Antimicrobial carbon dots/pectin-based hydrogel for promoting healing processes in multidrug-resistant bacteria-infected wounds.

Multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections have become a significant threat to global healthcare systems. Here, we developed a highly efficient antimicrobial hydrogel using environmentally friendly garlic carbon dots, pectin, and acrylic acid. The hydrogel had a porous three-dimensional network structure, which endowed it with good mechanical properties and compression recovery performance. The hydrogel could adhere closely to skin tissues and had an equilibrium swelling ratio of 6.21, indicating its potential as a wound dressing. In particular, the bactericidal efficacy following 24-h contact against two MDR bacteria could exceed 99.99 %. When the hydrogel was applied to epidermal wounds infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on mice, a remarkable healing rate of 93.29 % was observed after 10 days. This was better than the effectiveness of the traditionally used antibiotic kanamycin, which resulted in a healing rate of 70.36 %. In vitro cytotoxicity testing and hemolysis assay demonstrated a high biocompatibility. This was further proved by the in vivo assay where no toxic side effects were observed on the heart, liver, spleen, lung, or kidney of mice. This eco-friendly and easy-to-prepare food-inspired hydrogel provides an idea for the rational use of food and food by-products as a wound dressing to control MDR bacterial infections.

Efficacy of sorafenib adjuvant therapy in northwestern Chinese patients with non-metastatic renal-cell carcinoma after nephrectomy: A multicenter retrospective study.

Recent studies have confirmed the efficacy of sorafenib for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma; however, its efficacy and safety as an adjuvant therapy in patients with non-metastatic and loco-regional renal cell carcinoma after surgery remains controversial. Thus, the aim of the present retrospective study was to evaluate the efficacy of adjuvant sorafenib therapy in such patients from 8 centers in northwestern China that were treated from August 2009 to December 2016.After surgery, the patients (n = 48) received oral sorafenib for 3 months. The control group (n = 48) comprised patients that underwent the same surgery from December 2009 to June 2016 but without adjuvant therapy who were matched 1:1 with the sorafenib group with respect to sex, age, pathological findings, disease stage and grade, operation time, and surgical procedure. The primary outcome compared between the groups was disease-free survival. Adverse events were also recorded to evaluate the safety of sorafenib. The influence of patients' characteristics and laboratory tests on recurrence was analyzed using unconditional logistic regression.Overall, the demographic characteristics of the 2 groups were similar. There was no significant difference in the rate of recurrence (8.3% for sorafenib patients and 6.2% for the matched patients, P = .66) or median disease-free survival between the 2 groups (hazard ratio = 1.561, 95% confidence interval = 0.349-6.987, P = .56). In multiple logistic regression analysis, increased blood urea nitrogen (BUN) emerged as an independent predictor of recurrence risk (P = .02).These results indicate that postoperative sorafenib adjuvant therapy did not achieve the expected beneficial effect, pointing to the need for further studies to evaluate its utility in such cases.