Sawsan Abuhamdah

Al Ain University · College of Pharmacy

Background: Epilepsy is a disorder characterized by recurring seizures that do not have an immediate identifiable cause. It is a disorder with complex symptoms and a wide range of risk factors, with age, genetics, and origin being the most prevalent variations. This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge of and attitude towards epilepsy among the J...

Introduction: Traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) is a life-threatening neurological disorder and there is a lack of biomarker research, particularly human studies that could help to categorize the severity and predict the outcome. We aimed to assess the role of serum Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1) and Neuroglobin (NGB) in predicting s...

Introduction: Verruca vulgaris is a benign hyperkeratotic proliferation of the epidermis. Few studies look at the differences in serum and tissue macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) levels in verruca vulgaris, as well as its gene polymorphisms that have yet to be explored. The current study provided in-depth evaluation of MIF in serum and...

Objectives: To examine the prevalence of mental distress among university students in Jordan. Methods: An online cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire was conducted between 12th of June and the 4th of August 2021 in Jordan to measure student mental stress using Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20 (SRQ-20). Results: A total...

Melissa officinalis L. is used in traditional European and Iranian folk medicines to treat a plethora of neurological diseases including epilepsy. We utilized the in vitro and in vivo models of epilepsy to probe the anticonvulsant potentials of essential oil from M. officinalis (MO) to gain insight into the scientific basis for its applications in...

Luteolin is a naturally occurring secondary metabolite belonging to the class of flavones. As many other natural flavonoids, it is often found in combination with glycosides in many fruits, vegetables, and plants, contributing to their biological and pharmacological value. Many preclinical studies report that luteolin present excellent antioxidant,...

Purpose: Gephyrin (GPHN) is an essential protein in the regulation of inhibitory postsynaptic density and polymorphism in the corresponding gene may have a role in the development of pharmacoresistant epilepsy (PRE). For the first time, we aimed to evaluate the association of rs928553T/C variants with PRE susceptibility. Moreover, we have analyzed...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a multifactorial disease that commonly affects the knee. Tumor Necrosis Factor-α (TNF-α) regulates inflammation during OA. Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (MIF) may be involved in the pathophysiology of arthritis. Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) may reduce pain associated with OA. The present study assessed the possible the...

Background: Caffeine and taurine, which possess neuro-modulatory activity happen to be consumed together as part of the constituents of energy drinks, could have beneficial effects and prevent neuronal deterioration in Parkinson's disease (PD). Objective: This study aimed to investigate behavioral and neurochemical effects of these two agents in...

Introduction: Understanding why adults resort to herbal medicine can help in planning interventions aimed at increasing awareness regarding herbal use. This study sought to investigate the prevalence and to determine factors for predicting the use of herbal medicine among Jordanian adults. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted involving...

Survivin is an inhibitor of apoptosis as well as a promoter of cell proliferation. Fibulin-3 is a matrix glycoprotein that displays potential for tumor suppression or propagation. This study aimed to validate the expression levels of survivin and fibulin-3 in benign and malignant respiratory diseases. This case-control study included 219 patients c...

Survivin is an inhibitor of apoptosis as well as a promoter of cell proliferation. Fibulin-3 is a matrix glycoprotein that displays potential for tumor suppression or propagation. This study aimed to validate the expression levels of survivin and fibulin-3 in benign and malignant respiratory diseases. This case-control study included 219 patients c...

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a multifactorial disease that commonly affects the knee. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) is able to regulate inflammation in OA. Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) may be involved in the pathophysiology of arthritis. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) may reduce pain associated with OA. The current study aimed t...

Peganum harmala L., Zygophyllaceae popularly known as Wild Syrian rue, a well-known plant in folk medicine for many pharmacological uses including antispasmodic activity. Chemical composition of the plant showed that the most important constituents of this plant are betacarboline alkaloids such as harmalol, harmaline, and harmine. In this work, we...

The leaves of Aloysia citriodora Palau (Jordanian "malliseh") are traditionally used to remediate irritative gastrointestinal symptoms. The aim of this study is to assess the spasmolytic activity of the ethanolic extract and essential oil of "malliseh" on spasmogen-induced isometric tension in small intestine isolated from Wistar rats (Rattus norve...

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) plays an important role in the progression of the Alzheimer’s disease. In this study, we used a structure-based virtual screening (VS) approach to discover new BChE inhibitors. A ligand database was filtered and docked to the BChE protein using Glide program. The outcome from VS was filtered and the top ranked hits were...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of commonly used Jordanian spices to inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) for the management of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Both aqueous and methanolic extracts (1:1; v/v) of 30 spices were prepared and evaluated using a thin-layer chromatography (TLC) assay and Ellman...

Background and Objective: Although Bongardia chrysogonum L. (family Berberidaceae) has been used in many countries in traditional medicine to treat gastrointestinal tract disorders, scientific evidence for this treatment is lacking. The present study was carried out to assess the antimicrobial activity and to evaluate the antispasmodic potential of...

The positive impact of acetylcholinesterase enzyme (AChE) inhibitors on neurodegenerative diseases impelled continuous attempts to discover and optimize new AChE inhibitors. The combined recent interest in AChE inhibitors, together with known shortages of docking and docking validation methods prompted us to use our new 3D-QSAR method, namely, dock...

Background and Objective: The dried tuber of Bongardia chrysogonum (L.) is a popular folk remedy for its use in the treatment of epilepsy in traditional medicine. The study aimed to evaluate the anti-oxidant and anti-convulsant activity of B. chrysogonum ethanolic-aqueous extract using the Pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) kindling animal model. Materials a...

Background and Objective: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease where symptoms appear after significant neuronal loss. Current treatments for AD do not significantly alter the disease process, where they temporarily improve symptoms. In vitro data has indicated that low doses of vanillin reduce beta-amyloid aggregation...

Graduate Research Forum- The University of Toledo

Background: Smoking is the world's leading cause of preventable death among populations. Cigarette smoking increases the risk of numerous health problems, including heart diseases, stroke, atherosclerosis and many types of cancer, including lung, stomach and bladder cancers. Outcomes: Many individuals find it difficult to stop smoking because of...

The present study reports the chemical composition, antioxidant, antibacterial, antidiarrheal as well as the spasmolytic activity of Zanthoxylum rhetsa (DC) essential oil, fractionated oil and its principal constituent (Terpinen-4-ol). The constituents of essential oil were characterized by GC-FID and GC-MS. The pharmacological and biological activ...

Evidence demonstrated that glial cells, mainly astrocytes, regulate glutamate uptake, which is regulated by several glutamate transporters. Among these glutamate transporters, glutamate transporter 1 (GLT-1; its human homolog is excitatory amino acid transporter-2) is responsible for the majority of glutamate uptake by glial cells. Cystine-glutamat...

Objectives The Jordanian ‘Melissa’, (Aloysia citrodora) has been poorly studied both pharmacologically and in the clinic. Essential oils (EO) derived from leaves of A. citrodora were obtained by hydrodistillation, analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and were investigated for a range of neurobiological and pharmacological prope...

http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/AJPP/article-abstract/324C1A149561

(2000 g) were macerated three times with 70% MeOH solution. Thehydroalcoholic solution was concentrated under reduced pressure to dryness, and the residue was dissolved in hot water(1000 mL) and kept in the cold overnight. After filtration, the aqueous solution was successively extracted with EtOAc onceand with

A simple and a stability indicating spectrofluorometric method was developed and validated for the analysis of lanzoprazole via its degradation product in formulation. The proposed method was based on measuring the fluorescence intensity of the degradation products at 410 nm for the emission wavelength and at 322 nm for the excitation wavelength. T...

Melissa officinalis (Mo) and Lavandula angustifolia (La) essential oils and their major constituents ((E) caryophyllene, caryophyllene oxide, geranyl acetate, linalool, nerol, Oct-1-en-3-ol, 3-Octanone, myrcene, allo-ocimene, p-cymene and α- terpineol) assessed by GC-MS) which are shared by these two essential oils were probed in an attempt to iden...

Aqueous and hydro-alcoholic extracts of Achil- lea fragrantissima L. (Asteraceae) grown in Jor- dan were screened for their antioxidant, antimi- crobial, antiplatelet, anti-proliferative and ace- tylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition efficacy. To- tal phenols and flavonoids were determined co- lorimetrically. The radical scavenging activities were ev...

Inhibition of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) has been shown to alleviate neurodegenerative diseases prompting several attempts to discover and optimize new AChE inhibitors. In this direction, we explored the pharmacophoric space of 85 AChE inhibitors to identify high quality pharmacophores. Subsequently, we implemented genetic algorithm-bas...

The chemical composition of the hydrodistilled essential oil of Satureja calamintha ssp. sylvatica, collected from Jijel (Eastern Algerian), was analyzed by GC and GC/MS. 23 components representing 94.45% of the essential oil were detected with isopulegone (66.5%) and pulegone (11.6%) as the major components. The antibacterial activity of the essen...

The chemical composition of the hydrodistilled essential oil of Satureja calamintha ssp. sylvatica, collected from Jijel (Eastern Algerian), was analyzed by GC and GC/MS. 23 components representing 94.45% of the essential oil were detected with isopulegone (66.5%) and pulegone (11.6%) as the major components. The antibacterial activity of the essen...

The chemical composition of the hydrodistilled essential oil of Thymus guyonii de Noé, collected from Zelfana-Province of Ghardaia (Algerian Septentrional Sahara), was analyzed by GC and GC/MS. Nineteen components representing 94.63% of the essential oil were detected with carvacrol (55.55%), thymol (19.51%) and p-cymene (6.25%) as the major compon...

The hydrodistilled essential oil of fresh aerial parts of Salvia officinalis, collected at Batna (Eastern Algerian) was analyzed by GC and GC/MS. 35 components representing 98.39 % of the essential oil were detected with a-thujone (24.52%),1,8-cineole (15.92%), camphor (16.86%), β-thujone (6.50%) and veridiflorol (6.35%), as the major components. T...

The chemical composition of the hydrodistilled essential oil of Origanum glandulosum Desf., collected from Zighoud-Youcef (Eastern Algerian), was analyzed by GC and GC/MS. 18 Components representing 93.65% % of the essential oil were detected with thymol (70.59%), tert-butylbenzene (5.76%), carvacrol (5.44%) and γ-terpinene (5.04%) as the major com...

The hydrodistilled essential oils of fresh aerial parts of I. viscosa (L.) Ait., collected at Ain El-Bey (Southern Constantine), was characterized by nerolidol (25.3%), isocostic acid (10.1%), costic acid (8.0%), neo-intermedeol (6.4%) and caryophyllene oxide (5.5%), as major components. The essential oil of hydrodistilled fresh aerial parts of I....

The study objective was to investigate the effects of melatonin on obesity and obesity-associated systolic hypertension and dyslipidemia in young male Zucker diabetic fatty (ZDF) rats, an experimental model of the metabolic syndrome. ZDF rats (n=30) and lean littermates (ZL) (n=30) were used. At 6wk of age, both lean and fatty animals were subdivid...

Both Melissa officinalis (Mo) and Lavandula angustifolia (La) essential oils have putative anti-agitation properties in humans, indicating common components with a depressant action in the central nervous system. A dual radioligand binding and electrophysiological study, focusing on a range of ligand-gated ion channels, was performed with a chemica...

Nature is the best chemist. Novel therapeutics derived from natural sources is clearly a worthwhile strategy and has long historic pedigree. Anxiety, depression and psychotic disorders lack ideal medications based on a limited understanding of the underlying causes of these complaints. Many of the current therapeutics display lack of efficacy and/o...

A dual radioligand binding and electrophysiological study, focusing on a range of ligand-gated ion channels, was performed with a chemically-validated essential oil derived from Melissa officinalis (MO), which has shown clinical benefit in treating agitation. MO inhibited binding of [35S] t-butylbicyclophosphorothionate (TBPS) to the rat forebrain...

Agitation is a common symptom in people with severe dementia and is often treated with neuroleptic drugs which demonstrate severe side effects and limited efficacy. An encouraging alternative treatment involves the use of aromatherapy using essential oils from melissa (Melissa officinalis L.) or lavender (Lavandula angustifolia Mill.), both of whic...

Caloporoside is a natural active fungal metabolite, which was isolated from Caloporous dichrous and was described to exhibit antibacterial, antifungal and phospholipase C inhibitory activity. We have previously reported evidence that related beta-linked compounds, lactose and octyl-beta-d-mannoside, bind and functionally modulate rodent GABA(A) rec...