Development and validation of a web-based headache diagnosis questionnaire.

Information technology advances may help in conducting epidemiological studies using web-based surveys. Questionnaire-based headache diagnosis should be validated against the doctor's diagnosis. This study aimed to develop and validate a web-based diagnostic questionnaire for migraine, probable migraine (PM), and tension-type headache (TTH). We constructed a seven-item questionnaire for diagnosing migraine, PM, and TTH. A web-based survey was conducted among adults aged 20-59 years; migraine, PM, and TTH were diagnosed based on the responses. Validation interview was performed via telephone by a neurologist within 1 month after the web-based interview. Finally, 256 participants completed both web-based survey and validation interview. Of them, 121 (47.3%), 65 (25.4%), 61 (23.8%), and 9 (3.5%) were diagnosed with migraine, PM, TTH, and unclassified headache (UH), respectively in the web-based survey, whereas 119 (46.5%), 60 (23.4%), 74 (28.9%), 2 (0.8%), and 1 (0.4%) were diagnosed with migraine, PM, TTH, UH, and primary stabbing headache, respectively in the validation interview. The best agreement was found in migraine (sensitivity: 92.6%; specificity: 94.8%; kappa coefficient: 0.875), followed by TTH (sensitivity: 78.4%; specificity: 98.4%; kappa coefficient: 0.809). PM showed the least agreement (sensitivity: 85.0%; specificity: 92.9%; kappa coefficient: 0.757). In conclusion, our questionnaire is valid in identifying these headache disorders.

Novel stem-loop RNA and drug-bearing DNA hybrid nanostructures specific to LNCaP prostate carcinoma.

Advances in nanotechnology have resulted in the introduction of new materials for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. In particular, DNA and RNA are viewed as representative and generic nano-blocks because of their physiochemical characteristics of specificity and nanoscopic-level accuracy. In addition, the intrinsic biocompatibility of DNA and RNA and their immune stimulation effects make these molecules ideal candidates for the rational design of novel bio-drug molecules. Recently, we reported novel RNA-DNA hybrid stem-loop structures that target and are endocytosed by LNCaP prostate cancer cells with high specificity. To effectively ligate the DNA and RNA modules in this research, we thoroughly evaluated and optimized several ligation parameters, and observed that we could enhance the ligation efficacy by changing the overhang sequences. A change in sequence information (GCAT) resulted in a 4-fold increase in ligation efficiency in comparison with other ligation factors. To determine the in vitro cellular targeting ability of the nanostructures, RNA-DNA hybrid constructs were complexed with gold nanorods (AuNRs), and the ability of these nanorods to target prostate cancer cells was highest at a 2 : 10 molar ratio of LNCaP cancer-specific looped A10 RNA to stem-DNA. Furthermore, doxorubicin (Dox) as a representative anti-prostate cancer therapeutic was loaded into the DNA-RNA hybrid nanostructures. Our results indicate that RNA-DNA hybrid constructs are effective anti-prostate cancer drug delivery platforms and can be employed for both discovery and delivery.

Hepatocyte cytotoxicity evaluation with zinc oxide nanoparticles.

Our innate immunity is composed of several integral leukocytes including neutrophil, NK cell, macrophage or so. They are usually known to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), in order to induce cell damages by these oxidizing reagents, and finally disrupting mitochondrial membrane to release cytochrome c. It is quite interesting to cancer therapy that the overexpressed cytochrome c level by ROS can lead to cancer cell death. Activated neutrophils exert anti-tumor effects against several carcinomas such as human skin melanoma by the increased production of ROS. To mimic the natural killing system, several nanoparticulates which contain cytotoxic properties have been in demand. Representatively, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles have been reported to have anti-bacterial and anti-cancer activity against various cancer cell lines due to production of ROS. They are shown to have preferential anti-cancer activity possibly due to higher level of oxidants and ROS in cancer cells. Inspired by these studies, we carried out the cytotoxicity evaluation of ZnO nanoparticulates against hepatocellular carcinoma. Our investigations were conducted by (1) screening the best size of ZnO (among 5, 50, and 100 nm) and the optimized time for anti-cancer effect against HepG2 cell line, (2) determining the apoptosis in the cells, and (3) regulating the production of intracellular ROS by ZnO nanoparticles. The ZnO nanoparticles revealed the dose-dependent toxic effect on HepG2 cells, irrespective of the sizes.

A light-driven anti-cancer dual-therapeutic cassette enhances solid tumour regression.

The majority of anticancer therapeutics have failed to control the target cancers. Thus, new rational design concepts are critical. In most of the biological reactions, a cascade pathway is used to activate appropriate responses. In the cascade pathway, a small signal derived from neighboring environments can be amplified and it further triggers overwhelming and specialized responses. It can be applied to achieve powerful therapeutic effects for novel drug design strategies. Inspired by this concept, we design a preferential dual anti-cancer therapeutic cassette composed of (i) DNA/RNA nanostructures as both anticancer containers and target ligands and (ii) a gold nanocrystal as localized heat inducers. We demonstrate that this multi-modular platform is superior to conventional cancer medications in that it had higher drug loading efficiency, tunable drug release, and intrinsic serum stability characteristics. Both doxorubicin chemotherapy and thermal ablation exert a powerful synergistic killing effect that resulted in prostate cancer regression both in vitro and in vivo. We speculate that our novel anti-cancer drug system can be adapted to effectively destroy many different types of solid cancers.