Assessment of the effect of phenytoin on cutaneous healing from excision of melanocytic nevi on the face and on the back

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Topical phenytoin is a powerful skin wounds healing and it may be useful in clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of topical phenytoin 0.5%, by comparing it with cream (control) in wounds resulting from excision of two melanocytic nevi in the same patient. Our purpose was also to assess if phenytoin had better therapeutic and cosmetic outcomes when compared with cream (control).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study evaluated 100 patients with skin wounds from excision of melanocytic nevi. 50 patients with lesions on the face and 50 patients with lesions on the back, totalizing 200 lesions excised with modified punch. The resulting superficial skin wounds had the same diameter and depth, and second intention healing followed.</p> <p>Patients were followed for 60 days. Student's t-test, Mann Whitney nonparametric test, analysis of variance, LSD test, Shapiro-Wilks test and Fisher test were used to analyze the results, depending on the nature of the variables being studied.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Phenytoin showed better therapeutic and cosmetic results, by healing faster, with more intense epithelization in wounds in comparison with cream (control). Phenytoin showed a statistically significant difference regarding the following parameters (p < 0.05): wounded area and healing time. Phenytoin application resulted in a smaller area and a shorter healing time. Also the intensity of exudates, bleeding, and the epithelization were more intense in phenytoin-treated wounds. Regarding the shape and thickness of the scar, injuries treated with phenytoin had round and flat shaped scars in most of the cases. Considering patient's gender and phototype, female patients presented smaller wounds and scar areas; and phototype I had the largest scar areas. Contact eczema was an adverse reaction in 7 injuries located on the back caused by cream (control) and hypoallergenic tape.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Phenytoin showed better therapeutic and cosmetic results compared with cream (control). Phenytoin is a low cost drug, which accelerates skin wounds healing in human patients. Trial registration: ISRCTN96539803</p

Dermatitis and Aging-Related Barrier Dysfunction in Transgenic Mice Overexpressing an Epidermal-Targeted Claudin 6 Tail Deletion Mutant

The barrier function of the skin protects the mammalian body against infection, dehydration, UV irradiation and temperature fluctuation. Barrier function is reduced with the skin's intrinsic aging process, however the molecular mechanisms involved are unknown. We previously demonstrated that Claudin (Cldn)-containing tight junctions (TJs) are essential in the development of the epidermis and that transgenic mice overexpressing Cldn6 in the suprabasal layers of the epidermis undergo a perturbed terminal differentiation program characterized in part by reduced barrier function. To dissect further the mechanisms by which Cldn6 acts during epithelial differentiation, we overexpressed a Cldn6 cytoplasmic tail deletion mutant in the suprabasal compartment of the transgenic mouse epidermis. Although there were no gross phenotypic abnormalities at birth, subtle epidermal anomalies were present that disappeared by one month of age, indicative of a robust injury response. However, with aging, epidermal changes with eventual chronic dermatitis appeared with a concomitant barrier dysfunction manifested in increased trans-epidermal water loss. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed aberrant suprabasal Cldn localization with marked down-regulation of Cldn1. Both the proliferative and terminal differentiation compartments were perturbed as evidenced by mislocalization of multiple epidermal markers. These results suggest that the normally robust injury response mechanism of the epidermis is lost in the aging Involucrin-Cldn6-CΔ196 transgenic epidermis, and provide a model for evaluation of aging-related skin changes

Meta-Profiles of Gene Expression during Aging: Limited Similarities between Mouse and Human and an Unexpectedly Decreased Inflammatory Signature

Background: Skin aging is associated with intrinsic processes that compromise the structure of the extracellular matrix while promoting loss of functional and regenerative capacity. These processes are accompanied by a large-scale shift in gene expression, but underlying mechanisms are not understood and conservation of these mechanisms between humans and mice is uncertain. Results: We used genome-wide expression profiling to investigate the aging skin transcriptome. In humans, age-related shifts in gene expression were sex-specific. In females, aging increased expression of transcripts associated with T-cells, B-cells and dendritic cells, and decreased expression of genes in regions with elevated Zeb1, AP-2 and YY1 motif density. In males, however, these effects were contrasting or absent. When age-associated gene expression patterns in human skin were compared to those in tail skin from CB6F1 mice, overall human-mouse correspondence was weak. Moreover, inflammatory gene expression patterns were not induced with aging of mouse tail skin, and well-known aging biomarkers were in fact decreased (e.g., Clec7a, Lyz1 and Lyz2). These unexpected patterns and weak human-mouse correspondence may be due to decreased abundance of antigen presenting cells in mouse tail skin with age. Conclusions: Aging is generally associated with a pro-inflammatory state, but we have identified an exception to this pattern with aging of CB6F1 mouse tail skin. Aging therefore does not uniformly heighten inflammatory status across all mouse tissues. Furthermore, we identified both intercellular and intracellular mechanisms of transcriptome aging, including those that are sex- and species-specific

Sorghum economics under different irrigation methods and water doses

In this study, an attempt has been made to evaluate the biomass production and the economic results of sorghum growing in Greece under surface and sub-surface drip irrigation and with three different amounts of irrigating water: 100%, 70% and 50% of the daily evapotranspiration. Thus, a field experiment comprising a completely randomized block design with six treatments and four replications was conducted at the Experimental Farm Station of the University of Thessaly in 2007. Water needs were satisfied by using full (100% ET) and partial (70% and 50% ET) amounts of irrigating water. Crop production was measured in terms of dry biomass, while gross revenue, production costs and gross margin were the economic parameters to be measured and examined. The comparative data analysis of the two irrigation methods showed that the subsurface drip irrigation method was performing significantly better than the surface one in biomass production and other economic results

FIBER SORGHUM BIOMASS YIELD, WATER USE EFFICIENCY AND ECONOMIC RESULTS UNDER DIFFERENT LEVELS OF WATER, USING SUBSURFACE AND SURFACE IRRIGATION SYSTEMS

In 2007, an attempt was made to study the biomass production and the economic results of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench, variety H 132), growing in Greece, under two different irrigation methods, surface and subsurface, and three different amounts of irrigating water: 100%, 70% and 50% of the daily evapotranspiration (ET). The study is part of a wider research concerning the potential growing of energy plants, and using biomass for energy production. A field experiment comprising of a completely randomized block design with six treatments and four replications was conducted at the Experimental Farm Station of the University of Thessaly. Water needs were satisfied by using full (100% ET) and supplement (70% and 50% ET) amounts of irrigating water. Crop production was measured in terms of dry biomass, while gross revenue, production expenses and gross margin were the economic parameters measured and examined. The comparative data analysis of the two irrigation methods showed that the subsurface drip irrigation method significantly excels the surface one, in biomass production and other economic results

WATER-SAVING BY IRRIGATING TWO VARIETIES OF SORGHUM (ENERGY PLANT) WITH TREATED MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER: A 3-YEARS STUDY IN CENTRAL GREECE

In the last few years, the problem of limited precipitations and, consequently, the lack of water along with the rapid climatic changes have been one of the main topics of discussion in environmental forums all over the world. On the other hand, as the world population increases, so does water consumption for civil and agricultural use and urban wastewater. Under these circumstances, the national scientific communities focus their research on the possibility of reusing treated urban wastewater in agriculture as a source of irrigation water. The effects of treated urban wastewater, by using subsurface drip irrigation (S.D.I.), on yield and growth of two varieties of sorghum, sweet and fiber, used as an energy plant, were studied, as well as the freshwater saving. For this purpose, experiments were made at the Experimental Farm Station of the University of Thessaly in the Velestino area during the years 2005 and 2006 (sweet sorghum) and 2008 (fiber sorghum) that consisted of a fully randomized complete block design with two treatments in four replications. The first treatment was irrigated with freshwater (FW 100ET), whereas the second one was irrigated once with wastewater and twice with freshwater (WW 100ET), in sequence. The results showed that the rate of growth (height of plants) and the final yield of dry biomass differed but not significantly (P<0.05) in both treatments during the three years of study. However, by using processed urban wastewater, a significant saving in fresh irrigation water was achieved. Irrigating sorghum with treated wastewater seems to be a quite promising method to produce energy from biomass

Forecasting reference evapotranspiration using time lagged recurrent neural network

The aim of this study is to employ a Time Lagged Recurrent Neural Network (TLRNN) model for forecasting near future reference evapotranspiration (ETo) values by using climate data taken from meteorological station located in Velestino, a village near the city of Volos, in Thessaly, centre of Greece. TLRNN is Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP-NN) with locally recurrent connections and short-term memory structures that can learn temporal variations from the dataset. The network topology is using input layer, hidden layer and a single output with the ETo values. The network model was trained using the back propagation through time algorithm. Performance evaluations of the network model done by comparing the Mean Bias Error (MBE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Coefficient of Determination (R2) and Index of Agreement (IA). The evaluation of the results showed that the developed TLRNN model works properly and the forecasting ETo values approximate the FAO-56 PM values. A good proximity of predictions with the experimental data was noticed, achieving coefficients of determination (R2) greater than 75% and root mean square error (RMSE) values less than 1.0 mm/day. The forecasts range up to three days ahead and can be helpful to farmers for irrigation scheduling. © 2020, World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society. All rights reserved