Recent progress in development of dressings used for diabetic wounds with special emphasis on scaffolds

Diabetic wound (DW) is a secondary application of uncontrolled diabetes and affects about 42.2% of diabetics. If the disease is left untreated/uncontrolled, then it may further lead to amputation of organs. In recent years, huge research has been done in the area of wound dressing to have a better maintenance of DW. These include gauze, films, foams or, hydrocolloid-based dressings as well as polysaccharide-and polymer-based dressings. In recent years, scaffolds have played major role as biomaterial for wound dressing due to its tissue regeneration properties as well as fluid absorption capacity. These are three-dimensional polymeric structures formed from polymers that help in tissue rejuvenation. These offer a large surface area to volume ratio to allow cell adhesion and exudate absorbing capacity and antibacterial properties. They also offer a better retention as well as sustained release of drugs that are directly impregnated to the scaffolds or the ones that are loaded in nanocarriers that are impregnated onto scaffolds. The present review comprehensively describes the pathogenesis of DW, various dressings that are used so far for DW, the limitation of currently used wound dressings, role of scaffolds in topical delivery of drugs, materials used for scaffold fabrication, and application of various polymer-based scaffolds for treating DW

Internet addiction and academic performance among high school urban students

Background: Computer and internet usage has scaled up to massive level across the age groups globally over last few years. Internet serves as an important educational and recreational tool for adolescents. The objectives of the present study were to estimate the prevalence of Internet addiction and to study association between internet addiction and academic performance among 11th Standard English medium school students. Materials and methods:540 school students were enrolled for the study.Socio-demographic details,internet usage characteristics and details of marks obtained in board exams were gathered using semistructured pro-forma.Young’s internet addiction test (IAT) was used to determine presence of internet addiction. Data collected were subjected to suitable statistical analysis (student’s t-test, chi-square testand Pearson’s correlation coefficient).Results:Majority of the students were above15years old(71%),were males(72%),and were Hindus (97%). Around forty percent students were from science and commerce streams each whereas twenty percent students were from arts/humanities stream. The prevalence of internet addiction (IA)was found to be 4.81%. The gross prevalence of IA(including both Internet addicts and Possible Internet) was found to be 23.88%. The present study found a weak or mildly negative correlation between internet addiction and the academic performance of school students. Conclusion: Internet addiction is fairly prevalent among school students and it worsens academic performance. Educational interventions which favor safe internet use and limit its overuse and potential harm to individual and the society are the need of the hour

A Distributed Weighted Cluster Based Routing Protocol for MANETs

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are a form of wireless networks which do not require a base station for providing network connectivity. Many MANETs ’ characteristics that distinguish MANETs from other wire-less networks also make routing a challenging task. Cluster based routing is a MANET routing schemes in which various clusters of mobile nodes are formed with each cluster having its own clusterhead which is re-sponsible for routing among clusters. In this paper we propose and implement a distributed weighted clus-tering algorithm for MANETs. This approach is based on combined weight metric that takes into account several system parameters like the node degree, transmission range, energy and mobility of the nodes. We have evaluated the performance of the proposed scheme through simulation in various network situations. Simulation results show that improved distributed weighted clustering algorithm (DWCAIMP) outperforms the original distributed weighted clustering algorithm (DWCA)

Interplay of Gut Microbiota in Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome: Role of Gut Microbiota, Mechanistic Pathways and Potential Treatment Strategies

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) comprises a set of symptoms that pose significant risk factors for various diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Effective and safe methods to treat all the pathological symptoms of PCOS are not available. The gut microbiota has been shown to play an essential role in PCOS incidence and progression. Many dietary plants, prebiotics, and probiotics have been reported to ameliorate PCOS. Gut microbiota shows its effects in PCOS via a number of mechanistic pathways including maintenance of homeostasis, regulation of lipid and blood glucose levels. The effect of gut microbiota on PCOS has been widely reported in animal models but there are only a few reports of human studies. Increasing the diversity of gut microbiota, and up-regulating PCOS ameliorating gut microbiota are some of the ways through which prebiotics, probiotics, and polyphenols work. We present a comprehensive review on polyphenols from natural origin, probiotics, and fecal microbiota therapy that may be used to treat PCOS by modifying the gut microbiota

SB-RA-2001 Inhibits Bacterial Proliferation by Targeting FtsZ Assembly

FtsZ has been recognized as a promising antimicrobial drug target because of its vital role in bacterial cell division. In this work, we found that a taxane SB-RA-2001 inhibited the proliferation of <i>Bacillus subtilis</i> 168 and <i>Mycobacterium smegmatis</i> cells with minimal inhibitory concentrations of 38 and 60 μM, respectively. Cell lengths of these microorganisms increased remarkably in the presence of SB-RA-2001, indicating that it inhibits bacterial cytokinesis. SB-RA-2001 perturbed the formation of the FtsZ ring in <i>B. subtilis</i> 168 cells and also affected the localization of the late cell division protein, DivIVA, at the midcell position. Flow cytometric analysis of the SB-RA-2001-treated cells indicated that the compound did not affect the duplication of DNA in <i>B. subtilis</i> 168 cells. Further, SB-RA-2001 treatment did not affect the localization of the chromosomal partitioning protein, Spo0J, along the two ends of the nucleoids and also had no discernible effect on the nucleoid segregation in <i>B. subtilis</i> 168 cells. The agent also did not appear to perturb the membrane potential of <i>B. subtilis</i> 168 cells. <i>In vitro</i>, SB-RA-2001 bound to FtsZ with modest affinity, promoted the assembly and bundling of FtsZ protofilaments, and reduced the GTPase activity of FtsZ. GTP did not inhibit the binding of SB-RA-2001 to FtsZ, suggesting that it does not bind to the GTP binding site on FtsZ. A computational analysis indicated that SB-RA-2001 binds to FtsZ in the cleft region between the C-terminal domain and helix H7, and the binding site of SB-RA-2001 on FtsZ resembled that of PC190723, a well-characterized inhibitor of FtsZ. The findings collectively suggested that SB-RA-2001 inhibits bacterial proliferation by targeting the assembly dynamics of FtsZ, and this can be exploited further to develop potent FtsZ-targeted antimicrobials

Harnessing the therapeutic potential of fisetin and its nanoparticles : Journey so far and road ahead

Fisetin (FS) is a bioactive flavonoid obtained mostly from apple and strawberry and classified under the category of food supplements due to numerous pharmacological effects against various diseases through multiple mechanistic pathways. It acts as excellent neuroprotective, cardioprotective, anti-invasive, anti-tumorigenic, anti-angiogenic, anticancer, antidiabetics, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory agent. Despite having excellent safety and efficacy profile, FS is very less explored to clinical research either as food supplement or, as therapeutic agent due to its poor aqueous solubility, low bioavailability and reduced blood brain barrier permeability. Multiple mechanistic pathways through which FS elicits its pharmacological actions and the challenges associated with FS that compromises therapeutic efficacy are described in this article. The nanoformulations developed to enhance the bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy of FS are also covered with detailed description of research works carried by various researchers. These include nanoemulsions, liposomes, ethosomes, glycerosomes, polymeric micelles, self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system and polymeric nanoparticles. Various patents pertaining to extraction/isolation, formula composition and therapeutic uses of FS as well as some clinical studies conducted using FS as active moiety are also enlisted.</p