Plant-Mediated Inorganic Nanoparticles for Anti-Tumor Therapy in Colorectal Cancer: A Systematic Review

Colon cancer is the third most frequent neoplasm and the second most lethal worldwide. Despite progress in its treatment, new therapies are still needed to improve the prognosis of this type of tumor and, in this context, the use of plant compounds with anti-tumor properties has been increasing in recent years. The aim of this systematic review was to analyze the potential benefits of encapsulation of compounds derived from plant extracts in nanoparticles and their cytotoxic effect under in vitro conditions. Once the search strategy was defined based on the selected MESH terms, 147 publications published since 2012 were identified from three different databases (PubMed, SCOPUS and WOS). After eliminating duplicates and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 17 studies were finally included. The results showed that the use of natural extracts encapsulated in nanoparticles offered significant cytotoxic activity against colon neoplastic cells by increasing the therapeutic effect of free plant extracts through their encapsulation and without producing toxicity on healthy cells. In addition, most studies (14) involved metal-derived nanoparticles (zinc, iron and gold). Despite the possible efficacy of these nanodrugs, more in vivo studies are needed to elucidate their potential future therapeutic application and their biocompatibilityInstituto de Salud Carlos IIIPI19/01478-FEDERPMPTA22/00136Junta de AndalucíaA-CTS-666-UGR20P20_00540B-CTS-122- UGR20Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (RTC2019-006870-1)FEDERCTS-107 (Andalusian Government

A randomized, double-blind study on the efficacy of oral domperidone versus placebo for reducing SARS-CoV-2 viral load in mild-to-moderate COVID-19 patients in primary health care

15 p.-3 fig.-3 tab.Introduction:The clinical effect of domperidone against COVID-19 has been investigated in a double-blind phase III clinical trial (EudraCT number 2021-001228-17). Domperidone has shown in vitro antiviral activity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and potential immudolatory properties through the stimulation of prolactin secretion.Patients and methods:The efficacy of oral domperidone plus standard of care (SOC; n = 87) versus placebo plus SOC (n = 86) was evaluated in a 28-day randomized double-blind multicentre study in primary health care centres. A total of 173 outpatients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 were included. Three daily doses of 10 mg (30 mg/day) of domperidone or placebo were administered for 7 days. Reduction of viral load on day 4 was the primary efficay endpoint. It was estimated in saliva samples by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), as the cycle thresholds detected ORF1ab, N Protein and S Protein genes.Results:A significant reduction in the viral load was observed (p < 0.001) from baseline to days 4, 7 and 14 of the three genes studied with non-significant differences between domperidone and placebo groups. Twenty-three patients (13.3%) experienced adverse events, 14 patients in the domperidone group (16.1%) and 9 patients in the placebo group (10.5%). No patients needed to be hospitalized.Conclusion: Results do not prove the use of domperidone as antiviral in patients with COVID-19.This research was funded by CSIC (grant no. PIE 201980E024) and by the European Commission: NextGeneration EU (Regulation EU 2020/2094) through CSIC’s Global Health Platform (PTI Salud Global). The study sponsor was Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, M.P. (CSIC), Madrid, Spain. The sponsor was involved in the design, data interpretation, manuscript review and the decision to submit the article for publication.Peer reviewe

Automatic Urticaria Activity Score: Deep Learning–Based Automatic Hive Counting for Urticaria Severity Assessment

Chronic urticaria is a chronic skin disease that affects up to 1% of the general population worldwide, with chronic spontaneous urticaria accounting for more than two-thirds of all chronic urticaria cases. The Urticaria Activity Score (UAS) is a dynamic severity assessment tool that can be incorporated into daily clinical practice, as well as clinical trials for treatments. The UAS helps in measuring disease severity and guiding the therapeutic strategy. However, UAS assessment is a time-consuming and manual process, with high interobserver variability and high dependence on the observer. To tackle this issue, we introduce Automatic UAS, an automatic equivalent of UAS that deploys a deep learning, lesion-detecting model called Legit.Health-UAS-HiveNet. Our results show that our model assesses the severity of chronic urticaria cases with a performance comparable to that of expert physicians. Furthermore, the model can be implemented into CADx systems to support doctors in their clinical practice and act as a new end point in clinical trials. This proves the usefulness of artificial intelligence in the practice of evidence-based medicine; models trained on the consensus of large clinical boards have the potential of empowering clinicians in their daily practice and replacing current standard clinical end points in clinical trials

Comparative Study of Infliximab Versus Adalimumab in Refractory Uveitis due to Behçet's Disease: National Multicenter Study of 177 Cases.

To compare the efficacy of infliximab (IFX) versus adalimumab (ADA) as a first-line biologic drug over 1 year of treatment in a large series of patients with refractory uveitis due to Behçet's disease (BD). We conducted an open-label multicenter study of IFX versus ADA for BD-related uveitis refractory to conventional nonbiologic treatment. IFX or ADA was chosen as the first-line biologic agent based on physician and patient agreement. Patients received 3-5 mg/kg intravenous IFX at 0, 2, and 6 weeks and every 4-8 weeks thereafter, or 40 mg subcutaneous ADA every other week without a loading dose. Ocular parameters were compared between the 2 groups. The study included 177 patients (316 affected eyes), of whom 103 received IFX and 74 received ADA. There were no significant baseline differences between treatment groups in main demographic features, previous therapy, or ocular sign severity. After 1 year of therapy, we observed an improvement in all ocular parameters in both groups. However, patients receiving ADA had significantly better outcomes in some parameters, including improvement in anterior chamber inflammation (92.31% versus 78.18% for IFX; P = 0.06), improvement in vitritis (93.33% versus 78.95% for IFX; P = 0.04), and best-corrected visual acuity (mean ± SD 0.81 ± 0.26 versus 0.67 ± 0.34 for IFX; P = 0.001). A nonsignificant difference was seen for macular thickness (mean ± SD 250.62 ± 36.85 for ADA versus 264.89 ± 59.74 for IFX; P = 0.15), and improvement in retinal vasculitis was similar between the 2 groups (95% for ADA versus 97% for IFX; P = 0.28). The drug retention rate was higher in the ADA group (95.24% versus 84.95% for IFX; P = 0.042). Although both IFX and ADA are efficacious in refractory BD-related uveitis, ADA appears to be associated with better outcomes than IFX after 1 year of follow-up