Biogenic silica microparticles as a new and sustainable cosmetic ingredient: Assessment of performance and quality parameters.

The demand for sustainable products is increasing worldwide and cosmetic industry is not an exception. Besides exploring nature as source of new ingredients, their production must be sustainable and should use environmentally friendly processes. In this work, biogenic silica microparticles were synthesized from sugarcane ash, and their potential application as cosmetic and skincare ingredient was evaluated. For such application, several properties were validated, including cytotoxicity in skin keratinocytes, potential sensitization effect on skin peptides, stimulation of pro-collagen I alpha 1, wound healing capacity, as well as the ingredient stability along a storage period. Biogenic silica showed to be non-cytotoxic on skin keratinocytes, at concentrations up to 5 wt%, and non-skin sensitizer. A positive effect on the stimulation of pro-collagen I alpha 1 suggests a potential anti-ageing activity, while the migration of fibroblasts to a wounded area suggests a regenerative capacity. Under an accelerated stability study, biogenic silica showed an increase on the loss on drying, but no changes were observed on its functional properties, mainly oil absorption capacity, as well the microbiological quality, which was maintained. Overall, novel biogenic silica microparticles produced from a sustainable source are safe, stable over time and have potential to be used as a cosmetic and skincare ingredient.

Value-based decision-making for orphan drugs with multiple criteria decision analysis: burosumab for the treatment of X-linked hypophosphatemia.

OBJECTIVE: Burosumab is an orphan medicinal product (OMP) approved in Europe for the treatment of X-linked hypophosphatemia (XLH). The aim of this study was to assess the value of burosumab versus conventional therapy for the treatment of paediatric XLH, through a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework for health technology assessment (HTA) of OMPs in Portugal. METHODS: The MCDA framework considered 14 criteria related to disease burden, therapeutic value and economic burden. A multidisciplinary panel of national stakeholders participated in a two-phase exercise. In the first phase, relative weights and part-worth utilities for the criteria and their levels were elicited and a reimbursement likelihood function was calibrated through adaptive conjoint analysis. In the second phase, burosumab and conventional therapy were assessed against the criteria, providing a global value score (0-100) and reimbursement likelihood (0-100%) for both. RESULTS: Of the 14 criteria, disease burden, therapeutic value and economic burden criteria represented 27.29%, 57.17% and 15.53% of the total weight in the decision, respectively. All disease burden and some therapeutic value criteria, typically not included in traditional HTA, represented 47.88% of the total weight. Burosumab was unanimously considered superior to conventional therapy, with an average (range) global value score of 84.96 (82.48-86.54) against 48.06 (43.37-57.68), and reimbursement likelihood of 97.50% (96.78%-98.32%) against 43.66% (31.48%-68.73%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: MCDA represents a powerful tool in HTA decision-making for OMPs. The results of this MCDA acknowledge burosumab as a disease-modifying drug, deemed superior to conventional therapy for the treatment of paediatric XLH.

Nursing Epidemiological Approach of Hypertension Management in a Public Health Service from the Northern Region of Portugal.

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological surveillance of a nursing diagnosis is an approach anchored in a post-modern epidemiology focused on a person's health disease responses. Regarding public health priorities, the population where our study occurred had as a priority problem arterial hypertension. Related to this chronic disease, nursing diagnoses about health disease responses in primary healthcare has, as a major focus, Therapeutic Regimen Management. Our aim was to study the nursing diagnosis in this issue from an epidemiological approach. METHODS: A descriptive study from an epidemiological approach was developed, analyzing nursing diagnoses in hypertensive patients. RESULTS: We found 17.7% of undiagnosed patients and better diagnoses in patients with complications than in those without complications. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing records need to be improved in order to promote more robust studies in the post-modern epidemiology for the future.

Comparative assessment of computational methods for the determination of solvation free energies in alcohol-based molecules.

The determination of differences in solvation free energies between related drug molecules remains an important challenge in computational drug optimization, when fast and accurate calculation of differences in binding free energy are required. In this study, we have evaluated the performance of five commonly used polarized continuum model (PCM) methodologies in the determination of solvation free energies for 53 typical alcohol and alkane small molecules. In addition, the performance of these PCM methods, of a thermodynamic integration (TI) protocol and of the Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) and generalized Born (GB) methods, were tested in the determination of solvation free energies changes for 28 common alkane-alcohol transformations, by the substitution of an hydrogen atom for a hydroxyl substituent. The results show that the solvation model D (SMD) performs better among the PCM-based approaches in estimating solvation free energies for alcohol molecules, and solvation free energy changes for alkane-alcohol transformations, with an average error below 1 kcal/mol for both quantities. However, for the determination of solvation free energy changes on alkane-alcohol transformation, PB and TI yielded better results. TI was particularly accurate in the treatment of hydroxyl groups additions to aromatic rings (0.53 kcal/mol), a common transformation when optimizing drug-binding in computer-aided drug design.

Comparative assessment of theoretical methods for the determination of geometrical properties in biological zinc complexes.

In the present study, we have compared the performance of the density functional theory (DFT) functionals B1B95, B3LYP, B97-2, BP86, and BPW91 with MP2 for geometry determination in biological mononuclear Zn complexes. A total of 15 different basis sets, of rather diverse complexity, were tested, several which included also three different types of common effective-core potentials: Los Alamos, Steven-Basch-Krauss, and Stuttgart-Dresden. In addition, the ability to describe mononuclear Zn biological systems using relatively simple models of the metal coordination sphere, comprising only the metal atom and a simplified representation of the ligands at the first coordination sphere, starting from a set of high-resolution X-ray crystallographic structures, is evaluated for 90 combinations of method/basis set. The results show that the use of such models allows for a relatively accurate description of the Zn-ligand bond lengths, although failing to correctly represent the topology of the metal coordination sphere (namely, the angles involving the metal atom) if constraints at the Calpha atoms are not considered. Globally, B3LYP had the best average performance in the test, closely followed by MP2, whereas B1B95 was the least accurate method. The study also points out B3LYP/CEP-121G and B3LYP/SDD, which use, respectively, the Steven-Basch-Krauss and the Stuttgart-Dresden effective-core potentials, as the best compromise between accuracy and CPU time for the geometrical characterization of metal-ligand bond lengths in Zn biological systems.