Search

The impact of social capital on philanthropy has been studied extensively, but existing research fails to measure social capital consistently and completely. Using a representative data set from the 2013 Survey on Philanthropic Behaviors of Urban Citizens in China, this study first expanded existing social capital measurements to be more comprehensive, consisting of civic networks, norms of reciprocity, institutional trust, acquaintance trust, and stranger trust. Tobit regression and Heckman selection model were then used to explore the impact of social capital on philanthropy in China. Regression analyses indicate that civic network, norms of reciprocity, institutional trust, and stranger trust are positively associated with both volunteering and giving in the Chinese context. In addition, acquaintance trust is negatively correlated with giving, but has no significant association with volunteering. These findings provide insights to better understanding the complex relationship between social capital and philanthropy, especially in non-Western contexts.

Purpose To measure the anterior and posterior ocular biometric characteristics concurrently and to explore the relationship between iris, ciliary body and choroid in acute primary angle closure eyes (APAC) and fellow eyes. Methods It is a prospective, cross-sectional study. Thirty patients with recent APAC were finally enroled in it. Anterior and posterior uveal parameters were measured simultaneously by anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT), swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) and ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM). The parameters were measured including: pupil diameter (PD); iris thickness, curvature (ICURV), area (IAREA); anterior chamber depth (ACD), width (ACW), area (ACA), volume (ACV); lens vault (LV); choroidal thickness and retinal thickness; maximum ciliary body thickness (CBTmax); ciliary body thickness at the point of the scleral spur (CBT0) and 1000 mm away (CBT1000); anterior placement of the ciliary body (APCB); and trabecular-ciliary angle (TCA). Results Compared with fellow eyes, APAC eyes had narrower anterior biometric parameters and presented with smaller anterior segment parameters (including ACD and ACW); (p

Purpose To evaluate the frequency of and identify the factors that influence the artifacts of swept-source optical coherence tomography angiography (SS-OCTA) in glaucomatous and normal eyes. Methods Artifacts of OCTA images of open-angle glaucoma (OAG) and normal subjects were analyzed using SS-OCTA. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate the association of age, sex, best-corrected visual acuity, axial length (AL), intraocular pressure, presence and severity of OAG, and image quality score (IQS) with the presence of artifacts. Results Images from 4426 subjects were included in the study. At least one type of artifact was present in 24.54% of the images. The most common artifacts were occurrence of motion (705 eyes, 15.93%), followed by defocus (628 eyes, 14.19%), decentration (134 eyes, 3.03%), masking (62 eyes,1.40%), and segmentation errors (23 eyes, 0.52%). Multivariate logistic analyses showed that the presence of OAG (odds ratio [OR] = 2.71; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.09–3.51; P < 0.001), female sex (OR = 1.34; 95% CI, 1.12–1.61; P = 0.001), longer AL (OR = 1.09; 95% CI, 1.02–1.17; P = 0.017), and IQS < 40 (OR = 3.75; 95% CI, 3.15–4.48; P < 0.001) were significantly associated with higher odds for the presence of any artifact. The IQS had poor performance for detecting artifacts, with an area under the curve of 0.723, sensitivity of 73.04%, and specificity of 62.53%. Conclusions OAG eyes had more SS-OCTA image artifacts than normal eyes. IQS is an imperfect tool for identifying artifacts. Translational Relevance Special attention should be paid to the effect of artifacts when using SS-OCTA in the clinical setting to assess vascular parameters in patients with glaucoma.

High myopia is among the most common causes of vision impairment, and it is mainly characterized by abnormal elongation of the axial length, leading to pathologic changes in the ocular structures. Owing to the close relationship between high myopia and glaucoma, the association between intraocular pressure (IOP) and high myopia progression has garnered attention. However, whether lowering IOP can retard the progression of high myopia is unclear. On reviewing previous studies, we suggest that lowering IOP plays a role in progressive axial length elongation in high myopia, particularly in pathologic myopia, wherein the sclera is more remodeled. Based on the responses of the ocular layers, we further proposed the potential mechanisms. For the sclera, lowering the IOP could inhibit the activation of scleral fibroblasts and then reduce scleral remodeling, and a decrease in the scleral distending force would retard the ocular expansion like a balloon. For the choroid, lowering IOP results in an increase in choroidal blood perfusion, thereby reducing scleral hypoxia and slowing down scleral remodeling. The final effect of these pathways is slowing axial elongation and the development of scleral staphyloma. Further animal and clinical studies regarding high myopia with varied degree of IOP and the changes of choroid and sclera during IOP fluctuation in high myopia are needed to verify the role of IOP in the pathogenesis and progression of high myopia. It is hoped that this may lead to the development of a prospective treatment option to prevent and control high myopia progression.

The thought of criteria for accrediting engineering programs was introduced into major experiments for pharmaceutical engineering in Wuhan Institute of Technology. Aiming at the disadvantages of experimental teaching in pharmaceutical engineering in China, the integrated experimental teaching mode was introduced. Through the comprehensive study of a drug, original drug synthesis, pharmaceutical analysis, pharmaceutical preparation, and pharmacology experiment courses are linked together. Systematicness and integrity of the experiment were enhanced through re-integrating the corresponding experimental content and projects; the composite knowledge structure with the longitudinal and transverse connection of theoretical knowledge obtained through experiment was formed. With the evaluation criteria of pharmaceutical engineering experiment based on Chinese “Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs”, by comparing series and parallel teaching modes in a three - year period (2013–2015), the effects of experimental teaching in series and parallel on relevant knowledge structure of 324 undergraduate students (a total of 324 undergraduate students, 99 in 2013, 122 in 2014, 103 in 2015) of pharmaceutical engineering were studied. Not only to let them experience series, but also to let them experience parallel. The correlation data were compared using t-test to compare the differences between groups, final assessment data for students were subjected to a comparative statistical analysis. The results showed: in comparisons of students with higher scores in experimental report, experimental operation, and mastery of relevant knowledge, the proportions of the students in series teaching were respectively 40.50%, 11.40%, and 25.03% higher than those in parallel teaching; the proportion of students satisfied with series teaching was 23.03% higher than the proportion of students satisfied with parallel teaching. Through a comparative survey of students’ approval of series and parallel teaching, it’s discovered that series teaching could arouse the students’ interest in the experiment course more than parallel teaching could, make them clearly recognize the real significance of the experimental project training, and eliminate the adverse effects of traditional parallel teaching on the students to a certain extent. In the series integrated experimental teaching, students’ learning initiative and creativity were fully demonstrated. With the comprehensive evaluation system issued by Wuhan institute of technology, the influence of series teaching method on the students’ academic abilities was studied through the comparative analysis on the scores of the students’ graduation theses before (2011–2013) and after (2014–2016) the series teaching reform. The results showed: the series teaching method could significantly improve the quality of graduation thesis in the subject implementation, innovation ability, and subject progress. The work can be used for reference by other major engineering courses, thus integrating related courses into a whole, and promote the sustainable development of Engineering Education in China.

To compare biometric differences between eyes with unilateral chronic primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG) and fellow non-glaucomatous eyes in the same patient.Clinical data and imaging records of 17 patients with unilateral PACG were retrospectively reviewed. The fellow eyes with primary angle-closure (PAC) or primary angle-closure suspected (PACS) were grouped in Group 1. The PACG eyes were set as Group 2. The biometric parameters of both eyes were measured by IOL-Master, anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT), and swept source OCT.The iris area in Group 1 was significantly thicker than that in Group 2 (1.590 ± 0.267 versus 1.365 ± 0.352, P = 0.016). Choroidal thickness in the macular region was thicker in Group 1 than in Group 2, with statistical significance at inner temporal grid (282.7 ± 121.1 versus 191.6 ± 90.3, P = 0.036), central field (297.4 ± 130.6 versus 200.1 ± 96.3, P = 0.029), inner nasal grid (283.1 ± 128.3 versus 194.8 ± 91.8, P = 0.040), and average value (265.3 ± 105.6 versus 191.1 ± 87.0, P = 0.049). Group 1 also had thicker peripapillary choroidal thickness at 1 o'clock (141.4 ± 68.4 versus 101.8 ± 39.0, P = 0.025) and 12 o'clock (141.5 ± 82.3 versus 104.5 ± 44.6, P = 0.037) compared to Group 2. The multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that only intraocular pressure was independently associated with PACG and explained 58.3% variance of PACG.In unilateral PACG, there was significant inter-eye difference in anterior and posterior segment parameters. Longitudinal comparisons are required to further understand the differences in pathology of angle closures.

Purpose To assess the efficacy and safety of different regimens, including monotherapy and double therapy, for primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) or ocular hypertension. Methods We searched PubMed, EMBASE and clinicaltrials.gov for studies that fit our inclusion criteria in this network meta-analysis. Randomized controlled trials that report data on efficacy and safety of medications for POAG or ocular hypertension are included. Data on intra-ocular pressure (IOP) lowering effect and incidence of adverse events including hyperaemia and ocular discomfort were extracted and used in mixed-comparison analysis. Results This study includes 72 randomized trials. Data were available on 12 medical treatments of POAG or ocular hypertension. Of 66 possible comparisons of outcome efficacy, 15 treatments were compared directly. Compared to prostaglandin analogues (PGA), beta-blockers (BB) showed relatively weaker ability to lower IOP, followed by α2-adrenergic agonists (AA) and carbonic anhydrase inhibitors (CAI). For dual therapy, regimens composed of a combination of PGA with another treatment demonstrated more powerful IOP lowering efficacy, while the combination of two non-PGA drugs had lower efficacy in controlling IOP than PGA alone. There was no statistical significance in combinations that did not include PGA on efficacy of IOP control. In terms of tolerance, PGA alone leads to more severe hyperaemia than any other monotherapy regimen, while BBs have the lowest effect on the incidence of hyperaemia. Most dual therapy regimens containing PGA also lead to serious hyperaemia, with the exception of PGA + AA. Compared to regimens containing PGA, those with BB are less likely to cause hyperaemia. Conclusion Our network meta-analysis showed that PGAs provide best IOP lowering effect among all the monotherapy regimen. Combination of PGA and other category of drugs leads to better IOP decrease. Combination of BB and another non-PGA drug may have less ocular side-effects than PGA alone.

Based on the strategy of molecular hybridization, diketo acid fragment as a classical phamacophore of integrase inhibitors was introduced to reverse transcriptase inhibitors diarylpyrimidines to design a series of diarylpyrimidine-diketo acid hybrids (DAPY-DKAs). The target molecules 10b and 11b showed inhibitory activities against WT HIV-1 with EC50 values of 0.18μM and 0.14μM, respectively. And the results of molecular docking demonstrated the potential binding mode and revealed that the DKA moiety and its ester could both be tolerated in the nonnucleoside binding site (NNBS) of HIV-1 RT.

Morphological changes in the iris are one of the major causes of angle-closure glaucoma, and an anteriorly-bowed iris may be further associated with greater risk of disease progression from primary angle-closure suspect (PACS) to chronic primary angle-closure glaucoma (CPCAG). In consequence, the automated detection of abnormalities in the iris region is of great importance in the management of glaucoma. In this paper, we present a new method for the extraction of the iris region by using a local phase tensor-based curvilinear structure enhancement method, and apply it to anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) imagery in the presence of occludable iridocorneal angle. The proposed method is evaluated across a dataset of 200 anterior chamber angle (ACA) images, and the experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art method in applicability, effectiveness, and accuracy.

Emerging evidence has revealed significant roles for small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) in tumorigenesis. However, the genetic and pharmacogenomic landscape of snoRNAs has not been characterized. Using the genotype and snoRNA expression data from The Cancer Genome Atlas, we characterized the effects of genetic variants on snoRNAs across 29 cancer types and further linked related alleles with patient survival as well as genome-wide association study risk loci. Furthermore, we characterized the impact of snoRNA expression on drug response in patients to facilitate the clinical utility of snoRNAs in cancer. We also developed a user-friendly data resource, GPSno (http://hanlab.uth.edu/GPSno), with multiple modules for researchers to visualize, browse, and download multi-dimensional data. Our study provides a comprehensive genetic and pharmacogenomic landscape of snoRNAs, which will shed light on future clinical considerations for the development of snoRNA-based targeted therapies.

Additional file 1 Supplementary Figure 1. (A) Workflow of snoQTL analysis. Blue boxes are software or packages utilized; green boxes are detailed modules or analysis used. Other boxes are input or output data in QTL analysis. (B) Relationship between snoQTLs identified and sample size included. Supplementary Figure 2. (A) Association between snoQTL rs1694419 alleles and SNORD45B levels in KIRC patients. (B) SNORD45B significantly upregulated in KIRC tumor tissues compared to adjacent normal tissues. (C) KIRC patients with higher expression of SNORD45B have worse overall survival than those with lower expression of SNORD45B. Supplementary Figure 3. Association between snoQTL rs12905354 alleles and SNORD18A levels in TGCT patients. Supplementary Figure 4. Co-expression of snoRNAs related to drug response found in PRAD.

Additional file 2 Supplementary Table 1. Abbreviations of cancer types. Supplementary Table 2. Analysis Summary

Precise characterization and analysis of iris shape from Anterior Segment OCT (AS-OCT) are of great importance in facilitating diagnosis of angle-closure-related diseases. Existing methods focus solely on analyzing structural properties identified from an individual 2D slice, while accurate characterization of morphological changes of iris shape in 3D AS-OCT may be able to reveal in addition the risk of disease progression. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for reconstruction and quantification of 3D iris surface from AS-OCT volume. We consider it to be the first work to detect angle-closure glaucoma by means of 3D representation. An iris segmentation network with wavelet refinement block (WRB) is first proposed to generate the initial shape of the iris from single AS-OCT slice. The 3D iris surface is then reconstructed using a guided optimization method with Poisson-disk sampling. Finally, a set of surface-based features are extracted, which are used in detecting of angle-closure glaucoma. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is highly effective in iris segmentation and surface reconstruction. Moreover, we show that 3D-based representation achieves better performance in angle-closure glaucoma detection than does 2D-based feature.

The choroid provides oxygen and nourishment to the outer retina thus is related to the pathology of various ocular diseases. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is advantageous in visualizing and quantifying the choroid in vivo. (1) The lower boundary of the choroid (choroid-sclera interface) in OCT is fuzzy, which makes the automatic segmentation difficult and inaccurate. (2) The visualization of the choroid is hindered by the vessel shadows from the superficial layers of the inner retina. In this paper, we propose to incorporate medical and imaging prior knowledge with deep learning to address these two problems. We propose a biomarker infused global-to-local network for the choroid segmentation. It leverages the choroidal thickness, a primary biomarker in clinic, as a constraint to improve the segmentation accuracy. We also design a global-to-local strategy in the choroid segmentation: a global module is used to segment all the retinal and choroidal layers simultaneously for suppressing overfitting and providing global structure information, then a local module is used to refine the segmentation with the biomarker infusion. To eliminate the retinal vessel shadows, we propose a pipeline that firstly use anatomical and OCT imaging knowledge to locate the shadows using their projection on the retinal pigment epithelium layer, then the contents of the choroidal vasculature at the shadow locations are predicted with an edge-to-texture generative adversarial inpainting network. The experiments show our method outperforms the existing methods on both the segmentation and shadow elimination tasks. We further apply the proposed method in a clinical prospective study for understanding the pathology of glaucoma by detecting the structure and vascular changes of the choroid related to the elevation of intra-ocular pressure., Comment: 14 pages. This version has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI)

Anterior chamber angle (ACA) classification is a key step in the diagnosis of angle-closure glaucoma in Anterior Segment Optical Coherence Tomography (AS-OCT). Existing automated analysis methods focus on a binary classification system (i.e., open angle or angle-closure) in a 2D AS-OCT slice. However, clinical diagnosis requires a more discriminating ACA three-class system (i.e., open, appositional, or synechial angles) for the benefit of clinicians who seek better to understand the progression of the spectrum of angle-closure glaucoma types. To address this, we propose a novel sequence multi-scale aggregation deep network (SMA-Net) for open-appositional-synechial ACA classification based on an AS-OCT sequence. In our method, a Multi-Scale Discriminative Aggregation (MSDA) block is utilized to learn the multi-scale representations at slice level, while a ConvLSTM is introduced to study the temporal dynamics of these representations at sequence level. Finally, a multi-level loss function is used to combine the slice-based and sequence-based losses. The proposed method is evaluated across two AS-OCT datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in applicability, effectiveness, and accuracy. We believe this work to be the first attempt to classify ACAs into open, appositional, or synechial types grading using AS-OCT sequences.

Purpose: Discriminating objects’ topological property (TP) is a primitive function of visual representation, which is reported to be associated with magnocellular (M) visual pathway, temporal lobe (TL), and superior colliculus (SC)-pulvinar subcortical pathway. Previous studies have shown that M pathway and TL were affected in high myopia (HM) subjects. The study was accordingly designed to explore whether topological perception performance was abnormal in HM subjects. Methods: 30 mildly myopic, 25 moderately myopic, 35 highly myopic, and 20 emmetropic subjects were enrolled. All participants underwent a comprehensive ophthalmological assessment including automated refraction, intraocular pressure, Humphrey 10–2 standard automated perimetry, ocular fundus photography and swept-source optical coherence tomography. Defined by differences in hole, TP and non-TP discrimination with letters “E”, “S”, “P”, “d” as stimuli in the central and peripheral regions was performed using the MATLAB 2017 software. d-primes extracted from the software were analyzed within each group. The correlation of peripheral TP/non-TP deficit with spherical equivalent (SE), axial length (AL) and average peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness was performed. Results: The patterns of topological perception performance were similar among the groups. TP discrimination peripherally was significantly better than that centrally in the mild myopia (P P P P = .001). In the peripheral region, TP d-prime scores were significantly better than non-TP d-prime scores (all P .001). The main and interaction effects of eccentricity and stimulus type were statistically significant(P P > .05). Conclusions: The current study first showed that patterns of topological perception among the myopic population were similar and not affected by the severity of myopia.

By 2040, ~100 million people will have glaucoma. To date, there are a lack of high-efficiency glaucoma diagnostic tools based on visual fields (VFs). Herein, we develop and evaluate the performance of 'iGlaucoma', a smartphone application-based deep learning system (DLS) in detecting glaucomatous VF changes. A total of 1,614,808 data points of 10,784 VFs (5542 patients) from seven centers in China were included in this study, divided over two phases. In Phase I, 1,581,060 data points from 10,135 VFs of 5105 patients were included to train (8424 VFs), validate (598 VFs) and test (3 independent test sets-200, 406, 507 samples) the diagnostic performance of the DLS. In Phase II, using the same DLS, iGlaucoma cloud-based application further tested on 33,748 data points from 649 VFs of 437 patients from three glaucoma clinics. With reference to three experienced expert glaucomatologists, the diagnostic performance (area under curve [AUC], sensitivity and specificity) of the DLS and six ophthalmologists were evaluated in detecting glaucoma. In Phase I, the DLS outperformed all six ophthalmologists in the three test sets (AUC of 0.834-0.877, with a sensitivity of 0.831-0.922 and a specificity of 0.676-0.709). In Phase II, iGlaucoma had 0.99 accuracy in recognizing different patterns in pattern deviation probability plots region, with corresponding AUC, sensitivity and specificity of 0.966 (0.953-0.979), 0.954 (0.930-0.977), and 0.873 (0.838-0.908), respectively. The 'iGlaucoma' is a clinically effective glaucoma diagnostic tool to detect glaucoma from humphrey VFs, although the target population will need to be carefully identified with glaucoma expertise input. ispartof: NPJ Digit Med vol:3 issue:1 pages:123- ispartof: location:England status: Published online

Background: We investigated whether specific appointments for quality-assured care could increase referral uptake, often low in China, in children's vision screening. Methods: We randomized children aged 4-7 years in Yudu, Jiangxi, China, by school to Control (free school-based eye screening, parents of children failing screening recommended for further examination [usual practice]) or Intervention (identical examinations, with parents additionally provided with specific appointments for further examinations by quality-assured doctors at a designated local hospital). Both groups could select any hospital for referral exams, which were not free. Six months after screening, parents were interviewed on referral compliance and potential determinants. Findings: Among 9936 children at 63 schools randomized to Intervention (32 schools, 5053 [50·9%] children) or Control (31 schools, 4883 [49·1%] children), 1114 children (11·2%) failed screening. Among 513 referred Intervention children (46·1%, 32 schools, mean age 5·36 years, 53·0% boys) and 601 referred Control children (53·9%, 31 schools, mean age 5·30 years, 57·7 % boys), 104 (20·3%) and 135 (22·5%) were lost to follow-up respectively. Under Intention to Treat analysis, assuming children lost to follow-up were non-compliant, Intervention children had significantly higher compliance than Controls (308/513=60·0 % vs. 225/601=37·4%, P

BACKGROUND: To determine how many measurements should be evaluated to determine the iris bow and evaluate changes of iris bow at 12 clock positions after LPI in primary angle closure eyes. METHODS: A total of 93 primary angle closure eyes in 93 Chinese patients were enrolled. Anterior iris bowing was evaluated at 12 clock positions and 4 clock positions (3, 6, 9, and 12 o’clock) before, 1 week and 3 months after LPI using swept source optical coherence tomography. RESULTS: At baseline, almost all of the eyes exhibited an iris bow when measured using 12 clock positions, consistent with results obtained from measurements at 4 clock positions (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.99). LPI caused a relative unified change in all of the clock positions (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.91) except the LPI site. After LPI, there was no significant difference between 12 and 4 clock position measurements for the iris bow (both p > 0.05), with ~34.1% vs. 33% of the patients remained iris bow at 1 week and 34% vs. 31.9% of the patients remained iris bow at 3 months. However, the coexisting iris bow configuration was more common when measured using 4 clock positions (16.5% vs. 3.3% at 1 week and 25.5% vs. 10.6% at 3 months). CONCLUSIONS: There was excellent consistency when measuring the iris bow at 4 or 12 clock positions. LPI caused a relatively unified iris bow change at 12 clock positions, and a single LPI relieved only ~2/3 of the iris bow configurations.

Angle-closure glaucoma is one of the major causes of blindness in Asia. In this paper, we present a new approach for the classification of the anterior chamber angles into open, narrowed, and closure, in anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT), by learning the manual annotations from gonioscopy, so as to further assist the assessment of angle-closure glaucoma. The proposed framework firstly localizes the anterior chamber angle region automatically, which is the primary structural image cue for clinically identifying glaucoma. Then three scales of cropped chamber angle images are fed into our Multi-Scale Regions Convolutional Neural Networks (MSRCNN) architecture, in which three parallel convolutional neural networks are applied to extract feature representations. Finally, the representations are stacked to fully-connected layer for glaucoma type classification. The proposed method is evaluated across a dataset of 9728 anterior chamber angle images, and the experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in applicability, effectiveness, and accuracy.

aa

Introduction Little is known about the perception and use of e-cigarettes by the Chinese, particularly the young people. This study reveals the awareness, attitudes, and use of e-cigarettes among young adults in China, examines the relationship between smoking behavior and e-cigarette perception and use, and demonstrates the phenomenon of e-cigarette gifting. Methods We used results from a mobile app-based survey conducted in November 2015 that included 10477 young Chinese adults aged between 19 and 29 years. Bivariate tests were conducted to analyze perception and use of e-cigarettes by respondents of different smoking status. Multivariate logistic regressions were applied to examine the correlates of e-cigarette use and perception and e-cigarette gifting behavior, particularly the factors of tobacco smoking status and quitting behavior. Results Among the surveyed young adults, 88.40% were aware of e-cigarettes, and nearly a quarter of all respondents had used e-cigarettes by the time of our survey. Multivariate regression results demonstrated that current smokers with quitting experience were more likely to be aware of and to use e-cigarettes than current smokers with no quitting experience. Smokers with quitting experience also were more inclined to promote e-cigarettes to others by either recommending them or giving them as gifts. Conclusions E-cigarettes have gained popularity among young adults in China and smokers, especially those who had tried quitting, were more likely to have known and used e-cigarettes. More empirical research on the relationship between e-cigarette use and smoking cessation is warranted to better inform a potential regulatory framework in China.

To compare the distance from the corneoscleral limbus to the insertion site of the superior rectus of primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG) patients with normal controls and to identify potential characteristics associated with limbus-insertion distance.Cross-sectional study.A total of 92 subjects (eyes) were enrolled in the study: 35 were nonglaucoma controls and 57 were PACG patients.The limbus-insertion distance of the superior rectus was measured by anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) and intraoperative surgical caliper. The anterior chamber parameters were also measured using AS-OCT to identify potential characteristics associated with limbus-insertion distance.The limbus-insertion distance of the superior rectus was 0.40 ± 0.08 mm shorter in the PACG group than in the normal control group (p0.001). Anterior segment parameter values, including anterior chamber depth (ACD), anterior chamber width (ACW), anterior chamber area (ACA), and anterior chamber volume (ACV), were smaller in the PACG group than in the normal control group, but the lens vault was larger (all p0.001). A shorter limbus-insertion distance of the superior rectus was significantly associated with shorter axial length and "crowded" angle (smaller ACD, ACW, ACA, and ACV) (all p0.05).This is the first study to demonstrate that the limbus-insertion distance of the superior rectus was shorter in PACG eyes than in normal eyes. The shorter limbus-insertion distance may be another anatomic characteristic of PACG eyes.

A series of mononuclear Cu(I) complexes formulated as [Cu(L)Br] were prepared by reaction of copper(I) bromide with equimolar amounts of bis(pyrazol-1-ylmethyl)- pyridine (L) in toluene solvent. The five complexes were characterized by UV/Vis, 1H NMR and MS spectroscopy. The molecular structure of complex B2 has been established by single-crystal analyses. It features a tetrahedral copper center surrounded by three nitrogen atoms from the chelating pyridine–pyrazole ligand and one halogen atom. The complexes are luminescent in the solid state at ambient temperature. Intense green or yellow emission is observed, with maxima in the range of 520–569 nm, depending on the substitution pattern of the pyridine–pyrazole ligands used for the complexation. The emission lifetimes of the complexes in powder were in a dozen microseconds, indicating that the emission may be phosphorescent in origin. Moreover, the emission energies of the complexes show a concentration-dependence in the rigid environment, probably due to the different geometry in the lowest excited states. The emission of the complexes was assigned to metal-to-ligand charge-transfer excited states with some mixing of the halide-to-ligand characters, which was further supported by means of density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

Purpose To analyse miRNA regulation in a rat model of acute ocular hypertension (AOH). Methods Acute ocular hypertension (AOH) was induced in the left eye of adult albino rats by inserting a cannula connected with a saline container into the anterior chamber. The contralateral eye served as a control. Seven days later, animals were killed. Retinas were used either for quantitative analysis of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and microglial cells or for miRNA array hybridization, qRT-PCR and Western blotting. Results Anatomically, AOH caused axonal degeneration, a significant loss of RGCs and a significant increase in microglial cells in the ganglion cell layer. The miRNAs microarray analysis revealed 31 differentially expressed miRNAs in the AOH versus control group, and the regulation of 12 selected microRNAs was further confirmed by qRT-PCR. Bioinformatic analysis indicates that several signalling pathways are putatively regulated by the validated miRNAs. Of particular interest was the inflammatory pathway signalled by mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs). In agreement with the in silico analysis, p38 MAP kinase, tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and iNOS proteins were significantly upregulated in the AOH retinas. Conclusions Acute IOP elevation led to changes in the expression of miRNAs, whose target genes were associated with the regulation of microglia-mediated neuroinflammation or neural apoptosis. Addressing miRNAs in the process of retinal ischaemia and optic nerve damage in association with high IOP elevation may open new avenues in preventing retinal ganglion cell apoptosis and may serve as target for future therapeutic regimen in acute ocular hypertension and retinal ischaemic conditions.

To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of Ahmed glaucoma valve (AGV) implantation with intravitreal bevacizumab injection (IVB) pretreatment in the treatment of neovascular glaucoma (NVG).A comprehensive literature search was performed according to the Cochrane collaboration methodology to identify controlled clinical trials comparing AGV implantation with (IVB group) or without IVB (control group) pretreatment for NVG. The main outcome measures were the weighted mean differences (WMDs) for intraocular pressure reduction, a reduction in glaucoma medications, odds ratio (OR) for complete success rates, and qualified success rates. Tolerability estimates were measured by OR for adverse events.The WMD of the intraocular pressure reduction when comparing the IVB group with the control group was 3.30 (-1.21 to 7.80). The IVB group was associated with numerically greater but nonsignificant IOP lowering efficacy compared with the control group (P=0.152). Both groups were comparable in the reduction of glaucoma medication, with a WMD of 0.28 (-0.03 to 0.59) at the follow-up endpoint (P=0.077). The IVB group was associated with significant greater complete success rates compared with the control group, with a pooled OR of 3.18 (1.41 to 7.19). However, it did not show a significant difference for the qualified success rate between them, with a pooled OR of 2.00 (0.95 to 4.21). The IVB group was associated with a significantly lower frequency of hyphema than the control group, with a pooled OR of 0.15 (0.07 to 0.32).The use of IVB pretreatment for NVG is a safe and effective additional step during AGV implantation surgery.

PURPOSE To measure and compare the levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the aqueous humor of patients with acute primary angle closure (APAC), primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG), and normal cataract (controls). METHODS Aqueous humor samples were prospectively collected from 38 APAC eyes, 36 PACG eyes, and 25 nonglaucomatous cataract control eyes. The levels of aqueous humor VEGF were measured using enzyme-linked immunoassays. The clinical characteristics of participants were also collected for correlation analysis. RESULTS VEGF was detected in aqueous humor samples of 35 of 38 APAC patients (mean±SE of the mean, 935±258 pg/mL), 30 of 36 PACG patients (165±37.5 pg/mL), and 16 of 25 cataract controls (69.5±13.5 pg/mL). The mean concentration of VEGF in APAC eyes was 13.5 and 5.7 times higher than that in controls and PACG eyes, respectively, and these differences were statistically significant (both P

To review the current research on microglia as it relates to glaucoma, and summarize the potential microglia-targeted therapies.The data were collected from PubMed and Google Scholar databases published in English up to July 2014. Keywords used, both alone and in combination, in the database search included retinal microglia, over-activation and inhibition of microglia, and glaucoma.Articles were selected and reviewed if they involved microglia in animal models or human patients with glaucoma. Moreover, we also cited some comprehensive amalgamation of published literature.Together with the macroglia [astrocytes, ependymal cells, oligodendrocytes, radial (Müller) cells], the microglia form the supportive tissue of the central nervous system (CNS). Glial cells are generally smaller than the neural cells, but outnumber them by a factor of 5 to 10 with marked regional differences in the CNS. Approximately half of the volume of the CNS is composed of glial cells. Because of the blood-retina barrier, blood-born immunologic cells cannot penetrate into the retina under physiological conditions; the retinal microglial cells are the primary immunocompetent cells in the retina. The microglial cells are involved in any process of cell degeneration and loss, including retinal ganglion fiber and cell loss. Surveying the retinal tissue in normal situations as "spiders in a net," the retinal microglial cells change their form from a resting dendritic-like shape to an activated ameboid form in the case of invading microorganisms or cell damage. They are involved in the process of cell apoptosis and removal of the dead cells. Studies suggested that inhibition of the microglial cell activation in the case of optic nerve damage can increase the number of surviving retinal ganglion cells and may thus be neuroprotective.Activated microglia appear early in the glaucomatous process and may contribute detrimentally to the neuronal apoptosis in the later stage. Neuroprotective strategies that inhibit activated microglia may provide novel treatment modalities for glaucomatous optic neuropathy and any other retinal and optic nerve disease.

Radiation-induced optic neuropathy (RION) is a severe ocular complication in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) following external beam radiation therapy. However, the systemic risk factors for this condition remain unclear. Therefore, patients with NPC who received radiotherapy between 2004 and 2007 at the Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center were retrospectively reviewed in this case-control study. The study included 40 RION patients and 40 patients in the control group, who were strictly matched to the RION patients by tumor histopathology, location, Union for International Cancer Control-Tumor Node Metastasis classification and radiotherapy protocol. Univariate and multivariate statistical regression analyses were performed to identify factors predictive of RION. The univariate analysis demonstrated that age (>60 years), gender (female) and chemotherapy significantly affected the risk of RION, whereas diabetes, hypertension and hepatitis B virus infection did not exert a significant effect. The results of the multivariate analysis suggested that only gender and chemotherapy were significantly associated with an increased incidence of RION. Therefore, the results of the present study suggested that female gender and chemotherapy constitute risk factors for the development of RION following radiotherapy for NPC. The ocular symptoms of high-risk patients should be carefully investigated and reported by ophthalmologists.

Iridocorneal (ICE) syndrome is a rare ocular disease characterized by abnormal proliferation of corneal endothelial cells, progressive obstruction of irido-corneal angle and atrophy of iris. ICE syndrome progressed slowly, but can cause serious complications such as secondary glaucoma in late stage. Because the etiology of ICE syndrome is not clear, there is still no effective treatment in clinical practice. Previous studies have detected herpes simplex virus (HSV) DNA inside patient's aqueous humor. However, no further explanation for HSV-related etiology of ICE syndrome was established. Besides, construction of animal models using HSV all failed, leaving behind a blank space about how HSV infection finally led to ICE syndrome. By summarizing findings from previous studies, we came up with a hypothesis about etiology of ICE syndrome: HSV infection initiated ICE syndrome by integration of viral genetic material into human genome. Infection of HSV changed activity and morphology of endothelial cells, making them regain the ability of mitosis. Proof of such hypothesis will provide a theoretical foundation for construction of animal models and effective intervention of the disease.

Purpose: Aerobic exercise (AE) has been reported to decrease intraocular pressure (IOP) in healthy subjects and there are concomitant morphological changes in the anterior segment of the eye including the Schlemm's canal (SC). However, its effects on IOP and SC morphology in glaucoma patients had not been studied before. We aim to investigate the effect of AE on the IOP and SC dimension in both healthy and primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) eyes. Methods: The area and diameter of SC and IOP were measured in 35 primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) patients (59 eyes) and 36 healthy subjects (72 eyes) before and after performing moderate intensity of AE by running on a treadmill for 30 min. SC was imaged by swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) for evaluation. Results: In comparison with baseline values, mean IOP decreased significantly following AE in both POAG and healthy eyes (both P < 0.001), in which POAG eyes showed a greater degree of reduction compared to healthy eyes (P = 0.002). In comparison with baseline values, in both POAG and healthy eyes, the average cross-sectional area (POAG: 80.48 +/- 59.54 vs. 99.20 +/- 54.87 pixels; healthy: 151.84 +/- 52.76 vs. 198.23 +/- 53.70 pixels; both P < 0.001) and diameter (POAG: 3.73 +/- 1.69 vs. 4.33 +/- 1.74 pixels; healthy: 5.61 +/- 1.02 vs. 6.47 +/- 1.20 pixels; both P < 0.001) of SC significantly increased after AE. In POAG, both treated and untreated with IOP-lowering medications, a significant reduction in mean IOP and increase in SC dimensions following AE were observed (all P < 0.05), and there were no significant differences of such measurements between the two subgroups (all P > 0.05). Conclusion: AE-induced reduction in IOP and an increase in SC dimensions in POAG eyes as in healthy eyes. Further studies to evaluate the long-term effect of AE on IOP control and SC morphology in POAG seem warranted.

Purpose Optic disc (OD) and optic cup (OC) segmentation are fundamental for fundus image analysis. Manual annotation is time consuming, expensive, and highly subjective, whereas an automated system is invaluable to the medical community. The aim of this study is to develop a deep learning system to segment OD and OC in fundus photographs, and evaluate how the algorithm compares against manual annotations. Methods A total of 1200 fundus photographs with 120 glaucoma cases were collected. The OD and OC annotations were labeled by seven licensed ophthalmologists, and glaucoma diagnoses were based on comprehensive evaluations of the subject medical records. A deep learning system for OD and OC segmentation was developed. The performances of segmentation and glaucoma discriminating based on the cup-to-disc ratio (CDR) of automated model were compared against the manual annotations. Results The algorithm achieved an OD dice of 0.938 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.934-0.941), OC dice of 0.801 (95% CI = 0.793-0.809), and CDR mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.077 (95% CI = 0.073 mean absolute error (MAE)0.082). For glaucoma discriminating based on CDR calculations, the algorithm obtained an area under receiver operator characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.948 (95% CI = 0.920 mean absolute error (MAE)0.973), with a sensitivity of 0.850 (95% CI = 0.794-0.923) and specificity of 0.853 (95% CI = 0.798-0.918). Conclusions We demonstrated the potential of the deep learning system to assist ophthalmologists in analyzing OD and OC segmentation and discriminating glaucoma from nonglaucoma subjects based on CDR calculations. Translational relevance We investigate the segmentation of OD and OC by deep learning system compared against the manual annotations.

PURPOSE To test the repeatability and reproducibility of the Zhongshan ONH Calculator (ZOC) software in terms of selected optic nerve head (ONH) parameters commonly used in clinical research of glaucoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS Forty-two horizontal single-line scans were selected to test the repeatability and reproducibility of the ZOC software. Clinically relevant 2D parameters of the ONH area were selected to test repeatability of ZOC, including length of BMO, minimum rim thickness on both sides (RIML and RIMR), optic cup depth (OCD), and depth of the anterior surface of the LC (ALCD). RESULTS Intraobserver test showed higher the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of BMO ((0.991 vs. 0.777), RIML (0.988 vs. 0.890), RIMR (0.972 vs. 0.846), OCD (0.997 vs. 0.992), and ALCD (0.993 vs. 0.949) by single researcher using ZOC software than manual measurement. BA analysis showed acceptable agreement between automatic and manual measurements. SDs and limits of agreement (95% CI) of BMO, RIML, RIMR, OCD, and ALCD were 0.05 (-0.13, 0.07), 0.03 (-0.05, 0.05), 0.03 (-0.06, 0.07), 0.015 (-0.035, 0.024), and 0.04 (-0.07, 0.08), respectively. CONCLUSION This study presented the design and development of software for the automatic measurement of OCT images of ONH area with good reproducibility. In the future, with advances of OCTs and improvements to the resolution of the LC, ZOC will become a powerful tool in glaucoma research.

Acute primary angle-closure (APAC) eyes show an early ‘acute inflammatory’ condition, while the inflammation condition has not been fully elucidated in the development of primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG). To evaluate the roles of inflammatory cytokines in the pathogenesis of PACG, this cross-sectional study involved 40 eyes of 32 PACG patients who required trabeculectomy and 24 eyes of 24 patients who required cataract surgery. The aqueous humor samples were collected at the time of surgery. Fifteen inflammatory cytokines were detected using the multiplex bead immunoassay technique, and the clinical information was recorded for the correlation analysis. Eight of the 15 cytokines were all detectable in both groups, including granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP)-1, MCP-3, macrophage-derived chemokine (MDC), macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1β, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). When compared with the cataract patients, the MCP-3, MDC, and VEGF levels were elevated in the PACG patients, while the MCP-1 and MIP-1β levels were decreased. However, the G-CSF, IL-6, and IL-8 levels were similar between the two groups. The MCP-1 concentration was elevated accordingly as the disease progressed in the PACG patients. Our results suggest the PACG eyes retained a ‘mild inflammation’ condition in the aqueous humor, and MCP-1 may play an important role in the progression of this disease.

PurposeTo investigate whether the combined subconjunctival injection of dexamethasone can accelerate the decrease in intraocular pressure (IOP) in acute primary angle closure (APAC)-affected eyes.Methods42 patients with APAC were recruited for a randomised controlled trial. These patients were separated into two groups: the injection group (21 patients) and the control group (21 patients). The injection group was subjected to a subconjunctival injection with 2.5 mg dexamethasone. Other drug treatments were the same with the control group. The follow-up was at 0, 3, 6, 12 and 24 hours after injection. The outcome measures include IOP and intraocular inflammation variables.ResultsThe IOP was significantly decreased in both groups after treatment. However, 24 hours after the initial treatment, the IOP of the injection group was significantly lower compared with the control group (p = 0.017). Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis showed that the total success rate of the injection group and the control group were 79.7% and 54.9% at 24 hours after treatment (p = 0.027), respectively. For the comparison of anterior chamber inflammation, the severity of conjunctival erythema, ciliary flush and pain in the injection group was also lower than that in the control group at 24 hours after treatment(p = 0.012, p = 0.048 and p = 0.013, respectively). No statistical significance was found between the two groups regarding the anterior chamber cells, anterior chamber flare and photophobia.ConclusionThe combined subconjunctival injection of dexamethasone for the management of APAC eyes can significantly accelerate the relief of high IOP, and therefore, improve the success rate of treatment.

In this work, we propose to study a special semantic segmentation problem where the targets are long and continuous strip patterns. Strip patterns widely exist in medical images and natural photos, such as retinal layers in OCT images and lanes on the roads, and segmentation of them has practical significance. Traditional pixel-level segmentation methods largely ignore the structure prior of strip patterns and thus easily suffer from the topological inconformity problem, such as holes and isolated islands in segmentation results. To tackle this problem, we design a novel deep framework, StripNet, that leverages the strong end-to-end learning ability of CNNs to predict the structured outputs as a sequence of boundary locations of the target strips. Specifically, StripNet decomposes the original segmentation problem into more easily solved local boundary-regression problems, and takes account of the topological constraints on the predicted boundaries. Moreover, our framework adopts a coarse-to-fine strategy and uses carefully designed heatmaps for training the boundary localization network. We examine StripNet on two challenging strip pattern segmentation tasks, retinal layer segmentation and lane detection. Extensive experiments demonstrate that StripNet achieves excellent results and outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both tasks.

Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, which is now viewed as a disease of brain with pathogenesis not fully understood. The main diagnostic methods are examining the retinal nerve fiber layer through optical coherence tomography and investigating visual field defect, but these methods present disadvantages in clinical practice. Studies have shown that patients with glaucoma often suffer negative emotion like anxiety and depression which is related to abnormal or reduced amygdala. Moreover, selective reduction of fMRI responses to transient achromatic stimuli in the superficial layer of the superior colliculus was found in the early glaucoma patients. By summarizing previous studies, we developed a hypothesis: superior colliculus-pulvinar-amygdala subcortical visual pathway may be involved in the incidence or progression of glaucoma. Validating this hypothesis would further clarify the mechanism of glaucoma and lead to the development of a more sensitive method for making an early diagnosis of glaucoma.

Background To develop a deep neural network able to differentiate glaucoma from non-glaucoma visual fields based on visual filed (VF) test results, we collected VF tests from 3 different ophthalmic centers in mainland China. Methods Visual fields obtained by both Humphrey 30–2 and 24–2 tests were collected. Reliability criteria were established as fixation losses less than 2/13, false positive and false negative rates of less than 15%. Results We split a total of 4012 PD images from 1352 patients into two sets, 3712 for training and another 300 for validation. There is no significant difference between left to right ratio (P = 0.6211), while age (P = 0.0022), VFI (P = 0.0001), MD (P = 0.0039) and PSD (P = 0.0001) exhibited obvious statistical differences. On the validation set of 300 VFs, CNN achieves the accuracy of 0.876, while the specificity and sensitivity are 0.826 and 0.932, respectively. For ophthalmologists, the average accuracies are 0.607, 0.585 and 0.626 for resident ophthalmologists, attending ophthalmologists and glaucoma experts, respectively. AGIS and GSS2 achieved accuracy of 0.459 and 0.523 respectively. Three traditional machine learning algorithms, namely support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) were also implemented and evaluated in the experiments, which achieved accuracy of 0.670, 0.644, and 0.591 respectively. Conclusions Our algorithm based on CNN has achieved higher accuracy compared to human ophthalmologists and traditional rules (AGIS and GSS2) in differentiation of glaucoma and non-glaucoma VFs. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12880-018-0273-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Purpose To explore the microRNA (miRNA) profile and its putative role in glaucomatous optic neuropathy by using next-generation sequencing. Methods Aqueous humor (AH) samples were collected from 19 primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) eyes and 17 cataract eyes before surgery. Next-generation sequencing was performed for RNA samples extracted from 18 AH samples, and the bioinformatics approach was applied for samples with adequate clean data output. The other 18 samples were used for quantitative PCR validation of sequencing results. Results In total, 12 (six POAG and six cataract controls) samples with sufficient clean data output after sequencing were used for further data analysis. Four hundred sixty-six and 480 mature miRNAs were detected in the POAG and cataract control groups, respectively. Among them, 164 miRNAs were detected in all POAG samples, and 96 miRNAs were detected in all cataract control samples. Furthermore, 88 miRNAs were identified as differently expressed between POAG and cataract control eyes. In addition, 16 miRNAs were differently expressed between POAG eyes with severe visual field damage and eyes with moderate visual field damage. This differential expression was predicted to regulate thiamine metabolism, purine metabolism, and transcriptional misregulation. Relative expression patterns of hsa-miR-184, hsa-miR-486-5p, and hsa-miR-93-5p were confirmed by quantitative PCR. Conclusions This study comprehensively demonstrated the miRNA expression profile in the AH of POAG eyes, especially the differential expression of miRNA in eyes with varying degrees of visual field damage, which, together with the underlying miRNA-related pathways, indicate new targets for the pathogenesis and progression of POAG.

To compare the anterior and posterior choroid thickness (ACT and PCT, respectively) in primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), primary angle-closure disease (PACD), and healthy control subjects.A total of 29 POAG patients (56 eyes), 37 PACD patients (64 eyes), and 34 healthy volunteers (68 eyes) were enrolled in this study; 50 POAG eyes were divided into 25 early/moderate-stage and 25 advanced-stage eyes by visual field loss, while 64 PACD eyes were classified as primary angle-closure suspect (PACS), 8 eyes; primary angle closure (PAC), 18 eyes; and primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG), 38 eyes. Ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) was used to measure the ACT at a distance of 4 mm from the root of iris in all participants. ACT and PCT were measured using UBM and swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT), respectively. A 4-mm distance from the iris root was self-defined as the anterior choroid that well matched the real anterior choroid.The mean ACT measured by UBM was 0.45 ± 0.057 mm in POAG eyes, 0.38 ± 0.050 mm in PACD eyes, and 0.30 ± 0.050 mm in healthy eyes. Both the POAG and PACD eyes had a thicker anterior choroid than healthy eyes (P0.01). Compared to early/moderate-stage eyes of POAG, advanced-stage eyes had similar ACT (P0.05). PACG eyes had a thinner anterior choroid than PAC/PACS eyes (P0.05). However, no statistically significant difference was noted for POAG, PACD, and normal control eyes' PCT using SS-OCT (P0.05).POAG/PACD eyes had a thicker anterior choroid than the controls. However, there was no significant difference in the PCT among the groups. The anterior choroid might play a role in the pathogenesis of glaucoma, warranting further investigation.

A new surface dicarboxylatic kapok fiber (DC-KF) was prepared by surface modification. During the sorbent preparation, the response surface methodology based on the experimental design of central composite design was employed to select the optimum conditions. Fourier transform infrared, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetry, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were employed to investigate the structures of raw, wax removed, and surface DC-KF. As a novel sorbent, it was used in removing cationic dyes of natural red, methylene blue, and rhodamine 6G. The influences of contact time, pH, dye concentration, and ionic strength on dye removal were studied. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms were analyzed. Results showed that the dyes adsorbed onto DC-KF could reach the equilibrium within 1 h. The maximum adsorption capacities calculated from the Langmuir model were 816.4, 524.4, and 613.4 mg/g for NR, MB, and Rh-6G, respectively. The pH and ionic strength had a significant effect on dye removal. Excellent regeneration property demonstrated that DC-KF had the potential of actual applications. For its high adsorption capacity, excellent regeneration, low cost, simple preparation, and complete environmental friendliness, DC-KF will be an excellent candidate for treating cationic dye polluted water.

Primary angle closure disease (PACD), prevalent in Asian countries, is generally associated with a shallower anterior chamber, a shorter axial length, thicker lens, hyperopia, and female sex. Other physiologic factors, however, may be important, especially with regard to triggering acute primary angle closure. Thickening of the choroid has been demonstrated in untreated and treated, acute and chronic PACD eyes. Recently, there has been growing interest in studying the role of the choroid in the pathophysiology of PACD. The emergence of new imaging technology such as the enhanced depth imaging mode of spectral-domain optical coherence tomography and swept-source optical coherence tomography has contributed to understanding PACD pathologies. We summarize the functions of the choroid and choroidal changes in the pathogenesis of PACD, and discuss potential future developments.

Through a new synthetic route, three ruthenium-phenanthroline porphyrins (RPP1, RPP2 and RPP3) were prepared. Their photophysical and photochemical properties, such as DNA photocleavage activity, singlet-oxygen photogeneration and two-photon absorption (2PA) were evaluated. These porphyrins 1–3 had substantial photocleavage activities, with 71%, 74% and 38% observed at 20 μM. The porphyrins with different substituents on phenathroline group had similar singlet oxygen quantum yields, with ΦΔ values at 0.52, 0.47 and 0.41, respectively. The 2PA cross-section (σ(2)) values of RPP 1–3, measured by the Z-scan method, were calculated to be 152, 172 and 135 GM, respectively, which were around 5-fold higher than that of H2TPP . Thus, these porphyrins, with their good photocleavage activities, 1 O 2 quantum yields and high 2PA cross section, suggest great potential as photodynamic therapeutic agents.

Objective To investigate the changes of retinal oxygen saturation (Sat O 2 ) concentrations, choroidal thickness (CT), and retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) in eyes with trabeculectomy-required acute primary angle closure (APAC). Design Prospective, longitudinal study. Participants Twenty-three eyes with trabeculectomy-required APAC were recruited. Methods Retinal oximetry was performed at postoperative day one and again at approximately 1 month. CT and the RNFL were tested on the same day. A paired t test and Pearson correlation were used for analysis. Results Mean Sat O 2 increased in retinal arterioles from 88.74% ± 14.36% at postoperative day 1 to 96.61% ± 18.42% at 1 month ( p = 0.049). The mean diameter of the arterioles was statistically different between postoperative day 1 and 1 month ( p = 0.044), as was the mean diameter of the venules ( p = 0.027). APAC eyes at postoperative 1 month had a thinner mean CT, compared with day 1 ( p = 0.002). No significant difference was found in the RNFL between postoperative day 1 and 1 month ( p > 0.05). The Sat O 2 in retinal arterioles correlated with the mean diameter of the arterioles at postoperative day 1 ( r = –0.482, p = 0.020) and at 1 month ( r = –0.463, p = 0.026). No significant correlation was found between retinal Sat O 2 and other parameters. Conclusions Increased Sat O 2 in retinal arterioles, changed vessel diameter, and thinner CT from postoperative day 1 to 1 month suggest gradual recovery from APAC. However, the different pathophysiologies for APAC still need further study to prove.

This study aimed to evaluate the angiogenesis-related factors of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) family in the aqueous humour of patients with neovascular glaucoma (NVG).This study involved 22 eyes of 22 patients with advanced NVG requiring antiglaucomatous surgery and 20 control subjects with cataracts. The NVG eyes received an intravitreal injection of ranibizumab (IVR) treatment before antiglaucomatous surgery. Aqueous humour and blood were collected at the time of IVR and cataract surgery. Protein concentration of VEGF-A, VEGF-B and placenta growth factor (PlGF) in aqueous humour and plasma was determined by ELISA tests.The mean concentration (standard deviation) of VEGF-A and PlGF in the aqueous humour of patients with NVG were 3037 (2387) pg/ml and 1078 (712) pg/ml, respectively; both were significantly higher than the control group (both p0.001). However, levels of VEGF-A and PlGF in the serum of NVG and control subjects remained low. High concentrations of VEGF-A were closely correlated with high levels of PlGF in patients with NVG (r = 0.593, p = 0.004). Concentrations of VEGF-B in aqueous humour and serum remained unchanged (p0.05).There were high concentrations of angiogenesis factors of the VEGF family, with the exception of VEGF-B, in the aqueous humour of patients with NVG, and there was a positive correlation between VEGF-A and PlGF. High PlGF levels in patients with NVG may provide another potential target for treatment of NVG.

Purpose To compare the concentrations of chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 2 (CCL2) and chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 7 (CCL7) in aqueous humour of eyes with acute primary angle-closure (APAC), primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG) or with age-related cataract. Methods The prospective investigation included a study group of 56 patients (24 patients with APAC; 32 patients with PACG) undergoing glaucoma surgery and a control group of 21 patients undergoing routine cataract surgery. The interval between glaucoma attack and trabeculectomy was 19.4 ± 9.8 days. Results The concentrations of CCL2 (3037 ± 501 versus 1127 ± 141 pg/ml; p = 0.003) and CCL7 (10.5 ± 2.4 versus 2.8 ± 0.4 pg/ml; p

Surface soil samples were collected from urban agglomeration of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), China in 2003 and 2012, respectively. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were analyzed to determine if there were any changes in their levels and compositional profiles between the two sampling years. The concentrations of Σ8PBDEs ranged from 0.553 to 13.0 μg kg(-1)(with the mean of 3.31 μg kg(-1)) in the 2003 samples and from 1.01 to 43.2 μg/kg (with the mean of 10.0 μg kg(-1)) in the 2012 samples. The concentrations of Σ32PCBs ranged from 0.301 to 3.29 μg kg(-1)(with the mean of 1.01 μg kg(-1)) in the 2003 samples and from 0.205 to 3.96 μg/kg (with the mean of 0.991 μg kg(-1)) in the 2012 samples. The comparisons between the 2012 and 2003 data showed that PBDEs concentrations increased over the years, but PCB concentrations did not change much. BDE-209 was the major BDE congener in both the 2003 and 2012 samples, indicating that the dominant PBDE mixture production and usage in the YRD had been the commercial deca-BDE mixture. Investigation of the PBDE congener profiles indicated that there had been new input of octa-BDEs in this region in recent years. Little change was found for the pattern of PCBs congener profiles between 2 years' samples. As such, spatial distributions of PBDEs or PCBs in surface soil samples reflected a gradient (from high to low) from the central cities out to rural areas in both the 2003 and 2012 data. In addition, high concentrations of PBDEs were observed in the industrial and residential areas, whereas high concentrations of PCBs were only observed in the industrial areas.