Search

We conducted a cross-sectional survey including 23869 participants and aimed to measure the prevalences of and risk factors for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and diabetic kidney disease (DKD) in a Chinese rural population. CKD and DKD status was defined according to the combination of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and presence of albuminuria Participant completed a questionnaire involving life-style and relevant medical history, and the blood and urinary specimen were taken. The age- and gender- adjusted prevalences of CKD and DKD were calculated and risk factors associated with the presence of CKD and DKD were analyzed by logistic regression. The overall prevalence of CKD was 16.4% (15.9–16.8%) and of DKD was 2.9% (2.7–3.1%). In participants with diabetes, the overall prevalence of CKD was 35.5% (95% CI = 33.7–37.3%). Factors independently associated with renal damage were age, gender, education, personal income, alcohol consumption, overweight, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia. Our study shows current prevalences of CKD and DKD in Chinese rural residents. Further researches could identify potential factors explaining the observed differences and implement the interventions to relieve the high burden of CKD and DKD in rural population.

Tandem device is an important architecture in fabricating high performance organic light-emitting diodes and organic photovoltaic cells. The key element in making a high performance tandem device is the connecting materials stack, which plays an important role in electric field distribution, charge generation and charge injection. For a tandem organic light-emitting diode (OLED) with a simple Liq/Al/MoO3 stack, we discovered that there is a significant current lateral spreading causing light emission over an extremely large area outside the OLED pixel when the Al thickness exceeds 2 nm. This spread light emission, caused by an inductive electric field over one of the device unit, limits one’s ability to fabricate high performance tandem devices. To resolve this issue, a new connecting materials stack with a C60 fullerene buffer layer is reported. This new structure permits optimization of the Al metal layer in the connecting stack and thus enables us to fabricate an efficient tandem OLED having a high 155.6 cd/A current efficiency and a low roll-off (or droop) in current efficiency.

This study evaluated if iodine-125 brachytherapy prophylaxis after radiofrequency ablation (RFA) prolongs time to recurrence (TTR) and overall survival (OS) of patients in high risk of locoregional hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) recurrence. 116 patients with total tumor necrosis after RFA were divided into iodine-125 brachytherapy prophylaxis treatment group and control group. The primary endpoint was TTR, and secondary endpoints were OS and treatment-related adverse events. There were no significant differences among the baseline characteristics of two subgroups patients. The mean iodine-125 particles were 29.8 (26.59 ± 12.51 mCi) per patient. The mean follow-up was 25 months, and mean TTR of treatment and control groups were 21.7 and 15.9 months (P = 0.733); mean OS of two subgroups were 41.7 and 40.9 months (P = 0.316). There were no significant differences of 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-and 5-years TTR and OS and patients’ immunity pre- and 1 month post-treatment. Extrahepatic metastasis was found to have a statistically significant influence on TTR, and AFP, extrahepatic metastasis were found to have a statistically significant influence on OS by multivariate analysis. There was no major complications and procedure related death. Iodine-125 brachytherapy prophylaxis after RFA can’t improve TTR and OS of HCC patients who were in high risk of locoregional tumor recurrence.

Technology of displaying static images in portable displays, advertising panels and price tags pursues significant reduction in power consumption and in product cost. Driving at a low-frequency electric field in fringe-field switching (FFS) mode can be one of the efficient ways to save powers of the recent portable devices, but a serious drop of image-quality, so-called image-flickering, has been found in terms of the coupling of elastic deformation to not only quadratic dielectric effect but linear flexoelectric effect. Despite of the urgent requirement of solving the issue, understanding of such a phenomenon is yet vague. Here, we thoroughly analyze and firstly report the flexoelectric effect in in-plane switching (IPS) liquid crystal cell. The effect takes place on the area above electrodes due to splay and bend deformations of nematic liquid crystal along oblique electric fields, so that the obvious spatial shift of the optical transmittance is experimentally observed and is clearly demonstrated based on the relation between direction of flexoelectric polarization and electric field polarity. In addition, we report that the IPS mode has inherent characteristics to solve the image-flickering issue in the low-power consumption display in terms of the physical property of liquid crystal material and the electrode structure.

White organic light emitting diodes (WOLEDs) is becoming a new platform technology for a range of applications such as flat-panel displays, solid-state lightings etc. and are under intensive research. For general solid-state illumination applications, a WOLED’s color rendering index (CRI) and correlated color temperature (CCT) are two crucial parameters. This paper reports that WOLED device structures can be constructed using four stacked emission layers which independently emit lights at blue, green, yellow and red color respectively. The intensity of each emission layer is then engineered by funneling excitons to the targeted emission layer to achieve an ultrahigh 92 CRI at 5000 cd/m2 and to reduce CCT to below 2500 K.

The SLC4 genes are all capable of producing multiple variants by alternative splicing or using alternative promoters. The physiological consequences of such diversity are of great interest to investigators. Here, we identified two novel variants of the electroneutral Na+/"Equation missing" cotransporter NBCn1, one full-length starting with “MIPL” and the other Nt-truncated starting with “MDEL”. Moreover, we identified a new promoter of Slc4a10 encoding NBCn2 and a novel type of Nt-truncated NBCn2 starting with “MHAN”. When heterologously expressed, the new NBCn1 variants were well localized to the plasma membrane and exhibited characteristic NBCn1 activity. However, MHAN-NBCn2 was poorly localized on the plasma membrane. By deletion mutations, we identified the Nt regions important for the surface localization of NBCn2. Interestingly, coexpressing the full-length NBCn2 greatly enhances the surface abundance of the Nt-truncated NBCn2. Co-immunoprecipitation and bimolecular fluorescence complementation studies showed that the full-length and Nt-truncated NBCn2 interact with each other to form heterodimers in neuro-2A cells. Finally, we showed that the isolated Nt domain interacts with and enhances the surface abundance of the Nt-truncated NBCn2. The present study expands our knowledge of the NBCn1 and NBCn2 transcriptome and provides insights into how the Nt domain could affect transporter function by regulating its membrane trafficking.

TMPRSS4 (Transmembrane protease serine 4) is up-regulated in a broad spectrum of cancers. However, little is known about the biological effects of TMPRSS4 on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the related mechanisms. In the present study, we found that overexpression of TMPRSS4 significantly promoted the invasion, migration, adhesion and metastasis of HCC. Further more, TMPRSS4 induced EMT of HCC, which was mediated via snail and slug as a result of Raf/MEK/ERK1/2 activation and inhibition of ERK1/2 activation by its inhibitor was associated with reduced cell invasion and reversion of EMT. In addition, we demonstrated that TMPRSS4 remarkably suppressed the expression of RECK, an inhibitor of angiogenesis and drastically induced tumor angiogenesis and growth. More important, in clinical HCC specimens, TMPRSS4 expression was significantly correlated with tumor staging and was inversely correlated with E-cadherin and RECKS expression. Expression of TMPRSS4 is significantly associated with HCC progression and is an independent prognostic factor for postoperative worse survival and recurrence. In conclusion, TMPRSS4 functions as a positive regulator of Raf/MEK/ERK1/2 pathway and promotes HCC progression by inducing EMT and angiogenesis. The increase of TMPRSS4 expression may be a key event for HCC progression and may be regarded as a potential prognostic marker for HCC.

Calstabin2 is a component of the cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR2) macromolecular complex, which modulates Ca(2+) release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum in cardiomyocytes. Previous reports implied that genetic deletion of Calstabin2 leads to phenotypes related to cardiac aging. However, the mechanistic role of Calstabin2 in the process of cardiac aging remains unclear. To assess whether Calstabin2 is involved in age-related heart dysfunction, we studied Calstabin2 knockout (KO) and control wild-type (WT) mice. We found a significant association between deletion of Calstabin2 and cardiac aging. Indeed, aged Calstabin2 KO mice exhibited a markedly impaired cardiac function compared with WT littermates. Calstabin2 deletion resulted also in increased levels of cell cycle inhibitors p16 and p19, augmented cardiac fibrosis, cell death, and shorter telomeres. Eventually, we demonstrated that Calstabin2 deletion resulted in AKT phosphorylation, augmented mTOR activity, and impaired autophagy in the heart. Taken together, our results identify Calstabin2 as a key modulator of cardiac aging and indicate that the activation of the AKT/mTOR pathway plays a mechanistic role in such a process.