Sharif Digital Repository

High morbidity and mortality caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has made coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) the leading challenge for health experts all over the world. Currently, there is no specific treatment for COVID-19; however, thanks to worldwide intense attempts, novel vaccines such as mRNA-1273 (Moderna TX, Inc.) and BNT162b2 (Biontech/Pfizer) were developed very fast and FDA approved them for emergency use. Nanomedicine-based drug delivery can be an advanced therapeutic strategy to deal with clinical complications of COVID-19. Given the fact that SARS-CoV-2 typically affects the respiratory tract, application of inhalable nanoparticles (NPs)... 

Respiratory drug delivery has been under the research spotlight for the past few decades, mainly due to the high incidence of pulmonary diseases and the fact that this type of delivery offers the highest efficiency for treatment. Despite its invaluable benefits, there are some major drawbacks to respiratory drug delivery, the most important of which being poor delivery efficiency and relatively high drug deposition in undesirable regions, such as the mouth cavity. One way to improve the efficiency of respiratory drug delivery with metered-dose inhalers is placing a respiratory spacer between the inhaler exit and the mouth. It is argued that high drug deposition in the immediate airways of... 

In this study, a machine learning approach was applied to evaluate the impact of operating and design variables on dry powder inhalation efficiency. Emitted dose and fine particle fraction data were extracted from the literature for a variety of drug and carrier combinations. Carrier surface properties are obtained by image analysis of SEM images reported. Models combining artificial neural network and genetic algorithm were developed to determine the emitted dose and fine particle fraction. Design strategies for the carrier surface were also proposed to enhance the fine particle fractions. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd  

The present study provides an accurate simulation of velocity and temperature distributions of inhalation thermal injury in a human upper airway, including vestibule, nasal cavity, paranasal sinuses, nasopharynx, oropharynx, larynx, and upper part of main bronchus. To this end, a series of CT scan images, taken from an adult woman, was used to construct a three dimensional model. The airway walls temperature was adjusted according to existing in vivo temperature measurements. Also, in order to cover all breathing activities, five different breathing flow rates (10, 15, 20, 30, and 40. l/min) and different ambient air temperatures (100, 200, 300, 400, and 500. °C) were studied. Different flow... 

In order to perform the drug delivery via lung, tracking the trajectories of fine inhaled particles in the acinar airways is of high importance. The causes of irreversibility in the motion of fine particles (0.1 - 1 micron) and chaotic flow deep in the acinar region of lung has been always under investigation. In this study we demonstrate the importance of geometric hystersis and asynchrony of lung deformation on the issue. We adapted a 2D axisymmetric geometry of alveolated duct from recent relative works and deformed it in a way that some hystersis would appear in a respiration period. The overall deformation of duct was corresponding to the transpulmonary pressure of lung reported in... 

Aerosol measurement is used in a variety of fields such as nanotechnology, materials science, pollution monitoring, air quality measurements, combustion and engine exhaust analysis, inhalation toxicology, and medical studies. One of the most prevalent methods for aerosol measurement is to use electrical mobility. An electrical mobility spectrometer (EMS) is used to measure aerosol particles size distribution ranging from 10-1000 nanometers, under the influence of an electric field. The accuracy of this distribution is influenced by flow conditions, the geometry of the EMS, the electric field, and the number of electrode rings. In this work, a multi-channel EMS is studied using computational... 

Biologic products are large molecules such as proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, etc., which have already produced many new drugs for clinical use in the last decades. Due to the inherent challenges faced by biologics after oral administration (e.g., acidic stomach pH, digestive enzymes, and limited permeation through the gastrointestinal tract), several alternative routes of administration have been investigated to enable sufficient drug absorption into systemic circulation. This review describes the buccal, sublingual, pulmonary, and transdermal routes of administration for biologics with relevant details of the respective barriers. While all these routes avoid transit through the... 

Various EEG features have been used in depth of anesthesia (DOA) studies. The objective of this study was to And the excellent features or combination of them than can discriminate between different anesthesia states. Conducting a clinical study on 22 patients we could define 4 distinct anesthetic states: awake, moderate, general anesthesia, and isoelectric. We examined features that have been used in earlier studies using single-channel EEG signal processing method. The maximum accuracy (99.02%) achieved using approximate entropy as the feature. Some other features could well discriminate a particular state of anesthesia. We could completely classify the patterns by means of 3 features and...