Background:
Local drug delivery (LDD) systems have gained prominence in periodontal therapy due to their ability to achieve high drug concentrations at diseased sites while minimizing systemic adverse effects. Sustained-release formulations may further enhance therapeutic efficacy by prolonging drug bioavailability within periodontal pockets.
Methods:
This combined in-vitro–in-vivo experimental study evaluated a novel biodegradable sustained-release LDD system containing doxycycline hyclate. In-vitro analysis assessed drug release kinetics, antibacterial efficacy, and biocompatibility. In-vivo evaluation involved 60 patients with chronic periodontitis randomly allocated to three groups: Group I (scaling and root planing [SRP] + sustained-release doxycycline gel), Group II (SRP + conventional doxycycline gel), and Group III (SRP alone). Clinical parameters, including probing pocket depth (PPD), clinical attachment level (CAL), and gingival index (GI), were recorded at baseline, 1 month, and 3 months.
Results:
In-vitro testing demonstrated sustained drug release up to 14 days with a cumulative release of 92.6 ± 3.1%. Group I showed significantly greater reductions in PPD (3.1 ± 0.6 mm) and CAL gain (2.8 ± 0.5 mm) at 3 months compared with Group II and Group III (P < 0.001). Microbial reduction was highest in Group I (78.4%).
Conclusion:
The novel sustained-release LDD system demonstrated superior in-vitro release characteristics and enhanced clinical outcomes when used as an adjunct to SRP, supporting its potential role in advanced periodontal therapy.
Complex organic molecules (COMs) are widely detected in protostellar and protoplanetary systems, where they are thought to have been inherited in large part from earlier evolutionary phases. The chemistry of COMs in these earlier phases, namely starless and prestellar cores, remains poorly understood, as models often struggle to reproduce the observed gas-phase abundances of these species. We simulate the formation of a molecular cloud, and the cores within it, out of the diffuse interstellar medium, and follow the chemical evolution of the cloud material starting from purely-atomic initial conditions. We find that the formation of both gas- and ice-phase COMs precedes the formation of cores as distinct objects, beginning at gas densities of a few $10^3 \,{\rm cm}^{-3}$. Much of this COM-enriched material remains at these relatively modest densities for several Myr, which may provide a reservoir for accretion onto planet-forming discs in later evolutionary stages. We suggest that models of core and disc chemistry should not ignore the complex dynamical evolution which precedes these structures, even when studying supposedly late-forming molecules such as CH$_3$OH and CH$_3$CN.
The circumstellar liquid-water habitable zone guides our search for potentially inhabited exoplanets, but remains observationally untested. We show that the inner edge of the habitable zone can now be mapped among exoplanets using their lack of surface water, which, unlike the presence of water, can be unambiguously revealed by atmospheric sulfur species. Using coupled climate-chemistry modelling we find that the observability of sulfur-gases on exoplanets depends critically on the ultraviolet (UV) flux of their host star, a property with wide variation: most M-dwarfs have a low UV flux and thereby allow the detection of sulfur-gases as a tracer of dry planetary surfaces; however, the UV flux of Trappist-1 may be too high for sulfur to disambiguate uninhabitable from habitable surfaces on any of its planets. We generalise this result to show how a population-level search for sulfur-chemistry on M-dwarf planets can be used to empirically define the Habitable Zone in the near-future.
B. John Rozar Raj, Shanmugasundaram Somasundaram, Bharan Ravindran
et al.
Aim:
The aim of the study was to assess the pre-operative assessment of the anatomical position of the inferior alveolar nerve using computed tomography during bilateral sagittal split osteotomy surgery.
Materials and Methods:
The inferior alveolar nerve was delineated on a pre-operative CBCT scan from the position of the lingual first visible to the mental foramen on both sides. The buccolingual and supero-inferior distances from the inferior alveolar nerve canal were measured bilaterally at four different locations. The location of the nerve during the partial and complete split was recorded based on the CT data.
Results:
There was a higher average distance in 47 and 37 locations, respectively, between the buccal cortex and the IAN canal. There were statistically significant differences in the mean distance between the lingual cortex and the IAN canal in 45 and 35 regions, respectively. Ten patients had no visible nerve on the right side after the partial split, whereas eight patients had no visible nerve on the left side. There was statistically no difference between the right and left sides. Only eight individuals on the left side had the nerve located in the distal section, compared to eleven on the right. There were statistically significant variations between the left and right sides.
Conclusion:
The location and trajectory of the IAN canal can be ascertained with pre-operative CT imaging before BSSO surgery, which lowers the possibility of direct IAN bundle damage during the procedure.
Abstract During the last decade, templating polymers using molecular imprinting has developed into an efficient strategy for the creation of selective synthetic receptor materials based on cross-linked polymeric networks. However, incubation studies and scavenger applications using conventional molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are rather time consuming, as they require centrifugation and extraction steps. An innovative method circumnavigating this problem is the use of magnetic particles facilitating separations via magnetic field. Nowadays, magnetic materials and especially nanoparticles find widespread applications in analytical chemistry, medicine, and biotechnology. Consequently, combining molecularly imprinting materials with magnetic properties provides a new class of smart synthetic receptors, i.e., magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MMIPs). This review gives an overview on these multifunctional materials prepared for biomacromolecules such as enzymes, proteins, DNA and viruses including synthesis, applications and also highlights future trends and perspectives in this emerging research field.
Anurag Acharya, Shivam Sharma, Robin Cosbey
et al.
A proliferation of Large Language Models (the GPT series, BLOOM, LLaMA, and more) are driving forward novel development of multipurpose AI for a variety of tasks, particularly natural language processing (NLP) tasks. These models demonstrate strong performance on a range of tasks; however, there has been evidence of brittleness when applied to more niche or narrow domains where hallucinations or fluent but incorrect responses reduce performance. Given the complex nature of scientific domains, it is prudent to investigate the trade-offs of leveraging off-the-shelf versus more targeted foundation models for scientific domains. In this work, we examine the benefits of in-domain pre-training for a given scientific domain, chemistry, and compare these to open-source, off-the-shelf models with zero-shot and few-shot prompting. Our results show that not only do in-domain base models perform reasonably well on in-domain tasks in a zero-shot setting but that further adaptation using instruction fine-tuning yields impressive performance on chemistry-specific tasks such as named entity recognition and molecular formula generation.
Dario De Angelis, Luca Longetti, Gabriele Bonano
et al.
Experimental characterization of the structural, electronic and dynamic properties of dilute systems in aqueous solvents, such as nanoparticles, molecules and proteins, are nowadays an open challenge. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is probably one of the most established approaches to this aim as it is element-specific. However, typical dilute systems of interest are often composed of light elements that require extreme-ultraviolet to soft X-ray photons. In this spectral regime, water and other solvents are rather opaque, thus demanding radical reduction of the solvent volume and removal of the liquid to minimize background absorption. Here, we present an experimental endstation designed to operate a liquid flat jet of sub-micrometre thickness in a vacuum environment compatible with extreme ultraviolet/soft XAS measurements in transmission geometry. The apparatus developed can be easily connected to synchrotron and free-electron-laser user-facility beamlines dedicated to XAS experiments. The conditions for stable generation and control of the liquid flat jet are analyzed and discussed. Preliminary soft XAS measurements on some test solutions are shown.
Nuclear and particle physics. Atomic energy. Radioactivity, Crystallography
Babiker Rasha, Mohammed Riham, Chaitanya Nallan CSK
et al.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurological condition that is much more common as people get older. It may start out early or late. Increased levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and microglial activation, both of which contribute to the central nervous system’s inflammatory state, are characteristics of AD. As opposed to this, periodontitis is a widespread oral infection brought on by Gram-negative anaerobic bacteria. By releasing pro-inflammatory cytokines into the systemic circulation, periodontitis can be classified as a “low-grade systemic disease.” Periodontitis and AD are linked by inflammation, which is recognized to play a crucial part in both the disease processes. The current review sought to highlight the effects of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are released during periodontal and Alzheimer’s diseases in the pathophysiology of both conditions. It also addresses the puzzling relationship between AD and periodontitis, highlighting the etiology and potential ramifications.
Mutations in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle enzyme fumarate hydratase (FH) are associated with a highly malignant form of renal cancer. We combined analytical chemistry and metabolic computational modelling to investigate the metabolic implications of FH loss in immortalized and primary mouse kidney cells. Here, we show that the accumulation of fumarate caused by the inactivation of FH leads to oxidative stress that is mediated by the formation of succinicGSH, a covalent adduct between fumarate and glutathione. Chronic succination of GSH, caused by the loss of FH, or by exogenous fumarate, leads to persistent oxidative stress and cellular senescence in vitro and in vivo. Importantly, the ablation of p21, a key mediator of senescence, in Fh1-deficient mice resulted in the transformation of benign renal cysts into a hyperplastic lesion, suggesting that fumarate-induced senescence needs to be bypassed for the initiation of renal cancers. Fumarate hydratase (FH) mutations are associated with renal cancer. Here, Zheng et al. use metabolomic and analytical chemistry approaches to reveal that fumarate accumulated due to FH loss covalently modifies intracellular glutathione, leading to oxidative stress and senescence.