TNF Antagonists, The Prevention of Myocardial Infarction in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients?

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been acknowledged to be a major extra-articular comorbidity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), with myocardial infarction (MI) particularly being the most prominent. Contributory factors include the rise in traditional risk factors and proinflammatory changes seen in RA patients. Two drivers of proinflammatory changes are mainly emphasized in this review: insulin resistance and dyslipidaemia. Among the cytokines involved, tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) has been identified as one of the major molecules contributing to the proatherogenic state seen in these patients. As such, biological therapies such as anti-TNF drugs are hypothesized to have a secondary function in reducing CVD in these patients. Using TNF-α as an example, this review provides an overview of how chronic inflammation increases the risk of CVD, focusing mainly on the two drivers: insulin resistance (IR) state and dyslipidaemia. The review also investigates if anti-TNF drugs can reduce the effects of these two drivers and hence, determine if anti-TNF drugs can produce a clinical effect of reducing the risk of MI in RA patients.A literature search was conducted using Medline and Google Scholar (1990–January 2013). Studies were selected if they addressed the pathophysiology of TNF-α in CVD risk for RA patients or the effects of anti-TNF therapy on IR, dyslipidaemia or MI in RA patients. Although the studies were unable to establish if anti-TNF therapy can reduce CVD risk, responders to anti-TNF therapy appears to have a significant lower risk of MI.Despite its effects, additional studies should be conducted to determine its cost-benefit ratio. This is because of its high cost and its administration limitations. Future studies should also determine if the lipid profile in RA patients truly reflects their risk of CVD, as some studies have reflected an increased CVD risk as compared to the general population

John Y. Templeton III: Pioneer of modern cardiothoracic surgery.

John Young Templeton III was born in 1917 in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1941. He completed his residency training under Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr., and was the first resident who worked on Gibbon\u27s heart-lung machine. After his training, he remained at Jefferson as an American Cancer Society fellow and Damon Runyon fellow and went on to become the fourth Samuel D. Gross Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery in 1967. Dr. Templeton was the recipient of numerous grants and published over 80 papers in the field of cardiothoracic surgery. As a teacher and mentor, he was a beloved figure who placed great faith in his residents. He participated in over 60 professional societies, serving as president to many such as the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery and the Pennsylvania Association of Thoracic Surgery. He was also recognized through his many awards, in particular the John Y. Templeton III lectureship established in 1980 at Jefferson of whom Denton Cooley was the first lecturer. Dr. Templeton retired from practice in 1987. He is forever remembered as an important model of a modern surgeon evident in numerous academic achievements, the admiration and affection of his trainees, and the lives of patients that he had touched

Critical thinking skills in early years

Learning to think critically set a good foundation for good thinking development in younger children. The preschool years have to be liable to incorporate strategies and develop appropriates practices of critical thinking into the classroom. However, teaching critical thinking has not been a simple task. The purpose of the research study attempts to identify critical and creative thinking among kindergarten children. In the name of this purpose the ideas are taken from the teacher candidates who teach in kindergarten level. In the study four preschool teacher candidates take part in. To get the teachers’ ideas, in the research a form is applied consisting of 19 open-ended questions was directed to the teachers and principal in a kindergarten. The frequencies of the teacher candidates’ opinions are taken by coding with the content analysis. Looking into the results of the research it is stated that teachers declare that insufficient sources of critical thinking develop in students and teachers have shallow understanding of critical thinking skills. This proposed study is expected to benefit to the education society in order to enrich young children’s capacity and skills to think critically and creatively

Surface acoustic wave concentration of microparticle and nanoparticle suspensions

A rapid particle concentration method in a sessile droplet has been developed using asymmetric surface acoustic wave (SAW) propagation on a substrate upon which the droplet is placed. The SAW device consisted of a 0.75-mm thick, 127.68 YXaxis- rotated cut LiNbO3 as a substrate. An interdigital transducer electrode (IDT) with 25 straight finger pairs in a simple repeating pattern, 12 mm aperture, and a wavelength of l = 44 μm was patterned on the substrate. The IDT was then driven with a sinusoidal signal at the resonance frequency 8.611 MHz. To investigate the effect of particle type and size on the concentration process, several types of particles were used in this study, including fluorescent particles (1 μm), polystyrene microspheres (3, 6, 20, and 45 μm), and living yeast cells (10- 20 μm). Different RF powers were applied ranging from 120 to 510 mW. The concentration processes occurs within two to twenty seconds, depending on the particle size, type and input radio frequency (RF) power, much faster than currently available particle concentration mechanisms due to the large convective velocities achieved using the SAW device

Driving Cell Seeding Using Surface Acoustic Wave Fluid Actuation

In this paper, we investigate the ability to drive fluid streaming via a surface acoustic wave (SAW) into a porous bioscaffold structure, and to exploit this effect to deliver fluorescent particles/yeast cells into the scaffold as a potential rapid and efficient method for cell seeding in tissue engineering. The results demonstrate that the seeding process takes approximately 10 seconds, much shorter than that if the cell suspension were to perfuse through the scaffold under the effects of gravity alone (approximately 30 mins). By increasing the input power, both the velocity of the fluid flow and the particle seeding efficiency can be enhanced. At 560 mW, fluid velocities of the order 10 mm/s were achieved; in this case, the particle/yeast seeding efficiency is around 92%. In addition to rapid seeding, the SAW streaming induced perfusion is observed to significantly improve the uniformity of the scaffold cell distribution due to greater penetration into the scaffold. Finally, we verify using a methylene violet staining procedure that 80% of the yeast cells seeded by the SAW method within the scaffold remained viable

Antireflection silicon structures with hydrophobic property fabricated by three-beam laser interference

This paper demonstrates antireflective structures on silicon wafer surfaces with hydrophobic property fabricated by three-beam laser interference. In this work, a three-beam laser interference system was set up to generate periodic micro-nano hole structures with hexagonal distributions. Compared with the existing technologies, the array of hexagonally-distributed hole structures fabricated by three-beam laser interference reveals a design guideline to achieve considerably low solar-weighted reflectance (SWR) in the wavelength range of 300-780 nm. The resulting periodic hexagonally-distributed hole structures have shown extremely low SWR (1.86%) and relatively large contact angle (140°) providing with a self-cleaning capability on the solar cell surface

Brief Effect of a Small Hydrophobic Drug (Cinnarizine) on the Physicochemical Characterisation of Niosomes Produced by Thin-Film Hydration and Microfluidic Methods

first_pagesettings Open AccessArticle Brief Effect of a Small Hydrophobic Drug (Cinnarizine) on the Physicochemical Characterisation of Niosomes Produced by Thin-Film Hydration and Microfluidic Methods by Li Key YeoOrcID,Temidayo O. B. Olusanya,Cheng Shu Chaw andAmal Ali Elkordy *OrcID School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Sunderland, Sunderland SR1 3SD, UK * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Pharmaceutics 2018, 10(4), 185; https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics10040185 Received: 20 July 2018 / Revised: 5 October 2018 / Accepted: 9 October 2018 / Published: 13 October 2018 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Non-Ionic Surfactant Vesicles for Drug Delivery) Download PDF Browse Figures Abstract Novel niosomal formulations containing cinnarizine were developed to enhance its drug characteristics. In this work, niosomes (non-ionic surfactant vesicles) were prepared by conventional thin-film hydration (TFH) and microfluidic (MF) methods with sorbitan monostearate (Span® 60), cholesterol, and co-surfactants (Cremophor® ELP, Cremophor® RH40 and Solutol® HS15) as key excipients. The aim was to study the effect of cinnarizine on the characteristics of different niosomal formulations manufactured by using different methods. For effective targeted oral drug delivery, the efficacy of niosomes for therapeutic applications is correlated to their physiochemical properties. Niosome vesicles prepared were characterised using dynamic light scattering technique and the morphology of niosomes dispersion was characterised using optical microscopy. Dialysis was carried out to purify niosome suspensions to determine drug loading and drug release studies was performed to study the potential use of niosomal systems for cinnarizine