American University in Cairo

About: American University in Cairo is a education organization based out in Cairo, Egypt. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 2472 authors who have published 5339 publications receiving 73741 citations.

The efficacy of aloe vera in management of oral lichen planus: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Abstract: Objectives The main objective of oral lichen planus management is to control symptomatic outbreaks via eliminating lesions and alleviating symptoms. Corticosteroids, calcineurin inhibitors, and most of the available modalities are associated with adverse effects, which may limit their use. The aim of this review was to assess the effect of aloe vera on pain alleviation and/or clinical improvement in patients with symptomatic oral lichen planus. Methods MEDLINE-PubMed; CENTRAL, and LILACS were searched in May 2016 to identify all clinical trials evaluating aloe vera vs placebo or corticosteroids for treatment of oral lichen planus. The included studies were five clinical trials and two case reports. Results From the included studies, there is weak evidence that aloe vera is more efficient than placebo and has comparable effect to triamcinolone acetonide. The meta-analyses show heterogeneity and reveals that aloe vera is inferior to the control in general. Conclusion Although corticosteroids are still the gold standard, aloe vera shows promising results especially with no adverse effects compared with various adverse effects of corticosteroids. We recommend conducting new randomized clinical trials with larger sample size, sufficiently long follow-up period as well as standardized aloe vera formulations and outcome measures.

Extraction and characterization of nanocellulose from three types of palm residues

Abstract: Carbon footprint and nonrenewability are among the motives to mitigate dependence on oil resources. On the other hand, palm trees exceeded 100 million around globe, which poses enormous amount of biowastes to get exploited per annum. Moreover, nanocellulose is emerging as efficient low cost material, which shows increasing versatility throughout time. In this investigation we will attempt to extract nanocellulose from palm wastes (fronds, leaves, and coir), and characterize them. Dry biomass was pulped by being subjected to 10% (wt/wt) NaOH alkaline treatment at 160 °C for 2 h. Pulped non-bleached biomass underwent acidic hydrolysis by mechanical stirring in 20% H2SO4 (v/v) and heating to 120 °C for 30 min. After filtration, neutralization, and centrifugion, resultant particles were characterized to assess their morphology, size, particle charge, existing chemical groups, and crystallinity. For the three types of palm residues, our preparation technique was successful to isolate lignin containing nanocellulose particles. However, coir was more recalcitrant to acidic hydrolysis than fronds and leaves. Our palm residues yielded 42–82 nm spherical particles, and zeta potential ranging between −11 and −19 mV. Crystallinity was higher after pulping, and lower after hydrolysis, which suggests promotion of amorphous content of cellulose. Lignin-containing nanocellulose prepared in this study initiates promising horizon especially in heavy metal (cations) removal from water in environmental applications and sustained drug delivery for medical applications.

Functions of Egyptian Journalists: Perceived Importance and Actual Performance

Abstract: This study reports on Egyptian journalists’ rating of various journalistic functions in terms of both importance and ability to perform these functions. The functions, rated for importance, coalesced into four factors, Sustain Democracy, Support Arabism/Values, Support Government and Provide Entertainment. Egyptian journalists gave prime importance to supporting Arabism/values and also performed this function most often. They considered democracy-sustaining functions second in importance, but were able to perform them least often, at about the average level. For all function factors, perceived importance was discrepant with actual amount of performance, with the latter always being lower. The study’s contribution lies in (1) the quantitative benchmarks it establishes for Egyptian journalism practice, (2) its inclusion of functions specific to Egyptian society and press as culled from the literature and (3) its finding of the prime placement by Egyptian journalists of the function support for the Palestini...

Essential oil loaded pectin/chitosan nanoparticles preparation and optimization via Box–Behnken design against MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines

Abstract: In the continuous search for effective cancer treatments, we here report a novel anticancer nanoparticulate system composed of jasmine oil (JO), an essential oil with proven anticancer activity and pectin/chitosan composite nanoparticles (Pec/CS NPs) as encapsulating materials to overcome JO's solubility and sensitivity problems using a green ionotropic gelation method. Pec/CS/JO NPs were formulated using Box–Behnken design (BBD) to estimate the interactions and effects of studied formulation variables on particle size, zeta potential and encapsulation efficiency to develop an optimized Pec/CS nanoformulation. The nano-encapsulation system preserved the consistency of total phenolic contents in JO and amended its thermal stability by 1.64 fold. The antioxidant potency of JO was enhanced after encapsulation by 96.28%. Consequently, the cytotoxic activity of bare Pec/CS NPs, pure JO and encapsulated JO in Pec/CS NPs against (MCF-7) breast cancer cells and (L-929) normal cells was evaluated using MTT assay. Encapsulated JO was more potent than pure JO with ≈13 fold improvement in anticancer activity, whereas the cell viability of normal cells wasn't affected but was rather enhanced when treated with Pec/CS NPs.