donepezil (E 2022 / TK023 / TK 023)

Tiny patch of Amazon probably holds 40,000 insect species - many new to science.

Lenharo Mariana M

DoE-oriented optimization of a chitosan-based nanoemulgel of clobetasol propionate for therapeutic intervention in psoriasis.

Prajapati Shiv Kumar SK, Lashkari Deepa D, Acharya Sweta S, Bajpai Meenakshi M et al.

Psoriasis is an inflammatory skin disease caused by immune-mediated inflammation. Clobetasol propionate (Cp), a steroid, reduces inflammation by binding the glucocorticoid receptor. This study aimed to optimize a Cp-loaded nanoemulsion (Cp-NE) with a focus on its cytocompatibility with HaCaT keratinocytes and physicochemical stability during storage. Optimization was performed using a Box-Behnken design. Cp-NE was loaded into a chitosan gel to prolong skin retention. The formulations were analyzed for globule size, PDI, ZP, and viscosity. In vitro, drug release and skin permeability were also assessed. The optimized Cp-NE had a globule size of 122 nm, a %EE of 89%, a PDI of 0.508, and a ZP of -28 mV. The Cp-NE gel had a pH of 6.13 and a viscosity of 6799 cps, making it suitable for topical use. In vitro, free Cp released 91% within 2 h; Cp-NE released 83.4% at 12 h, indicating sustained release, which was further extended in chitosan gel. The release followed Higuchi kinetics, confirming diffusion control. Skin permeation was higher with the Cp-NE gel than with the free drug. Cytocompatibility tests showed higher cell viability for Cp-NE. Cytokine assays in HaCaT cells showed significant reductions in IL-6 and TNF-α with Cp-NE and Cp-NE gel, indicating anti-inflammatory potential. MTT assays confirmed biocompatibility, supporting transdermal use. The results suggest that chitosan nanoemulsions improve drug delivery and biocompatibility and reduce inflammation. Stability studies showed excellent stability at 5 ± 3 °C and 25 ± 2 °C/60 ± 5% RH. The Cp-NE gel exhibited favorable physicochemical properties, sustained release, enhanced skin permeation, and stability, highlighting its potential for psoriasis treatment.

Enhancing Epileptic Seizure Identification by Exploring Swin Transformer Integration within Conformer Architecture.

Wen Rufeng R, Lian Jian J

This study proposes a novel enhancement to the Conformer architecture for epileptic seizure identification by replacing the standard Vision Transformer (ViT) with the Swin Transformer. The proposed Swin-Conformer model leverages the hierarchical patch merging and shifted-window self-attention mechanisms of the Swin Transformer to better capture both local electrophysiological patterns and long-range temporal dependencies in electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. To handle the significant class imbalance inherent in epileptic EEG data, a weighted focal loss function is employed during training. The model is evaluated on the CHB-MIT dataset through stratified 10-fold cross-validation and validated on the independent Bonn EEG dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves accuracy of 99.24%, specificity of 99.55%, and sensitivity of 98.47% on the segment-based evaluation, as well as an event-based sensitivity of 99.50%, outperforming the original Conformer and state-of-the-art baseline methods. Ablation studies confirm that the performance gains originate from the Swin Transformer's hierarchical multi-scale feature representation and efficient local-global attention mechanism. Statistical analysis confirms that the improvements are statistically significant ([Formula: see text]).

Recurrent Nonischemic Left Ventricular Aneurysms: A Cardiac MRI-Driven Diagnosis in a DES Variant Carrier.

Garcia Nathalia Prata NP, Forti Diego D, Tassine Penatti Leticia Araujo LA, Moreira Henrique Turin HT et al.

Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is the gold-standard technique for characterizing nonischemic structural cardiomyopathies, offering tissue characterization and precise localization of myocardial injury. A 24-year-old man presented with recurrent chest discomfort and tachyarrhythmias. Initial CMR revealed an apical left ventricular aneurysm with imaging features consistent with a true aneurysm and normal coronary arteries, successfully treated surgically. Five years later, recurrent ventricular tachycardia prompted re-evaluation; CMR identified a new inferolateral basal aneurysm in a region previously normal on postoperative imaging. Coronary computed tomography angiography again showed normal epicardial coronary arteries. Surgical patch repair and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator placement were performed. Genetic testing revealed a pathogenic desmin (DES) c.785A>T (p.Glu262Val) variant and additional variant of unknown significance in VCL and CDH2. The identification of a pathogenic DES variant suggests a potential underlying susceptibility to structural remodeling, although causality cannot be confirmed. CMR was crucial in identifying sequential, anatomically distinct left ventricular aneurysms. The combination of recurrent nonischemic aneurysms and a pathogenic DES variant suggests a possible cytoskeletal genetic cardiomyopathy with arrhythmic risk.