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Introduction: The aim of the study was to evaluate the antimicrobial effect of chitosan, chlorhexidine, and their combination, on root canal flora. Method: Antimicrobial efficacy was evaluated using the agar-well diffusion method. Ten samples of each ATCC strain i.e. Enterococcus faecalis, Candida albicans, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptococcus sanguis were examined for antimicrobial efficacy of 2% chlorhexidine, 2% chitosan and their combination. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in zones of inhibition between chlorhexidine and chlorhexidine+chitosan against different microorganisms(p>0.05). Normal saline and chitosan alone did not show any zones of inhibition. Conclusion: No statistically significant difference was found between the antimicrobial efficacy of chlorhexidine and chlorhexidine+chitosan against different microorganisms.

Abstract: Osteoarthritis (OA), a chronic degenerative musculoskeletal disorder, progressively increases with age. It is characterized by progressive loss of hyaline cartilage followed by subchondral bone remodeling and inflammaging. To counteract the inflammation, synovium releases various inflammatory and immune mediators along with metabolic intermediates, which further worsens the condition. However, even after recognizing the key molecular and cellular factors involved in the progression of OA, only disease-modifying therapies are available such as oral and topical NSAIDs, opioids, SNRIs, etc., providing symptomatic treatment and functional improvement instead of suppressing OA progression. Long-term use of these therapies leads to various life-threatening complications. Interestingly, mother nature has numerous medicinal plants containing active phytochemicals that can act on various targets involved in the development and progression of OA. Phytochemicals have been used for millennia in traditional medicine and are promising alternatives to conventional drugs with a lower rate of adverse events and efficiency frequently comparable to synthetic molecules. Nevertheless, their mechanism of action in many cases is elusive and uncertain. Even though many in vitro and in vivo studies show promising results, clinical evidence is scarce. Studies suggest that the presence of carbonyl group in the 2nd position, chloro in the 6th and an electron- withdrawing group at the 7th position exhibit enhanced COX-2 inhibition activity in OA. On the other hand, the presence of a double bond at the C2-C3 position of C ring in flavonoids plays an important role in Nrf2 activation. Moreover, with the advancements in the understanding of OA progression, SARs (structure-activity relationships) of phytochemicals and integration with nanotechnology have provided great opportunities for developing phytopharmaceuticals. Therefore, in the present review, we have discussed various promising phytomolecules, SAR as well as their nano-based delivery systems for the treatment of OA to motivate the future investigation of phytochemical-based drug therapy.

Abstract: Luliconazole is the first and only anti-fungal agent approved for the short-term treatment of superficial fungal infections. However, commercially available conventional topical dermal drug delivery cargo of luliconazole is associated with certain limitations like lower skin permeation and shorter skin retention of drug. Therefore, present review is an attempt to decode the penetration hurdles in luliconazole topical dermal drug delivery. Moreover, we also summarized the activity of functional nanomaterials based drug delivery systems employed by the scientific fraternity to improve luliconazole efficacy in superficial fungal infections on case-to-case basis. In addition, efforts have also been made to unbox the critically acclaimed mechanism of action of luliconazole against fungal cells. Under the framework of future prospects, we have analyzed the combination of luliconazole with isoquercetin using in-silico docking technique for offering synergistic antifungal activity. Isoquercetin exhibited a good affinity for superoxide dismutase (SOD), a fungal target owing to the formation of hydrogen bond with Glu132, Glu133, and Arg143, in addition to few hydrophobic interactions. On the other hand, luliconazole inhibited lanosterol-14α-demethylase and consequently blocked ergosterol. In addition, nanotechnology and artificial neural network (ANN) derived integrated drug delivery systems may also be explored for augmenting the luliconazole therapeutic efficacy in topical fungal infections. Synergy of ANN models along with topical nanoscaled drug delivery may help to achieve critical quality attributes (CQA) to gain commercial success.

A cost effective test structure to check a correctness of cache performance in chip multiprocessors (CMPs) is developed in this work. The basis of the work has been the cellular automata (CA) structure proposed by von Neumann in 1950's. The theory of 1-dimentional 3-neighborhood null boundary CA is developed to monitor the behavior of each of the processors cache in CMPs. The special class of single length cycle attractor cellular automata accepts the (March) read/write status of cache word/line and evaluates to decide on the inaccurate functioning of a cache module. In this way, the inability of the classical design to identify defective behavior of CMPs cache is overcome. The design further enables identification of the region of defective cache module in the CMPs.