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Purpose China employed a unique volunteerism system where health care providers outside of Hubei Province, the epicentre, travelled to reverse the devastation wrought by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) at its global onset. The aim is to study the unique circumstances of Chinese volunteerism in the context of continuing pandemic threats, specifically exploring the experiences of 20 Chinese nurse and physician volunteers fighting COVID-19 during the outbreak. Methods Interviews were done through video calling. Results Using content analysis with a hermeneutic perspective, emerging patterns showed the ways in which China’s particular manifestation of volunteerism teaches us how to engage global threats of this nature. The overarching lesson, For the Good of the People, was manifested in several dynamic and overlapping themes: 1) Reaching for Professional Standards Even in Crisis; 2) Constantly Caring Through Failures and Successes; and 3) Holding Fast to the Common Good. The devastation was met by the resilience of volunteers, who overcame profound challenges managing patient care. Conclusions Volunteerism required sacrifice and tremendous support in the form of training and administrative direction, family support, and peer collaboration. Volunteers’ physical and psychosocial wellbeing was a priority. Recognizing the representative themes can help societies plan for continuing and future events.

Abstract Background Pheochromocytoma is a neuroendocrine tumor that can overproduce catecholamines. Heart failure and Takotsubo Syndrome (TTS) caused by excessive catecholamines are uncommon pheochromocytoma complications. Case presentation A 27-year-old woman was referred to our center for further preoperative assessment and adrenalectomy. She came to the emergency ward with the typical symptoms of acute coronary syndrome and heart failure, including chest stuffiness, dyspnea, epigastric pain, and diaphoresis. The high level of 24-hour urinary vanillylmandelic acid and abdominal computed tomography findings supported the diagnosis of pheochromocytoma. Transthoracic echocardiography showed diffuse hypokinesis of the left ventricular wall with an ejection fraction of 23%. All symptoms and left ventricular function recovered rapidly after left laparoscopic adrenalectomy. Histopathology findings confirmed the diagnosis of pheochromocytoma. Based on the above findings, we eventually diagnosed her with pheochromocytoma-induced TTS. Conclusions This is a rare case of pheochromocytoma without hypertension complicated by TTS and acute heart failure. A diagnosis of pheochromocytoma-induced TTS should be considered for patients presenting with uncommon heart failure, even in patients without hypertension. Standard treatment is the surgical removal of the adrenal mass.

The purpose is to explore the prediction of epidemiological characteristics of vascular cognitive impairment based on susceptible infectious recovered and immune hosts (SIR) mathematical model and the effect of brain rehabilitation health measurement system on cognitive function of patients. SIR mathematical model was used to predict the epidemiological characteristics of vascular cognitive impairment (VCIND). Then, 60 patients with non dementia vascular cognitive impairment were randomly divided into training group and control group. Both groups were given conventional drug therapy and traditional rehabilitation training. The training group increased brain rehabilitation on this basis. Health measurement system cognitive training, 40 min/time, once a day, 5 times a week for a total of 4 weeks. A simple intelligent mental scale (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale (MoCA), Barthel Index (BI), and myoelectric evoked potentiometer were used for cognitive function, daily life activity (ADL) ability, and P300 of two groups of patients. assessment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of brain rehabilitation health care measurement system-assisted cognitive training on cognitive function and event-related potential (ERP) P300 in patients with VCIND. The study found that the brain rehabilitation health care measurement system assisted cognitive training can effectively improve the cognitive function of patients with VCIND and their daily activities.

Abstract Cardiac rehabilitation program is well‐established but the Rehabilitation After Myocardial Infarction Trial (RAMIT) is reported that it does not affect mortality and morbidity of patients after myocardial infarction during follow‐up period. The objectives of the study were to compare functional walking capacity, risk factor control, and morbidities in follow‐up for cardiac rehabilitation (exercise + education), exercise only, and usual care among patients with coronary artery disease. A total of 492 male and female patients (age range: 45–73 years) with coronary artery disease after myocardial infarction or underwent percutaneous coronary intervention or coronary artery bypass grafting surgeries referred to cardiac rehabilitation were included in the study. Patients were participating in a cardiac rehabilitation program (exercise + education, CRP cohort, n = 125), exercise only (USC cohort, n = 182), or usual care (NCR cohort, n = 185). Data regarding incremental shuttle walk test, lipid profile, the Patient Health Questionnaire 9, and morbidities in follow‐up of patients were retrospectively collected and analyzed. After completion of 1 year, cardiac rehabilitation program (p

ABSTRACT: Animal aggression is one of the most conserved behaviors. Excessive and inappropriate aggression was a serious social concern across species. After long-term selection under strict stress conditions, Henan gamecock serves as a good model for studying aggressive behavior. In this research, we constructed a Henan game chicken backcross population containing 25% Rhode Island Red (RIR), and conducted brain transcriptomics and serum metabolomics analyses on Henan gamecock (HGR) through its comparison with its female encounters (HGH) and the male backcross birds (BGR). The study revealed that seven differential metabolites in serum and 172 differentially expressed genes in the brain were commonly shared in both HGR vs. HGH and HGR vs. BGR comparisons. They exhibited the same patterns of modulation in Henan gamecocks, following either HGH < HGR > BGR or HGH > HGR < BGR style. Therein, some neurological genes involving in serotonergic and dopaminergic signaling were upregulated, while the levels of many genes related with neuro-immune function were decreased in Henan gamecock. In addition, many unknown genes specifically or highly expressed in the brain of the Henan gamecock were identified. These genes are potentially key candidates for enhancing the bird's aggression. Multi-omics joint analysis revealed that tyrosine metabolism and neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction were commonly affected. Overall, our results propose that the aggressiveness of Henan gamecocks can be heightened by the activation of the serotonergic-dopaminergic metabolic process in the brain, which concurrently impairs the neuroimmune system. Further research is needed to identify the function of these unknown genes on the bird's aggressive behavior.

BackgroundThyroid disease (TD) is a prominent endocrine disorder that raises global health concerns; however, its comorbidity patterns remain unclear. ObjectiveThis study aims to apply a network-based method to comprehensively analyze the comorbidity patterns of TD using large-scale real-world health data. MethodsIn this retrospective observational study, we extracted the comorbidities of adult patients with TD from both private and public data sets. All comorbidities were identified using ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision) codes at the 3-digit level, and those with a prevalence greater than 2% were analyzed. Patients were categorized into several subgroups based on sex, age, and disease type. A phenotypic comorbidity network (PCN) was constructed, where comorbidities served as nodes and their significant correlations were represented as edges, encompassing all patients with TD and various subgroups. The associations and differences in comorbidities within the PCN of each subgroup were analyzed and compared. The PageRank algorithm was used to identify key comorbidities. ResultsThe final cohorts included 18,311 and 50,242 patients with TD in the private and public data sets, respectively. Patients with TD demonstrated complex comorbidity patterns, with coexistence relationships differing by sex, age, and type of TD. The number of comorbidities increased with age. The most prevalent TDs were nontoxic goiter, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and thyroid cancer, while hypertension, diabetes, and lipoprotein metabolism disorders had the highest prevalence and PageRank values among comorbidities. Males and patients with benign TD exhibited a greater number of comorbidities, increased disease diversity, and stronger comorbidity associations compared with females and patients with thyroid cancer. ConclusionsPatients with TD exhibited complex comorbidity patterns, particularly with cardiocerebrovascular diseases and diabetes. The associations among comorbidities varied across different TD subgroups. This study aims to enhance the understanding of comorbidity patterns in patients with TD and improve the integrated management of these individuals.

The compromised egg quality and leg abnormality during the end of the laying cycle (after 40 weeks) have been leading to poor animal welfare and substantial economic losses. Therefore, the effects of fermented calcium (Ca) butyrate, produced by fermentation by Clostridium butyricum, on production, eggshell quality, and tibial property of hens were explored. A total of 192 Hy-line brown laying hens at 50-week-old were assigned to a basal diet or the basal diet with 300 mg/kg of the fermented Ca butyrate from 50 to 58 weeks of age. Each treatment had 6 replicates with 16 hens each. The diet supplemented with 300 mg/kg fermented Ca butyrate notably increased egg weight, ovarian follicle number, and eggshell strength (P = 0.072) as compared to the basal diet, which were associated with cytokine secretion, toll-like receptor signaling pathways, and intestinal immunity based on the RNA-seq data from the granulosa. Dietary Ca butyrate inclusion decreased the expression of ileal tumor necrosis factor-alpha and serum pro-inflammatory cytokine concentration, as well as increased the content of serum immunoglobulin A when compared to the basal diet (both P 0.05). In addition, the diet with fermented Ca butyrate reduced the number of osteoclasts in the proximal tibia and the level of C-terminal cross-linked telopeptide of type I collagen, a bone resorption marker (P

IntroductionThe study aimed to investigate the potential effects of varying wheat levels in broiler diets on growth performance, intestinal barrier, and cecal microbiota.MethodsDay-old male broilers were fed the same diet until 10 d of age. Then they were randomly assigned to 1) the low-level wheat group, where inclusion of 15.0% and 25.0% wheat in the grower and finisher diet, respectively, 2) the medium-level wheat group with 30.0% and 40.0% of wheat in the grower and finisher periods; and 3) the high-level wheat dietary group, in which the grower and finisher diets contained 55.77% and 62.38% of wheat, respectively.ResultsDietary treatments unaffected the body weight at 39 d, whereas incorporating high wheat in diets significantly increased the feed intake and reduced the feed conversion ratio from 10 to 39 d (p

The glucose metabolism of poultry draws wide attention as they have nearly twice the fasting blood glucose than that of mammals. To define the relationship between glucose metabolism and breed of chicken, the outcomes from different growth rate chickens showed that Arbor Acres (AA) broilers, a well-known fast-growing breed, had a lower fasting blood glucose concentration and glucose clearance rate when compared to Silky chickens, a Chinese traditional medicinal chicken with black skin and a slow growth rate. Moreover, AA broilers had a relatively slow rise in blood glucose in response to oral glucose solution than the Silky chickens on 21 and 42 d (P

There has been much controversy over the effects of music tempo on movement flow. In this study, a single-factor repeated-measurement design was used to explore the effect of music tempo (fast, slow, and no music control) on movement flow by measuring both subjective experiences and objective electroencephalographic (EEG) characteristics during brisk walking. In the experiment, 20 college students walked briskly on a treadmill using EEG equipment. Each participant walked for 10 min on three different days. Their brain waves were recorded during brisk walking on a treadmill. After each walk, the participants completed a form of short flow state scale-2 (S FSS-2), which covered nine major aspects of flow. The results showed that music tempo had a significant effect on subjective experiences and objective physiological characteristics; that is, a higher subjective flow level for fast-tempo music in brisk walking and a significant enhancement of mean power values in the subconscious brain waves of the delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands for fast tempo music were observed. A fast tempo facilitated the movement flow. The findings of this study can be instructive for the use of music in exercises to improve sports training outcomes.

Abstract This study investigates the effects of text direction (horizontal and vertical) and length (long and short) on Chinese reading performance. The experiment enrolled 68 university students aged 19–29 years who were asked to read articles. We recorded reading times and measured recall after reading using a memory test and measured task load using the NASA-TLX scale. The results show that horizontal text was read faster than vertical text. When reading long texts, horizontal reading has a better memory effect than vertical reading. When reading short texts, the effect of text direction on memory was not significant. Moreover, the mental, physical, and temporal demands of horizontal text were lower than those of vertical text. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the impact of text direction, provide valuable suggestions for Chinese typography, and help readers obtain better reading outcomes.

Background: Acute kidney injuries are common in the medical intensive care unit. Generally, intravenous normal saline is administered in critically ill patients but it is associated with acute kidney injury. Current knowledge of chloride and its effect on the physiological functions of the kidney is limited. The objectives of the study were to compare the safety of chloride-restrictive intravenous fluid administration against that of chloride-liberal regarding acute kidney injuries. Methods: Data regarding RIFLE (risk, injury, failure, loss, and end-stage renal failure) categories, Kidney Disease: Improved Global Outcomes (KDIGO) stage, Δ creatinine, and requirements of renal replacement therapy of 285 patients admitted to medical intensive care unit for critical illness during 4-months from the hospitalisation were retrospectively collected and analysed. Patients received chloride-liberal intravenous fluid (CL cohort, n = 163) or that of chloride-restrictive (CR cohort, n = 122) during bundle-of-care. Results: Patients with risk (P = .039) and injury (P = .041) categories of RIFLE, high Δ creatinine (0.22 ± 0.02 mg/dL/patient vs 0.18 ± 0.02 mg/dL/patient, P < .0001), and patients with KDIGO stage 1 (P = .023) and stage 2 (P = .048) were reported significantly higher in the CL cohort than the CR cohort. The higher numbers of patients were put on renal replacement therapy in the CL cohort than those of the CR cohort (16 vs 3, P = .014). Conclusion: The chloride-restrictive intravenous fluid administration has reduced the chances of acute kidney injuries in the intensive medical care unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Replacing corn with different levels of wheat in the iso-energy and -protein diet of broilers and the impacts on growth performance and intestinal homeostasis of broilers under the condition of supplying the multienzyme complex were evaluated in this study. A total of 480 10-day-old male broilers were assigned randomly to the low-level wheat group (15% wheat and 35.18% corn), the medium-level wheat group (30% and 22.27%), and the high-level wheat group (55.77% wheat without corn) until 21 d. The different levels of wheat supplementation did not affect hepatic function, serum glycolipid profile, or bone turnover. The replacement of corn with 55% wheat in the diet of broilers increased the body weight at 21 d and feed intake during 10 to 21 d (both p < 0.05), with a comparable feed conversion ratio. Compared with the low-wheat group, the dietary addition of medium or high wheat levels notably increased the ratio of villus height to crypt depth in the duodenum (p < 0.05) and the ileal villus height (p < 0.05). Meanwhile, the supplementation of medium and high wheat in the diet increased the proportion of Bacteroidetes, and a diet with high wheat proportion elevated the content of Firmicutes when compared to the low-level wheat group (both p < 0.05). In addition, the diet containing 30–55% wheat enhanced the anti-inflammatory capability in both the ileum and the serum. These findings suggest that the replacement of corn with 55% wheat in the diet improved the growth performance of 21-day-old broilers, which might be linked to the alteration in intestinal morphology and cecal microbiota.

Abstract. Background:. The preferred therapeutic regimen for Toxoplasma encephalitis (TE) is a combination of pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) plus azithromycin is the widespread alternative therapeutic regimen. The synergistic sulfonamides tablet contains TMP, sulfadiazine, and SMX and hypothetically could be used for TE treatment. This study aimed to compare the efficacy and safety of synergistic sulfonamides plus clindamycin (regimen B) with TMP-SMX plus azithromycin (regimen A) for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) associated TE. Methods:. This was an open-labeled, multi-center randomized controlled trial recruited from 11 centers. Each recruited patient was randomly assigned to receive regimen A or regimen B for at least 6 weeks. The overall response was evaluated by assessment of the clinical response of TE-associated clinical features and the radiological response of TE-associated radiological findings. The overall response rate, clinical response rate, radiological response rate, and adverse events were assessed at 2, 6, and 12 weeks. Death events were compared between the two regimens at 6, 12, and 24 weeks. Results:. A total of 91 acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)/TE patients were included in the final analysis (44 in regimen A vs. 47 in regimen B). The overall response rate, which refers to the combined clinical and radiological response, was 18.2% (8/44) for regimen A and 21.3% (10/47) for regimen B at week 6. The results of clinical response showed that, in comparison with regimen A, regimen B may perform better with regards to its effect on the relief of clinical manifestations (50.0% [22/44] vs. 70.2% [33/47], P = 0.049). However, no significant differences in radiological response, mortality events, and adverse events were found between the two regimens at week 6. Conclusions:. Synergistic sulfonamides plus clindamycin, as a novel treatment regimen, showed no significantly different efficacy and comparable safety in comparison with the TMP-SMX plus azithromycin regimen. In addition, the regimen containing synergistic sulfonamides may exhibit advantages in terms of clinical symptom alleviation. Trial Registration:. ChiCTR.org.cn, ChiCTR1900021195.

Abstract Background Escherichia coli (E. coli) infection in humans and animals usually comes with gut dysbiosis, which is potential culprit to skeletal health, it is still unclear to whether diet interfered gut microbiome changes can be a protective strategy to bone loss development. Here, the effects of resistant starch from raw potato starch (RPS), a type of prebiotic, on E. coli-induced bone loss and gut microbial composition in meat ducks were evaluated. Results The results showed that dietary 12% RPS treatment improved bone quality, depressed bone resorption, and attenuated the pro-inflammatory reaction in both ileum and bone marrow. Meanwhile, the 12% RPS diet also increased the abundance of Firmicutes in E. coli-treated birds, along with higher production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) especially propionate and butyrate. Whereas addition of β-acid, an inhibitor of bacterial SCFAs production, to the drinking water of ducks fed 12% RPS diet significantly decreased SCFAs level in cecum content and eliminated RPS-induced tibial mass improvement. Further, treatment with MI-2 to abrogate mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma translocation protein 1 (Malt1) activity replicated the protective role of dietary 12% RPS in E. coli-induced bone loss including reduced the inhibition on nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) inflammasome activation, decreased bone resorption, and improved bone quality, which were correlated with comparable and higher regulatory T cells (Treg) frequency in MI-2 and 12% RPS group, respectively. Conclusions These findings suggested that the diet with 12% RPS could alleviate E. coli-induced bone loss in meat ducks by changing the gut microbial composition and promoting concomitant SCFAs production, and consequently inhibiting Malt1/NF-κB inflammasome activation and Treg cells expansion. Graphical Abstract

Objective Diet acidification supplementation is known to influence intestinal morphology, gut microbiota, and on phosphorus (P) utilization of broilers. Alterations in intestinal barrier and microbiota have been associated with systemic inflammation and thus regulating bone turnover. Hence the effect of acidifier addition to drinking water on tibia mass and the linkages between intestinal integrity and bone were studied. Methods One-d-old male broilers were randomly assigned to normal water (control) or continuous supply of acidified water (2% the blend of 2-hydroxy-4-methylthiobutyric acid, lactic, and phosphoric acid) group with 5 replicates of 10 chicks per replicate for 42 d. Results Acidification of drinking water improved the ash percentage and calcium content of tibia at 42 d. Broilers receiving acidified water had increased serum P concentration compared to control birds. The acidified group showed improved intestinal barrier, evidenced by increased wall thickness, villus height, the villus height to crypt depth ratio, and upregulated mucin-2 expression in ileum. Broilers receiving drinking water containing mixed organic acids had a higher proportion of Firmicutes and the ratio of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, as well as a lower population of Proteobacteria. Meanwhile, the addition of acidifier to drinking water resulted in declined ileal and serum proinflammatory factors level and increased immunoglobulin concentrations in serum. Concerning bone remodeling, acidifier addition was linked to a decrease in serum C-terminal cross-linked telopeptide of type I collagen and tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase reflecting bone resorption, whereas it did not apparently change serum alkaline phosphatase activity that is a bone formation marker. Conclusion Acidified drinking water increased tibia mineral deposition of broilers, which was probably linked with higher P utilization and decreased bone resorption through improved intestinal integrity and gut microbiota and through decreased systemic inflammation.

ABSTRACT: Glucose transporter protein 4 (GLUT4) plays an important role in regulating insulin-mediated glucose homeostasis in mammals. Until now, studies on GLUT4 have focused on mammals mostly, while chicken GLUT4 has been rarely investigated. In this study, chicken GLUT4 mRNA sequences were obtained by combining conventional amplification, 5′- and 3′- rapid amplification of cDNA ends technique (RACE), then bioinformatics analysis on its genomic structure, splicing pattern, subcellular localization prediction and homologous comparisons were carried out. In addition, the distribution of GLUT4 was detected by RT-qPCR in bird′s liver and striated muscles (cardiac muscle, pectoralis and leg muscle) at different ages, including embryonic day 14 (E14), E19, 7-day-old (D7), D21 and D49 (n = 3–4). Results showed that chicken GLUT4 gene produced at least 14 transcripts (GenBank accession No: OP491293-OP491306) through alternative splicing and polyadenylation, which predicted encoding 12 types of amino acid (AA) sequences (with length ranged from 65 AA to 519 AA). These proteins contain typical major facilitator superfamily domain of glucose transporters with length variations, sharing a common sequence of 59 AA, and were predicted to have distinct subcellular localization. The dominant transcript (named as T1) consists of 11 exons with an open reading frame being predicted encoding 519 AA. In addition, analyzing on the spatio-temporal expression of chicken GLUT4 showed it dominantly expressed in pectoralis, leg muscles and cardiac muscle, and the mRNA level of chicken GLUT4 dramatically fluctuated with birds′ development in cardiac muscle, pectoralis and leg muscles, with the level at D21 significantly higher than that at E14, E19, and D49 (P < 0.05). These data indicated that chicken GLUT4 undergoes complex alternative splicing events, and GLUT4 expression level in striated muscle was subjected to dynamic regulation with birds′ development. Results indicate these isoforms may play overlapping and distinct roles in chicken.

Essential oils have been proven to exert multiple effects on growth performance, production quality, and health status in poultry nutrition, which is dependent on the component and/or dose of essential oils. Diets with the optimal combination of essential oils might be able to improve the performance traits and welfare of laying hens. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary essential oils, which are composed of cinnamaldehyde with carvacrol or thymol, on performance, egg quality, and intestinal health in post-peak laying hens. A total of 384, 50-week-old Hy-line brown laying hens were randomly divided into three groups with 8 replicates of 16 birds each: (1) a basal diet (Ctrl), (2) a basal diet with 100 mg/kg of essential oils consisting of 4.5% cinnamaldehyde with 13.5% carvacrol (CAR+CIN), and (3) a basal diet containing 100 mg/kg of essential oils composed of 4.5% cinnamaldehyde with 13.5% thymol (THY+CIN). The CAR+CIN diet increased the feed consumption from 52 to 55 weeks more than the Ctrl and the THY+CIN diet. Compared with the Ctrl group, the addition of essential oils decreased the dirty egg rate (P = 0.07) in the whole trial period. Regarding egg quality, the birds that received the CAR+CIN and THY+CIN diets increased the eggshell strength (P = 0.099) or Haugh unit (HU, p = 0.03) at 54 weeks, respectively. Supplementation of both CAR+CIN and THY+CIN diets significantly increased the ratio of villus height to crypt depth in the duodenum through increasing villus height and decreasing crypt depth as well as upregulated the mRNA abundances of duodenal occluding and cadherin (P < 0.05). However, the treatment with dietary essential oils did not notably change the proportion of cecal microbiota and bacterial diversity. This study suggested that dietary supplementation of cinnamaldehyde with carvacrol or thymol, the active components of essential oils, could promote egg quality in post-peak laying hens, which might be associated with improved intestinal development and barrier.

Abstract Background A new learning-based patient similarity measurement was proposed to measure patients’ similarity for heterogeneous electronic medical records (EMRs) data. Methods We first calculated feature-level similarities according to the features’ attributes. A domain expert provided patient similarity scores of 30 randomly selected patients. These similarity scores and feature-level similarities for 30 patients comprised the labeled sample set, which was used for the semi-supervised learning algorithm to learn the patient-level similarities for all patients. Then we used the k-nearest neighbor (kNN) classifier to predict four liver conditions. The predictive performances were compared in four different situations. We also compared the performances between personalized kNN models and other machine learning models. We assessed the predictive performances by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), F1-score, and cross-entropy (CE) loss. Results As the size of the random training samples increased, the kNN models using the learned patient similarity to select near neighbors consistently outperformed those using the Euclidean distance to select near neighbors (all P values

BackgroundThe widespread secondary use of electronic medical records (EMRs) promotes health care quality improvement. Representation learning that can automatically extract hidden information from EMR data has gained increasing attention. ObjectiveWe aimed to propose a patient representation with more feature associations and task-specific feature importance to improve the outcome prediction performance for inpatients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). MethodsMedical concepts, including patients’ age, gender, disease diagnoses, laboratory tests, structured radiological features, procedures, and medications, were first embedded into real-value vectors using the improved skip-gram algorithm, where concepts in the context windows were selected by feature association strengths measured by association rule confidence. Then, each patient was represented as the sum of the feature embeddings weighted by the task-specific feature importance, which was applied to facilitate predictive model prediction from global and local perspectives. We finally applied the proposed patient representation into mortality risk prediction for 3010 and 1671 AMI inpatients from a public data set and a private data set, respectively, and compared it with several reference representation methods in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC), and F1-score. ResultsCompared with the reference methods, the proposed embedding-based representation showed consistently superior predictive performance on the 2 data sets, achieving mean AUROCs of 0.878 and 0.973, AUPRCs of 0.220 and 0.505, and F1-scores of 0.376 and 0.674 for the public and private data sets, respectively, while the greatest AUROCs, AUPRCs, and F1-scores among the reference methods were 0.847 and 0.939, 0.196 and 0.283, and 0.344 and 0.361 for the public and private data sets, respectively. Feature importance integrated in patient representation reflected features that were also critical in prediction tasks and clinical practice. ConclusionsThe introduction of feature associations and feature importance facilitated an effective patient representation and contributed to prediction performance improvement and model interpretation.

ABSTRACT: Fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome is characterized by hepatic damage and hemorrhage impairing animal welfare in birds, which was well-known to be moderately relieved through dietary choline chloride supplementation in laying hens. Chinese herb has been proven to exert a positive role on hepatic health in human and rodents. Here, we investigated the effect of herbaceous mixture (HM), which consists of Andrographis paniculate, Silybum marianum, Azadirachta Indica, and Ocimum basilicum (2:3.5:1:2), on the hepatic lipid metabolism and health status in laying hens. A total of 240 Hy-line Brown hens (389-day-old) were randomly fed the basal diet with 0 mg/kg choline chloride (negative control, NC), 1,000 mg/kg choline chloride (control, Ctrl), or 300 mg/kg HM for 28 d. Birds fed HM diet exhibited lower serum triglyceride (TG) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration, and higher high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level than those received NC and Ctrl diets (P < 0.05). When compared to control and NC group, the diets with HM decreased the contents of total cholesterol and TG in liver, as well as upregulated the mRNA abundance of hepatic hormone-sensitive lipase and lipoprotein lipase. Meanwhile, the hepatic area and diameter of steatosis vacuoles were also decreased by dietary HM administration (P < 0.05), which accompanied by decreased serum alanine aminotransferase activity (P < 0.05). Birds fed HM diets enhanced the hepatic antioxidative capacity than those received NC and Ctrl diet. Dietary HM depressed the mRNA level of inflammatory cytokine as compared to NC but not Ctrl group. Collectively, the diet with 300 mg/kg HM has a favorable effect in decreasing the lipid deposition and protecting liver injury by alleviating hepatic oxidant stress and inflammation in post-peak laying hens.

ABSTRACT: The cytidine diphosphate diacylglycerol synthases (CDSs) gene encodes the cytidine diphosphate-diacylglycerol (CDP-DAG) synthase enzyme that catalyzes the formation of CDP-diacylglycerol from phosphatidic acid. At present, there are no reports of CDS2 in birds. Here, we identified chicken CDS2 transcripts by combining conventional RT-PCR amplification, 5′ rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE), and 3′ RACE, explored the spatio-temporal expression profiles of total CDS2 and the longest transcript variant CDS2-4, and investigated the effect of exogenous insulin on the mRNA level of total CDS2 via quantitative RT-PCR. Four transcripts of chicken CDS2 (CDS2-1, -2, -3, and -4) were identified, which were alternatively spliced at the 3′-untranslated region (UTR). Both total CDS2 and CDS2-4 were prominently expressed in adipose tissue, and exhibited low expression in liver and pectoralis of 49-day-old chickens. Regarding the spatio-temporal expression patterns of CDS2 in chicken, total CDS2 exhibited a similar temporal expression tendency with a high level in the later period of incubation (embryonic day 19 [E19] or 1-day-old) in the brain, liver, and pectoralis. While CDS2-4 presented a distinct temporal expression pattern in these tissues, CDS2-4 levels peaked at 21 d in the brain and pectoralis, while liver CDS2-4 mRNA levels were highest at the early stage of hatching (E10). Total CDS2 (P < 0.001) and CDS2-4 (P = 0.0090) mRNA levels in the liver were differentially regulated throughout the development of the chicken. Total CDS2 levels in the liver of Silky chickens were higher than that of the broiler in the basal state and after insulin stimulation. Exogenous insulin significantly down-regulated the level of total CDS2 at 240 min in the pectoralis of Silky chickens (P < 0.01). In conclusion, chicken CDS2 isoforms with variation at the 3′-UTR were identified, which was prominently expressed in adipose tissue. Total CDS2 and CDS2-4 presented distinct spatio-temporal expression patterns, that is they were differentially regulated with age in brain, liver, and pectoralis. Insulin could regulate chicken CDS2 levels in a breed- and tissue-specific manner.

Gut microbiota interfered with using prebiotics may improve bone mass and alleviate the onset of bone problems. This study aimed to investigate the beneficial effect of resistant starch from raw potato starch (RPS) on bone health in meat ducks. Response to the dietary graded level of RPS supplementation, both tibia strength and ash were taken out linear and quadratic increase and positively correlated with increased propionate and butyrate levels in cecal content. Moreover, further outcomes of gut microbiota and micro-CT analysis showed the beneficial effect of RPS on bone mass might be associated with higher Firmicutes proportion and the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in the cecum. Consistent with improving bone mass, SCFAs promoted phosphorus absorption, decreased the digestive tract pH, and enhanced intestinal integrity, which decreased the expression of pro-inflammatory genes in both gut and bone marrow, and consequently depressed osteoclastic bone resorption mediated by inflammatory cytokines. These findings highlight the importance of the “gut-bone” axis and provide new insight into the effect of prebiotics on bone health.

The obligate intracellular bacterium Chlamydia psittaci is the causative agent of psittacosis in birds and humans. The capability of this zoonotic pathogen to develop a persistent phase may serve a role in the chronicity of infections, in addition to the failure of antibiotic therapy or immunoprophylaxis. In the present study, a C. psittaci strain 6BC persistent infection cell model was induced using interferon (IFN)‑γ, alterations in the infectivity and morphology of the pathogen were analyzed, and the transcript profile of seven selected genes was analyzed. Following treatment with IFN‑γ, the infectivity of C. psittaci 6BC was decreased, the inclusion bodies appeared to be smaller, reticulate bodies were larger and the number of infectious elementary bodies was decreased compared with acute infection. In IFN‑γ‑induced persistently infected cells, the relative mRNA expression levels of the genes CPSIT‑0208, CPSIT‑0310, CPSIT‑0846, CPSIT‑0844 and CPSIT‑0594 were upregulated at 2‑48 h post‑infection (p.i.). The genes CPSIT‑0959 and CPSIT‑0057 were downregulated at 2‑36 h p.i. The results of the present study advanced the understanding of C. psittaci persistent infection and demonstrated a number of previously unknown alterations in chlamydial gene expression, which may provide novel targets to further analyze this particular host‑pathogen interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number reflects the abundance of mitochondria in cells and is dependent on the energy requirements of tissues. We hypothesized that the mtDNA copy number in poultry may change with age and tissue, and feed restriction may affect the growth and health of poultry by changing mtDNA content in a tissue-specific pattern. TaqMan real-time PCR was used to quantify mtDNA copy number using three different segments of the mitochondrial genome (D-loop, ATP6, and ND6) relative to the nuclear single-copy preproglucagon gene (GCG). The effect of sex, age, and dietary restriction (quantitative, energy, and protein restriction) on mtDNA copy number variation in the tissues of broilers was investigated. We found that mtDNA copy number varied among tissues (P

Despite the rapid development of natural language processing (NLP) implementation in electronic medical records (EMRs), Chinese EMRs processing remains challenging due to the limited corpus and specific grammatical characteristics, especially for radiology reports. In this study, we designed an NLP pipeline for the direct extraction of clinically relevant features from Chinese radiology reports, which is the first key step in computer-aided radiologic diagnosis. The pipeline was comprised of named entity recognition, synonyms normalization, and relationship extraction to finally derive the radiological features composed of one or more terms. In named entity recognition, we incorporated lexicon into deep learning model bidirectional long short-term memory-conditional random field (BiLSTM-CRF), and the model finally achieved an F1 score of 93.00%. With the extracted radiological features, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and machine learning methods (support vector machine, random forest, decision tree, and logistic regression) were used to build the classifiers for liver cancer prediction. For liver cancer diagnosis, random forest had the highest predictive performance in liver cancer diagnosis (F1 score 86.97%, precision 87.71%, and recall 86.25%). This work was a comprehensive NLP study focusing on Chinese radiology reports and the application of NLP in cancer risk prediction. The proposed NLP pipeline for the radiological feature extraction could be easily implemented in other kinds of Chinese clinical texts and other disease predictive tasks.

Oriented lines impact human cognition subconsciously. This study aimed to determine whether line orientations in the background of Chinese written characters influenced individual’s memory and emotion. Five pictures with Chinese characters as experimental material, in which four had equidistant parallel lines (0°, -45°, 90°, and +45°) as background and the other one had a blank background, were presented on a personal computer screen, for 15 seconds each, to 94 participants. The participants were then given 45 seconds to write down what they had just memorized. Participants’ emotion was identified by their Heart Rate Variability (HRV) simultaneously during the viewing process. The results showed that vertical (90°) and 45° leftward leaning lines (-45°) did not weaken users’ memory, and no significant difference in memory was found between these two states and the blank background, while horizontal (0°) and 45° rightward leaning lines (+45°) weakened the memory effect significantly. Overall, memory decreased in the condition of horizontally lined background while no influence in vertically lined background condition; and it showed asymmetry under leftward and rightward leaning line conditions: memory decreased in rightward leaning lined background while no influence in leftward lined background. Moreover, the results of emotion and memory showed negative similar trend. These findings provide practical suggestions for visual information design.

ABSTRACT: The first purpose of this study was to reveal the distribution of the angel wing (AW) of geese. Our data showed that the total incidence of AW was 6.67% in 150-day-old White Zhedong (ZD) geese, the occurrence of AW in left wing is higher than that in right wing and bilateral wing than unilateral wing (both P < 0.01). In 70-day-old Hybrid-Wanxi (HW) geese, the total incidence of AW was 8.86%, with similar incidence rate between unilateral and bilateral. The sex has not apparently affected the incidence of AW in both ZD and HW geese. To explore the potential relationship between wing type with body weight, organ index, bone characteristic, or blood biochemical parameters in 70-day-old HW geese. We found that the body weight and organ index were similar between normal wing (NW) and AW geese. The length for the humerus, metacarpal and phalanx, and the phalanx weights, as well as the angle between the humerus and the radial ulna (HRU) in NW geese were pronounced greater than that in AW geese (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the angel wing was strongly associated with lower platelet size indicators. Collectively, AW affected the wing bone length, phalanx weight, and HRU, and the occurrence of AW may be related with dysfunctional platelet activation in geese.

Roles of plant-derived cinnamaldehyde, carvacrol, and thymol in the gut and bone health of laying hens was evaluated in the present study. After acclimation for 2 weeks, a total 384 of 52-week-old laying hens were allocated into three groups for 6 weeks: (1) basal diet group (Ctrl), (2) combination of cinnamaldehyde with carvacrol group (CAR+CIN), and (3) blend of cinnamaldehyde with thymol (THY+CIN). The dietary essential oil level was 100 mg/kg. Each treatment group had eight replicate pens (16 birds/pen). The stiffness and ultimate load of the tibiae from both the CAR+CIN and THY+CIN groups were higher than that of the Ctrl group (p < 0.05), along with comparable tibia ash, calcium, and phosphorus content among groups. At the same time, the manipulation of essential oils upregulated the transcription abundances of intestinal barrier proteins to varying degrees, whereas the experimental treatment failed to affect the composition in phyla of cecal microbiota. When compared to the Ctrl group, birds fed the CAR+CIN and THY+CIN diet displayed decreased bone resorption markers, reduced interleukin-1 concentrations, and increased transforming growth factor beta levels in serum. These findings suggest that cinnamaldehyde with carvacrol or thymol in feed of hens could enhance intestinal barrier and improve the mechanical properties of tibiae through structural modelling but not increase the mineral density, which might be involved in suppressing inflammation-mediated bone resorption.

BackgroundThe secondary use of structured electronic medical record (sEMR) data has become a challenge due to the diversity, sparsity, and high dimensionality of the data representation. Constructing an effective representation for sEMR data is becoming more and more crucial for subsequent data applications. ObjectiveWe aimed to apply the embedding technique used in the natural language processing domain for the sEMR data representation and to explore the feasibility and superiority of the embedding-based feature and patient representations in clinical application. MethodsThe entire training corpus consisted of records of 104,752 hospitalized patients with 13,757 medical concepts of disease diagnoses, physical examinations and procedures, laboratory tests, medications, etc. Each medical concept was embedded into a 200-dimensional real number vector using the Skip-gram algorithm with some adaptive changes from shuffling the medical concepts in a record 20 times. The average of vectors for all medical concepts in a patient record represented the patient. For embedding-based feature representation evaluation, we used the cosine similarities among the medical concept vectors to capture the latent clinical associations among the medical concepts. We further conducted a clustering analysis on stroke patients to evaluate and compare the embedding-based patient representations. The Hopkins statistic, Silhouette index (SI), and Davies-Bouldin index were used for the unsupervised evaluation, and the precision, recall, and F1 score were used for the supervised evaluation. ResultsThe dimension of patient representation was reduced from 13,757 to 200 using the embedding-based representation. The average cosine similarity of the selected disease (subarachnoid hemorrhage) and its 15 clinically relevant medical concepts was 0.973. Stroke patients were clustered into two clusters with the highest SI (0.852). Clustering analyses conducted on patients with the embedding representations showed higher applicability (Hopkins statistic 0.931), higher aggregation (SI 0.862), and lower dispersion (Davies-Bouldin index 0.551) than those conducted on patients with reference representation methods. The clustering solutions for patients with the embedding-based representation achieved the highest F1 scores of 0.944 and 0.717 for two clusters. ConclusionsThe feature-level embedding-based representations can reflect the potential clinical associations among medical concepts effectively. The patient-level embedding-based representation is easy to use as continuous input to standard machine learning algorithms and can bring performance improvements. It is expected that the embedding-based representation will be helpful in a wide range of secondary uses of sEMR data.

Abstract Background Conventional risk prediction techniques may not be the most suitable approach for personalized prediction for individual patients. Therefore, individualized predictive modeling based on similar patients has emerged. This study aimed to propose a comprehensive measurement of patient similarity using real-world electronic medical records data, and evaluate the effectiveness of the individualized prediction of a patient’s diabetes status based on the patient similarity. Results When using no more than 30% of the whole training sample, the personalized predictive models outperformed corresponding traditional models built on randomly selected training samples of the same size as the personalized models (P

Different lipid sources differ in the fatty acid profiles and differently affect growth performance as well as immune function of broilers. The influences of different dietary lipid sources on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, blood T lymphocyte population, and cardiac antioxidant status were investigated of broilers. A total of 360 one-day-old male broilers (BW = 44 ± 3 g) were randomized into 3 treatment groups, consisting of 6 replicates with 20 birds in each group. Broilers received standard diets supplemented with 5% (wt/wt) of lard (LD, as a control diet), sesame oil (SO), or flaxseed oil (FO). Broilers in both SO and FO treatment groups had lower (P

Chicken mitochondrial DNA is a circular molecule comprising ~16.8 kb. In this study, we used next-generation sequencing to investigate mitochondrial heteroplasmy in the whole chicken mitochondrial genome. Based on heteroplasmic detection thresholds at the 0.5% level, 178 cases of heteroplasmy were identified in the chicken mitochondrial genome, where 83% were due to nucleotide transitions. D-loop regionwas hot spot region for mtDNA heteroplasmy in the chicken since 130 cases of heteroplasmy were located in these regions. Heteroplasmy varied among intraindividual tissues with allele-specific, position-specific, and tissue-specific features. Skeletal muscle had the highest abundance of heteroplasmy. Cases of heteroplasmy at mt.G8682A and mt.G16121A were validated by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, which showed that both had low ratios of heteroplasmy occurrence in five natural breeds. Polymorphic sites were easy to distinguish. Based on NGS data for crureus tissues, mitochondrial mutation/heteroplasmy exhibited clear maternal inheritance features at the whole mitochondrial genomic level. Further investigations of the heterogeneity of the mt.A5694T and mt.T5718G transitions between generations using pyrosequencing based on pedigree information indicated that the degree of heteroplasmy and the occurrence ratio of heteroplasmy decreased greatly from the F0 to F1 generations in the mt.A5694T and mt.T5718G site. Thus, the intergenerational transmission of heteroplasmy in chicken mtDNA exhibited a rapid shift toward homoplasmy within a single generation. Our findings indicate that heteroplasmy is a widespread phenomenon in chicken mitochondrial genome, in which most sites exhibit low heteroplasmy and the allele frequency at heteroplasmic sites changes significantly during transmission events. It suggests that heteroplasmy may be under negative selection to some degree in the chicken.

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of nitric oxide (NO)-mediated mitochondrial apoptosis on Tan sheep meat tenderness during postmortem aging. The hind leg muscle of Tan sheep was injected with 0.8% NaCl (control), 20 mmol/L aminoguanidine hydrochloride (AH) or 90 mmol/L L-arginine (L-Arg) and aged at 4 ℃ for 0, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and 192 h. NO and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) contents, cytochrome c (Cyt c) redox state, oxidative stress level, mitochondrial apoptotic pathways, and tenderness were measured during postmortem aging. The results indicated that at 12 and 24 h after slaughter, NO and iNOS levels were significantly higher, and ATP levels were significantly lower in the L-Arg group than in the control group (P < 0.05). At 24 and 48 h, Cyt c reduction levels and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity were significantly higher, while the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was significantly lower in the AH group than in the control group (P < 0.05). From 12 to 96 h, ATP contents were significantly lower in the L-Arg group than in the control group (P < 0.05). In addition, at 24 h, Ca2+ concentration significantly increased in the L-Arg group compared with the control group (P < 0.05). At all time points except 24 h, the caspase-3 activity in the L-Arg group was significantly higher than that in the control group (P < 0.05). Moreover, it was found that the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio, pH, and myofibril fragmentation index (MFI) in the L-Arg group were significantly higher than those in the control group at all time points after slaughter (P < 0.05). Shear force was significantly lower in the L-Arg group but significantly higher in the AH group than in the control group (P < 0.05). In conclusion, NO exacerbates mitochondrial oxidative stress and directly upregulates ROS levels during the postmortem aging of Tan sheep meat, leading to a decrease in SOD activity, irreversible opening of mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MPTP), and ultimately mitochondrial damage. In addition, by controlling the redox state of Cyt c, NO indirectly activates caspase-3 activity to accelerate apoptotic energy metabolism, deplete ATP and consequently maintain myocyte homeostasis. Furthermore, NO affects the release of Ca2+, up-regulates the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio, and induces the occurrence of mitochondrial apoptotic cascade, ultimately resulting in an increase in MFI and a decrease in shear force and, consequently, improving the tenderness of Tan sheep meat.

Lmbr1 has been reported to be associated with chicken polydactyly and carcass traits. Based on the hypothesis that chicken Lmbr1 should have multiple alternative splices as human and mouse Lmbr1/C7orf2, we successfully identified one novel chicken Lmbr1 transcript variant (designated as Lmbr1-2) by bioinformatics analysis and RT-PCR confirmation. Chicken Lmbr1-2 transcript was predicted to encode a 30 amino acid protein. Lmbr1-2 transcript was ubiquitously expressed in a range of chicken tissues. A SNP (rs14135851: G>T, also named as 288G>T reference to 603234777F1) was found to be located at the 5′ boundary (first base) of alternatively spliced exon (IN2) of chicken Lmbr1-2. Eight variants/10 haplotypes were detected from 4 breeds in a 300-bp genomic fragment surrounding 288G>T. The 288T>G and 331G>A changes were predicted resulting to the formation/loss of SRSF5 and SRSF6 motifs. The genotype/allele distribution for a G/A variant (331G>A, reference to 603234777F1) and haplotype types in polydactylous Silkie presented distinct difference with that in other four-toed breed chickens. Association analysis showed that chicken 331G>A variation had significant effect on meat quality traits including breast muscle water loss rate, leg muscle water loss rate and leg muscle fiber density, and carcass traits including evisceration weight, pancreas weight in Gushi chicken F2 resource population. These data demonstrated that chicken Lmbr1 was alternatively spliced to produce multiple splice forms as was the case in mammals, and it suggested that chicken Lmbr1-2 variation might have important effect on the carcass and meat quality traits in chicken.