Microphysiological system to address the opioid crisis: A novel multi-organ model of acute opioid overdose and recovery.

Opioids have been the primary method used to manage pain for hundreds of years, however the increasing prescription rate of these drugs in the modern world has led to a public health crisis of overdose related deaths. Naloxone is the current standard treatment for opioid overdose rescue, but it has not been fully investigated for potential off-target toxicity effects. The current methods for pharmaceutical development do not correlate well with pre-clinical animal studies compared to clinical results, creating a need for improved methods for therapeutic evaluation.

Biology-inspired dynamic microphysiological system approaches to revolutionize basic research, healthcare and animal welfare.

The regular workshops held by the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) on biology-inspired microphysiological systems (MPS) taking place every four years, have become a reliable measure to assess fundamental scientific, industrial and regulatory trends for translational science in the MPS-field from a bird's eye view. The 2023 workshop participants at that time concluded that the technology as used within academia has matured significantly, underlined by the broad use of MPS and the steadily increasing number of high quality research publications - yet, broad industry adoption of MPS has been slow, despite strong interest. Academic research using MPS primarily aims to accurately recapitulate human biology in MPS-based organ models in areas where traditional models have been lacking key elements of human physiology, thereby enabling breakthrough discoveries for life sciences.

From Dizziness to Dysphagia: A Complex Presentation of Lateral Medullary Syndrome.

Lateral medullary syndrome (LMS), also known as Wallenberg syndrome, is a rare neurological condition most commonly resulting from occlusion of the posterior inferior cerebellar artery (PICA). This syndrome is characterized by a constellation of symptoms including vertigo, ataxia, sensory deficits, and cranial nerve abnormalities, which arise due to infarction of the lateral medulla. We report the case of a 74-year-old female patient with a history of hypertension who presented to the emergency department with acute onset of vertigo and an unsteady gait.

Exploring Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) among patients with HIV-associated TB in Khayelitsha, South Africa.

Background: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is an important and frequently used patient-reported outcome in health research. However, little qualitative research exists in this field in South Africa. This study was set in Khayelitsha, one of the largest informal settlements in South Africa, where the burden of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) co-infection are amongst the highest in the world and significantly affect HRQOL.

Validation of a functional human AD model with four AD therapeutics utilizing patterned ipsc-derived cortical neurons integrated with microelectrode arrays.

Preclinical methods are needed for screening potential Alzheimer's disease (AD) therapeutics that recapitulate phenotypes found in the Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) stage or even before this stage of the disease. This would require a phenotypic system that reproduces cognitive deficits without significant neuronal cell death to mimic the clinical manifestations of AD during these stages. Long-term potentiation (LTP), which is a correlate of learning and memory, was induced in mature human iPSC-derived cortical neurons cultured on microelectrode arrays utilizing circuit patterns connecting two adjacent electrodes.