The Effect of Ficin Immobilized on Carboxymethyl Chitosan on Biofilms of Oral Pathogens.

In the last decade, Ficin, a proteolytic enzyme extracted from the latex sap of the wild fig tree, has been widely investigated as a promising tool for the treatment of microbial biofilms, wound healing, and oral care. Here we report the antibiofilm properties of the enzyme immobilized on soluble carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCh) and CMCh itself. Ficin was immobilized on CMCh with molecular weights of either 200, 350 or 600 kDa.

Enriched Environment Attenuates Enhanced Trait Anxiety in Association with Normalization of Aberrant Neuro-Inflammatory Events.

Neuroinflammation is discussed to play a role in specific subgroups of different psychiatric disorders, including anxiety disorders. We have previously shown that a mouse model of trait anxiety (HAB) displays enhanced microglial density and phagocytic activity in key regions of anxiety circuits compared to normal-anxiety controls (NAB). Using minocycline, we provided causal evidence that reducing microglial activation within the dentate gyrus (DG) attenuated enhanced anxiety in HABs.

[The state of the oral cavity in early diagnosis and predicting cognitive disorders.].

A review of the literature on the problem of the use of non-invasive technologies in early diagnosis and prediction of age-associated cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's disease is presented. The main attention is paid to the study of the buccal epithelium, oral fluid, as surrogate models of degenerative lesions of cerebral structures, as well as determining the role of oral microorganisms in the formation and development of cognitive disorders. An original hypothesis of neurodegenerative lesions of cerebral structures is presented, on the basis of which an algorithm for studying the state of the oral cavity is proposed in order to detect and predict cognitive deficits as early as possible.

Cassava Starch as an Effective Texture Corrector of Fat-Free Dairy Products Based on Symbiotic Starter Culture.

Cassava starch can be an effective texture corrector for dairy products; however, the presence of a starchy taste in such products is undesirable. A possible solution to this problem can be the use of partially hydrolyzed cassava starch; complex microbial amylase preparations, for instance, Amylosubtilin® or amylases, can be used as an enzyme. The use of these enzyme preparations in low concentration allows it to obtain cassava starches with increased solubility, which can be easily used in the technology of dairy products.

Development and Validation of a Shortened Form of SELweb EE, a Web-Based Assessment of Children's Social and Emotional Competence.

This article describes the development and validation of a shortened form of SELweb EE, a web-based assessment for social-emotional skills in the early elementary grades. Using a Rasch approach, in the first study, we used data from two archival data sets to reduce the number of items in three subtests to create short forms that maintained item fit, item difficulty, item discrimination, and test information function range. In the second study, we created and administered a short form of SELweb EE to a demographically diverse cross-validation sample of 22,683 students.