273 research outputs found
Propiedades antibacterianas del auraptene y acidos benzoicos y cinámicos oxi-prenilados naturales
La actividad antibacteriana in vitro del auraptene y de cuatro ácidos preniloxycinámicos y benzoicos ha sido evaluada sobre un grupo de tres distintas cepas bacterianas. Todos los compuestos mostraron ser activos como agentes inhibitorios del crecimiento del Staphylococcus Aureus
Antiviral furanosesquiterpenes from Commiphora erythraea.
The crude methanolic extract obtained from C. erythraea resin was chromatographed on silica gel with solvent of increasing polarity. The extract and fractions were evaluated for cytotoxicity and antiviral activity [parainfluenza type 3 virus (PIV3)] by plaque forming units (PFU) reduction assay using HEp-2 cells (human larynx epidermoid carcinoma cell line). From the active fraction, five compounds were isolated and tested. Only two of these showed anti-PIV3 activity with a selectivity index (SI) of 66.6 and 17.5, respectively. Both the compounds are furanosesquiterpenoids
Organoselenium Compounds as Phytochemicals from the Natural Kingdom.
Selenium is naturally present in soils but it is also produced by pollution from human activities into the environment. Its incorporation into plants affords organoselenium metabolites that, depending on the nature of the molecules and the plant species, can be incorporated into proteins, stored or eliminated by volatilization. The possibility to use the selenium metabolism of some plants as a method for bioremediation and, at the main time, as a source of selenated phytochemicals is here discussed taking into consideration the growing interest in organic selenium derivatives as new potential therapeutic agents
Agarsenone, a Cadinane Sesquiterpenoid from Commiphora erythraea
Agarsenone (1), a new cadinane sesquiterpenoid, was isolated from the resin of Commiphora erythraea. The structures of 1 and its decomposition products agarsenolides (2a and 2b) and myrrhone (3) were established by extensive NMR spectroscopic analysis. The absolute configuration of 3 and the relative and absolute configurations of 1 were assigned by comparison of experimental and calculated optical rotatory dispersion and electronic circular dichroism spectr
organoselenium compounds an overview on the biological activities beyond antioxidant properties
For a long period, Selenium was considered mainly a toxic element and has been the object of disputes for its controversial balance between beneficial and toxic effects. Nowadays, many evidences demonstrated its role as essential microelement in mammalian diet, having an essential role in redox homeostasis of all the living systems. Around 25 proteins were discovered to contain a selenocysteine in the place of the more common sulfureted amino acid and, in this protein, selenium have the main role in the catalytic center and playng a key role in several major metabolic pathways such as thyroid hormone metabolism, antioxidant defense systems, and immune functions. Many studies report that selenium has a protective effect against some forms of cancer decreases, cardiovascular disease mortality, regulates the inflammatory mediators in asthma, maintains bone homeostasis and protects against bone loss. Antioxidant activities of organoselenium compounds has been widely studied and discussed in a number of recent review article. In this communication taking inspiration from a number of recent publications we want to highlight that other biological activities can be envisioned for organoselenium compounds deriving from the peculiar reactivity of this element
Smart drugs and neuroenhancement: what do we know?
Introduction: Smart drugs are among the most common drugs used by students. It is estimated that they are second in incidence after cannabis. Although they are usually used for diseases such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dementia, in most cases the use of smart drugs is illegal and without a prescription. Methodological issues: A systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. SCOPUS, Medline (using PubMed as a search engine), Embase, Web of Sciences, and Google Scholar were used as search engines from January 1, 1980 to June 1, 2021 to evaluate the association between smart drugs and neuro-enhancement. A total of 4715 articles were collected. Of these, 295 duplicates were removed. A total of 4380 articles did not meet the inclusion criteria. In conclusion, 48 articles were included in the present systematic review. Results: Most of the studies were survey studies, 1 was a prospective longitudinal study, 1 was a cross-over study, and 1 was an experimental study in an animal model (rats). The largest group of consumers was school or university students. The most frequent reasons for using smart drugs were: better concentration, neuro enhancement, stress reduction, time optimization, increased wake time, increased free time, and curiosity. There are conflicting opinions, in fact, regarding their actual functioning and benefit, it is not known whether the benefits reported by consumers are due to the drugs, the placebo effect or a combination of these. The real prevalence is underestimated: it is important that the scientific community focus on this issue with further studies on animal models to validate their efficacy
MEAD: A Multi-Armed Approach for Evaluation of Adversarial Examples Detectors
This paper has been accepted to appear in the Proceedings of the 2022 European Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining (ECML-PKDD), 19th to the 23rd of September, Grenoble, FranceInternational audienceDetection of adversarial examples has been a hot topic in the last years due to its importance for safely deploying machine learning algorithms in critical applications. However, the detection methods are generally validated by assuming a single implicitly known attack strategy, which does not necessarily account for real-life threats. Indeed, this can lead to an overoptimistic assessment of the detectors' performance and may induce some bias in the comparison between competing detection schemes. We propose a novel multi-armed framework, called MEAD, for evaluating detectors based on several attack strategies to overcome this limitation. Among them, we make use of three new objectives to generate attacks. The proposed performance metric is based on the worst-case scenario: detection is successful if and only if all different attacks are correctly recognized. Empirically, we show the effectiveness of our approach. Moreover, the poor performance obtained for state-of-the-art detectors opens a new exciting line of research
Cardiovascular disease risk in liver transplant recipients transplanted due to chronic viral hepatitis
Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality after liver transplantation, mostly in patients transplanted for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, obesity and diabetes. Few data exist on cardiovascular diseases among patients transplanted for viral hepatitis. Objective: Our aim is to clarify the cardiovascular risk and subclinical vascular damage among liver transplant recipients for chronic viral hepatitis (i.e. hepatits C virus, hepatis B virus and hepatitis D virus infection). Methods: Adult patients (age ≥ 18 years) with orthotopic liver transplants (OLT) due to viral hepatitis who signed informed consent, and were admitted for a routine follow-up between June 2019 and September 2020 at the Infectious Disease outpatient clinic of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Naples, Italy, were prospectively enrolled. An estimation of cardiovascular risk was assessed using three main risk charts, echocolor-Doppler of epiaortic vessels was performed to assess subclinical Intima-Media changes. Results: A total of 161 patients were evaluated; of these 15 were excluded because not affected by viral hepatitis. 146 patients were considered. 83 patients (56.8%) were considered at high cardiovascular risk according to Framingham, 54 patients (36.9%) to American Heart Association Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) score and 19 (13.0%) to Heart Score. Only 8 patients (5.4%) showed a normal carotid ultrasound, while 52 patients (35.6%) had a carotid artery Intima-Media Thickness (IMT) and 86 (58.9%) an atherosclerotic plaque. Conclusions: Liver transplant recipients for virus-related associated liver disease are, in light of the high percentage of carotid lesions, at high risk of CVD. Risk charts compared to subclinical carotid lesions which represent damage already established and a real localization of the disease, seem to underestimate the cardiovascular risk. A chronic inflammatory status, could play a key role. It's important to raise the awareness of cardiovascular risk in liver transplant patients to prevent cardiovascular diseases and improve the timing of early diagnosis of premature vascular lesions
179. Correcting the Bleeding Phenotype in Hemophilia Ausing Lentivirally FVIII-Corrected Endothelial Cells Differentiated from Hemophilic Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC)
Hemophilia A (HA) is a bleeding disorder caused by factor VIII (FVIII) gene mutations.Somatic cells can be reprogrammed to generate autologous, disease-free iPSCs, then differentiated into cell targetsrelevant for gene and cell therapy. Our aim is to develop a novel HA treatment strategy generating FVIII-corrected patient-specific iPSCs from peripheral blood cells anddifferentiating them into functional endothelial cells (ECs), secreting FVIII after transplantation
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