Graphene Oxide-Based Nanomaterials: An Insight into Retinal Prosthesis.

Retinal prosthesis has recently emerged as a treatment strategy for retinopathies, providing excellent assistance in the treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa. The potential application of graphene oxide (GO), a highly biocompatible nanomaterial with superior physicochemical properties, in the fabrication of electrodes for retinal prosthesis, is reviewed in this article. This review integrates insights from biological medicine and nanotechnology, with electronic and electrical engineering technological breakthroughs, and aims to highlight innovative objectives in developing biomedical applications of retinal prosthesis.

Association between General Anesthesia and Root Canal Treatment Outcomes in Patients with Mental Disability: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

In the population of individuals with a disability, mental illness patients can be uncooperative during dental treatment; thus, general anesthesia has been widely applied during dental procedures. This study aims to investigate the association between general anesthesia and the outcomes of root canal treatment in patients with disability. Teeth treatment records of patients with disability from Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital Research Database and electronic database from January 2005 to December 2018 were used in this retrospective cohort study. The authors conducted analysis comparing root canal treatment outcomes under general anesthesia and non-general anesthesia, indicated by endodontic re-treatment or post-treatment teeth extraction. Over the 9-year follow-up period, root canal treatment outcomes representing a cumulative survival rate of 87.68% and 74.51% in the general anesthesia group and non-general anesthesia group, respectively, were found. After adjustment for potential confounders, the teeth with general anesthesia showed a substantially and significantly reduced HR of root canal treatment failure at 0.24 (95% confidence interval, 0.12 to 0.49). Our study supported the notion that root canal treatment with general anesthesia may entail substantial reduction of treatment failure in patients with disability.

TRAIL encapsulated to polypeptide-crosslinked nanogel exhibits increased anti-inflammatory activities in Klebsiella pneumoniae-induced sepsis treatment.

Bacterial infections are often treated inadequately. Sepsis, being one of its most severe forms, is a multi-layered, life-threatening syndrome induced by rampant immune responses, like cytokine storms, that leads to high morbidity and death of infected patients. Particularly, the current increment in resistant bacterial strains and the lack of creative antibiotics to counter such menace are central reasons to the worsening of the situation. To avoid the said crisis, the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) were used to target cell wall components, such as lipopolysaccharides (LPS), seems to have the most promise. These combine the ability of broad-spectrum bactericidal activity with low potential for induction of resistance. Inhibition of cytokine storms induced by activated immune cells has been considered a feasible treatment for in sepsis. One of the therapeutic approaches widely utilized in inducing apoptosis in inflammatory cells is the use of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-related apoptosis-inducing ligands (TRAIL), which trigger an extrinsic apoptotic pathway via death receptors. Herein, we report TRAIL encapsulated in a bactericidal polypeptide-crosslinked nanogel that suppressed Klebsiella pneumoniae infection and overactive macrophages. Of interest, nanogel and TRAIL-nanogel treatments were more toxic towards LPS-activated cells than to naïve cells in cell viability assays. Treatment with TRAIL-nanogel significantly prolonged survival in septic mice and reduced bacterial numbers in circulation. As such, TRAIL-nanogel may be promising as a therapeutic agent for treating bacteria-infected diseases.

A Versatile Method to Enhance the Operational Current of Air-Stable Organic Gas Sensor for Monitoring of Breath Ammonia in Hemodialysis Patients.

Point-of-care (POC) application for monitoring of breath ammonia (BA) in hemodialysis (HD) patients has emerged as a promising noninvasive health monitoring approach. In this context, many organic gas sensors have been reported for BA detection. However, one of the major challenges for its integration with affordable household POC application is to achieve stable performance for accuracy and high operational current at low voltage for low-cost read-out circuitry. Herein, we exploited the stability of the Donor-Acceptor polymer on the cylindrical nanopore structure to realize the sensors with a high sensitivity and stability. Then, we proposed a double active layer (DL) strategy that exploits an ultrathin layer of Poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) to serve as a work function buffer to enhance the operational current. The DL sensor exhibits a sustainable enhanced operational current of microampere level and a stable sensing response even with the presence of P3HT layer. This effect is carefully examined with different aspects, including vertical composition profile of DL configuration, lifetime testing on different sensing layer, morphological analysis, and the versatility of the DL strategy. Finally, we utilize the DL sensor to conduct a tracing of BA concentration in two HD patients before and after HD, and correlate it with the blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels. A good correlation coefficient of 0.96 is achieved. Moreover, the feasibility of DL sensor integrated into a low-cost circuitry was also verified. The results demonstrate the potential of this DL strategy to be used to integrate organic sensor for affordable household POC devices.