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Atopic dermatitis (AD), a chronic and inflammatory skin disease, has brought huge physiological and psychological burdens to patients, which causes wide concerns in society. Herein, a multifunctional microneedle (MN) patch is proposed integrated with a desirable moisturizer and intelligent drug delivery capacity for AD treatment. Such MN patch consists of hyaluronic acid (HA) backing and near‐infrared (NIR) responsive tips containing black phosphorous quantum dots (BPQDs), low‐melting agarose, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), and triamcinolone acetonide (TA). Among them, the soluble HA serves as a long‐term moisturizer for relieving dryness symptoms of AD. By introducing the NIR excitable and photothermal responsive BPQDs into agarose, the state of the composite material can be adjusted intelligently via NIR, thus achieving controllable release of the encapsulated TA in tips. Besides, PVP with enough mechanical strength can help MNs successfully penetrate the thickened skin of AD patients. Based on these advantages, it is demonstrated that the multifunctional MN patch reveals a satisfactory therapeutic effect in the AD model of Balb/c mice. These results indicate the potential values of the proposed MN patch in the treatment of AD skin diseases and other related biomedical fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflammation is one of the crucial mechanisms mediating spinal cord injury (SCI) progress. Sesamol, a component of sesame oil, has anti-inflammatory activity, but its mechanism in SCI remains unclear. We investigated if the AMPK/SIRT1/NF- κ B pathway participated in anti-inflammation of sesamol in SCI. Sesamol could inhibit neuronal apoptosis, reduce neuroinflammation, enhance M2 phenotype microglial polarization, and improved motor function recovery in mice after SCI. Furthermore, sesamol increased SIRT1 protein expression and p-AMPK/AMPK ratio, while it downregulated the p-p65/p65 ratio, indicating that sesamol treatment upregulated the AMPK/SIRT1 pathway and inhibited NF- κ B activation. However, these effects were blocked by compound C which is a specific AMPK inhibitor. Together, the study suggests that sesamol is a potential drug for antineuroinflammation and improving locomotor functional recovery through regulation of the AMPK/SIRT1/NF- κ B pathway in SCI., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Xiaochu Feng et al.)