Depression is a mental disorder that depicts a wide variety of symptoms, including mood and cognitive alterations, as well as recurrent thoughts of death or suicide. It could become the second leading cause of premature death or disability worldwide. Treatments with conventional antidepressants have several limitations in terms of effectiveness, side effects, and high costs. Therefore, medicinal plants such as Mucuna pruriens are potent candidates for treating depressive disorders. This review shows a compendium of evidence supporting the antidepressant effect of the Mucuna pruriens plant in diverse animal models. This includes the mechanisms of action underlying the antidepressant activity of the treatment concerning dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, reactive oxygen species, nitric oxide, cortisol, and inflammation. Clinical trials are needed to study the efficacy and safety of Mucuna pruriens for depression.

Currently, there are approximately 250 antibiotics registered for use in human and veterinary medicine worldwide, which, as a result of inadequate management and poor disposal of waste, among other bad practices in their management, are more common in wastewater; this situation has begun to attract more attention and be an interesting topic for the proposal of solutions. In the search for options to solve this problem, structured materials are being actively studied; one material that has received significant attention is the metal organic framework (MOF) type. The use of MOFs with various topologies and characteristics are demonstrating great effectiveness in the elimination of different types of contaminants from water, such as medications, such as anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, explosives, and heavy metals. Different antibiotics are used as models in these studies, from which it follows that the nature of the drugs that can be eliminated from effluents is very varied, which allows us to see that it can be an interesting option. Another objective pursued by these studies is to seek to establish the number of cycles in which these materials can be used to carry out the capture of drugs, as well as the type of kinetics that follow the adsorption of these materials in the MOFs.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), even when mild, has been associated with the presence of depression. Depression is a mood disorder characterized by persistent negative thoughts and sadness and is challenging to treat due to the multiple mechanisms involved in its pathophysiology, including increased nitric oxide (NO) levels. There are no completely safe and effective pharmacological strategies to treat this disorder. Mucuna pruriens (MP) has been shown to possess neuroprotective properties by regulating inflammatory responses and nitric oxide synthase activity. In this study, we evaluated the antidepressant-like effect of MP in male Wistar rats with induced mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). MP extract (50 mg/kg i.p.) was administered immediately after mTBI and every 24 h for five days. We used the rats’ preference for sucrose consumption to assess the presence of depression-like behavior and analyzed the nitrite and nitrate levels in their cerebral cortex, striatum, midbrain, and nucleus accumbens. Untreated animals with mTBI showed a reduced preference for sucrose than those treated with MP, whose preference for sucrose was similar to that of sham animals. Increased nitrite and nitrate levels were observed in different brain regions in the TBI subjects; however, this increase was not observed in MP-treated animals. MP reduces behavior associated with depression and the brain NO levels in rats with mTBI.

Introducción: La esquizofrenia es una condición crónica que afecta al 1% de la población. Una de las principales teorías que explican la etiología de la esquizofrenia, es la relacionada con la hipofunción en los receptores de glutamato N-Methyl-d-Aspartato (NMDA), induciendo la pérdida del equilibrio entre la producción de especies oxidantes producidas en el metabolismo celular y los sistemas de defensa antioxidante, lo que genera un estado de estrés oxidante. Se ha propuesto a la N-acetilcisteína (NAC) como un agente adyuvante para potencializar la eficacia de antipsicóticos atípicos como la olanzapina, mejorando los procesos de oxidación propios de la enfermedad. Métodos:Se utilizaron 30 ratones divididos en 5 grupos experimentales a los cuales se les administró MK-801 (un antagonista de NMDA) como modelo de esquizofrenia. Se evalúo la participación del estrés oxidativo al medir la peroxidación lipídica y la concentración de glutatión reducida a nivel de la corteza frontal. Resultados: La administración de MK-801 produjo un aumento en la peroxidación lipídica y una disminución en la concentración de glutatión reducido a nivel de la corteza frontal. En este mismo sentido, tanto el tratamiento con Olanzapina (OLA) como con NAC y con la combinación de OLA-NAC disminuyeron la peroxidación lipídica y aumentaron el glutatión en el tejido cerebral. Discusión: Estos datos sugieren que el tratamiento con OLA y NAC pudiera regular el daño oxidativo propio de la enfermedad y representar una opción terapéutica para pacientes con psicosis crónica o inclusive aquellos resistentes al tratamiento farmacológico.