Reduction of intra-articular adhesion by topical application of daidzein following knee surgery in rabbits

Background: Intra-articular adhesion is the commonest complication that is faced by orthopedic surgeons after knee surgery. Thus, the present investigation evaluates the effect of daidzein on intra-articular adhesion in rabbits.Material and methods: All the rabbits were separated in to four different groups each group carries ten rabbits. Cancellous bone was exposed in each rabbit by removing cortical bone from both side of the femoral condyle. Following daidzein (2.5, 5 and 10 mg/ml) was topically applied for the duration of 10 min to the decorticated areas. Thereafter for the period of 4 week surgical limb was fixed. Effect of daidzein on intra articular adhesion was estimated by visual score through macroscopic examination, histopathology study, hydroxyproline content, fibroblast and collage density.Results: Data obtained in the study suggest that topical application of daidzein (5 and 10 mg/ml) loose the collagen and significantly decreases the adhesion at the decorticated areas. Moreover there were significant reduction in the fibroblast density, hydroxyproline content and optical density of collagen tissue in daidzein (5 and 10 mg/ml) treated group than control.Conclusion: Thus present study concludes that topical application of daidzein reduces intra-articular adhesion around the knee.Keywords: Daidzein, articular adhesion, fibroblast, chondrocyt

Arglabin as a potential drug in the treatment of Freund’s complete adjuvant-induced arthritis in rats

Purpose: To investigate the anti-arthritic activity of arglabin in Freund’s complete adjuvant- induced arthritis in rats, and the likely underlying mechanism.Methods: A total of 40 male albino Wistar rats weighing between 120 and 150 g were used for this study. The rats were divided into four groups of ten rats each: control group, arthritis group, arglabintreated group, and standard (STD) group. Chronic arthritis was induced by injecting Freund's complete adjuvant in the plantar region of the rats. Rats in the arglabin-treated group received 5 ng/g arglabin intraperitoneally (i.p.), while those in the STD group received 1.5 mg/kg indomethacin, p.o. for 4 weeks. The development of arthritis was assessed at 0, 7, 14, 21 and 28th day of protocol by measuring thermal hyperalgesia, mechanical nociceptive threshold, arthritic score and paw volume. Activities of liver alkaline phosphatase (ALP), alanine amino-transaminase (ALT) and aspartate amino-transaminase (AST), and the levels of inflammatory cytokines -tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), interleukin (IL)-6 and interleukin (IL)-1β were measured in the synovial fluid, while those of inflammatory mediators - thromboxane B2 (TXB2), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and leukotriene B4 (LTB4) were determined in serum. The expressions of mRNAs of nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NFkB), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) were also determined in rat synovial tissues.Results: Arglabin significantly decreased the paw swelling and arthritic scores, but significantly increased the paw withdrawal latency, when compared to the arthritis group (p < 0.05). It also attenuated the altered levels of inflammatory cytokines in arthritic rats, and significantly reduced the levels of inflammatory mediators, when compared to the arthritis group (p < 0.05). The expressions of mRNAs of NFkB, COX-2 and iNOS also significantly decreased in arglabin-treated group, relative to the arthritis group (p < 0.05).Conclusion: The anti-arthritic activity of arglabin is due to its effect on inflammatory pathway via decreases in the levels of inflammatory mediators and cytokines, and decrease in the expressions of NFkB, COX-2 and iNOS in the synovial tissues of arthritic rats.Keywords: Arglabin, Arthritis, Freund’s complete adjuvant, Inflammatory cytokine

Observation of forbidden phonons and dark excitons by resonance Raman scattering in few-layer WS2_2

The optical properties of the two-dimensional (2D) crystals are dominated by tightly bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) and lattice vibration modes (phonons). The exciton-phonon interaction is fundamentally important to understand the optical properties of 2D materials and thus help develop emerging 2D crystal based optoelectronic devices. Here, we presented the excitonic resonant Raman scattering (RRS) spectra of few-layer WS$_2$ excited by 11 lasers lines covered all of A, B and C exciton transition energies at different sample temperatures from 4 to 300 K. As a result, we are not only able to probe the forbidden phonon modes unobserved in ordinary Raman scattering, but also can determine the bright and dark state fine structures of 1s A exciton. In particular, we also observed the quantum interference between low-energy discrete phonon and exciton continuum under resonant excitation. Our works pave a way to understand the exciton-phonon coupling and many-body effects in 2D materials.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

REDUCTION OF INTRA-ARTICULAR ADHESION BY TOPICAL APPLICATION OF DAIDZEIN FOLLOWING KNEE SURGERY IN RABBITS

Background: Intra-articular adhesion is the commonest complication that is faced by orthopedic surgeons after knee surgery. Thus, the present investigation evaluates the effect of daidzein on intra-articular adhesion in rabbits. Material and methods: All the rabbits were separated in to four different groups each group carries ten rabbits. Cancellous bone was exposed in each rabbit by removing cortical bone from both side of the femoral condyle. Following daidzein (2.5, 5 and 10 mg/ml) was topically applied for the duration of 10 min to the decorticated areas. Thereafter for the period of 4 week surgical limb was fixed. Effect of daidzein on intra articular adhesion was estimated by visual score through macroscopic examination, histopathology study, hydroxyproline content, fibroblast and collage density. Results: Data obtained in the study suggest that topical application of daidzein (5 and 10 mg/ml) loose the collagen and significantly decreases the adhesion at the decorticated areas. Moreover there were significant reduction in the fibroblast density, hydroxyproline content and optical density of collagen tissue in daidzein (5 and 10 mg/ml) treated group than control. Conclusion: Thus present study concludes that topical application of daidzein reduces intra-articular adhesion around the knee

Comprehensive analysis reveals CCDC60 as a potential biomarker correlated with prognosis and immune infiltration of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

BackgroundCoiled-coil domain containing 60 (CCDC60) is a member of the CCDC family, which participates in the progression of many types of cancer. However, the prognostic value of CCDC60 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC) and its function in tumor immunity remain unclear.MethodsCCDC60 expression and its prognostic potential in HNSC were evaluated by bioinformatics approaches, which was validated in human HNSC samples. Genetic alteration analysis of CCDC60 and the underlying biological function of CCDC60 related co-expressed genes in HNSC were analyzed. The impact of CCDC60 on the regulation of immune infiltration in HNSC was comprehensively investigated. In vitro, a series of functional assays on CCDC60 were performed in HNSC cells.ResultsOur study has indicated that compared with the adjacent normal tissues, CCDC60 expression was considerably downregulated in HNSC tissues. High CCDC60 expression was connected with favorable outcome of HNSC patients, and its prognostic significance was examined by distinct clinical characteristics. We identified the CCDC60-related co-expression genes, which were mainly enriched in the NOD-like receptor signaling pathway associated with the inhibition of tumor growth, leading to a better prognosis of HNSC patients. In vitro, CCDC60 overexpression significantly inhibited the growth, migration and invasiveness but regulated cell cycle progression, and promoted cell adhesion of Fadu and Cal27 cells. Additionally, high CCDC60 expression had strong connections with the infiltrating levels of immune cells, immune marker sets, immunomodulators and chemokines in HNSC, suggesting that targeting CCDC60 could be a promising strategy to enhance the efficacy of immunotherapy for HNSC patients.ConclusionTumor suppressor CCDC60 may be identified as a prognostic and immune-related indicator in HNSC, which had the potential functions in regulating the immune infiltration of HNSC and improving the response to immunotherapy for HNSC patients

A Comparison of Low Temperature Alkali and High Temperature Acid Pretreatments for Improving Saccharification of Spent Mushroom Substrate

AbstractLow temperature alkali (LTA) pretreatment and high temperature acid (HTA) pretreatment methods were applied to spent mushroom substrate (SMS) for providing comparative performance data on the enhancement of enzymatic saccharification and the change of composition and structure. LTA pretreatment contributed to higher lignin removal (67.6%) and enzymatic digestibility (85.6%) during enzymatic hydrolysis, while HTA pretreatment resulted in higher hemicellulose reduction (85.3%) but lower enzymatic digestibility (43.5%). The physical structure was destroyed at certain degree and changes in cellulose crystallinity occurred after both LTA and HTA pretreatments. Besides, the effect of lignin reduction in alkali pretreatment on glucose yield was studied. These results indicated that LTA pretreatment had the potential to be developed into a cost effective process for producing bioproducts from lignocellulosic materials

SDF-Pack: Towards Compact Bin Packing with Signed-Distance-Field Minimization

Robotic bin packing is very challenging, especially when considering practical needs such as object variety and packing compactness. This paper presents SDF-Pack, a new approach based on signed distance field (SDF) to model the geometric condition of objects in a container and compute the object placement locations and packing orders for achieving a more compact bin packing. Our method adopts a truncated SDF representation to localize the computation, and based on it, we formulate the SDF minimization heuristic to find optimized placements to compactly pack objects with the existing ones. To further improve space utilization, if the packing sequence is controllable, our method can suggest which object to be packed next. Experimental results on a large variety of everyday objects show that our method can consistently achieve higher packing compactness over 1,000 packing cases, enabling us to pack more objects into the container, compared with the existing heuristics under various packing settings