Overview of Unilateral and Bilateral Pediatric Facial Paralysis: Workup, Treatment, and Frontiers.

Pediatric facial nerve paralysis can present significant challenges based on its various etiologies, unique approach to treatment options, and overall outcomes. It can impact both the child and parent when regarding function, appearance, and psychosocial implications. The etiology of facial nerve palsy can include congenital, traumatic, iatrogenic, and idiopathic causes.

Biohacking Nerve Repair: Novel Biomaterials, Local Drug Delivery, Electrical Stimulation, and Allografts to Aid Surgical Repair.

The regenerative capacity of the peripheral nervous system is limited, and peripheral nerve injuries often result in incomplete healing and poor outcomes even after repair. Transection injuries that induce a nerve gap necessitate microsurgical intervention; however, even the current gold standard of repair, autologous nerve graft, frequently results in poor functional recovery. Several interventions have been developed to augment the surgical repair of peripheral nerves, and the application of functional biomaterials, local delivery of bioactive substances, electrical stimulation, and allografts are among the most promising approaches to enhance innate healing across a nerve gap.

Corneal Nerve Assessment by Aesthesiometry: History, Advancements, and Future Directions.

The measurement of corneal sensation allows clinicians to assess the status of corneal innervation and serves as a crucial indicator of corneal disease and eye health. Many devices are available to assess corneal sensation, including the Cochet-Bonnet aesthesiometer, the Belmonte Aesthesiometer, the Swiss Liquid Jet Aesthesiometer, and the newly introduced Corneal Esthesiometer Brill. Increasing the clinical use of in vivo confocal microscopy and optical coherence tomography will allow for greater insight into the diagnosis, classification, and monitoring of ocular surface diseases such as neurotrophic keratopathy; however, formal esthesiometric measurement remains necessary to assess the functional status of corneal nerves.

Histone deacetylases regulate organ-specific growth in a horned beetle.

Background: Nutrient availability is among the most widespread means by which environmental variability affects developmental outcomes. Because almost all cells within an individual organism share the same genome, structure-specific growth responses must result from changes in gene regulation. Earlier work suggested that histone deacetylases (HDACs) may serve as epigenetic regulators linking nutritional conditions to trait-specific development.

Corneal Neurotization: Essentials for The Facial Paralysis Surgeon.

Deficits in corneal innervation lead to neurotrophic keratopathy (NK). NK is frequently associated with facial palsy, and corneal damage can be accelerated by facial palsy deficits. Corneal nerves are important regulators of limbal stem cells, which play a critical role in epithelial maintenance and healing.

Notch signaling patterns head horn shape in the bull-headed dung beetle Onthophagus taurus.

Size and shape constitute fundamental aspects in the description of morphology. Yet while the developmental-genetic underpinnings of trait size, in particular with regard to scaling relationships, are increasingly well understood, those of shape remain largely elusive. Here we investigate the potential function of the Notch signaling pathway in instructing the shape of beetle horns, a highly diversified and evolutionarily novel morphological structure.