Red sacaca essential oil-loaded nanostructured lipid carriers optimized by factorial design: cytotoxicity and cellular reactive oxygen species levels.

Amazonian flora includes several species with the potential to develop pharmaceutical and biotechnological products. The essential oils from Amazonian species possess some biological properties, such as antioxidant, antibacterial, and cytotoxic activities. The essential oil of red sacaca (RSO), Croton cajucara Benth., contains metabolites characterized by antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) are an advantageous alternative for the effective delivery of drugs because they can solubilize lipophilic actives and reduce their cytotoxicity. This study aimed to optimize the synthesis of RSO-loaded nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC-RSO) using a 23 factorial design and investigate their antioxidant and cytotoxic effects. The red sacaca essential oil (RSO) metabolite profile was characterized using gas chromatography coupled with a mass spectrometer (GC-MS), identifying 33 metabolites, with linalool and 7-hydroxy-calamenene as the major ones, as reported in the literature

Validation of SATURN, a free, electronic, self‐administered cognitive screening test

BackgroundCognitive screening is limited by clinician time and variability in administration and scoring. We therefore developed Self-Administered Tasks Uncovering Risk of Neurodegeneration (SATURN), a free, public-domain, self-administered, and automatically scored cognitive screening test, and validated it on inexpensive (<$100) computer tablets.MethodsSATURN is a 30-point test including orientation, word recall, and math items adapted from the Saint Louis University Mental Status test, modified versions of the Stroop and Trails tasks, and other assessments of visuospatial function and memory. English-speaking neurology clinic patients and their partners 50 to 89 years of age were given SATURN, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and a brief survey about test preferences. For patients recruited from dementia clinics (n = 23), clinical status was quantified with the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale. Care partners (n = 37) were assigned CDR = 0.ResultsSATURN and MoCA scores were highly correlated (P < .00001; r = 0.90). CDR sum-of-boxes scores were well-correlated with both tests (P < .00001) (r = -0.83 and -0.86, respectively). Statistically, neither test was superior. Most participants (83%) reported that SATURN was easy to use, and most either preferred SATURN over the MoCA (47%) or had no preference (32%).DiscussionPerformance on SATURN-a fully self-administered and freely available (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.02v6wwpzr) cognitive screening test-is well-correlated with MoCA and CDR scores