Real‐time monitoring wound status and providing timely therapies with smart wound dressing is a promising way to treat wound infections and accelerate the healing process. Herein, to establish a closed‐loop monitoring and treatment system, a fully integrated, battery‐free, and wireless smart wound dressing for wound infection detection and on‐demand drug delivery is developed using flexible electronics. The smart wound dressing integrated with the near field communication module can realize wireless power harvest and data transmission, on‐site signal processing, and drug delivery control, through the miniaturized circuit and smartphone. The temperature, pH, and uric acid of the wound is detected simultaneously by the developed sensors to assess wound conditions. Meanwhile, the drug delivery electrode in the dressing is used to provide on‐demand infection treatment by the electrically controlled antibiotics delivery. Through in vitro antibacterial experiments and in situ animal studies, it is shown that the dressing can effectively inhibit bacterial growth and accelerate wound healing, which fully validates its effectiveness in the wound treatment. Utilizing the advantages of near‐field communication and flexible electronics, the battery‐free and integrated design of sensing and treatment provides a promising solution for the development of a closed‐loop biomedical system integrating monitoring, diagnosis, and therapy.
Background Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis is a serious inflammatory disease of the central nervous system (CNS) and is associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. The inflammatory processes initiated by recognition of bacterial components contribute to apoptosis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has long been recommended for the treatment of CNS diseases due to its powerful neuro-survival properties, as well as its recently reported anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects in vitro and in vivo.MethodsIn this study, we investigated the effects of BDNF-related signaling on the inflammatory response and hippocampal apoptosis in experimental models of pneumococcal meningitis. Pretreatment with exogenous BDNF or the tropomyosin-receptor kinase B (TrkB) inhibitor k252a was performed to assess the activation or inhibition of the BDNF/TrkB-signaling axis prior to intracisternal infection with live S. pneumoniae. At 24 h post-infection, rats were assessed for clinical severity and sacrificed to harvest the brains. Paraffin-embedded brain sections underwent hematoxylin and eosin staining to evaluate pathological severity, and cytokine and chemokine levels in the hippocampus and cortex were evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Additionally, apoptotic neurons were detected in the hippocampal dentate gyrus by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP-nick-end labeling, key molecules associated with the related signaling pathway were analyzed by real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blot, and the DNA-binding activity of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) was measured by electrophoretic mobility shift assay.ResultsRats administered BDNF exhibited reduced clinical impairment, pathological severity, and hippocampal apoptosis. Furthermore, BDNF pretreatment suppressed the expression of inflammatory factors, including tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin (IL)-1β, and IL-6, and increased the expression of the anti-inflammatory factor IL-10. Moreover, BDNF pretreatment increased TrkB expression, activated downstream phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (AKT) signaling, and inhibited the myeloid differentiation primary response gene 88 (MyD88)/NF-κB-signaling pathway.ConclusionsThese data suggested that BDNF administration exerted anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects on an experimental pneumococcal meningitis model via modulation of MyD88/NF-κB- and PI3K/AKT-signaling pathways. Our results indicated that treatment with exogenous BDNF might constitute a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of bacterial meningitis.
The steady-state fully resonant wave system, consisting of two progressive primary waves in finite water depth and all components due to nonlinear interaction, is investigated in detail by means of analytically solving the fully nonlinear wave equations as a nonlinear boundary-value problem. It is found that multiple steady-state fully resonant waves exist in some cases which have no exchange of wave energy at all, so that the energy spectrum is time-independent. Further, the steady-state resonant wave component may contain only a small proportion of the wave energy. However, even in these cases, there usually exist time-dependent periodic exchanges of wave energy around the time-independent energy spectrum corresponding to such a steady-state fully resonant wave, since it is hard to be exactly in such a balanced state in practice. This view serves to deepen and enrich our understanding of the resonance of gravity waves.
An intelligent stretching device was developed to treat the spastic/contractured ankle of neurologically impaired patients. The device stretched the ankle safely throughout the range of motion (ROM) to extreme dorsiflexion and plantarflexion until a specified peak resistance torque was reached with the stretching velocity controlled based on the resistance torque. The ankle was held at the extreme position for a period of time to let stress relaxation occur before it was rotated back to the other extreme position. Stretching was slow at the joint extreme positions, making it possible to reach a larger ROM safely and it was fast in the middle ROM so the majority of the treatment was spent in stretching the problematic extreme ROM. Furthermore, the device evaluated treatment outcome quantitatively in multiple aspects, including active and passive ROM, joint stiffness and viscous damping and reflex excitability. The stretching resulted in considerable changes in joint passive ROM, stiffness, viscous damping and reflex gain. The intelligent control and yet simple design of the device suggest that with appropriate simplification, the device can be made portable and low cost, making it available to patients and therapists for frequent use in clinics/home and allowing more effective treatment and long-term improvement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.