From Tea to Health: Exploring Abrus mollis for Liver Protection and Unraveling Its Potential Mechanisms.

Abrus mollis Hance is a characteristic medicinal herb which is used in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces of China for making soup, medicinal meals, and herbal tea to treat dampheat jaundice and rib discomfort. Current phytochemical study on A. mollis led to the isolation of four new flavones, mollisone A-D (1-4), and thirty two known compounds (5-36). Their structures were characterized by an extensive analysis of spectroscopic data including IR, UV, HR-ESI-MS, and 1D and 2D NMR, as well as electronic circular dichroism calculation. In addition, in order to initially understand their biological activities for traditional applications, in vitro antioxidant and hepatoprotective tests were carried out, whose results illustrated that 25 compounds had significant free radical scavenging ability, and compounds 13 and 16 exhibited protective activities on D-GalN-induced LO2 cell damage than the positive control. Moreover, network pharmacological analysis revealed that the hepatoprotective activity of A. mollis involved multitargets and multipathways such as PI3K/Akt, MAPK, and JAK-STAT pathways and various biological processes such as positive regulation of phosphorylation and regulation of kinase activity. These results suggested that this species could serve as a potential hepatoprotective agent for functional food or medicinal use.

Design and fabrication of a novel passive hand tremor attenuator.

Parkinson's disease is most highly recognised by tremors of the hands that occur in those afflicted with the disease. Though the symptoms of Parkinson's disease involving motor function begin with very slight tremors of the hands, they further develop into issues such as difficulty swallowing, severe postural problems and extremely limited mobility. In this study, a method of reducing these tremors that appear during the early stages of the disease is developed by creating a wearable passive device that reduces vibrations of the hand and arm through the use of magnetic actuators. The proposed wearable technology has surpassed other known alternatives in selected testing scenarios while possessing a light weight of only 120 grams.