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Obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) is characterized by the aggravation of upper airway constriction or obstruction, and it is associated with high incidence of various metabolic diseases and high mortality. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is now recommended as the first-line therapy for OSAHS, but its application is limited by its unsatisfactory patient tolerance. Previous studies have showed that high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) may improve symptoms in some patients with OSAHS. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of HFNC on OSAHS in a larger cohort than in previous research and to study the details of its therapeutic characteristics.Polysomnography recording with and without HFNC was performed in 56 OSAHS patients with a wide spectrum of disease severity. Subgroups were divided by different treatment response criteria to identify the effect of this device.Of 56 patients enrolled, 9 were of mild severity (AHI, 5 to 15 events/h), 30 were of moderate severity (AHI, 15 to 30 events/h), and 17 patients were severe (AHI ≥ 30 events/h); 34 patients were younger than 50 years old and 22 patients were older than 50 years old. AHI decreased significantly (from 26.9 ± 14.7 to 21.5 ± 17.0 events/h, p 0.001) after HFNC treatment in general. The subjects of responder group accounted for 21%. There was a negative correlation between the difference of AI and the difference of HI in nonresponder group before and after HFNC treatment, and the negative correlation was strong (Pearson's test, r = - 0.804, p = 0.000). Of the patients with mild to moderate severity, 76% achieved any AHI reduction and 24% of patients achieved at least 50% reduction in AHI. Older patients (the age of responder group 52.6 ± 11.7 vs. nonresponder group 43.7 ± 12.1 years old, p 0.05), especially patients older than 50 years, had a better response rate (≤ 50 years 9% vs. 50 years 41%, p = 0.007).HFNC may be useful in treating patients with OSAHS, especially older patients and those with mild to moderate severity. HFNC may be an alternative treatment when patients are intolerant of CPAP.

The ɛ4 allele of the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene in individuals infected by Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) has been demonstrated to be a risk factor in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). APOE-ɛ4 reduces the levels of neuronal cholesterol, interferes with the transportation of cholesterol, impairs repair of synapses, decreases the clearance of neurotoxic peptide amyloid-β (Aβ), and promotes the deposition of amyloid plaque, and eventually may cause development of AD. HSV-1 enters host cells and can infect the olfactory system, trigeminal ganglia, entorhinal cortex, and hippocampus, and may cause AD-like pathological changes. The lifecycle of HSV-1 goes through a long latent phase. HSV-1 induces neurotropic cytokine expression with pro-inflammatory action and inhibits antiviral cytokine production in AD. It should be noted that interferons display antiviral activity in HSV-1-infected AD patients. Reactivated HSV-1 is associated with infectious burden in cognitive decline and AD. Finally, HSV-1 DNA has been confirmed as present in human brains and is associated with APOE ɛ4 in AD. HSV-1 and APOE ɛ4 increase the risk of AD and relate to abnormal autophagy, higher concentrations of HSV-1 DNA in AD, and formation of Aβ plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.

The host-guest interaction between cucurbit[8]uril(Q[8]) and chrysin(CHR) has been studied by means of 1H NMR, mass spectrometry(MS), differential thermal analysis(DTA), and UV-Vis spectrophotometry. The results show that CHR forms a 1:1 inclusion complex with Q[8], with a binding constant of CHR with Q[8] by UV absorption being 5.4×106. Phase solubility experiments show a 5.13-fold increase in the solubility of CHR through interaction with Q[8]{c(Q[8])=10‒4 mol/L}. A study of the evolution of UV absorption spectra with time shows that Q[8] significantly increases the stability of CHR. The antioxidant activity of CHR-Q[8] has been tested by the ABTS method. The CHR-Q[8] inclusion complex shows a better scavenging effect towards the ABTS radical than CHR, with respective IC50 values of 1.05×10–6 and 3.07×10–6 mol/L. In vitro release studies have shown that CHR-Q[8] has a sustained release effect.

Topographical cues provided by micropatterns on material surfaces have been demonstrated to control multiple cell functions. However, the majority of currently studied micropatterns fail to recapitulate the key characteristics of an osteon, which is the structural unit of natural cortical bone. Thus, in the present study, a micropatterned polycaprolactone (PCL) surface comprising a series of concentric circular microgrooves was fabricated by combining photolithography with the melt-casting method to mimic the concentric structure of an osteon in a two-dimensional setting. By culturing mouse mesenchymal stem cells (mMSCs) and osteoclast progenitor cells (RAW264.7 cells) on the osteon-like concentric microgrooved surface, the effects of this micropatterned surface on the osteogenesis of mMSCs and the osteoclastogenesis of RAW264.7 cells were systematically investigated. Osteoclastogenic differentiation was significantly inhibited in RAW264.7 cells on the fabricated osteon-like concentric microgrooved surface compared to that on the parallel linear microgrooved and flat surfaces, as indicated by the downregulated expression of key osteoclast-specific function genes (TRAP, CATK and MMP9), the lower activity of TRAP and less formation of TRAP-positive multinucleated giant osteoclasts. Further investigation indicated that RANK-NFκB signaling may have been involved in mediating the inhibited osteoclastogenesis of RAW264.7 cells by the osteon-like concentric microgrooved surface. In addition, the osteon-like concentric microgrooved surface greatly modulated the osteoclastogenic-related paracrine secretion of mMSCs (RANKL, M-CSF and OPG), despite its small effect on the osteogenesis of mMSCs. This secretory profile was found to be able to effectively inhibit osteoclastogenesis in RAW264.7 cells, confirming the enhanced osteoclastogenesis inhibitory functions of mMSCs on the osteon-like concentric microgrooved surface. Our findings demonstrate the importance of the microgroove orientation and arrangement in affecting cellular behaviors and highlight the potential benefits of incorporating osteon-like concentric microgrooved patterns on the surface of scaffolds for bone repair.

Background A novel line of research suggests that eating at nighttime may have several metabolic consequences that are highly relevant to breast cancer. We investigated the association between nighttime eating habits after 10 p.m. and breast cancer in Hong Kong women. Methods A hospital-based case-control study was conducted during 2012–2015. A total of 922 patients with incident breast cancer (cases) and 913 hospital controls were recruited and interviewed using a standard questionnaire including information on eating behavior during both daytime and nighttime. We collected the timing, duration, types and frequencies of food intake of eating at nighttime. Odds ratios (ORs) for the risk of breast cancer in relation to nighttime eating-related variables were calculated by unconditional multivariable logistic regression. Results Eating at night after 10 pm was significantly associated with breast cancer with an adjusted OR of 1.50 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.06–2.12, P = 0.02), and the associations were stronger in women who had the longest duration of nighttime eating (≥20 years) (adjusted OR = 2.28 (95% CI 1.13–4.61, P = 0.02) and who ate late (midnight to 2 a.m.) (adjusted OR = 2.73, 95% CI 1.01–6.99, P = 0.04). Interestingly, nighttime eating was only associated with breast cancer among women who consumed staple foods (OR = 2.16, 95% CI 1.42–3.29, P

With the aging population problem getting more and more aggravated, the number of hemiplegia patients increases rapidly, which results in the increasing requirement of rehabilitation training for regaining the body movement function. Taking advantages of rehabilitation robots makes the rehabilitation training more scientific and efficient compared to traditional rehabilitation measures such as manual training. By now, many types of rehabilitation robots have been proposed by researchers. However, from the view of the physiological structure, many of them can't well fit the motion characteristics. Ankle plays an important role in standing, walking and so on. As the motion of these robots is different from the motion characteristics of ankles, it would make an undesired influence on the training effect. Rehabilitation robots have many structures, and they are mainly serial mechanism and parallel mechanism. However, serial mechanism is inconvenient to package. In this paper, a new type of parallel mechanism with five degrees of freedom was proposed. Compared to serial mechanism, parallel mechanism is convenient to package and it has larger motion area. It enables ankles to rotate around the rotary center of the ankle. With the screw theory, the degree of freedom was calculated. To verify the working space of the mechanism, the working space simulation was carried out by Matlab. Finally, the quantity and position of motors are determined.

With the aggravation of ageing society, the number of hemiplegic patients has increased rapidly. As a result, the requirement of rehabilitation training has made a huge increase. In order to help hemiplegic patients to get a better rehabilitation and help occupational therapists to reduce working pressure, series of rehabilitation training robot has been developed. Although the rehabilitation robot has been improved greatly for meeting various requirements, most of rehabilitation robots still just focus on rehabilitation training of single joint and neglect the recovery of damaged nervous system. In order to offer patients comprehensive rehabilitation training and help recovering nervous system, a new MKW series rehabilitation robots are designed to realize wrist and hand independent and cooperative training in our team. As the MKW-I is not convenient for use and its sensors' accuracy would be heavily influenced by environment. Therefore, MKW-II is designed for better rehabilitation effectiveness. For these reasons, we propose the MKW-II, which can perfectly solve these problems. The improvement of mechanism structure and improvement of related sensors will be introduced detailly in this paper.

Chemical epigenetic manipulation was applied to a deep marine-derived fungus, Aspergillus sp. SCSIOW2, resulting in significant changes of the secondary metabolites. Three new eremophilane-type sesquiterpenes, dihydrobipolaroxin B (2), dihydrobipolaroxin C (3), and dihydrobipolaroxin D (4), along with one known analogue, dihydrobipolaroxin (1), were isolated from the culture treated with a combination of histone deacetylase inhibitor (suberohydroxamic acid) and DNA methyltransferase inhibitor (5-azacytidine). 1–4 were not produced in the untreated cultures. 2 and 3 might be artificial because 1 could form 2 and 3 spontaneously in water by intracellular acetalization reaction. The absolute configurations of 1 and 2 were assigned based on ECD spectroscopy combined with time-dependent density functional theory calculations. All four compounds exhibited moderate nitric oxide inhibitory activities without cytotoxic effects.

Up to now, with the developments of society, aging problems are more serious. With the requirements of rehabilitation, a large of hemiplegia rehabilitation devices are launched out. But most of the hand training robots just limit to the fingers flexible training. They ignored the importance of functional training of hand, and ignore wrist cooperative training in the rehabilitation process. In this paper, a novel finger and wrist rehabilitation robot will be introduced for hemiplegia rehabilitation, a creative hand rehabilitation way is presented. Two rehabilitation units are included —wrist rehabilitation unit and hand rehabilitation unit. Novel torque sensor units with a simple structure are designed to detect torque. The detail of the sensor is introduced in the paper. The proposed finger and wrist rehabilitation robot leads to further research on the rehabilitation robot.

Up to now, the number of hemiplegia rehabilitation devices is increasing quickly along with hemiplegic patients'. But most of hand rehabilitation training just limit to the fingers flexible training of patients' affected hand. They not only ignore the importance of functional training of hand, but also wrist cooperative training during rehabilitation process. In our new research, we proposed a novel hand and wrist rehabilitation robot to achieve grasp functional training of hand except thumb and intorsion/extorsion and dorsiflexion/plantar flexion of wrist, which provides a creative hand rehabilitation way for hemiplegic patients. In this paper, we will introduce the detail design of the robot. It mainly includes two rehabilitation units —wrist rehabilitation unit and hand rehabilitation unit, which can realize separate motion or cooperate motion of hand and wrist based on patients' willingness. What's more, the torque sensor unit is purposely designed to detect feedback torque of related motion instead of available ones in the market, which makes the whole mechanical structure more compact. In a word, this novel hand and wrist rehabilitation robot will have a promising prospect.

Neurologic examination takes an important role in the physical examination. It requires abundant knowledge with prominent skills. Normally, the medical staffs, especially novices are trained to master the skills and accumulate experiences with several methods such as watching video, training with the simulated patient (SP), and so on. However, the drawbacks of the above methods, such as lack of multi-symptoms, lack of active interactions, etc, limit the training effects. To make up them, several kinds of medical training simulators have been developed to improve training effectiveness. However, most of these simulators just focus on mimicking the symptoms. The could not simulate the pathology of diseases. In this paper, we will propose an elbow robot named WKE-2(Waseda Kyotokagaku Elbow Robot No.2) to simulate the symptoms of motor nerve system for neurologic examination training on elbow force examination. In this paper, the mechanism of the elbow robot and physiological neurological model is described. As a sample, the performance of lead-pipe symptoms is introduced. Taking advantage of the robot, the trainee can get a full training on the examination skills and knowledge as well as the understanding of disease effection. Finally, several experiments are performed to verify the proposed robot. The results lead to the consideration that the approach is worth following in further research. 1

Making use of rehabilitation robot to replace traditional therapist rehabilitation on hemiplegic rehabilitation has been a fashion trend. There are many ankle rehabilitation robots are proposed. However all of them are only focusing on providing a passive training to the patient. In this paper, we will present the frame work on designing a novel ankle robot which combines the active training with passive training together. To get the design basis, an experiment to detect the ankle physiology data is established. Additionally, an ankle rehabilitation robot with three degrees is proposed. This robot embeds force sensors and position sensors to detect the dynamic movements of the ankle. The detail design of the mechanism is introduced. The mechanical structure includes pedal parts, thigh fixing parts, base, driving unit and sensing unit. Comparing with the other ankle rehabilitation robots, this robot uses three blushless motors to direct three rotation motions directly, and the whole structure is simple and reliable. Control system is also introduced in this paper. In order to test the performance of control system, two experiments are established to test the velocity respond and positioning accuracy. Results show that the system has a nice rapidity, stability and accuracy.

Ankle rehabilitation training takes an important role in the hemiplegic rehabilitation training. Traditional training requires the physical therapist treating the patient as one to one. The training process is repeating and needs a long period. The performances of training rely heavily on the skill of therapists. The training effectiveness depends on the skills of the therapist. To improve the training effectiveness, there are many ankle rehabilitation robots are proposed. However all of them are only focusing on providing a passive training to the patient. In this paper, an ankle rehabilitation robot with three degrees is proposed. This robot can not only realizes the passive training but also has much more sensors to detect the movements of the ankle, especially realizes the patient active training. In this paper, the detail design of the mechanism is introduced. The mechanical structure includes pedal parts, thigh fixing parts, cross slider parts, driving unit and sensing unit. Comparing with current ankle rehabilitation researches, this robot uses linear motion in horizontal and vertical plane instead of rotary motion to realize dorsiflexion/plantar flexion and abduction/adduction. Finally, we present ankle motion space analysis and ankle robot workspace analysis of ankle robot to verify the feasibility of the robot.

Up to now, the number of hemiplegia rehabilitation devices is increasing quickly. But most of ankle rehabilitation training just limit to the training of patients' affected side. They ignore the importance of patients' subjective participation in the recovery of central nervous system. In our new research, we proposed a new method that making use of the movements of the sound side to realize the passive training of the affected side. Therefore, an ankle motion detecting mechanism is proposed to detect the ankle motion of patients' sound side. In this paper, we will introduce the detail design of the mechanism. It includes three detecting units for recording the rotations of ankle. Comparing with other Body-movement information detection method, such as optical measurement method and biological signals measuring method, it can gather the real-time information of three rotations of ankle with a simple structure. This ankle motion detecting mechanism can not only detects the ankle motion but also helps patients do affected ankle strength training. Finally, the workspace analysis of this detecting mechanism is carried out to verify the ability of the designed mechanism.