Oleoylethanolamide protects mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) from oxidative stress and reduces adipogenic related genes expression in adipose-derived MSCs undergoing adipocyte differentiation.

BACKGROUND: Human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (hMSCs) are known for their pronounced therapeutic potential; however, they are still applied in limited clinical cases for several reasons. ROS-mediated oxidative stress is among the chief causes of post-transplantation apoptosis and death of hMSCs. It has been reported that a strategy to protect hMSCs against ROS is to pretreat them with antioxidants. Oleoylethanolamide (OEA) is a monounsaturated fatty acid derived from oleic acid and it has many protective properties, including anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant effects. OEA is also used as a weight loss supplement; due to its high affinity for the PPAR-α receptor, OEA increases the fat metabolism rate. METHODS AND RESULTS: This study hence assessed the effects of OEA pretreatment on the in vitro survival rate and resistance of hMSCs under oxidative stress as well as the cellular and molecular events in the biology of stem/stromal cells affected by oxidative stress and free radicals. Considering the role of MSCs in adipogenesis and obesity, the expression of the main genes involved in adipogenesis was also addressed in this study. Results revealed that OEA increases the in vitro proliferation of MSCs and inhibits cell apoptosis by reducing the induction of oxidative stress. The results also indicated that OEA exerts its antioxidant properties by both activating the Nrf2/NQO-1/HO-1 signaling pathway and directly combating free radicals. Moreover, OEA can reduce adipogenesis through reducing the expression of PPARγ, leptin and CEBPA genes in hMSCs undergoing adipocyte differentiation. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, OEA protects hMSCs from oxidative stress and reduces adipogenic related genes expression and can be regarded as a therapeutic agent for this purpose.

COVID-19 and tuberculosis coinfection: An overview of case reports/case series and meta-analysis of prevalence studies.

Background and aim: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) coinfection with other respiratory pathogens poses a serious concern that can complicate diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. Since COVID-19 and tuberculosis are both severe respiratory infections, their symptoms may overlap and even increase mortality in case of coinfection. The current study aimed to investigate the coinfection of tuberculosis and COVID-19 worldwide through a systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: A systematic literature search based on the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses" (PRISMA) was performed on September 28, 2021, for original research articles published in PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases from December 2019 to September 2021 using relevant keywords. Data analysis was performed using Stata 14 software. Results: The final evaluation included 18 prevalence studies with 5843 patients with COVID-19 and 101 patients with COVID-19 and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis). The prevalence of tuberculosis infection was 1.1% in patients with confirmed COVID-19. This coinfection among patients with COVID-19 was 3.6% in Africa, 1.5% in Asia, and 1.1% in America. Eighteen case reports and 57 case series were also selected. Eighty-nine adults (67 men and 22 women) with a mean age of 45.14 years had concurrent infections with tuberculosis. The most common clinical manifestations were fever, cough, and weight loss. A total of 20.83% of evaluated patients died, whereas 65.62% recovered. Lopinavir/ritonavir was the most widely used antiviral drug for 10.41% of patients. Conclusion: COVID-19 has a low prevalence of tuberculosis coinfection, but it remains a critical issue, especially for high-risk individuals. The exact rate of simultaneous tuberculosis in COVID-19 patients could not be reported since we didn't have access to all data worldwide. Therefore, further studies in this field are strongly recommended.

Cutaneous Mucormycosis Following a Bullous Pemphigoid Flare in a Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Patient on Ibrutinib.

While the recent development of novel therapeutics in oncology, such as small molecule kinase inhibitors (SMKIs), has enabled our ability to target disease-specific molecular pathways, the prolonged impact of these agents on the immune system and infectious risk remains to be seen. We present a 68-year-old male with refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) on ibrutinib monotherapy for 3 years who developed extensive cutaneous mucormycosis following a severe bullous pemphigoid (BP) flare. He received amphotericin B for 4 weeks and was continued on posaconazole with resolution of his mucormycosis infection. Consistent with a growing evidence of literature identifying opportunistic fungal infections in patients on ibrutinib therapy, providers should be cognizant of medical comorbidities that may predispose to such infections and explore methods of prevention before starting ibrutinib and other SMKIs.

Human Verification Using a Combination of Static and Dynamic Characteristics in Foot Pressure Images.

Since gait is the mixture of many complex movements, each individual can define with a unique foot pressure image that can be used as a reliable biometric scale for human verification. Foot pressure color images of Center for Biometrics and Security Research (CBSR) dataset from 45 men and 5 women were used in this study. Owing to the properties of this dataset, an index of foot pressure in addition to external feature and contourlet coefficient of images was extracted. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) was utilized for verification of subjects (it is a common practice to explain more about the training and test dataset). To validate the algorithm performance, results were obtained using a 5-fold cross validation approach. The results indicated accuracy of 99.14±0.65 and equal error rate (EER) of 0.02. These results demonstrated the reliability of proposed neural network in human verification application. Hence, it can be utilized in other verification systems.