The prevalence of osteoarthritis (OA) has been rising exponentially in recent years. As the disease progresses, patients may eventually require surgical intervention to restore the functionality of the affected knees. The current literature review aims to explore two treatment options in regenerative medicine for OA by analyzing the efficacy and safety of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) use, as well as determining which population will benefit from these treatments. A total of 1093 patients who were diagnosed with unilateral or bilateral knee osteoarthritis (KOA) were recruited in 23 studies. The experimental groups received either PRP or MSCs injections in comparison to the control groups receiving either hyaluronic acid (HA) or placebo (saline or dextrose) injections. Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) was used to evaluate all participants at different time intervals of the studies. Medical imaging evaluations (X-ray or MRI) were used to look for structural improvements. In conclusion, both PRP and MSCs treatments were well tolerated, effective and safe to use. Repeated administrations and higher concentrations resulted in superior clinical improvements. A decrease in cartilage loss was observed in some MSCs trials. No severe adverse effects were documented. PRP treatment proved to be more efficacious among patients with KOA Kellgren-Lawrence (KL) grade I-II, while MSCs treatment proved to be more beneficial among the KOA KL grade II-III group.

BackgroundPancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is considered as one of the most aggressive cancers lacking efficient early detection biomarkers. Circulating miRNAs are now being considered to have potency to be used as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in different diseases as well as cancers. In case of cancer, a fraction of the circulating miRNAs is actually derived from the tumour tissue. This fraction would function as stable biomarker for the disease and also would contribute to the understanding of the disease development. There are not many studies exploring this aspect in pancreatic cancer and even there is not much overlap of results between existing studies.MethodsIn order to address that gap, we performed a miRNA microarray analysis to identify differentially expressed circulating miRNAs between PDAC patients and normal healthy individuals and also found two more similar datasets to perform a meta-analysis using a total of 182 PDAC patients and 170 normal, identifying a set of miRNAs significantly altered in patient serum. Next, we found five datasets studying miRNA expression profile in tumour tissues of PDAC patients as compared to normal pancreas and performed a second meta-analysis using data from a total of 183 pancreatic tumour and 47 normal pancreas to detect significantly deregulated miRNAs in pancreatic carcinoma. Comparison of these two lists and subsequent search for their target genes which were also deregulated in PDAC in inverse direction to miRNAs was done followed by investigation of their role in disease development.ResultsWe identified 21 miRNAs altered in both pancreatic tumour tissue and serum. While deciphering the functions of their target genes, we characterized key miR-Gene interactions perturbing the biological pathways. We identified important cancer related pathways, pancreas specific pathways, AGE-RAGE signaling, prolactin signaling and insulin resistance signaling pathways among the most affected ones. We also reported the possible involvement of crucial transcription factors in the process.ConclusionsOur study identified a unique meta-signature of 21 miRNAs capable of explaining pancreatic carcinogenesis and possibly holding the potential to act as biomarker for the disease detection which could be explored further.

Two sibs from an inbred Arab family are described with an autosomal syndrome of choanal atresia, hypothelia/athelia and thyroid gland anomalies overlapping Bamforth syndrome, ANOTHER syndrome and methimazole embryopathy. In one case the syndrome described was lethal. Cases with similar features are reviewed and genetic mutations discussed.

Author contribution: Bishnupriya Chhatriya generated data, did formal analysis, and drafted the manuscript, reviewed and edited. Piyali Sarkar helped in data generation and data analysis. Srikanta Goswami conceptualized, designed the study, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. Sukanta Ray, Debashis Nath, and Kshaunish Das helped in finalizing the study design and drafting the manuscript apart from executing the clinical components of the study. Saroj K Mohapatra contributed to analytic tools, supervised data analysis and provided critical inputs to the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript, conception, and design or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data. They have also been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content.

.