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Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder affecting approximately 1% of the population worldwide. Disturbances in the homocysteine metabolism are an important factor in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. In this research, a novel validated liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) quantification procedure was developed to investigate three significant compounds of homocysteine metabolism: homocysteine, cysteine, and methionine in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. Sample preparation involved a reduction with dithiothreitol followed by protein precipitation, and the chromatographic runtime was 2 min. The LC–MS/MS method was validated according to CLSI C62‐A and the Chinese Guidance for Liquid Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry Clinical Application. The performance of the method was excellent with a coefficient of variation for precision in the range of 0.5–6.9%, an accuracy of 90.4–101.6%. In addition, the practical applicability of the method was demonstrated by applying it in the routine sample analysis for a schizophrenic patient. Increased homocysteine levels and decreased cysteine levels were observed in the patient with schizophrenia. These results indicate that the activity of the transsulfuration pathway may play a key role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely reported that the key biomarkers of homocysteine metabolic pathways have emerged as markers or independent risk factors for cardiovascular disease and many other diseases. To improve the accuracy of evaluation in China, we establish the reference intervals of serum homocysteine (Hcy), cysteine (Cys), and methionine (Met) in apparently healthy Chinese adults. We examined 1553 subjects aged ≥20 years who underwent Hcy metabolic pathway tests, in the Chaoyang Central Hospital between January 2019 and December 2020. The serum Hcy, Cys, and Met levels were simultaneously determined by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Multiple regression analysis was performed to identify sources of variation. A nonparametric method was used to establish the reference intervals. Gender differences were observed in Hcy and Met, with higher levels in males. Reference intervals for males were 6.09–17.00 μmol/L (Hcy) and 19.31–33.68 μmol/L (Met); conversely, the reference intervals for females were 4.61–14.61 μmol/L (Hcy) and 16.16–30.35 μmol/L (Met). The serum Cys reference intervals were seen to be gender-independent, but age-dependent reference intervals were needed; those for Cys were 188.85–334.27 μmol/L, 200.48–340.66 μmol/L, and 216.03–349.67 μmol/L in <40, 40–50, and ≥50 years, respectively. By this study, the gender- or age-specific reference intervals of Hcy, Cys, and Met that were matched with the Chinese population were established, providing valuable references for clinical work and laboratory researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To systematically evaluate the effect of intensive care unit diary psychotherapy on the incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression after discharge from intensive care unit. Background: Many studies have reported the potential advantages and risks of intensive care unit diary psychotherapy in adult patients discharged from intensive care unit, but the results are divergent. Design: Systematic review and meta‐analysis of prospective randomized controlled or case‐controlled studies. Data source: Databases such as Cochran Library, Pubmed, Embase, CINAHL, and ProQuest databases, China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) were searched for literatures published from January 2000–March 2020. Review methods: We use the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool for quality assessment and audit manager 5.3 software for meta‐analysis. The main result is the incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. Results: Ten studies meeting the inclusion criteria were identified, including eight randomized controlled studies and two case‐controlled studies, with a total of 1,210 patients. The pooled results of this meta‐analysis indicated that the intensive care unit diary could reduce the incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. Conclusion: This study showed that an intensive care unit diary could improve the psychological symptoms of adult intensive care unit patients after discharge. However, due to limitations such as publication bias and case sample size, the results should be carefully considered. Researchers need to further clarify the multidisciplinary collaborative process of intensive care unit diary therapy, the real beneficiaries, and its impact on family members' psychological status by conducting large, robust studies in the future. Impact: This study's findings suggest that medical staff need to re‐examine the role of intensive care unit diary therapy, its standardized implementation and provide effective intervention for reducing psychological stress‐related symptoms of intensive care unit patients after discharge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mean–variance (MV) portfolio selection model, which aims to maximize the expected return while minimizing the risk measured by the variance, has been studied extensively in the literature and regarded as a powerful guiding principle in investment practice. Recognizing the importance to reduce the impact of parameter estimation error on the optimal portfolio strategy, we integrate a set of parameter sensitivity constraints into the traditional MV model, which can also be interpreted as a model with marginal risk control on assets. The resulted optimization framework is a quadratic programming problem with non-convex quadratic constraints. By exploiting the special structure of the non-convex constraints, we propose a convex quadratic programming relaxation and develop a branch-and-bound global optimization algorithm. A significant feature of our algorithm is its special branching rule applied to the imposed auxiliary variables, which are of lower dimension than the original decision variables. Our simulation analysis and empirical test demonstrate the pros and cons of the proposed MV model with sensitivity control and indicate the cases where sensitivity control is necessary and beneficial. Our branch-and-bound procedure is shown to be favourable in computational efficiency compared with the commercial global optimization software BARON. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Retraction: Zheng Y, Li Y, Wang G, et al. A hybrid feature selection algorithm for microarray data. Concurrency Computat Pract Exper. 2018;e4716. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.4716. The above article, published online on 25th October 2018 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief Professor Geoffrey Fox, and John Wiley and Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed as an alternative algorithm was used than that described in the manuscript resulting in foundational errors that are beyond the application of errata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Occupational stress is a critical global public health problem. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence of occupational stress among the workers in the electricity, heat, gas, water production and supply (EHGWPS), manufacturing, and transportation industries in Beijing, China. We explored the demographic differences in occupational stress status among workers in industrial enterprises., Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 13,867 workers. The self-administered New Brief Job Stress Questionnaire was used to evaluate high occupational stress status, which includes four sub-dimensions (job stressors, stress response, social support, job stressors & social support). Multiple regression and logistic regression models were used to estimate the association between high occupational stress and the four occupational stress sub-dimensions with risk factors., Results: A total of 13,867 workers were included. The prevalence of high occupational stress was 3.3% in the EHGWPS industries, 10.3% in manufacturing, and 5.8% in transportation. The prevalence of high occupational stress was higher than in the other two categories ( p < 0.05) in manufacturing industries. Logistic regression analysis showed that male workers with lower educational status, more job experience, and working in manufacturing were vulnerable to high occupational stress. Further analysis of the four occupational stress sub-dimensions showed that male workers, older adult workers, workers with lower educational levels, and longer working time were associated with higher scores in job stressors, stress response, social support, and job stress & social support (all p < 0.05). Moreover, divorced or widowed workers had higher occupational stress scores., Conclusion: Male workers with lower educational levels and longer working time may have an increased risk of occupational stress., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Yan, Ji, Bi, Wang, Cui, Liu, Niu, Li, Lan, Xie, Wu, Li and Ding.)

When almost all underlying assets suddenly lose a certain part of their nominal value in a market crash, the diversification effect of portfolios in a normal market condition no longer works. We integrate the crash risk into portfolio management and investigate performance measures, hedging and optimization of portfolio selection involving derivatives. A suitable convex conic programming framework based on parametric approximation method is proposed to make the problem a tractable one. Simulation analysis and empirical study are performed to test the proposed approach., (© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)