand for optimization. By developing useful organic polymers, cyclodextrin architectures have been investigated to improve the performance of Li-based batteries. The macrocyclic oligosaccharides known as cyclodextrins (CDs) have relatively hydrophobic cavities that can enclose other molecules. There are many industries where this “host–guest” relationship has been found useful. The hydrogen bonding and suitable inner cavity diameter of CD have led to its selection as a lithium-ion diffusion channel. CDs have also been used as solid electrolytes for solid-state batteries and as separators and binders to ensure adhesion between electrode components. This review gives a general overview of CD-based materials and how they are used in battery components, highlighting their advantages.

Outdoor bronze statues are constantly exposed to weather conditions and reactive compounds in the atmosphere that can interact with their surfaces. To avoid these interactions, a commonly used method is the application of coatings with corrosion inhibitors. However, a significant limitation of these inhibitors is their gradual loss over time. In this study, we aimed to improve the durability of 5-ethyl-1,3,4-thiadiazol-2-amine (AEDTA), the inhibitor chosen to formulate new acrylic coatings for outdoor bronzes. Methyl-β-cyclodextrin (Me-β-CD) was selected to host the inhibitor due to the capability of cyclodextrins to form complexes incorporating small organic molecules. The complexes of Me-β-CD and AEDTA were prepared and the inclusion of AEDTA was proved by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Then, acrylic coatings were prepared at different concentrations of the Me-β-CD/AEDTA system. They were thermally aged and monitored every 24 h. To evaluate the volatilization of the corrosion inhibitor, solid phase microextraction-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS) and thermal desorption-GC/MS (TD-GC/MS) analyses were performed during the first 72 h. The results were compared to those of pure AEDTA films and Incralac®. The outcomes showed that Me-β-CD/AEDTA complexes are promising candidates for developing coatings with improved stability and longer retention of AEDTA.

Background Assessment and rating of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) are commonly based on the medical observation of several clinical manifestations, including the analysis of motor activities. In particular, medical specialists refer to the MDS-UPDRS (Movement Disorder Society – sponsored revision of Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale) that is the most widely used clinical scale for PD rating. However, clinical scales rely on the observation of some subtle motor phenomena that are either difficult to capture with human eyes or could be misclassified. This limitation motivated several researchers to develop intelligent systems based on machine learning algorithms able to automatically recognize the PD. Nevertheless, most of the previous studies investigated the classification between healthy subjects and PD patients without considering the automatic rating of different levels of severity. Methods In this context, we implemented a simple and low-cost clinical tool that can extract postural and kinematic features with the Microsoft Kinect v2 sensor in order to classify and rate PD. Thirty participants were enrolled for the purpose of the present study: sixteen PD patients rated according to MDS-UPDRS and fourteen healthy paired subjects. In order to investigate the motor abilities of the upper and lower body, we acquired and analyzed three main motor tasks: (1) gait, (2) finger tapping, and (3) foot tapping. After preliminary feature selection, different classifiers based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) were trained and evaluated for the best solution. Results Concerning the gait analysis, results showed that the ANN classifier performed the best by reaching 89.4% of accuracy with only nine features in diagnosis PD and 95.0% of accuracy with only six features in rating PD severity. Regarding the finger and foot tapping analysis, results showed that an SVM using the extracted features was able to classify healthy subjects versus PD patients with great performances by reaching 87.1% of accuracy. The results of the classification between mild and moderate PD patients indicated that the foot tapping features were the most representative ones to discriminate (81.0% of accuracy). Conclusions The results of this study have shown how a low-cost vision-based system can automatically detect subtle phenomena featuring the PD. Our findings suggest that the proposed tool can support medical specialists in the assessment and rating of PD patients in a real clinical scenario.

Resveratrol and oxyresveratrol are natural polyphenolic stilbenes with several important pharmacological activities. However, low solubility and aqueous instability are the major limitations in their drug delivery applications. In the present work, we demonstrated the encapsulation of resveratrol and oxyresveratrol with nanosponge to improve solubility and stability. Several characterization techniques were used to confirm the encapsulation of both drug molecules within the nanosponges. The high encapsulation efficiency of resveratrol (77.73%) and oxyresveratrol (80.33%) was achieved within the nanosponges. Transmission electron microscopy suggested uniform spherical size particles of resveratrol and oxyresveratrol loaded nanosponges. Compared to free drugs, better protection against UV degradation was observed for resveratrol-loaded nanosponge (2-fold) and oxyresveratrol-loaded nanosponge (3-fold). Moreover, a higher solubilization of resveratrol- and oxyresveratrol-loaded nanosponges lead to a better antioxidant activity compared to drug molecules alone. Cytotoxicity studies against DU-145 prostate cancer cell lines further suggested improved activity of both resveratrol and oxyresveratrol-loaded nanosponges without any significant toxicity of blank nanosponges.