fThe antileprosy drug clofazimine has shown potential for shortening tuberculosis treatment; however, the current dosing of the drug is not evidence based, and the optimal dosing is unknown. Our objective was to conduct a preclinical evaluation of the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of clofazimine in the mouse model of tuberculosis, with the goal of providing useful information on dosing for future studies. Pharmacokinetic parameters were evaluated in infected and uninfected BALB/c mice. Pharmacodynamic parameters were evaluated in Mycobacterium tuberculosis-infected mice that were treated for 12 weeks with one of six different clofazimine dosing regimens, i.e., doses of 6.25, 12.5, and 25 mg/kg of body weight/day and 3 regimens with loading doses. Clofazimine progressively accumulated in the lungs, livers, and spleens of the mice, reaching levels of greater than 50 g/g in all tissues by 4 weeks of administration, while serum drug levels remained low at 1 to 2 g/ml. Elimination of clofazimine was extremely slow, and the half-life was dependent on the duration of drug administration. Clofazimine exhibited dosedependent tissue and serum concentrations. At any dose, clofazimine did not have bactericidal activity during the first 2 weeks of administration but subsequently demonstrated potent, dose-independent bactericidal activity. The antituberculosis activity of clofazimine was dependent on neither the dose administered nor the drug concentrations in the tissues, suggesting that much lower doses could be effectively used for tuberculosis treatment. C lofazimine (CFZ) is a phenazine dye developed in the 1950s for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) (1, 2). Despite promising activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis both in vitro and in vivo, clofazimine was not advanced as a TB drug but instead became incorporated decades later into the multidrug treatment of leprosy, where it remains a key drug (3, 4). Interest in clofazimine for TB treatment has been revitalized following the 2010 report by Van Deun and colleagues that a clofazimine-containing regimen not only was highly effective for the treatment of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB, but was also associated with a significantly decreased duration of therapy (5); 9 months of a clofazimine-containing regimen resulted in 87.9% relapse-free cure, which is in sharp contrast to the limited efficacy (less than 50% relapse-free cure) of the World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended, at least 20-month-long MDR-TB treatment regimen (6, 7). This report was complemented by experimental chemotherapy studies in which the inclusion of clofazimine in first-and secondline regimens significantly shortened the duration of treatment needed for relapse-free cure in mouse models of drug-susceptible and MDR TB, respectively (8, 9). These clinical and preclinical data suggest that clofazimine has great potential for TB treatment.Because clofazimine was abandoned as an option for TB treatment shortly after its discovery, and also because the use of clofazimine for leprosy is not ba...

Portability is one of the essential keys in the development of modern analytical devices. Screen printing technology is an established technology for both chemical and biosensor development. Screen printing technology has been used to generate a variety of electronic sensors that are rapid, cost-effective, on-site, real-time, inexpensive, and practical for use in healthcare, environmental monitoring, industrial monitoring, and agricultural monitoring. This review aims to describe recent research progress related to the development and improvement of screen-printed electrodes (SPEs). We also demonstrate the wide range of applications, also highlighting the market directions and the need for novel devices to be used by non-specialists. Finally, we conclude and provide an overview of the constraints and future opportunities of SPEs in biosensor application.

Elastic liposomes (EL) are some of the most versatile deformable vesicular carriers that comprise physiologically biocompatible lipids and surfactants for the delivery of numerous challenging molecules and have marked advantages over other colloidal systems. They have been investigated for a wide range of applications in pharmaceutical technology through topical, transdermal, nasal, and oral routes for efficient and effective drug delivery. Increased drug encapsulation efficiency, enhanced drug permeation and penetration into or across the skin, and ultradeformability have led to widespread interest in ELs to modulate drug release, permeation, and drug action more efficiently than conventional drug-release vehicles. This review provides insights into the versatile role that ELs play in the delivery of numerous drugs and biomolecules by improving drug release, permeation, and penetration across the skin as well as stability. Furthermore, it provides future directions that should ensure the widespread use of ELs across all medical fields.

No abstract

Our data suggest that clofazimine's delayed antimicrobial activity may be due more to its mechanism of action rather than to host-related factors.

SUMMARYThe increased accessibility of antiretroviral therapy continues to positively drive the reduction in viral load and survival of patients despite the attendant reproductive toxicities. We propose that testicular damage caused by highly active antiretroviral therapy (HA-ART) can be attenuated by antioxidant treatment by investigating the testicular histomorphologic and stereological effects of antiretroviral drugs and its interaction with antioxidants using an experimental animal model. Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into seven groups of six rats per group (A, B. . . G) using simple random sampling and treated orally with 0.9% normal saline as placebo, a HAART cocktail of stavudine, lamivudine and nevirapine using the adjusted human therapeutic doses of 200, 600 and 350-400 mg/ day, respectively, and antioxidants ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and I.M a-tocopherol (vitamin E). Animals were killed after 4 weeks and testicular tissue harvested and processed for light microscopy and stereological evaluations. The results were interpreted by a Veterinary pathologist blinded to the study. No animal died during the experimental period. The histopathological assessment of the testis of animals treated with placebo, ascorbic acid alone and a-tocopherol alone as well as vitamin E + HAART displayed normal testicular microanatomy. Groups treated with HAART alone, HAART + vitamin C + vitamin E and vitamins C + HAART showed extensive seminiferous tubular atrophy, necrosis and hypocellularity in the histoarchitectural patterns. While testicular cross-sectional area of seminiferous tubules remained unaffected by HAART, epithelial heights significantly decreased (p < 0.05) when compared with controls. There was marked (p < 0.05) increased in testicular-body weight ratio in HAART group. The results show that vitamin E could be useful in protecting testicular tissue from toxicities of HAART regimes as these results mirrors stereological data for the groups. HAART presents with deleterious histopathological changes in the testes causing tubular atrophy with altered morphometric indices. Supplementation with vitamin E appears to be a better adjuvant antioxidant that ameliorates these deleterious effects.

No abstract

The antileprosy drug clofazimine was recently repurposed as part of a newly endorsed short-course regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. It also enables significant treatment shortening when added to the first-line regimen for drug-susceptible tuberculosis in a mouse model. However, clofazimine causes dose- and duration-dependent skin discoloration in patients, and the optimal clofazimine dosing strategy in the context of the first-line regimen is unknown. We utilized a well-established mouse model to systematically address the impacts of duration, dose, and companion drugs on the treatment-shortening activity of clofazimine in the first-line regimen. In all studies, the primary outcome was relapse-free cure (culture-negative lungs) 6 months after stopping treatment, and the secondary outcome was bactericidal activity, i.e., the decline in the lung bacterial burden during treatment. Our findings indicate that clofazimine activity is most potent when coadministered with first-line drugs continuously throughout treatment and that equivalent treatment-shortening results are obtained with half the dose commonly used in mice. However, our studies also suggest that clofazimine at low exposures may have negative impacts on treatment outcomes, an effect that was evident only after the first 3 months of treatment. These data provide a sound evidence base to inform clofazimine dosing strategies to optimize the antituberculosis effect while minimizing skin discoloration. The results also underscore the importance of conducting long-term studies to allow the full evaluation of drugs administered in combination over long durations.