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Objective. To systematically evaluate the clinical efficacy of modified Xiebai Powder or modified Xiebai Powder combined with Western medicine in the treatment of pneumonia and explore its potential mechanism of action. Methods. Meta-analysis was used to screen the eligible literature on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about Xiebai Powder in the treatment of pneumonia, and Review Manager 5.3 software was used for statistical analysis of the data. Based on the results of the meta-analysis, the active ingredients in Xiebai Powder and their therapeutic targets, disease-related targets, and intersection targets were screened using methods of network pharmacology, and their biological processes and key signaling pathways were analyzed using bioinformatics tools. Molecular docking was carried out to verify and predict the mechanisms for Xiebai Powder combined with Western medicine in the treatment of pneumonia. Results. A total of 16 papers were screened out, with a total of 1,465 patients. The results of the meta-analysis showed that modified Xiebai Powder or modified Xiebai Powder combined with Western medicine were superior to conventional Western medicine in terms of clinical efficacy, shortening the disappearance time of symptoms (body temperature, cough, and pulmonary rales) and reducing the level of C-reactive protein, and the incidence of adverse reactions was significantly reduced. A total of 40 active ingredients in Xiebai Powder and 285 therapeutic targets of Xiebai Powder combined with azithromycin after deduplication were screened out from the database. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that Xiebai Powder combined with azithromycin might play a role in the treatment of pneumonia through the IL-17 signaling pathway, tumor necrosis factor signaling pathway, C-type lectin receptor signaling pathway, Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, and HIF-1 signaling pathway. Conclusions. Modified Xiebai Powder or modified Xiebai Powder combined with azithromycin has better effects in treating pneumonia, and modified Xiebai Powder combined with azithromycin may play a role in treating pneumonia through several pathways such as the IL-17 signaling pathway.

The anoxic/multi-aerobic process is widely applied for treating landfill leachate with low carbon to nitrogen ratio. In this study, the effect of two aeration modes in the aerobic phase, i.e. decreasing dissolved oxygen (DO) and increasing DO, on nitrogen removal and N

Transportation matrices are $m\times n$ nonnegative matrices with given row sum vector $R$ and column sum vector $S$. All such matrices form the convex polytope $\mathcal{U}(R,S)$ which is called a transportation polytope and its extreme points have been classified. In this article, we consider a new class of convex polytopes $\Delta(\bar{R},\bar{S},\sigma)$ consisting of certain transportation polytopes satisfying that the sum of all elements is $\sigma$, and the row and column sum vectors are dominated componentwise by the given positive vectors $\bar{R}$ and $\bar{S}$, respectively. We characterize the extreme points of $\Delta(\bar{R},\bar{S},\sigma)$. Moreover, we give the minimal term rank and maximal permanent of $\Delta(\bar{R},\bar{S},\sigma)$.

A spatial co-location pattern refers to a subset of spatial features whose instances are frequently co-located in spatial. In spatial data mining, most of the existing algorithms aim to discover the positive patterns. Moreover, there are patterns with strong negative correlations in spatial, such as negative co-location patterns. The discovery of such patterns is also greatly significant in some applications. Existing negative co-location patterns mining algori-thm is time-consuming and the number of mining results is huge. To address these problems, this paper explores the upward inclusion property of the negative co-location pattern, and proposes a minimal negative co-location pattern. Based on the minimal negative co-location patterns, all prevalent negative co-location patterns can be derived. In the negative co-location pattern mining process, the calculation of table instances of the candidate patterns is the funda-mental factor that restricts the mining efficiency. In order to reduce the calculation of the table instance effectively, three pruning strategies are proposed. A large number of experiments on real and synthetic data sets verify the correctness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm. In particular, the experimental results show that the minimal negative co-location patterns can compress the number of prevalent negative co-location patterns by more than 80%.

Background. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) has made a revolution in the mode of pathogen identification. We decided to explore the diagnostic value of blood and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) as mNGS samples in pneumonia. Methods. We retrospectively reviewed 467 mNGS results and assessed the diagnostic performance of paired blood and BALF mNGS in 39 patients with pneumonia. Results. For bacteria and fungi, 16 patients had culture-confirmed pathogen diagnosis, while 13 patients were culture-negative. BALF mNGS was more sensitive than blood mNGS (81.3% vs. 25.0%, p=0.003), and the specificity in BALF and blood mNGS was not statistically significant different (76.9% vs. 84.6%, p=0.317). For 10 patients without culture test, treatments were changed in 2 patients. For viruses, Epstein-Barr virus was positive in blood mNGS in 9 patients. Human adenovirus was detected in both BALF and blood mNGS in 3 patients. Conclusion. Our study suggests that BALF mNGS is more sensitive than blood mNGS in detecting bacteria and fungi, but blood also has advantages to identify the pathogens of pneumonia, especially for some viruses.

Fluorescent metallic nanoparticles with high quantum yield are highly desirable for optical imaging in the fields of biology and materials science. We investigate the photoluminescence (PL) properties of Ag nanoplates, particularly triangular ones, systematically at the single-particle level under different excitation conditions. We find that their emission is controlled by surface plasmon resonances (SPRs). Because of their high geometric symmetry, the shape and intensity of the PL spectrum from Ag triangular nanoplates are independent of the excitation polarization. Under excitation wavelengths of 473, 532 and 633 nm, the PL quantum yield (QY) of Ag triangular nanoplates is found to be twice that of Au nanorods at similar SPR wavelengths. It can be attributed to the stronger and broader SPR response, which can make the PL more intense not only in the spatial domain but also over a larger range in the frequency domain. Our investigations will extend the application of Ag nanoplates in imaging, labeling, and emitting, especially at the single-molecule level, due to their ultra-bright, stable, and polarization-independent PL. This method to enhance the PL signal, in both the spatial and frequency domains, can be easily expanded to other systems.

In this paper, some inequalities for permanents and permanental minors of row substochastic matrices are proved. The convexity of the permanent function on the interval between the identity matrix and an arbitrary row substochastic matrix is also proved. In addition, a conjecture about the permanent and permanental minors of square row substochastic matrices with fixed row and column sums is formulated.

The fusions of receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) involving anaplastic lymphoma kinase (

The existing small-signal stability constrained optimal power flow (SC-OPF) generally needs to deduce the sensitivity analytical expression of the small-signal stability index to parameters, which requires a large amount of formula derivation and mathematical computation. In order to overcome the complex problem of sensitivity, this article proposes an approximate sensitivity calculation method based on the back propagation (BP) neural network algorithm in the SC-OPF model. First, the minimum damping ratio of the system is taken as the small-signal stability index, and the algebraic inequality composed of the minimum damping ratio is used as the small-signal stability constraint in this model. Second, the BP neural network is introduced into the SC-OPF to analyze the mapping relationship between the generator power, node power, line power and the minimum damping ratio of the system, and then the numerical differentiation method is used to calculate the approximate first-order sensitivity of the minimum damping ratio in the correction equation. Finally, a series of simulations on the WSCC-9 bus and IEEE-39 bus systems verify the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed model.

Intervention strategies are of great significance for controlling large-scale outbreaks of epidemics. Since the spread of epidemic depends largely on the movement of individuals and the heterogeneity of the network structure, understanding potential factors that affect the epidemic is fundamental for the design of reasonable intervention strategies to suppress the epidemic. So far, most of previous studies mainly consider intervention strategies on the network composed of a single type of locations, while ignoring the movement behavior of individuals to and from locations that are composed of different types, i.e., residences and public places, which often presents heterogeneous structure. In addition, the transmission rate in public places with different population flows is heterogeneous. Inspired by the above observation, we build a bipartite metapopulation network model and propose intervention strategies based on the importance of public places. With the Markovian Chain approach, we derive the epidemic threshold under intervention strategies. Experimental results show that, compared with the uniform intervention to residences or public places, nonuniform intervention to public places is more effective for suppressing the epidemic with an increased epidemic threshold. Specifically, interventions to public places with large degree can further suppress the epidemic. Our study opens a new path for understanding the spatial epidemic spread and provides guidance for the design of intervention strategies for epidemics in the future.

Iron carbide (Fe1−xCx) thin films were successfully grown by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) using bis(N, N′-di-tert-butylacetamidinato)iron(II) as a precursor and H2 plasma as a reactant. Smooth and pure Fe1−xCx thin films were obtained by the PEALD process in a layer-by-layer film growth fashion, and the x in the nominal formula of Fe1−xCx is approximately 0.26. For the wide PEALD temperature window from 80 to 210 °C, a saturated film growth rate of 0.04 nm/cycle was achieved. X-ray diffraction and transition electron microscope measurements show that the films grown at deposition temperature 80–170 °C are amorphous; however, at 210 °C, the crystal structure of Fe7C3 is formed. The conformality and resistivity of the deposited films have also been studied. At last, the PEALD Fe1−xCx on carbon cloth shows excellent electrocatalytic performance for hydrogen evolution.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) of cobalt carbide thin films is reported by using bis(N,N′-diisopropylacetamidinato)cobalt(II) (Co(amd)2) and H2 plasma. The process shows a good self-limiting ALD fil...

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is an artificially synthesized per-fluorinated chemical widely used in industry. It is often released into the environment without treatment and causes pollution in groundwater. In this paper, we employed a strip fountain dielectric barrier discharge (SF-DBD) plasma source to degrade PFOA from the water. The effects of power supply mode, discharge gases, pH, the conductivity of the solution, concentration, etc., on the degradation efficiency were studied. For a 200 mL sample of 75 mg/L PFOA, a 99% degradation efficiency with a 204.5 μg/kJ energy production rate was achieved using an average power of 43 W negative pulse argon plasma for 50 min at atmospheric pressure. The total organic carbon concentration (TOC) decreased by 63% after a 60 min treatment. The SF-DBD proves to be a promising and energy-saving technique to efficiently remove PFOA from water.

In the recent outbreak of novel coronavirus infection worldwide, the risk of thrombosis and bleeding should be concerned. We aimed to observe the dynamic changes of D-dimer levels during disease progression to evaluate their value for thrombosis. In this study, we report the clinical and laboratory results of 57 patients with confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia and 46 patients with confirmed community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CAP). And their concentrations of D-dimer, infection-related biomarkers, and conventional coagulation were retrospectively analyzed. The Padua prediction score is used to identify patients at high risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE). The results found that, on admission, both in COVID-19 patients and CAP patients, D-dimer levels were significantly increased, and compared with CAP patients, D-dimer levels were higher in COVID-19 patients (P < 0.05). Besides, we found that in COVID-19 patients, D-dimer were related with markers of inflammation, especially with hsCRP (R = 0.426, P < 0.05). However, there was low correlation between VTE score and D-dimer levels (Spearman’s R = 0.264, P > 0.05) weakened the role of D-dimer in the prediction of thrombosis. After treatments, D-dimer levels decreased which was synchronous with hsCRP levels in patients with good clinical prognosis, but there were still some patients with anomalous increasing D-dimer levels after therapy. In conclusion, elevated baseline D-dimer levels are associated with inflammation but not with VTE score in COVID-19 patients, suggesting that it is unreasonable to judge whether anticoagulation is needed only according to D-dimer levels. However, the abnormal changes of D-dimer and inflammatory factors suggest that anticoagulant therapy might be needed. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11239-020-02171-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background: Aged people is more susceptible and vulnerable to COVID-19 pneumonia. As the “super-elderly” group, octogenarian COVID-19 patients is not rare in current world-wide common healthy event.Object: To describe clinical features in octogenarian with severe COVID-19. And try to find out the differences with other non-octogenarian adult patients.Materials and Methods: We studied a small cohort of octogenarian COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Wuhan from 10 February to 15 March. We recorded interested clinical data including chest CT in the octogenarian patients. In order to know the differences of clinical characteristics between octogenarian and other adult patients, we included the number of non-octogenarian patients cohort as ratio of 1:3.Result: For octogenarian patients, the age is 83.33±3.08 and 4 are female (4/6,66.7%). For non-octogenarian patients, the age is 60.72±8.28 years and 5 are female(5/18, 27.8%). and 59% were men. Compared non-octogenarian patients, octogenarian patients’ hospital stay duration is significantly longer (p=0.0052*). WBC is obvious elevated in octogenarian(p=0.0494*). BUN (p=0.0377*) and Cr (p=0.0112*) is with obvious differences between two group patients. No obvious differences in CT findings between two groups.Conclusion: The severe COVID-19 pneumonia octogenarian may have more chance to combined with bacterial infection. Octogenarian has worse baseline kidney function than non-octogenarian. In individual cases, the broader lesion and more lesion types may be found in octogenarian CT image.

In this paper, we report the combination of atomic layer deposition (ALD) with hydrothermal techniques to deposit ZnO on electrospun polyamide 6 (PA 6) nanofiber (NF) surface in the purpose of antibacterial application. The micro- and nanostructures of the hierarchical fibers are characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). We find that NFs can grow into “water lily”- and “caterpillar”-like shapes, which depend on the number of ALD cycles and the hydrothermal reaction period. It is believed that the thickness of ZnO seed layer by ALD process and the period in hydrothermal reaction have the same importance in crystalline growth and hierarchical fiber formation. The tests of antibacterial activity demonstrate that the ZnO/PA 6 core-shell composite fabricated by the combination of ALD with hydrothermal are markedly efficient in suppressing bacteria survivorship.

In this paper the roll-to-roll atmospheric dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) was used to pre-treat polyethylene (PE) web surface before the conventional thermal evaporation aluminum (Al) was performed as a barrier layer. We emphasized the plasma environment effect based on the inlet three kinds of reactive monomers. The cross hatch test was employed to assess the Al coating adhesion; and the oxygen transmission rate (OTR) was used to evaluate gas barrier property. The results showed that after roll-to-roll DBD plasma treatment all Al coatings adhered strongly on PE films and were free from pinhole defects with mirror morphology. The OTR was reduced from 2673 cm3/m2 day for Al-coated original PE to 138 cm3/m2 day for Al-coated allyamine (C3H7N) modified PE. To well understand the mechanism the chemical compositions of the untreated and DBD plasma pretreated PE films were analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The surface topography was characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM). For the property of surface energy the water contact angle measurement was also carried out in the DBD plasma treated samples with deionized water.

Metallization of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) materials is a critical issue for protection against environmental attack and improvement of their electrical conductivity. In practice, the process should be preferably carried out below 150 °C to avoid epoxy resin decomposition. This work investigated a plasma enhanced pulse chemical vapor deposition process for copper thin film deposition at a temperature as low as 50 °C. Copper(I) di-isopropylacetamidinate was used as Cu precursor with high reactivity to H 2 plasma at low temperature. At certain experimental conditions (10 s Cu precursor pulse and 10 s H 2 plasma pulse, 100 °C), the Cu films deposited on CFRP were pure, continuous, with the resistivity of 4.4 μΩ cm. The influence of the deposition temperature on copper characteristics has been investigated.

In this paper, we report on polyethylene (PE) film modified by atmospheric dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma prior to the deposition of SiOx coating to improve its barrier properties. Three kinds of monomers: allylamine, acrylic acid, and ethanol, are used to modify the PE surface. For comparison, Ar and O2 plasma pre-treatments are also performed. It is found that with the addition of a monomer in the Ar DBD plasma, the grafted active groups on PE surfaces lead to dense, pinhole-free growth of the SiOx film. The oxygen transmission rate (OTR) decreases from 700 cc/m2&middot, day&middot, atm. for the pristine to ca. 70 cc/m2&middot, atm. for the pretreatment-coated PE, which is more than a 10-fold reduction. The relationship between the grafted monomer and the great decrease of OTR is then explored via chemical composition by attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and via morphology observation by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results show that the grafted functional groups of -NH2, -COOH and -OH increase the surface energy and promote the nucleation of Si&ndash, O radicals on polymeric surfaces, and the formation of network and cage structures in SiOx film contributes to the significant improvement of OTR.

Large area uniform plasma sources, such as high-density magnetized inductively coupled plasma (ICP) and helicon plasma, have broad applications in industry. A comprehensive comparison of ICP and helicon plasma, excited by a single-loop antenna, is presented in this paper from the perspectives of mode transition, hysteresis behavior, and density distribution. The E-H mode transition in ICP and the E-H-W mode transition in helicon plasma are clearly observed in the experiments. Besides, the considerable variation of hysteresis behavior from inverse hysteresis to normal hysteresis by the influence of the magnetic field is explored. The bi-Maxwellian and Maxwellian electron energy distribution functions in each discharge are used to explain this phenomenon, which is essentially related to the transition from a nonlocal kinetic property to a local kinetic property of electrons. In addition, we notice that the plasma density, in the radial direction, is peaked in the center of the tube in ICP, but a complicated distribution is formed in helicon plasma. In the axial direction, the maximum plasma density is still in the center of the antenna in ICP, whereas the highest plasma density is located downstream, far away from the antenna, in helicon plasma. It is believed that the reflected electrons in the sheath and pre-sheath by the upper metallic endplate and downstream propagated helicon wave will be responsible for this plasma density profile in helicon plasma. Due to the constrained electron motion in the magnetic field, an extremely uniform density distribution will be obtained with an appropriate axial magnetic field in the wave discharge mode.

Herein, a new peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation system was proposed employing nonredox metal ions as Lewis acids (LA), which have been widely recognized to play important roles in many biological and chemical oxidations. With Co2+ ions as model catalysts, it was found that oxidizing power of PMS was enhanced after binding weak LA such as Ca2+ ions, leading to its easier reduction to active radicals and substantial enhancement of dye degradation. The promoting effect of Ca2+ was also observed with other cobalt catalysts including CoFe2O4 and Co3O4. The rate of PMS decomposition in Co2++LA/PMS system was correlated with Lewis acidity; while in the presence of strong LA including La3+ and Y3+, the dye degradation rate declined. The interactions of LA with PMS were characterized and the detailed mechanism was proposed. The present study provides the first example of the promoting effect of weak LA on PMS activation with cobalt based catalysts.

In this paper, we investigate the properties of chromium nitride (CrN) coating prepared using a high power magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) technique. As a comparison, CrN coating prepared using a direct current magnetron sputtering (DCMS) technique is also studied. The crystal structure, surface and cross-sectional morphologies, and composite properties of the as-deposited CrN coatings are compared by x-ray diffraction, a scanning electron microscope, and a microhardness tester, respectively. It is found that the as-deposited CrN film by HiPIMS grew preferentially on (200) facet when compared with that by DCMS on (111) facet. As a result, the coatings deposited by HiPIMS have a very compact microstructure with high hardness: the microhardness reached 855.9 Hv replacing 501.5 Hv by DCMS. Besides, the inner-stress of CrN films prepared by HiPIMS is also relatively small. After measuring the corrosion resistance, the corrosion current of films prepared by HiPIMS was an order of magnitude smaller than that of CrN films deposited by DCMS. Based on the plasma diagnostics by time resolved optical emission spectroscopy, it is believed that the superior quality of CrN coatings prepared by HiPIMS is because of the ionic reaction between Cr+ and N+, rather than the neutral Cr and N reaction in DCMS during the CrN film growth.

Agglomeration is a critical issue for depositing copper (Cu) thin films, and therefore, the deposition should be preferably performed below 100 °C. This work explores an atomic layer deposition (ALD) process for copper thin films deposited at temperature as low as 50 °C. The process employs copper(I)-N,N′-diisopropylacetamidinate precursor and H2 plasma, which are both highly reactive at low temperature. The deposition process below 100 °C follows an ideal self-limiting ALD fashion with a saturated growth rate of 0.071 nm/cycle. Benefitting from the low process temperature, the agglomeration of Cu thin films is largely suppressed, and the Cu films deposited at 50 °C are pure, continuous, smooth, and highly conformal, with the resistivity comparable to PVD Cu films. In-situ reaction mechanism studies by using quartz crystal microbalance and optical emission spectroscopy are followed, and the results confirm the high reactivity of the Cu amidinate precursor at low temperature. To the best of our knowledge, ...

Objectives An understanding of the awareness, treatment and control of hypertension is helpful to guide decision-making regarding interventions to reduce the risk for diseases with hypertension as a key risk factor. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension in Shenzhen, China. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted. We employed multistage cluster random sampling methods to select participants. A survey involving face-to-face interviews was conducted to collect the data. A total of 1676 participants finished the survey and formed the final analysis. Results We found that the prevalence of hypertension was 17.6%. The rates of hypertension awareness, treatment and control were 48.8%, 51.4% and 43.2% respectively. Only 6.8% hypertensives were found to be managed by community health centres. Compared with the female participants, the males were found to have higher rates of prevalence (19.7% vs 15.7%; OR 1.47, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.97) and awareness (42.9% vs 38.1%; OR 2.35, 95% CI 1.28 to 4.33), but lower rates of medication treatments (20.5% vs 30.2%; OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.92) and control (12.8% vs 23.0%; OR 0.45, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.96). Migrants were more likely to be aware of hypertension (32.5% vs 44.3%; OR 0.57, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.90), reduce their salt intake (8.8% vs 18.1%; OR 0.40, 95% CI 0.15 to 0.94), and undertake regular monitoring of hypertension (1.3% vs 11.0%; OR 0.14, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.92) when compared with the locals. Conclusions Our study finds that hypertension is an important public health burden in Shenzhen. It implies that strategies need to be developed to improve effective primary care management of hypertension. It also suggests a need to develop gender and household register tailored strategies for the prevention, detection, treatment and control of hypertension.

BACKGROUND Understanding epidemiological characteristics of diabetes in a specific population will potentially benefit prevention and control of diabetes and policy-making. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and awareness of diabetes, as well as its pharmacological, non-pharmacological and primary care management in Shenzhen, China. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted. We employed multistage cluster random sampling methods to select the participants. Face-to-face interview surveys were conducted to collect data. A total of 1676 participants completed the survey. RESULTS We found that the prevalence of diabetes was 4.8%. The prevalence of impaired fasting blood glucose was 6.0%. The prevalence rates of both diabetes and impaired fasting blood glucose increased with age (P

This paper presents the strategy of selective-area growing of a positively-charged layer of Al2O3 and the negatively-charged layer of HfO2 on ion beam track-etched polyethylene terephthalate (PET) nanotubes through the thermal atomic layer deposition (T-ALD) technique. We used the self-assembled monolayer of octadecyl trichlorosilane (OTS-SAMs) on the surface to serve as a passivation layer and then selectively deposited the Al2O3 and HfO2 in the nanotubes. The influence of the dipping time of the substrates in the OTS solution and the experimental conditions on the roughness and the thickness of the OTS monolayer have been investigated. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to analyze the composition of the ALD Al2O3 and HfO2 films. Atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were employed to study the morphologies before and after the ALD of Al2O3 and HfO2. The I-V characteristics of the film confirmed the surface charge polarities in the nanotubes, i.e. the positively-charged Al2O3 and negatively-charged HfO2, in the electrically-neutral solution. The results will aid surface modification and functionalization of PET by nanotubes.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) contributes to endothelial dysfunction that is involved in the pathogeneses of hypertension. Vascular peroxidase 1 (VPO1) can utilize ROS to catalyze peroxidative reactions, possibly enhancing endothelial dysfunction. This study is to identify VPO1's involvement in endothelial dysfunction and hypertension. Sixty-four spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) and 64 age-matched, bodyweight controlled normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKYs) were randomly grouped and studied at the age of 5, 8, 13 and 20 weeks (16 animals, each). Blood pressure and vasodilator responses to acetylcholine in aortic rings were observed. The expressions of VPO1 and endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) in aortas were assessed by quantitative reverse transcription-PCR and western blotting analysis. Plasma concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and NO, NOX activity, hypochlorous acid (HOCl) production, and 3-nitrotyrosine content in aortic homogenates were also determined in this study. Along with the development of hypertension in SHR rats, VPO1 expression was up-regulated together with a significant increase in NOX activity, HOCl production, 3-nitrotyrosine content, and plasma H2O2 level compared with WKYs at 8, 13 and 20 weeks of age. In contrast, blood NO levels were decreased and aortic relaxation to acetylcholine was deteriorated in SHRs. The over-expression of VPO1 during the development of hypertension, accompanied by the endothelial dysfunction, the decreased NO levels, the elevated NOX and ROS activities, indicates a clear connection between VPO1 gene and hypertension. VPO1 may pathogenetically contribute to hypertension via signal pathways involving NOX-H2O2-VPO1-HOCl or JNK/p38 MAPK although further studies are needed to determine the precise mechanisms.