Search

Background and purpose: Breast cancer remains one of the most prevalent cancers affecting women worldwide. Despite advances in conventional treatments such as chemotherapy, surgery, hormone therapy, and radiotherapy, their effectiveness in eradiating the disease is often limited. This study was conducted to explore the anticancer potential of artemisinin-based electrospun implantable scaffolds against the MDA-MB231 breast cancer cell line. Materials and methods: Artemisinin (Art)-loaded polycaprolactone scaffolds (Art-PCL NFs) were synthesized using electrospinning technique and their physical and chemical properties were characterized through electron microscopy and infrared spectroscopy. This experimental study involved the preparation and culture of MDA-MB231 cells in triplicate wells for both test and control groups. In the test groups, five concentrations of artemisinin in its free and nanoformulated form (0, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 30 mM) were applied and incubated for 24, 48, and 72 hours. The control group was incubated with cell culture medium without any treatment. The MTT assay was conducted to evaluate the cytotoxic effects of nanofibers containing Art on the MDA-MB231 cell line. Additionally, the expression levels of BCL2 and Bax genes in breast cancer cells treated with Art-PCL NFs were analyzed using Real-Time PCR. Data were analyzed using an unpaired t-test and GraphPad Prism version 8, and Excel software. Results: The MTT assay demonstrated that loading artemisinin onto polycaprolactone scaffolds significantly enhanced its cytotoxic effect on MDA-MB231 cancer cells (P

Objective and Approach Our study aimed to improve methods for identifying incident chronic kidney disease (CKD), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and diabetes in a young cohort from the Antecedents of Renal Disease in Aboriginal Children (ARDAC) study. We linked 20 state and federal administrative health datasets, including hospital records, Medicare claims, pharmaceutical data, and the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS) data for the first time. This approach facilitated the development of new algorithms for disease detection. Notably, we will make the R code for these algorithms publicly available. Results The analysis, involving 3,758 ARDAC study participants, created clinically robust definitions of CKD, CVD, and diabetes (by subtype) in the Australian linked data context; and revealed that all other data sources inaccurately estimated the incidence of diabetes compared to the NDSS data. Conclusions This key finding illustrates the discrepancy in diabetes incidence estimates and highlights the value of integrating multiple data sources for the investigation of chronic disease. Implications Hundreds of published studies use data linkage to investigate CVD, CKD, and diabetes in the Australian context. Our novel robust case definitions, and the identified poor estimation of diabetes incidence among young people, underscores the need to critically evaluate linked data sources used to inform health policy and research. By sharing the developed R code, we support ongoing efforts to improve transparency and replicability in health research. Our study refines chronic disease definition methods and contributes to more effective public health strategies, with particular focus on improving outcomes for Indigenous communities.

Objectives The Antecedents of Renal Disease in Aboriginal Children and Young Adults (“ARDAC”) study is the largest data linkage study on the kidney health of First Nations Peoples internationally. Using this data linkage this study aimed to describe the kidney health of ARDAC study participants (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) aged under 25 years old. Methods Administrative data from hospital and community healthcare utilisation, pharmaceutical claims, and biomedical measurements were used to create a hybrid case definition for CKD. Using this definition, descriptive statistics and bivariate analysis were used to describe sociodemographic characteristics of ARDAC participants with CKD. A ‘strengths-based’ regression analysis was also undertaken to challenge past ways of reporting kidney health outcomes and improve equity among young Aboriginal peoples. Results From the 3758 participants enrolled at baseline, approximately 1.5% of young people developed CKD between 2002 to 2019 (follow-up: 2-4 years). The current median age of the cohort is 26.7 years. The majority of those with CKD were identified through biomedical and pharmaceutical data combined, followed by community healthcare claims, and hospitalizations. Findings from the regression analysis will provide insight into the socioeconomic factors that lead to CKD in young people and will be the focus of this presentation. Conclusions/Implications Our findings report for the first time the socioeconomic drivers of kidney health equity for young Aboriginal peoples. Understanding these drivers provides opportunities to work in partnership with communities to develop culturally safe health promotion.

Abstract In tissue engineering (TE) and regenerative medicine, the accessibility of engineered scaffolds that modulate inflammatory states is extremely necessary. The aim of the current work was to assess the efficacy of metformin (MET) incorporated in PLGA/Collagen nanofibers (Met-PLGA/Col NFs) to modulate RAW264.7 macrophage phenotype from pro-inflammatory status (M1) to anti-inflammatory status (M2). Given this, MET-PLGA/Col NFs were fabricated using an electrospinning technique. Structural characterization such as morphology, chemical and mechanical properties, and drug discharge pattern were assessed. MTT assay test exposed that MET-PLGA/Col NFs remarkably had increased cell survival in comparison with pure PLGA/Collagen NFs and control (p

In this article, the authors will describe a creative writing therapeutic group program they developed based on narrative therapy and narrative medicine principles. This was a Social Science and Humanities Research Council—Partnership Engagement Grant funded project, the aim of which was to develop a facilitator’s manual for people interested in offering this group, titled “Journey through Words”. The link to the agency partner’s website, where the manual is available, is provided. The group program is structured over 6 weeks and includes a writing prompt each week, focusing on the storyline of resilience rather than the storyline of diagnosis or disease. Using a narrative inquiry approach, the facilitators kept brief field notes following group meetings. These field notes indicate that although spirituality was not planned as an identified focus of the program, due to the space narrative therapy provides for people to describe their values, preferences, and hopes during hardship, the experience of the group was that members shared reflections which were deeply spiritual in nature.

Abstract Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) led to COVID-19 and has become a pandemic worldwide with mortality of millions. Nanotechnology can be used to deliver antiviral medicines or other types of viral reproduction-inhibiting medications. At various steps of viral infection, nanotechnology could suggest practical solutions for usage in the fight against viral infection. Nanotechnology-based approaches can help in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nanoparticles can play an essential role in progressing SARS-CoV-2 treatment and vaccine production in efficacy and safety. Nanocarriers have increased the speed of vaccine development and the efficiency of vaccines. As a result, the increased investigation into nanoparticles as nano-delivery systems and nanotherapeutics in viral infection, and the development of new and effective methods are essential for inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 infection. In this article, we compare the attributes of several nanoparticles and evaluate their capability to create novel vaccines and treatment methods against different types of viral diseases, especially the SARS-CoV-2 disease. Graphical Abstract

Decline in the ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL) or ' functional decline' is a major health concern among aging populations. With intervention, ADL decline may be delayed, prevented or reversed. The capacity to anticipate the trajectory of future functional change can enhance care planning and improve outcome for residents. Methods This is a 36 months' retrospective longitudinal analysis of LTC residents in five Canadian provinces. Group-based trajectory modelling (GBTM) was performed to identify distinct trajectories and resident attributes associated with membership of the trajectory groups. Results A total of 204 036 LTC residents were included in this study. Their admission mean age was 83.7 years (SD = 8.6), and 63.3% were females. Our model identified four distinct trajectories namely: ' Catastrophic decline ' (n  = 48 441, 22.7%), ' Rapid decline with some recovery ' (n  = 27 620, 18.7%), ' Progressive decline ' trajectory (n = 30 287, 14.4%), and the ' No/Minimal decline ' (n  = 97 688, 47.9%) Residents' admission ADL Hierarchy score was the single, strongest predictor of functional decline trajectory that residents followed. Residents with ADLH 5–6 OR 0.03 (0.03–0.04) were least likely to follow a catastrophic decline trajectory, while those with ADLH 5–6 OR 39.05 (36/60–41.88) were most likely to follow a minimal or no decline trajectory. Conclusion Results of this study further highlight the heterogeneity of health trajectory among residents in LTC setting, re-affirming the need for personalized care. The study shows who among residents would be most at risk for different levels of functional decline. The study findings provide useful information that would assist both immediate and advanced care planning as well as to forecast care personnel requirements into the future based on total acuity levels of residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moodle represents a great contribution to the educational world since it provides an evolving platform for Virtual Learning Management Systems (VLMS) that became a standard de facto for most of the educational institutions around the world. Through the pedagogical functions provided, it collects in the many globally spread out databases a huge amount of information regarding the activities that teachers and students perform during the learning process. This reality makes Moodle a natural choice for conducting experimental research by Artificial Intelligence researchers interested in theories for improving learning and teaching; particularly those related with the controversial "learning styles" concept. Roughly defined, a learning style intends to be a model of the way and media an apprentice acquires knowledge and hence the way a teacher should present that knowledge to the apprentice matching his/her learning style. Independently of the many controversies (be these scientific, psychological or even ethical) about the soundness and real outcomes that such ideas can bring to improve learning, it's a worthy intriguing research area for many researchers pursuing the ideal automated teacher: "the teachbot dream." Behind this goal we have developed Middle, a Moodle plug-in able to infer the learning style of each student taking a course using an advanced version of a Bayesian network model that we previously tested. Middle intends support "personalized" teaching based on the Felder-Silverman's ILS model and has been evaluated through controlled experiments and pilot test in high schools and university courses. Such experiments showed promising results that shed some light on learning styles modeling and its potential outcomes. During the experience we found strong limitations in the Moodle design regarding its supposed flexibility to incorporate new functionalities. From a strict software architecture point of view, we found that such flexibility is far from being enough to easier the implementation of the dynamic computational behavior required to support a "teachbot." This made our effort much harder than expected, perhaps because of the illusion induced by the widespread use of Moodle. In this article we present our results and experiences extending Moddle with intelligent behavior from a software architecture point of view, focusing on the lessons learnt in such extension. Our experience indicates that this simplicity is far from being so and hence it is worth to share the limitations and how we overcome them.

Este artículo aborda el tema de las reglas y principios que rigen los métodos de interpretación previstos en los artículos 31 a 33 de la Convención de Viena sobre Derechos de los Tratados. El propósito es demostrar, con base en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Internacional de Justicia, que este marco jurídico integrado para la interpretación de los tratados, los que reflejan el Derecho de Costumbre Internacional, establecen medios obligatorios, medios complementarios, así como ciertas reglas para la interpretación de los tratados autenticado en dos o más idiomas, que le garantizan la intérprete certeza sobre la función de las herramientas y sobre la pertinencia concreta de los diferentes medios de interpretación y la manera en que deben entrar en interacción con los demás medios en la unidad del proceso como única operación combinada.

Background: This article examines intrapreneurship principles that can contribute to enhancing the effectiveness of service delivery in the O.R. Tambo District Municipality. Aim: The aim of this research was to investigate whether municipalities practise intrapreneurship and how intrapreneurship drivers may be incorporated into the municipal environment to improve service delivery to surrounding communities. Setting: This study is based in the O.R. Tambo District Municipality, and the target population is middle- and top-level managers from all the municipalities in the district. Methods: The research is situated within the interpretivist paradigm and employed the qualitative method of semi-structured interviews, which were purposively conducted with 12 middle- and top-level managers. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. Municipal documents were also used for triangulation purposes. Results: The empirical findings revealed that policies, laws and regulatory aspects are a hindrance to the development of intrapreneurial practices. The bureaucratic environment that exists is not flexible enough to encourage intrapreneurial conduct among employees. The blurred lines between the administrative and political wings in the municipalities lead to a constricting environment that hinders intrapreneurial practices in the municipalities. Conclusion: A framework for the integration of intrapreneurship drivers to improve service delivery was developed. The article recommends that employees and the community should play a larger role in the planning process so that they can assist to identify best practices and alternate approaches to certain identified issues. The implementation of projects should be left to the administrative managers and staff, and contingency platforms should be introduced to manage transition periods with new replacements.

Exploration of the pollution status of river-based water sources is important to ensure quality and safe drinking water supply for the public. The present study investigated physicochemical parameters of surface water in the upper segment of River Mahaweli, which provides drinking water to the Nuwara Eliya and Kandy districts of Sri Lanka. River surface water from 15 intakes and treated water from 14 Water Treatment Plants (WTPs) were tested for pH, water temperature, turbidity, EC, COD, 6 anions, 21 cations, 3 pesticides, and 30 antibiotics once every 3 months from June 2022 to July 2023. Except for turbidity and iron concentrations, all other parameters were within the permissible range as per the Sri Lanka Standard Specification for Potable Water (SLS 614:2013). The uppermost Kotagala WTP raw water had a high concentration of iron due to runoff from areas with abundant iron-bearing minerals. Turbidity increased as the river flowed downstream, reaching its highest value of 13.43 NTU at the lowermost Haragama. Four intakes had raw surface water suitable for drinking as per the Water Quality Index (WQI). Pollution increased gradually towards downstream mainly due to agricultural runoff, industrial effluents, and urbanization. Poor water quality at the upstream Thalawakale-Nanuoya intake was due to highly contaminated effluent water coming from Lake Gregory in Nuwara Eliya. Cluster analysis categorized WTP locations in the river segment into 3 clusters as low, moderate, and high based on contaminations. Principal component analysis revealed that the significance of the 41.56% variance of the raw water was due to the pH and the presence of heavy metals V, Cr, Ni, Rb, Co, Sr, and As. All treated water from 15 WTPs had very good to excellent quality. In general, heavy metal contamination was low as indicated by the heavy metal pollution index (HPI) and heavy metal evaluation index (HEI). The treatment process could remove up to 94.7% of the turbidity. This is the first attempt to cluster the river catchment of the Mahaweli River based on physicochemical parameters of river water. We present here the land-use pattern-based pollution of the river and efficacy of the water treatment process using the Mahaweli River Basin as a case study. Regular monitoring and treatment adjustments at identified points are recommended to maintain the delivery of safe drinking water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder and is characterized by the degeneration of the dopamine (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, leading to a loss of DA in the basal ganglia. The presence of aggregates of alpha-synuclein (α-synuclein) is seen as the main contributor to the pathogenesis and progression of PD. Evidence suggests that the secretome of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) could be a potential cell-free therapy for PD. However, to accelerate the integration of this therapy in the clinical setting, there is still the need to develop a protocol for the large-scale production of secretome under good manufacturing practices (GMP) guidelines. Bioreactors have the capacity to produce large quantities of secretomes in a scalable manner, surpassing the limitations of planar static culture systems. However, few studies focused on the influence of the culture system used to expand MSC, on the secretome composition. In this work, we studied the capacity of the secretome produced by bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (BMSC) expanded in a spinner flask (SP) and in a Vertical-Wheel™ bioreactor (VWBR) system, to induce neurodifferentiation of human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) and to prevent dopaminergic neuron degeneration caused by the overexpression of α-synuclein in one Caenorhabditis elegans model of PD. Results showed that secretomes from both systems were able to induce neurodifferentiation, though the secretome produced in the SP system had a greater effect. Additionally, in the conditions of our study, only the secretome produced in SP had a neuroprotective potential. Lastly, the secretomes had different profiles regarding the presence and/or specific intensity of different molecules, namely, interleukin (IL)-6, IL-4, matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP2), and 3 (MMP3), tumor necrosis factor-beta (TNF-β), osteopontin, nerve growth factor beta (NGFβ), granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (GCSF), heparin-binding (HB) epithelial growth factor (EGF)-like growth factor (HB-EGF), and IL-13. Overall, our results suggest that the culture conditions might have influenced the secretory profiles of cultured cells and, consequently, the observed effects. Additional studies should further explore the effects that different culture systems have on the secretome potential of PD.