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In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the therapeutic potential of natural compounds, particularly of plant origin, owing to their demonstrated anti-inflammatory properties. Among these, Anacardium occidentale, commonly known as cashew, has garnered significant attention due to its reputed health benefits. This study aim to establish a correlation between the bioactive compounds contained in the extracts of Anacardium occidentale and its anti-inflammatory activity. Dried Anacardium occidentale leaves powder was used as the extraction matrix. Extraction techniques are maceration, pressurized fluid extraction (PFE), and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). The preliminary analysis of extracts was made by LC-MS/MS. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and heat maps were employed to model the influence of experimental conditions on extraction yield and peak area of specific compounds from the plant. To evaluate anti-inflammatory activity, RAW 264.7 cells were cultured, activated with LPS, and treated with varying concentrations of the plant extracts. Cell proliferation was assessed using the XTT assay. Indeed, Anacardium occidentale extracts contain anacardic acids, cardanols, and cardol, with distinct profiles yielded by SFE and ethanol-based methods. RSM shows that temperature and ethanol, as additives to CO 2 , significantly affect extraction efficiency in both PFE and SFE. Moreover, this composition with SFE demonstrate higher selectivity for specific group of compounds. The extracts exhibit anti-inflammatory properties without cytotoxicity in macrophages, reducing levels of pro-inflammatory proteins COX-2, COX-1, and TLR4 in activated cells. This suggests their potential as anti-inflammatory agents without adverse effects on cell viability or pro-inflammatory protein levels in non-activated cells. Overall, these findings underscore the promising therapeutic potential of Anacardium occidentale extracts in mitigating inflammation, while also providing crucial insights into optimizing the extraction process for targeted compound isolation. Thus, this makes a good prospect for the development of anti-inflammatory drugs from this plant., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: WP, RP reports financial support was provided by European Union. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Activated platelets and platelet derived microvesicles (PMVs) emerged recently to be promising biomarkers. There is no universal procedure to carry out the proteomic analysis on microvesicles. In this study we proposed a nano-liquid chromatography (nano-LC) technique coupled off-line with a spectrometric measurement MALDI-TOF-MS/MS as a throughput and time-saving procedure. In this study we developed a simplified method to evaluate the protein composition of platelet organelles and PMVs. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) was collected from healthy donors. PMVs were generated from washed and thrombin activated platelets. Activated platelets from every donor were used to compare the PMV proteome. Enzymatic digestion of protein lysate was carried out using Filter Aided Sample Preparation (FASP) method with trypsin as a proteolytic enzyme. Tryptic peptides derived from PMVs and activated platelets were analysed using nano-LC coupled off-line mode with a MALDI-TOF/TOF-MS. PMV and platelet protein identification was performed using the Mascot engine for searching against the Swiss-Prot human database. The precision tolerance was 100ppm for peptide masses and 0.7Da for fragment ion masses. Individual peptide matches with a score above 28 were considered statistically significant. In total, 446 proteins were identified in PMVs and 513 proteins in activated platelets. Among them 190 were specific for activated platelets and 123 were PMV specific. Cellular component analysis of identified proteins revealed that PMVs contained relatively more extracellular proteins than activated platelets (9.6 vs. 6.0 %) and unique synaptic proteins (0.3%). A new simplified bottom-up method for PMV proteome analysis allowed eliminating the drawbacks of the previously used protocols. This approach can be used in PMV proteome identification., (Copyright © 2016 The Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Benzodiazepine drugs belong to important and most widely used medicaments. They demonstrate such therapeutic properties as anxiolytic, sedative, somnifacient, anticonvulsant, diastolic and muscle relaxant effects. However, despite the fact that benzodiazepines possess high therapeutic index and are considered to be relatively safe, their use can be dangerous when: (1) co-administered with alcohol, (2) co-administered with other medicaments like sedatives, antidepressants, neuroleptics or morphine like substances, (3) driving under their influence, (4) using benzodiazepines non-therapeutically as drugs of abuse or in drug-facilitated crimes. For these reasons benzodiazepines are still studied and determined in a variety of biological materials. In this article, sample preparation techniques which have been applied in analysis of benzodiazepine drugs in biological samples have been reviewed and presented. The next part of the article is focused on a review of analytical methods which have been employed for pharmacological, toxicological or forensic study of this group of drugs in the biological matrices. The review was preceded by a description of the physicochemical properties of the selected benzodiazepines and two, very often coexisting in the same analyzed samples, sedative-hypnotic drugs., (Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

The activity of zinc administered intraperitoneally, acutely (in single dose), sub-chronically (in triple doses) or chronically (once daily for 14 days) were assessed in the forced swim test (FST) and olfactory bulbectomy (OB) model of depression in rats. Previously, we have demonstrated that acute administration of zinc sulfate is active in FST in rats and mice. In the present study, zinc hydroaspartate in a dose of 65 mg/kg (11.5 mgZn/kg), all: acute, sub-chronic and chronic administration, reduced the immobility time in the FST in rats. Removal of olfactory bulbs (OB surgery) in rats is associated with variety of behavioral abnormalities such as deficit in a step-down passive avoidance or hyperactivity in the "open field" test. Both acute and chronic administration of zinc hydroaspartate reduced the number of trials needed to the learning passive avoidance and reduced the OB-induced hyperactivity in rats. At the time schedule following zinc hydroaspartate administration, when behavioral experiments were performed, the serum zinc concentrations were significantly higher than control-physiological values. These results confirm activity of zinc in the FST, show its antidepressant-like activity in the OB rat model of depression, demonstrate the lack of tolerance to these effects and suggest relationship of these antidepressant-like effects with the rise in serum zinc. These animal data further suggest antidepressant activity of zinc in human depression.

The presence of volatile compounds, such as acetone, acetaldehyde, methanol, ethanol, isopropanol, and n-propanol, in the blood of 169 acutely poisoned alcoholics was determined. The clinical diagnosis of addiction was made on the basis of a patient interview as well as physical, psychological, and psychiatric examination. At the time of the patients' admission to the clinic, the mean concentration of ethanol in blood was 3.14 +/- 1.10 g/l and its elimination rate in the studied group was 0.27 +/- 0.08 g/kg/hr, an elimination rate significantly higher (P <.001) than that of social drinkers, which averages to 0.014 +/- 0.04 g/kg/h. The presence of other volatile compounds in the blood of alcohol-addicted patients is common. The calculated elimination rate constant of methanol was about 0.2 h(-1). This rate seems to indicate that, in heavy drinkers, the elimination of methanol may be relatively fast even if the ethanol concentration is above 1 g/l. The elimination of other volatile compounds can be accelerated by large doses of ethanol, although it is not correlated with actual blood ethanol level. Moreover, in most of the blood samples with a methanol concentration below 10 mg/l, the measured concentration of acetone was below 7 mg/l and that of isopropanol was below 2 mg/l.