Egg yolk phosphatidylcholine alleviates DSS-induced colitis in BALB/c mice.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a common inflammatory bowel disease, whose incidence is on the rise worldwide. The drugs commonly used for UC are often associated with a number of side effects. Therefore, the development of effective, food-borne substances for UC is in line with the current needs. Egg yolk phosphatidylcholine (EYPC) is one of the abundant lipids in egg yolk and possesses various biological activities. However, its protective effect against UC has not been clarified. In this study, the anti-UC activity of EYPC was investigated using a dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis model of BALB/c mice. The results showed that EYPC supplementation inhibited DSS-induced colon shortening, the spleen index and disease activity index increase and intestinal structural damage. EYPC could down-regulate the levels of TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6 and MPO in the colon and restore the number of goblet cells and the level of tight junction (TJ) proteins. Besides, EYPC modulated the composition of the gut microbiota, lowered the relative abundance of the pathogenic bacterium Parabacteroides and upregulated the abundance of the beneficial bacteria Alistipes and Lachnospiraceae_NK4A136_group. These results evidenced that EYPC could attenuate DSS-induced colitis in mice and had the potential to prevent and treat UC.

Effect of laser irradiation on aphthae pain management: A four different wavelengths comparison.

Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis (RAS) is an oral condition characterized by painful ulcerations of the mucosa, healing spontaneously in 10-14 days but sometimes, due to their number, size and frequency of recurrence, lesions may be the cause of a severe disconfort with an impact on the quality of life of the patients due to the increased difficulty to eat, swallow and speak. For RAS, different protocols and treatments have been proposed as standard topical treatment to provide symptomatic relief, immunomodulating drugs as thalidomide, colchicine and steroids have been also proposed with the outcome to relief the pain, accelerating the healing process and increase the duration of ulcer-free period but without definitive results and without side effects. In this study we analysed the effect of laser treatment of aphthous lesions with four devices available on the market, two with wavelength in the infra-red region (2940 nm 808 nm) and two with a wavelength in the visible region (450 nm and 635 nm). Diode lasers 808 nm and 450 nm defined almost the same results with an improvement starting already after the application and gradually improving until 7 days after treatment without any statistically significant difference between them. Diode 635 nm was the device gaining the earliest effect reducing the pain already during the treatment and maintaining it at low level immediately after the laser application and after 3 and 7 days with levels of pain comparable with them obtained with 808 nm and 450 nm lasers. Er:YAG laser with the used parameters obtained a pain relief only during the treatment. The originality of this study was to compare different laser wavelengths, some of them never used for this purpose, and to compare also the two different ways to use lasers, the photobiomodulation (LLLT) and the high-power irradiation.