Administration, Cutaneous

BACKGROUND: Atopic eczema is the commonest inflammatory skin disease of childhood, affecting 15-20% of children in the UK at any one time. Adults make up about one-third of all community cases. Moderate-to-severe atopic eczema can have a profound effect on the quality of life for both sufferers and their families.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether hypnosis would be more effective in helping smokers quit than standard behavioral counseling when both interventions are combined with nicotine patches (NP). A total of 286 current smokers were enrolled in a randomized controlled smoking cessation trial at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Participants in both treatment conditions were seen for two 60-min sessions, and received three follow-up phone calls and 2 months of NP.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of ylang ylang oil (Cananga odorata, Annonaceae) on human physiological parameters and self-evaluation after transdermal absorption. Forty healthy volunteers participated in the experiments. Physiological parameters recorded were skin temperature, pulse rate, breathing rate and blood pressure. Self-evaluation was assessed by means of visual analog scales (VAS). The ylang ylang oil caused a significant decrease of blood pressure and a significant increase of skin temperature.

The climacteric is not an illness, but the menopause is an event that troubles a woman's present life and puts her future life at risk. One would like to think that, for the woman of the new millennium, the menopause has simply become what it is: a feminine milestone that marks the transition and path to another period of life. She appears younger than her mother was at her age, she has given birth when she decided to, she has had the number of children she wanted, and her social and professional roles are well defined.

Saraca asoka (Family - Caesalpiniaceae) has been widely used in the Ayurvedic (traditional Indian) system of medicine especially due to its wound healing property. The present study investigated the chemopreventive property of flavonoids from the flowers of Saraca asoka on 7,12 dimethyl benz(a)anthracene (DMBA) induced skin cancer in mice models. A single topical application of DMBA (100 microg/50 microL of acetone) followed after 2 weeks by three times a week treatment with croton oil (1% in acetone), for 20 weeks resulted in tumor induction.

LI85008F is a novel synergistic composition of Moringa oleifera, Murraya koenigi, and Curcuma longa. These herbs are well recognized and widely used in ayurvedic system of medicine for treating a variety of diseases and are also have been used for culinary purposes for thousands of years. LI85008F inhibits preadipocyte differentiation and potentiates lipid breakdown in mature adipocytes. In diet-induced obese rats, LI85008F significantly reduced weight gain and improved serum adiponectin levels. These findings motivated the authors to determine the broad-spectrum safety of LI85008F.

Neat N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) rapidly penetrated into the skin of male Sprague-Dawley rats after in vivo and in vitro topical application. At the two topical doses tested in vivo, no steady state was observed. The maximal absorption fluxes were 10 and 20 mg/cm(2)/h for 20 microl/cm(2) and 40 microl/cm(2), respectively. Similar results were observed after in vitro topical application of neat [(14)C]NMP (25-400 microl/cm(2)) in fresh full-thickness skin.

OBJECTIVES: Previous studies indicated that oral estrogen increased C-reactive protein by a first-pass hepatic effect. In this study, we determine whether the route of estrogen administration influences serum amyloid A (SAA), another acute-phase protein produced by the liver, and the SAA content of the high-density lipoprotein (HDL-SAA) in postmenopausal women. METHODS AND RESULTS: In 29 postmenopausal women without coronary heart disease, we conducted a randomized crossover placebo-controlled study to compare effects of transdermal versus oral estrogen on SAA and HDL-SAA.

The skin is a highly accessible organ and thus provides an attractive immune environment for cost-effective, simple, and needle-free delivery of vaccines and immunomodulators. In this study, we pretreated mouse skin with an anionic surfactant, sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), for a short period of time (10 min) followed by epicutaneous vaccination with hen egg lysozyme antigen. We demonstrated for the first time that pretreatment of skin with surfactant SLS significantly enhances the production of antibody to hen egg lysozyme.