The production and application of biochar has become increasingly popular in the past 10 years. Biochar has similar characteristics to charcoal and activated charcoal: they are all pyrogenic ...carbonaceous matter derived from organic carbon-rich materials and produced by pyrolysis. Studies related to the incorporation of biochar in animal feed are limited. This review summarizes major studies related to the use of biochar as a feed additive for ruminants (cattle and goats), pigs, poultry (chickens and ducks) and fish. Documented positive responses to biochar supplementation include improved growth performance, blood profiles, egg yield, ability to resist pathogens including gut pathogenic bacteria and a reduction of methane production by ruminant animals. In addition, the high sorption capacity of biochar efficiently aids the removal of pollutants and toxins from animals' bodies as well as from farm environments. It is expected that there will be increasing use of biochar in animal farming. The potential use of biochar in the medical and human health sectors should also be explored.
Display omitted
•Paclitaxel-loaded polymeric micelles were prepared by PEG-b-PCL.•Cellular drug uptake of is enhanced by the low molecular weight PEG-b-PCL.•Low molecular weight PEG-b-PCL exhibits ...permeation enhancement activity.•High molecular weight PEG-b-PCL provides better drug solubility.•Polymer choice plays a central role in determining oral bioavailability in vivo.
Drug solubility and permeability are two major challenges affecting oral delivery, the most popular route of drug administration. Polymeric micelles is an emerging technology for overcoming the current oral drug delivery hurdles. Previous study primarily focused on developing new polymers or new micellar systems and a systematic investigation of the impact of the polymer block length on solubility and permeability enhancement; and their subsequent effect on oral bioavailability is lacking.
Herein, by using paclitaxel, a poorly soluble P-glycoproteins (P-gp) substrate, as a model, we aim to assess and compare the drug-loaded micelles prepared with two different molecular weight of poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PEG-b-PCL), with the ultimate goal of establishing a strong scientific rationale for proper design of formulations for oral drug delivery.
PEG-b-PCL (750:570) (PEG17-b-PCL5) and PEG-b-PCL (5k:10k) (PEG114-b-PCL88) effectively enhanced the solubility of paclitaxel compared to the free drug. PEG-b-PCL (750:570) increased both P-gp and non P-gp substrate cellular uptake and increased the apparent permeability coefficient of a P-gp substrate.
In vivo animal study showed that PEG-b-PCL micelles efficiently enhanced the oral bioavailability of paclitaxel. In addition to solubility enhancement, polymer choice also plays a pivotal role in determining the oral bioavailability improvement, probably via permeation enhancement.
In conclusion, the knowledge gained in this study enables rational design of polymeric micelles to overcome the current challenges of oral drug delivery and it also provides a basis for future clinical translation of the technology.
China was the world's largest importer of e-waste in the 2000s, with e-waste entering the country via different pathways. It was treated informally by using primitive techniques. Since the 2010s, the ...quantities of illegal importation have been gradually decreasing as China started to amend and enforce the importation ban policy. The amount of imported e-waste is predicted to disappear in the coming decades if China keeps to her stringent enforcements. Being a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, Hong Kong (HK) pursues an independent judiciary, rule of law and retains a free trading policy. As such, a substantial amount of e-waste has entered HK, and is stored in the northern part of the New Territories (NT). Some of the e-waste has been dismantled and recycled, jeopardizing the local environmental and the human health of this increasingly affluent city. This article reviews the effects of the new movement of global e-waste, to find out whether the same mistakes made in China are being repeated in HK, in particular, the environmental and health impacts of recycling e-waste. In addition, the management strategies to deal with the problems in this densely populated city are also summarized.
The contamination of combined urban and rural area is a growing environmental issue due to rapid industrialization in China. This study investigated the eight potentially toxic elements (PTEs) ...arsenic (As), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and zinc (Zn) in paddy fields in a combined urban and rural area in Shaoxing city, Zhejiang province. Concentrations of the PTEs were determined in 60 topsoil samples (0–20 cm) collected from paddy fields in a combined urban and rural area in Shaoxing city, Zhejiang province, southeast China. The average contents of Pb, Cu, Zn, Cd, Hg, and As in the paddy soils increased by 23.7, 6.9, 17.0, 79.8, 62.5, and 47.9%, respectively, relative to their corresponding natural background concentrations. The mean contents of Cr and Ni did not exceed their background values. Multivariate statistical and geostatistical methods were used to distinguish between the PTEs (Cd, As, Pb, Zn, and Hg) contaminating the soils of the study area from those (Cr, Cu, and Ni) at background concentrations. About 17.2% of the soils were moderately polluted with PTEs as a result of urbanization. The results may be useful to policy makers in agricultural and urban management.
Hyperglycemia causes mitochondrial damage renal tubular cells, which contribute to the progression of diabetic kidney disease. However, the metabolic aberration of renal tubular cells in an ...hyperglycemic milieu has not been fully elucidated. In this study, human proximal renal tubular cell line (HK-2 cell) are incubated in glucose and mannitol at 5 mM or 25 mM. Cellular metabolome was determined by capillary electrophoresis time of flight mass spectrometer (CE-TOF/MS) and capillary electrophoresis-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (CE-QqQMS). A total of 116 metabolites were quantified. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed excellent clustering of metabolomic changes for different treatment conditions, and exposure to glucose at 5 and 25 mM lead to distinct metabolomic profiles as compared to samples treated with serum-free medium or mannitol as osmotic control. Hierarchical clustering analysis showed a number of characteristic changes in metabolic profile following exposure to 5 mM or 25 mM glucose. Notably, lactate-to-pyruvate ratio was significantly increased, while cellular levels of citric acid, α-ketoglutaric acid (i.e. 2-oxoglutaric acid), and fumaric acid were significantly reduced after exposure to glucose at 25 mM but not 5 mM. Moreover, cellular levels of reduced glutathione and total glutathione were significantly decreased, and S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) to S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH) ratio was significantly increased after exposure to glucose 25 mM but not 5 mM. We conclude that in response to high glucose, HK-2 cells characteristic metabolomic changes, including increase in lactate-to-pyruvate ratio, reduction in Krebs cycle metabolites, reduction in glutathione antioxidant activity, and increase in cellular methylation potential. Our results may shed light on the pathogenesis of diabetic kidney disease, but the expression of glucose metabolism-related protein and enzyme activity in HK-2 cells after hyperglycemia condition need to be confirmed by further studies.
Display omitted
•Crystalline orally-dissolving films of ropinirole were prepared.•The oral films exhibit fast disintegration, dissolution; and are physical stable.•The oral films are non-cytotoxic ...and metabolically stable in oral mucosal tissues.•The oral films exhibit fast drug absorption.•The bioavailability of ropinirole was significantly improved by the oral films.
Ropinirole is a very important treatment option for Parkinson’s disease (PD), a major threat to the aging population. However, this drug undergoes extensive first-pass metabolism, resulting in a low oral bioavailability. Moreover, the necessity of frequent administration due to the short half-life of ropinirole may jeopardize patient compliance. Indeed, taking this drug in solid oral dosage forms (e.g. Tablet) can be a challenge because of the tremor, rigidity, limited mobility, and impaired drug absorption experienced by PD patients. In light of these, there is a pressing need to devise formulations for the delivery of ropinirole that allow simple and easy administration and fast drug action, as well as avoidance of first-pass metabolism and overcoming the challenge of impaired absorption due to gastrointestinal dysfunctions, etc.
Herein, we seek to overcome all these challenges via sublingual or buccal delivery of orally-dissolving films. Accordingly, we aimed to fabricate and characterize orally-dissolving films of ropinirole and assess their in vivo pharmacokinetics after sublingual and buccal administration.
The ropinirole oral film was non-toxic and exhibited fast disintegration and dissolution and was physically stable for at least 28 days. Upon buccal/sublingual administration of the oral films, ropinirole reached the systemic circulation within 15 min and bioavailability was significantly improved, which may be attributable to avoidance of first-pass metabolism via absorption through the oral cavity.
In conclusion, our ropinirole oral film improved bioavailability after sublingual or buccal administration. This formulation potentially overcomes biopharmaceutical challenges and provide a convenient means of administration of ropinirole or other anti-PD drugs.
•An innovative combined system is introduced for treating PBDEs.•The combined system showed promising removals of BDE-209 in wastewater.•Rice is used as a model wetland plant in removing PBDEs from ...wastewater.•The uptake of PBDEs is compared between rice grains and rice hulls.
There is a rising concern about the capability of sewage treatment works in treating emerging chemicals, such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). A combined photocatalysis (TiO2 and visible light) and constructed wetland system (planted with Oryza sativa (rice cultivar: Hefengzhan) and Phragmites australis (common reed)) was designed to study PBDEs removal efficiencies. After the pre-treatment in TiO2 suspension, the artificially BDE-209 spiked sewage (78.2 and 782nmol/L) was discharged into the sub-surface flow constructed wetland tanks planted with rice and common reed, respectively. The treated sewage, soil, plant roots, shoots, rice grains and hulls were collected and analyzed for PBDEs by GC–MS. The removals of BDE-209 in the combined systems (93.6±2.19% (78.2nmol/L) and 92.1±1.11% (782nmol/L)) were significantly higher than those in the photocatalytic systems (56.3±5.78% (78.2nmol/L) and 54.7±9.47% (782nmol/L)), which could be explained by the enhanced biodegradability of PBDEs in photocatalysis, led to its better dissipation by rice plants. Therefore, this combined system might help to degrade BDE-209 in the wastewater effluent, reducing its potential entry into aquatic food chains.
•Previous studies showed that urinary levels of some miRNA targets are significantly altered in IgA nephropathy.•The persent study used healthy subjects and patients with biopsy-proved hypertensive ...nephrosclerosis as controls, so as to eliminate the confounding effect of kidney scarring.•The result showed that urinary miR-106a has good sensitivity but limited specificity in detecting IgA nephropathy.•Our result indicates that urinary miRNA level may be used for screening of IgA nephropathy.
Urinary micro-RNA (miRNA) level may serve as non-invasive disease markers for immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN), but urinary miRNA targets identified in previous studies may represent kidney scarring rather than being specific for IgAN. We aim to identify urinary miRNA targets for the diagnosis of IgAN by including hypertensive nephrosclerosis (HTN) as a control group. Methods In the development cohort, we performed complete miRNA profiling of urinary sediment in 33 patients with IgAN, 9 with HTN, and 9 healthy controls (CTL). Potential miRNA targets were quantified by a separate validation cohort of 72 IgAN, 34 HTN, and 20 healthy controls. Results In the development cohort, we identified 6 miRNA targets with urinary levels significantly increased in IgAN as compared to both HTN and CTL. In the validation study, all 6 miRNA targets remained increased than the other groups, although the result of miR-345 did not reach statistical significance. The area-under-curve of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for urinary mi-106a level for the diagnosis of IgAN was 0.742 (p < 0.0001), and the diagnostic performance was not further improved by having additional miRNA targets. At the cut-off ≥ 800 copy per 1000 copies of housekeeping gene, urinary miR-106a has 100% sensitivity and 14.8% specificity in detecting IgA nephropathy. Conclusions We identified 6 miRNA targets whose urinary levels are significantly elevated in IgAN, and urinary miR-106a level has an excellent sensitivity for the identification of IgAN. Further validation studies are needed to confirm its role in disease screening.
There were limited data on adipose and serum zinc alpha-2-glycoprotein (ZAG) expression and its association with body composition in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD). This study ...aimed to quantify adipose and serum ZAG expression and evaluate their association with body composition and its longitudinal change, together with mortality in incident dialysis patients. We performed a single-center prospective cohort study. Patients who were planned for peritoneal dialysis were recruited. ZAG levels were measured from serum sample, subcutaneous and pre-peritoneal fat tissue obtained during peritoneal dialysis catheter insertion. Body composition and functional state were evaluated by bioimpedance spectroscopy and Clinical Frailty Scale respectively at baseline and were repeated 1 year later. Primary outcome was 2-year survival. Secondary outcomes were longitudinal changes of body composition. At baseline, the average adipose and serum ZAG expression was 13.4 ± 130.0-fold and 74.7 ± 20.9 µg/ml respectively. Both adipose and serum ZAG expressions independently predicted adipose tissue mass (ATM) (p = 0.001, p = 0.008, respectively). At 1 year, ATM increased by 3.3 ± 7.4 kg (p < 0.001) while lean tissue mass (LTM) remained similar (p = 0.5). Adipose but not serum ZAG level predicted change in ATM (p = 0.007) and LTM (p = 0.01). Serum ZAG level predicted overall survival (p = 0.005) and risk of infection-related death (p = 0.045) after adjusting for confounders. In conclusion, adipose and serum ZAG levels negatively correlated with adiposity and predicted its longitudinal change of fat and lean tissue mass, whilst serum ZAG predicted survival independent of body mass in advanced CKD patient.
Systemic inflammatory state is a hallmark of peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients, but its etiology remains obscure. Because circulating microbial products are an important cause of systemic immune ...activation in other conditions such as HIV infection, it was hypothesized that endotoxemia is a cause of systemic inflammatory state and atherosclerosis in PD patients.
Plasma lipopolysaccharide (LPS) levels in 30 consecutive new PD patients were measured. The result was compared with serum C-reactive protein (CRP) level, peritoneal transport status, history of pre-existing cardiovascular diseases, and carotid intima media thickness (IMT) by Doppler ultrasound.
Among the 30 PD patients, there were 17 men. The average age was 53.7 +/- 15.1 yr. The average endotoxin concentration of PD patients was 0.44 +/- 0.18 EU/ml, which was significantly higher than that of patients with chronic kidney disease secondary to Ig-A nephropathy (IgAN) (0.035 +/- 0.009 EU/ml, P < 0.0001) and the controls (0.013 +/- 0.007 EU/ml, P < 0.0001). In PD patients, plasma LPS concentration had a significant correlation with serum CRP (r = 0.415, P = 0.025) and serum albumin level (r = -0.394, P = 0.034). In contrast, plasma LPS level did not correlate with Charlson's Comorbidity Index, peritoneal transport characteristics, or nutritional indices. Patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease (CVD) had higher plasma LPS level than those without CVD (0.53 +/- 0.19 versus 0.36 +/- 0.16 EU/ml, P = 0.016). Plasma LPS level correlated with carotid IMT (r = 0.438, P = 0.016).
It was found that endotoxemia was probably common in PD patients, and the degree of circulating endotoxemia might be related to the severity of systemic inflammation and features of atherosclerosis. This result suggests that endotoxemia may have a contributory role to the systemic inflammatory state and accelerated atherosclerosis in PD patients.
PDF
