Gulf Medical University

Urolithin A (UA) is synthesized when the body metabolizes ellagic acid and ellagitannins. UA has been a widely recognized physiologically active compound throughout the previous decade. The gut microbiota affects metabolic regulators AMPK and sirtuins, initiates autophagy, and activates mitochondrial quality control, which is essential for infection resistance, intestinal health, and inflammation reduction. A preclinical study indicates that UA alters cancer cell metabolism, fortifies the intestinal barrier, safeguards the brain, and supports skeletal muscle health. UA enhances muscle endurance, mitochondrial function indicators, and cardiometabolic health without side effects or adverse reactions in preliminary human trials, primarily including the elderly and sedentary individuals. UA production exhibits significant variability due to the heterogeneity of gut flora. The existing classifications of A, B, and O kinds, absence of longitudinal data, limited trial sizes, and inconsistency between results and real-world outcomes impede the pharmaceutical advancement of UA. This review commenced with an examination of UA’s origins, chemical properties, gastrointestinal metabolism, absorption, molecular functions, and therapeutic potential. The literature’s validity, applicability, and knowledge gaps indicate that UA is a postbiotic treatment that influences the gut microbiome’s impact on mitochondrial pathways affecting various bodily systems, considering the intricate connections among inflammation, aging, and cancer. Comprehensive clinical trials are required to validate the optimal composition, dosage, and therapeutic efficacy. Dietary ellagitannins, the gut microbial transformation to urolithin A, and its systemic mitochondrial and therapeutic advantages

The process of classifying brain tumors through MRI scans faces difficulties because tumors have different growth patterns and there are not enough diverse datasets and researchers need to create dependable ways to represent important features. This work presents a multiclass brain tumor classification method which uses a hybrid multi-transformer feature fusion framework and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) technology to control hyperparameter optimization. A unified 3584-dimensional representation is created through the extraction of deep features from four pretrained architectures which include Vision Transformer (ViT-B/16) and Swin Transformer (Swin-B) and BEiT (BEiT-B/16) and ConvNeXt (ConvNeXt-B). The GWO optimization with ResNet101 classifier enhances its ability to generalize while reducing the risk of overfitting. The work utilized a Kaggle brain MRI dataset which includes 6799 T1-weighted contrast-enhanced images that show four distinct categories of glioma meningioma pituitary tumor and no tumor. The proposed fusion-based model achieved a test accuracy of 97.73

Pediatric ovarian tumors, although rare, require accurate diagnosis through multimodality imaging. This pictorial essay highlights the key radiological features of various ovarian neoplasms in children using ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and positron emission tomography (PET-CT). Representative examples illustrate the characteristic imaging features of germ cell tumors, sex cord-stromal tumors, and epithelial tumors, which are essential for accurate diagnosis, guiding management, and preserving fertility in children.

Abstract Sperm DNA fragmentation (SDF) has gained increasing recognition as a biologically relevant biomarker in the evaluation of male infertility, reflecting genomic instability within the paternal gamete and its potential consequences for fertilization, embryo development, and pregnancy outcomes. Despite its growing clinical adoption, a persistent question in reproductive medicine concerns the existence of a single, universally applicable SDF cut-off that can reliably define male infertility. The present correspondence critically examines this assumption considering current evidence. Available data indicate that the concept of a universal numerical threshold is scientifically problematic because SDF measurements vary substantially across analytical platforms, including sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA), terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL), sperm chromatin dispersion (SCD), and Comet assays. Evidence suggests that values around ~ 20% may distinguish fertile from infertile men at a population level. However, this represents a population-level diagnostic estimate rather than a clinical decision threshold. In contrast, thresholds near 25–30%, derived primarily from SCSA-based studies, represent an assay-specific prognostic range associated with reduced natural conception or intrauterine insemination success. However, these thresholds are assay-dependent and influenced by methodological variability, clinical context, and couple-related factors. Consequently, SDF should not be interpreted as a binary diagnostic marker but rather as a probabilistic indicator of male reproductive competence. Future efforts should prioritize assay standardization, laboratory-specific validation, and outcome-oriented interpretation rather than the pursuit of a single universal cut-off.

Wound healing is a dynamic and multifaceted biological process involving hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and tissue remodeling. Topical therapy is widely preferred for wound management due to its localized action and reduced systemic adverse effects. However, the effective delivery of therapeutic agents is often limited by the skin’s barrier properties, the complex wound microenvironment, and the physicochemical characteristics of drugs. This review highlights the key physicochemical parameters governing topical drug delivery in wound therapy, including drug solubility, molecular size, lipophilicity, vesicle size distribution, surface charge, encapsulation efficiency, lipid composition, ethanol concentration, and vesicle deformability, which collectively influence drug permeation and retention at the wound site. Nanovesicular delivery systems have emerged as promising strategies to overcome these limitations. In particular, ultradeformable vesicles such as ethosomes, transferosomes, and transethosomes have demonstrated enhanced skin permeation and improved drug deposition in periwound tissue due to their flexible membrane structure and optimized physicochemical properties. This review systematically discusses the composition, preparation techniques, and critical formulation parameters of these vesicular systems that determine their stability, elasticity, and permeation performance. Furthermore, their applications in delivering anti-inflammatory drugs, antimicrobial agents, bioactive phytochemicals, and regenerative therapeutics for different wound types are examined. Widely used in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo evaluation methods, including permeation studies and wound healing models such as excision, burn, infected, and diabetic wounds, are also summarized. Finally, the review outlines current challenges related to formulation standardization, physicochemical characterization, safety assessment, and large-scale production, while highlighting the future potential of ultradeformable vesicles as next-generation nanocarriers for advanced wound healing therapies.