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Objectives: This study was to investigate factors that influence the sleep quality and menstrual cycles of female rotating-shift nurses., Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 213 female rotating-shift nurses between the ages of 20 and 45 were recruited from a medical center in Taiwan from November 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed with regard to sleep quality or menstrual cycle., Results: Female rotating-shift nurses who perceived a higher level of stress (p < .001), were late chronotypes (p = .020), or were working the night shift (p = .006) were more likely to have poor sleep quality. Late-type nurses working the day shift were more likely to have poor sleep quality than were early- and intermediate-type nurses (p < .001). With regard to menstrual cycles, female rotating-shift nurses who perceived a higher level of stress (p = .008), were working the night shift (p < .001), or had poor sleep quality (p = .001) were more likely to have irregular menstrual cycles. Late-type nurses working the day shift were more likely to have irregular menstrual cycles than were early- and intermediate-type nurses (p = .013)., Conclusions: A higher likelihood of poor sleep quality was found in female rotating-shift nurses when they perceived high levels of stress, and the interactions between chronotype and shift type could influence sleep quality. Shift type and the interactions between chronotype and shift type could also influence menstrual regularity., (© The Author(s) [2024]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Occupational Health.)

Adipocyte-secreted factors intricately regulate adipose tissue function, and the underlying molecular mechanisms are only partially understood. However, the function of PRELP, which is a key component of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in adipocytes, remains largely unknown. In this study, we demonstrate that PRELP was upregulated in both obese humans and mice, which exhibited a positive correlation with metabolic disorders. PRELP knockout could resist HFD-induced obesity and inhibit adipocyte differentiation. PRELP knockout improved glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity and alleviated adipose tissue fibrosis. Mechanistically, PRELP was secreted into the ECM and bound to the extracellular domain of its receptor p75 NTR in adipocytes, which further activated the FAK/MAPK (JNK, p38 MAPK, ERK1/2) signaling pathway, promoting adipocyte differentiation and exacerbating adipocyte fibrosis. Adipocyte PRELP plays a pivotal role in regulating obesity and adipose tissue fibrosis through an autocrine manner, and PRELP may be a therapeutic target for obesity and its related metabolic disorders., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest All the authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Methamphetamine (MA), a representative amphetamine-type stimulant, is one of the most abused drugs worldwide. Studies have shown that MA-induced neurotoxicity is strongly associated with oxidative stress and apoptosis. While nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), an antioxidant transcription factor, is known to exert neuroprotective effects, its role in MA-induced dopaminergic neuronal apoptosis remains incompletely understood. In the present study, we explored the effects of MA on the expression levels of Nrf2, dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1), mitofusin 1 (Mfn1), cytochrome c oxidase (Cyt-c), and cysteine aspartate-specific protease 3 (Caspase 3), as well as the correlations between Nrf2 and mitochondrial dynamics and apoptosis. Brain tissue from MA abusers was collected during autopsy procedures. An MA-dependent rat model was also established by intraperitoneal administration of MA (10 mg/kg daily) for 28 consecutive days, followed by conditioned place preference (CPP) testing. Based on immunohistochemical staining and western blot analysis, the protein expression levels of Nrf2 and Mfn1 showed a decreasing trend, while levels of Drp1, Cyt-c, and Caspase 3 showed an increasing trend in the cerebral prefrontal cortex of both MA abusers and MA-dependent rats. Notably, the expression of Nrf2 was positively associated with the expression of Mfn1, but negatively associated with the expression levels of Drp1, Cyt-c, and Caspase 3. These findings suggest that oxidative stress and mitochondrial fission contribute to neuronal apoptosis, with Nrf2 potentially playing a critical role in MA-induced neurotoxicity., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Rationale and Objectives: We aimed to compare superb microvascular imaging (SMI)-based radiomics methods, and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS)-based radiomics methods to the American College of Radiology Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (ACR TI-RADS) for classifying thyroid nodules (TNs) and reducing unnecessary fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) rate., Materials and Methods: This retrospective study enrolled a dataset of 472 pathologically confirmed TNs. Radiomics characteristics were extracted from B-mode ultrasound (BMUS), SMI, and CEUS images, respectively. After eliminating redundant features, four radiomics scores (Rad-scores) were constructed. Using multivariable logistic regression analysis, four radiomics prediction models incorporating Rad-score and corresponding US features were constructed and validated in terms of discrimination, calibration, decision curve analysis, and unnecessary FNAB rate., Results: The diagnostic performance of the BMUS + SMI radiomics method was better than ACR TI-RADS (area under the curve [AUC]: 0.875 vs. 0.689 for the training cohort, 0.879 vs. 0.728 for the validation cohort) (P < 0.05), and comparable with BMUS + CEUS radiomics method (AUC: 0.875 vs. 0.878 for the training cohort, 0.879 vs. 0.865 for the validation cohort) (P > 0.05). Decision curve analysis showed that the BMUS+SMI radiomics method could achieve higher net benefits than the BMUS radiomics method and ACR TI-RADS when the threshold probability was between 0.13 and 0.88 in the entire cohort. When applying the BMUS+SMI radiomics method, the unnecessary FNAB rate reduced from 43.4% to 13.9% in the training cohort and from 45.6% to 18.0% in the validation cohorts in comparison to ACR TI-RADS., Conclusion: The dual-modal SMI-based radiomics method is convenient and economical and can be an alternative to the dual-modal CEUS-based radiomics method in helping radiologists select the optimal clinical strategy for TN management., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Association of University Radiologists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Person re-identification (Re-ID) is a fundamental task in visual surveillance. Given a query image of the target person, conventional Re-ID focuses on the pairwise similarities between the candidate images and the query. However, conventional Re-ID does not evaluate the consistency of the retrieval results of whether the most similar images ranked in each place contain the same person, which is risky in some applications such as missing out a place where the patient passed will hinder the epidemiological investigation. In this work, we investigate a more challenging task: consistently and successfully retrieving the target person in all camera views. We define the task as continuous person Re-ID and propose a corresponding evaluation metric termed overall Rank-K accuracy. Different from the conventional Re-ID, any incorrect retrieval under an individual camera view that raises an inconsistency will fail the continuous Re-ID. Consequently, the defective cameras, in which the images are hard to be automatically associated with the images from other views, strongly degrade the performance of continuous person Re-ID. Since the camera deployment is crucial for continuous tracking across camera views, we rethink person Re-ID from the perspective of camera deployment and assess the quality of a camera network by performing continuous Re-ID. Moreover, we propose to automatically detect the defective cameras that greatly hamper the continuous Re-ID. Because brute-force search is costly when the camera network becomes complicated, we explicitly model the visual relations as well as the spatial relations among cameras and develop a relational deep Q-network to select the properly deployed cameras and the un-selected cameras are regarded as the defective cameras. Since most existing datasets do not provide topology information about the camera network, they are unsuitable for investigating the importance of spatial relations on camera selection. Thus, we collect a new dataset including 20 cameras with topology information. Compared with randomly removing cameras, the experimental results show that our method can effectively detect the defective cameras so that people could take further operations on these cameras in practice (https://www.isee-ai.cn/∼yixing/MCCPD.html).

Person Re-identification (ReID) has been extensively developed for a decade in order to learn the association of images of the same person across non-overlapping camera views. To overcome significant variations between images across camera views, mountains of variants of ReID models were developed for solving a number of challenges, such as resolution change, clothing change, occlusion, modality change, and so on. Despite the impressive performance of many ReID variants, these variants typically function distinctly and cannot be applied to other challenges. To our best knowledge, there is no versatile ReID model that can handle various ReID challenges at the same time. This work contributes to the first attempt at learning a versatile ReID model to solve such a problem. Our main idea is to form a two-stage prompt-based twin modeling framework called VersReID. Our VersReID firstly leverages the scene label to train a ReID Bank that contains abundant knowledge for handling various scenes, where several groups of scene-specific prompts are used to encode different scene-specific knowledge. In the second stage, we distill a V-Branch model with versatile prompts from the ReID Bank for adaptively solving the ReID of different scenes, eliminating the demand for scene labels during the inference stage. To facilitate training VersReID, we further introduce the multi-scene properties into self-supervised learning of ReID via a multi-scene prioris data augmentation (MPDA) strategy. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the success of learning an effective and versatile ReID model for handling ReID tasks under multi-scene conditions without manual assignment of scene labels in the inference stage, including general, low-resolution, clothing change, occlusion, and cross-modality scenes. Codes and models will be made publicly available.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical efficacy of full endoscopic lumbar annulus fibrosus suture in the treatment of single-segment lumbar disc herniation (LDH)., Methods: The clinical data of patients with single-segment LDH who underwent full endoscopic lumbar discectomy from January 2017 to January 2019 in our hospital were retrospectively analysed. Patients with full endoscopic lumbar discectomy combined with annulus fibrosus suture were divided into group A, and those with simple full endoscopic lumbar discectomy were divided into group B. The general information, surgery-related data, visual analog scale (VAS), Oswestry disability index (ODI), modified MacNab score at the last follow-up, reoperation rate and recurrence were compared between the two groups., Results: All patients were followed up for 12 to 24 months, and the surgical time was 133.6 ± 9.6 min in group A and 129.0 ± 11.7 min in group B. The difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). The blood loss of group A was higher than that of group B, and the difference was statistically significant when comparing the groups (p < 0.05). The postoperative symptoms of patients in both groups were significantly relieved, and the VAS score of low back pain and ODI index were significantly lower than the preoperative ones at all postoperative time points (1 month after surgery, 3 months after surgery, and at the last follow-up) (p < 0.05), but there was no significant difference between the groups (p > 0.05). The excellent rate of MacNab at the last follow-up in the two groups were 93.55% and 87.80%, respectively, with no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05). At the last follow-up, the recurrence rate of group A was significantly lower than that of group B, and the difference was statistically significant (p < 0.05), while the difference between the reoperation rate of the two groups was not statistically significant (p > 0.05)., Conclusions: Full endoscopic lumbar discectomy combined with annulus fibrosus repair reduces the postoperative recurrence rate and achieves satisfactory clinical outcomes., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The effects of humic acid water-soluble fertilizer on the growth and physiological characteristics of Bupleurum chinense seedlings(Zhongchai No.1) were studied by using a single factor experiment design. When the seedling age was 60 days, the humic acid water-soluble fertilizer was diluted 1 200 times(T1), 1 500 times(T2), 1 800 times(T3), and 2 100 times(T4) for seedling treatment, respectively, and water was used as the control(CK). The effects of different treatments on growth indexes, biomass accumulation, root activity, antioxidant enzyme activity, membrane lipid peroxidation, and photosynthetic characteristics of B. chinense seedlings were analyzed after 30 days. The results showed that compared with CK, stem height, leaf number, root diameter, and root length of the B. chinense seedlings under T3 treatment were significantly increased by 36.82%, 37.03%, 42.78%, and 22.38%, respectively. Root fresh weight, leaf fresh weight, root dry weight, and leaf dry weight under T3 treatment were significantly increased by 90.36%, 98.68%, 123.84%, and 104.38%, respectively. In addition, humic acid water-soluble fertilizer also enhanced TTC reducing activity of the root of B. chinense seedlings, inhibited malonaldehyde(MDA) content, increased superoxide dismutase(SOD), peroxidase(POD), and catalase(CAT) enzyme activities, improved chlorophyll content, and enhanced P&#95;n, G&#95;s, T&#95;r, and other photosynthetic parameters. In conclusion, the application of humic acid water-soluble fertilizer diluted 1 800 times can significantly promote the growth of B. chinense seedlings, enhance root vitality, improve seedling stress resistance, and enhance photosynthesis. The results of this study can provide a theoretical basis for fertilization of B. chinense seedlings.

Aim: The aim of this study was to provide a comprehensive overview of floating hip injury and attempt to provide a management algorithm., Methods: PubMed was searched using the terms 'Floating hip' or 'acetabular fracture' and 'Ipsilateral femoral fracture' or 'pelvic fracture' and 'Ipsilateral femoral fracture'. One author performed a preliminary review of the abstracts and references of the retrieved articles., Results: The mean injury severe score reported was higher than 20. Chest and abdominal injuries, as well as fractures at other sites, were the most common associated injuries. Despite the high disability rate, surgery remained the preferred option for managing these injuries. The surgical timing varied from a few hours to several days and was subjected to the principles of damage control orthopedics. Although, in most cases, fixation of femoral fractures took precedence over pelvic or acetabular fractures, there was still a need to consider the impact of damage control orthopedics, associated injuries, and surgeon's considerations and preferences. Posttraumatic arthritis, neurological deficits, heterotopic ossification, femoral head necrosis, femoral nonunion, and limb inequality were common complications of the floating hip injury., Conclusions: The severity of such injuries often exceeds that of an isolated injury and often requires specialized multidisciplinary treatment. In the management of these complex cases, the complexity and severity of the injury should be fully assessed, and an appropriate surgical plan should be developed to perform definitive surgery as early as possible, with attention to prevention of complications during the perioperative period.

Kidney disease is a serious public health problem and various kidney diseases could progress to end-stage renal disease. The many complications of end-stage renal disease. have a significant impact on the physical and mental health of patients. Ultrasound can be the test of choice for evaluating the kidney and perirenal tissue as it is real-time, available and non-radioactive. To overcome substantial interobserver variability in renal ultrasound interpretation, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be a new method to help radiologists make clinical decisions. This review introduces the applications of AI in renal ultrasound, including automatic segmentation of the kidney, measurement of the renal volume, prediction of the kidney function, diagnosis of the kidney diseases. The advantages and disadvantages of the applications will also be presented clinicians to conduct research. Additionally, the challenges and future perspectives of AI are discussed., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Xu, Zhang, Yang, Jiang, Chen, Pan, Peng and Cui.)

Background: The efficacy and safety of Qingda granule (QDG) in managing blood pressure (BP) among grade 1 hypertensive patients with low-moderate risk remain uncertain., Methods: In the randomized, double-blind, double dummy, non-inferiority and multicenter trial, 552 patients with grade 1 hypertension at low-moderate risk were assigned at a ratio of 1:1 to receive either QDG or valsartan for 4 weeks, followed up by a subsequent 4 weeks., Results: Post-treatment, clinic systolic/diastolic BPs (SBP/DBP) were reduced by a mean change of 9.18/4.04 mm Hg in the QDG group and 9.85/5.05 mm Hg in the valsartan group (SBP P = 0.47, DBP P = 0.16). Similarly, 24-hour, daytime and nighttime BPs were proportional in both groups (P > 0.05) after 4 weeks treatment. After discontinuing medications for 4 weeks, the mean reduction of clinic SBP/DBP were 0.29/0.57 mm Hg in the QDG group compared to -1.59/-0.48 mm Hg in the valsartan group (SBP P = 0.04, DBP P = 0.04). Simultaneously, the 24-hour SBP/DBP were reduced by 0.9/0.31 mm Hg in the QDG group and -1.66/-1.08 mm Hg in the valsartan group (SBP P = 0.006, DBP P = 0.02). And similar results were observed regarding the outcomes of daytime and nighttime BPs. There was no difference in occurrence of adverse events between two groups (P > 0.05)., Conclusion: QDG proves to be efficacious for grade 1 hypertension at a low-to-medium risk, even after discontinuation of the medication for 4 weeks. These findings provide a promising option for managing grade 1 hypertension and suggest the potential for maintaining stable BP through intermittent administration of QDG., Trial Registration: ChiCTR2000033890., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that the study was conducted in the absence of any business or financial relationships that could be construed as potential conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Background: American College of Radiology (ACR) Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (TI-RADS, TR) 4 and 5 thyroid nodules (TNs) demonstrate much more complicated and overlapping risk characteristics than TR1-3 and have a rather wide range of malignancy possibilities (> 5%), which may cause overdiagnosis or misdiagnosis. This study was designed to establish and validate a dual-modal ultrasound (US) radiomics nomogram integrating B-mode ultrasound (BMUS) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging to improve differential diagnostic accuracy and reduce unnecessary fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) rates in TR 4-5 TNs., Methods: A retrospective dataset of 312 pathologically confirmed TR4-5 TNs from 269 patients was collected for our study. Data were randomly divided into a training dataset of 219 TNs and a validation dataset of 93 TNs. Radiomics characteristics were derived from the BMUS and CEUS images. After feature reduction, the BMUS and CEUS radiomics scores (Rad-score) were built. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted incorporating both Rad-scores and clinical/US data, and a radiomics nomogram was subsequently developed. The performance of the radiomics nomogram was evaluated using calibration, discrimination, and clinical usefulness, and the unnecessary FNAB rate was also calculated., Results: BMUS Rad-score, CEUS Rad-score, age, shape, margin, and enhancement direction were significant independent predictors associated with malignant TR4-5 TNs. The radiomics nomogram involving the six variables exhibited excellent calibration and discrimination in the training and validation cohorts, with an AUC of 0.873 (95% CI, 0.821-0.925) and 0.851 (95% CI, 0.764-0.938), respectively. The marked improvements in the net reclassification index and integrated discriminatory improvement suggested that the BMUS and CEUS Rad-scores could be valuable indicators for distinguishing benign from malignant TR4-5 TNs. Decision curve analysis demonstrated that our developed radiomics nomogram was an instrumental tool for clinical decision-making. Using the radiomics nomogram, the unnecessary FNAB rate decreased from 35.3 to 14.5% in the training cohort and from 41.5 to 17.7% in the validation cohorts compared with ACR TI-RADS., Conclusion: The dual-modal US radiomics nomogram revealed superior discrimination accuracy and considerably decreased unnecessary FNAB rates in benign and malignant TR4-5 TNs. It could guide further examination or treatment options., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: children who undergo CPB operations are at an elevated risk of infection due to immunosuppression. This study aims to investigate the association between lymphopenia following CPB and early postoperative infection in children., Methods: A retrospective analysis including 41 children under 2 years old underwent CPB. Among them, 9 subjects had an early postoperative infection, and 32 subjects were period-matched without infection. Inflammatory cytokines, serum CRP and PCT values were measured in plasma, additionally, circulating total leucocyte and lymphocyte subpopulations were counted., Results: Infected subjects exhibited significantly higher levels of inflammatory cytokines, including IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-1β and TNF-α, than non-infected subjects after CPB. Additionally, lower absolute number of lymphocyte and their subpopulations CD3+ T cells, CD4+ T-helper cells and CD8+cytotoxic T-cells, were observed in infected subjects. The impairment of T-cells Immune was found to be associated with higher levels of inflammatory cytokines IL-10. The ROC demonstrated that the absolute number of CD3+ T-cells <1934/ul, CD4+ T helper cells <1203/ul and CD8+cytotoxic T-cells <327/ul were associated with early postoperative infection., Conclusion: Higher levels of inflammatory cytokines resulted in T-cells lymphopenia after CPB, which significantly increasing the risk of postoperative infection in infants and young children., Impact: Infection complications after cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) in pediatric CHD patients are serious issues, identifing the infection from after CPB remains a challenging. CPB can release numerous inflammatory cytokines associated with T cells lymphopenia, which increases the risk of postoperative infection after surgery. Monitoring T cells lymphopenia maybe more beneficial to predict early postoperative infection than C-reactive protein and procalcitonin., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to the International Pediatric Research Foundation, Inc.)

Insecticides have been widely used for the control of insect pests that have a significant impact on agriculture and human health. A better understanding of insecticide targets is needed for effective insecticide design and resistance management. Pymetrozine, afidopyropen and flonicamid are reported to target on proteins that located on insect chordotonal organs, resulting in the disruption of insect coordination and the inhibition of feeding. In this study, we systematically examined the susceptibility of six Drosophila melanogaster mutants (five transient receptor potential channels and one mechanoreceptor) to three commercially used insecticides, in order to identify the receptor subunits critical to the insect's response to insecticides. Our results showed that iav 1 , nan 36a and wtrw 1 mutants exhibited significantly reduced susceptibility to pymetrozine and afidopyropen, but not to flonicamid. The number of eggs produced by the three mutant females were significantly less than that of the w 1118 strain. Meanwhile, the longevity of all male mutants and females of nan 36a and wtrw 1 mutants was significantly shorter than that of the w 1118 strain as the control. However, we observed no gravitaxis defects in wtrw 1 mutants and the anti-gravitaxis of wtrw 1 mutants was abolished by pymetrozine. Behavioral assays using thermogenetic tools further confirmed the bioassay results and supported the idea that Nan as a TRPV subfamily member located in Drosophila chordotonal neurons, acting as a target of pymetrozine, which interferes with Drosophila and causes motor deficits with gravitaxis defects. Taken together, this study elucidates the interactions of pymetrozine and afidopyropen with TRPV channels, Nan and Iav, and TRPA channel, Wtrw. Our research provides another evidence that pymetrozine and afidopyropen might target on nan, iav and wtrw channels and provides insights into the development of sustainable pest management strategies., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Background: To understand the differences between patients with diabetes mellitus and obese patients with respect to the occurrence of peri-prosthetic joint infection (PJI) after lower-extremity joint arthroplasty as well as to identify differences in PJI occurrence at different time periods. Patients and Methods: The Cochrane Library, CINAHL, MEDLINE, and PubMed were searched for literature published between January 2000 and July 2022. Our targets were studies involving patients with PJI who had already been diagnosed as having diabetes mellitus or being obese before receiving lower-extremity joint arthroplasty. Analysis was performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Software (CMA) Version 3 (Biostat, Inc., Englewood, NJ, USA). Results: A total of 53,522 patients with diabetes mellitus and 360,018 obese patients were included. The forest plot for patients with and without diabetes mellitus indicated that patients with diabetes mellitus were more likely to contract PJIs than were patients without diabetes mellitus (odds ratio, 1.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.56-2.16) and that no differences existed among early, delayed, and late PJI occurrence in patients with diabetes mellitus. The forest plot for obese and non-obese patients indicated that obese patients were more likely to contract PJIs than were non-obese patients (odds ratio, 1.86; 95% CI, 1.53-2.14) and that among obese patients, early PJI occurrence was higher than was late PJI occurrence. In addition, the mixed model indicated that obese patients were more likely to develop early PJIs than were patients with diabetes mellitus. Conclusions: Patients with diabetes mellitus and obese patients were more likely to develop PJIs than were patients without diabetes mellitus and non-obese patients, and that obese patients were more likely to develop early PJIs than late PJIs. Also, obese patients were more likely to develop early PJIs than patients with diabetes mellitus.

Objectives: Percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) is a percutaneous interventional procedure for osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures (OVCFs). However, hidden blood loss (HBL) during the surgery is easily disregarded. This study aimed to evaluate HBL and its possible risk factors in the patients following PVP for OVCFs., Methods: Patients with OVCFs who underwent PVP surgery between January 2019 and November 2022 at our hospital were retrospectively analyzed. Patients' demographics, laboratory data, and imaging and clinical date were also collected. Preoperative and postoperative hematocrit were recorded, the hidden blood loss was calculated according to Sehat formula, and the risk factors were analyzed by multivariate linear regression analysis., Results: One hundred and fifty-five patients (26 males and 129 females) were retrospectively enrolled in this study. 85.2% of patients had one segment vertebral fracture and the mean surgical time was 30.5 ± 11.0 min. No intraspinal cement leakage occurred. The mean HBL was 204.0 ± 89.6 ml. Multivariate linear regression analysis revealed that HBL was positively associated with number of fracture segments (P = 0.001), degree of vertebral height restoration (P = 0.001), surgical time (P = 0.000), number of puncture (P = 0.002), and cement leakage (P = 0.038)., Conclusions: Multiple vertebral fractures, higher degree of vertebral height restoration, longer surgical time, more number of puncture, and cement leakage are independent risk factors for HBL. Therefore, HBL should not be neglected in the patients with OVCFs undergoing PVP surgery, especially in those with poor preoperative physical condition and presence of anemia., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

We theoretically explore the conditions for generating optical bistability (OB) in a heterodimer comprised of a semiconductor quantum dot (SQD) and a metallic nanoshell (MNS). The MNS is made of a metallic nanosphere as a core and a dielectric material as a shell. For the specific hybrid system considered, the bistable effect appears only if the frequency of the pump field is equal to (or slightly less than) the exciton frequency for a proper shell thickness. Bistability phase diagrams, when plotted, show that the dipole-induced bistable region can be greatly broadened by changing the shell thickness of the MNS in a strong exciton-plasmon coupling regime. In particular, we demonstrate that the multipole polarization not only narrows the bistable zone but also enlarges the corresponding thresholds for a given intermediate scaled pumping intensity. On the other hand, when the SQD couples strongly with the MNS, the multipole polarization can also significantly broaden the bistable region and induce a great suppression of the FWM (four-wave mixing) signal for a fixed shell thickness. These interesting findings offer a fresh understanding of the bistability conditions in an SQD/MNS heterodimer, and may be useful in the fabrication of high-performance and low-threshold optical bistable nanodevices.

Purpose: To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of endovascular treatment for massive haemoptysis caused by pulmonary pseudoaneurysm (PAP)., Methods: The clinical data, imaging data, and endovascular treatment protocol of 23 patients with massive haemoptysis caused by continuous PAP were retrospectively analysed. The success, complications, postoperative recurrence rate, and influence of the treatment on pulmonary artery pressure were also evaluated., Results: Nineteen patients with a bronchial artery-pulmonary artery (BA-PA) and/or nonbronchial systemic artery-pulmonary artery (NBSA-PA) fistula underwent bronchial artery embolization (BAE) and/or nonbronchial systemic artery embolization (NBSAE) + pulmonary artery embolization (PAE). The pulmonary artery (PA) pressures before and after embolization were 52.11 ± 2.12 (35-69 cmH 2 O) and 33.58 ± 1.63 (22-44 cmH 2 O), respectively (P = 0.001). Four patients did not have a BA-PA and/or NBSA-PA fistula. Embolization was performed in two patients with a distal PAP of the pulmonalis lobar arteria. Bare stent-assisted microcoils embolization was performed in the other two patients with a PAP of the main pulmonary lobar arteries. The PA pressures of the four patients before and after treatment were 24.50 ± 1.32 (22-28 cmH 2 O) and 24.75 ± 1.70 (22-29 cmH 2 O), respectively (P = 0.850). The technique had a 100% success rate with no serious complications and a postoperative recurrence rate of 30%., Conclusion: Endovascular treatment is safe and effective for massive haemoptysis caused by PAP. BAE and/or NBSAE can effectively reduce pulmonary hypertension in patients with a BA-PA and/or NBSA-PA fistula., (© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

Objective: Regular check-up with ultrasound in underserved rural and/or remote areas is hampered due to the limited availability of sonologists and ultrasound devices. This study aimed to assess the feasibility and satisfaction of health check-ups with a 5G-based robotic teleultrasound diagnostic system., Methods: In this prospective study, sonologists from two hospitals manipulated the telerobotic ultrasound system to perform teleultrasound check-ups of the liver, gallbladder, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, bladder, prostate (male), uterus and ovaries (female) for the subjects. The feasibility and satisfaction of health check-ups with a 5G-based robotic teleultrasound diagnostic system were evaluated in terms of examination results, examination duration, and satisfaction questionnaire survey., Results: A total of 546 subjects were included with the most frequently diagnosed being abdominal disorders ( n = 343) and male reproductive illnesses ( n = 97), of which fatty liver ( n = 204) and prostatic calcification ( n = 54) were the most. The median teleultrasound examination duration (interquartile range) for men and women was 9 (9-11) min and 9 (7-11) min ( p = 0.236), respectively. All the subjects were satisfied with this new type of telerobotic ultrasound check-ups and 96% reported no fear of the robotic arm during the examination., Conclusion: The 5G-based teleultrasound robotic diagnostic system in health check-ups is feasible and satisfactory, indicating that this teleultrasound robot system may have significant application value in underserved rural and/or remote areas to mitigate disparity in achieving health equity., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Ren, Lei, Lei, Peng, Pan, Ye and Cui.)

Background: The brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens) is one of the major rice insect pests in Asia. Recently, high levels of insecticide resistance have been frequently reported and cytochrome P450 monooxygenase (P450)-mediated metabolic detoxification is a common resistance mechanism in N. lugens. However, there has been no persuasive genetic method to prove the role of P450s in insecticide resistance in N. lugens., Results: Here, CRISPR/Cas9 system was used to disrupt the P450 gene NlCYP6CS1 to elucidate its role in insecticide resistance in field populations of N. lugens. We successfully constructed a homozygous strain (Nl6CS1-KO) with a 5-bp deletion and 1-bp insertion mutation of NlCYP6CS1. Compared with a background resistant strain (Nl-R), the susceptibility of knockout strain Nl6CS1-KO to imidacloprid, nitenpyram, thiamethoxam, dinotefuran, and pymetrozine was increased by 2.3-, 3.4-, 7.0-, 4.2- and 3.9-fold, respectively, but not significantly changed to triflumezopyrim, chlorpyrifos and buprofezin. Life table analysis demonstrated that the Nl6CS1-KO strain resembled the Nl-R strain in terms of egg and nymph developmental duration and adult lifespan, but differed from the Nl-R strain in the survival rate of eggs and nymphs, reproduction, and body weight., Conclusions: Our study demonstrates the effect of functional deletion of NlCYP6CS1 on multiple insecticide resistance in N. lugens. For the first time, we applied CRISPR/Cas9 system to reveal the mechanism of insecticide resistance in N. lugens, which may shed light on similar studies in other hemipteran insects. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry., (© 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.)

Background: Corosolic acid is a pentacyclic triterpene acid with hypoglycemic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer effects. However, its potential targets in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are unknown, hindering clinical utilization., Methods: Differentially expressed proteins of the Bel-7404 cell line were identified with tandem mass tag analysis and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of an HCC TCGA dataset using bioinformatics. Gene functions and pathways were inferred using the DAVID database. Online databases were used to establish P4HA2 expression in HCC (GEPIA2) and its relationship with patient survival (UALCAN and The Human Protein Atlas), the association between P4HA2 expression and immune cell infiltration (TIMER2), and DNA methylation of the P4HA2 gene (MethSurv). Cell proliferation, cell cycle, and cell death were assessed with PI and SYTOX-Green staining, CCK-8, and colony formation assays. Protein expression levels were detected by Western blotting., Results: A total of 44 differentially expressed proteins and 4498 DEGs were identified. Four genes whose proteins were also found in the differential protein profile but with opposing expressions were selected as candidate targets. The candidate gene prolyl 4-hydroxylase subunit alpha 2 (P4HA2) was recognized as the only potential target due to its high expression in public datasets, association with poor patient survival, and relation to immune cell infiltration in HCC tissues. Moreover, the DNA methylation status in 4 CpG islands of the P4HA2 gene correlated with a poor prognosis. Furthermore, corosolic acid treatment inhibited the proliferation of HCC cell lines Bel-7404 and HepG2 in a dose-dependent manner, caused G2/M phase cell cycle arrest, and promoted cell death. In addition, the treatment reduced P4HA2 protein levels., Conclusion: Our results indicate that P4HA2 is a potential target of corosolic acid. Thus, they contribute to understanding molecular changes in HCC after corosolic acid treatment and facilitate finding new treatment regimens., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

On the basis of the inhibition effects of pymetrozine on the reproductive behavior of N. lugens, we established a bioassay method to accurately evaluate the toxicity of pymetrozine in N. lugens and clarified the level of pymetrozine resistance of N. lugens in the field. In this study, pymetrozine's effects on the fecundity of N. lugens were evaluated using the topical application method and rice-seedling-dipping method. Moreover, the resistance of N. lugens to pymetrozine in a pymetrozine-resistant strain (Pym-R) and two field populations (YZ21 and QS21) was determined using the rice-seedling-dipping method and fecundity assay methods. The results showed that treatment of N. lugens third-instar nymphs with LC 15 , LC 50 , and LC 85 doses of pymetrozine resulted in a significantly reduced fecundity of N. lugens . In addition, N. lugens adults treated with pymetrozine, using the rice-seedling-dipping and topical application method, also exhibited a significantly inhibited fecundity. Using the rice-stem-dipping method, pymetrozine resistance levels were shown to be high in Pym-R (194.6-fold), YZ21 (205.9-fold), and QS21 (212.8-fold), with LC 50 values of 522.520 mg/L (Pym-R), 552.962 mg/L (YZ21), and 571.315 (QS21) mg/L. However, when using the rice-seedling-dipping or topical application fecundity assay method, Pym-R (EC 50 : 14.370 mg/L, RR = 12.4-fold; ED 50 : 0.560 ng/adult, RR = 10.8-fold), YZ21 (EC 50 : 12.890 mg/L, RR = 11.2-fold; ED 50 : 0.280 ng/adult; RR = 5.4-fold), and QS21 (EC 50 : 13.700 mg/L, RR = 11.9-fold) exhibited moderate or low levels of resistance to pymetrozine. Our studies show that pymetrozine can significantly inhibit the fecundity of N. lugens . The fecundity assay results showed that N. lugens only developed low to moderate levels of resistance to pymetrozine, indicating that pymetrozine can still achieve effective control on the next generation of N. lugens populations.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a highly metastatic and invasive malignant tumor that originates in the nasopharynx. The DNA-binding protein WD repeat and HMG-box DNA-binding protein 1 (WDHD1) are highly expressed in a variety of tumours, but its expression and mechanism of action in NPC have not been reported to date. To investigate the involvement of WDHD1 in NPC, we first mined databases for the gene expression profile of NPC. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was performed on 338 cases of NPC and 112 non-NPC samples to verify the results. We report that the expression of WDHD1 is significantly elevated in NPC. ChIP-seq was used to show that integrin alpha V (ITGAV) and WDHD1 exhibit a significant binding peak in the promoter region of the ITGAV gene. The expression levels of ITGAV and WDHD1 exhibit a significant positive correlation, and IHC was performed to show that ITGAV is highly expressed in NPC. Expression of ITGAV increased after overexpression of WDHD1, suggesting that ITGAV may be a potential target gene of WDHD1. Pathway analysis showed that both genes were closely related to the cell cycle, and flow cytometry was used to further confirm that decreased expression of WDHD1 significantly increased the number of apoptotic cells. In conclusion, our results suggest that expression of WDHD1 is increased in NPC and is likely to be associated with the NPC cell cycle; thus, we propose that WDHD1 may have the potential as a target gene for primary screening and treatment of NPC., (© 2022 The Authors. FEBS Open Bio published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Federation of European Biochemical Societies.)

Aim: This study was designed to systematically evaluate the effects of growth factor (GF) for therapeutic angiogenesis on ischemic heart disease (IHD) by pooling the results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Methods and Results: PubMed, EMBASE, and CENTRAL databases were searched from inception to October 2022. RCTs, investigating the effects of GF therapy on IHD, were included. The risk bias of included study was assessed according to Cochrane tool. Weighted mean difference (WMD), calculated with fixed effect model or random effect model, was used to evaluate the effects of GF therapy on left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) angina class. Relative risk (RR) was used to evaluate the effects of GF therapy on all-cause mortality, major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) and revascularization. Meta-analysis, meta-regression analysis and publication bias analysis were performed by RevMan 5.3 or Stata 15.1 software. Twenty-nine studies involving 2899 IHD patients (1,577 patients in GF group and 1,322 patients in control group) were included. Compared with the control group, GF therapy did not reduce all-cause mortality (RR: 0.82; 95% CI: 0.54-1.24; p = 0.341), MACE [(RR: 0.83; 95% CI: 0.61-1.12; p = 0.227), revascularization (RR: 1.27, 95% CI: 0.82-1.96, p = 0.290) and CCS angina class (WMD: -0.08, 95% CI: -0.36 to 0.20, p = 0.560). However, GF therapy could increase LVEF during short-term follow-up (<1 year). Conclusion: GF for therapeutic angiogenesis was beneficial for increasing LVEF during short-term follow-up (<1 year), however, the therapy was not efficacious in decreasing all-cause mortality, MACE and revascularization., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The reviewer BZ declared a shared parent affiliation with the authors H-ZL, Y-XP, J-ML, and F-FL to the handling editor at the time of review., (Copyright © 2022 Tan, Long, Li, Yang, Peng, Lu, Liao, Ma, Qu, Fu and Zhang.)

Artificial intelligence (AI), especially deep learning, is gaining extensive attention for its excellent performance in medical image analysis. It can automatically make a quantitative assessment of complex medical images and help doctors to make more accurate diagnoses. In recent years, AI based on ultrasound has been shown to be very helpful in diffuse liver diseases and focal liver lesions, such as analyzing the severity of nonalcoholic fatty liver and the stage of liver fibrosis, identifying benign and malignant liver lesions, predicting the microvascular invasion of hepatocellular carcinoma, curative transarterial chemoembolization effect, and prognoses after thermal ablation. Moreover, AI based on endoscopic ultrasonography has been applied in some gastrointestinal diseases, such as distinguishing gastric mesenchymal tumors, detection of pancreatic cancer and intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms, and predicting the preoperative tumor deposits in rectal cancer. This review focused on the basic technical knowledge about AI and the clinical application of AI in ultrasound of liver and gastroenterology diseases. Lastly, we discuss the challenges and future perspectives of AI., Competing Interests: Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article., (©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: The brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens, is considered the most destructive pest of rice in many Asian countries including China. Use of pymetrozine in insect resistance management (IRM) has been one strategy to control this pest. In this study, we reported the status of pymetrozine resistance in Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) collected from China over the period 2017-2021 and selected a strain of N. lugens resistant to pymetrozine and evaluated the cross-resistance, inheritance and fitness costs of the resistance., Results: Monitoring data (2017-2021) showed that field populations of N. lugens in China developed moderate- to high-level pymetrozine resistance during these 5 years. By continuous selection with pymetrozine in the lab, the pymetrozine selected N. lugens strain (Pym-R 98 ) developed a 225.2-fold resistance compared to a susceptible strain. The Pym-R 98 strain showed high cross-resistance to dinotefuran (66.6-fold) and low cross-resistance to nitenpyram (5.2-fold) and sulfoxaflor (5.8-fold). Inheritance pattern analysis of Pym-R 93 revealed that resistance to pymetrozine was polygenic, autosomal and incompletely dominant. Fitness costs of pymetrozine resistance were present in Pym-R 90 and WA2020 strains with a relative fitness of 0.72 and 0.60, respectively. The developmental duration of Pym-R 90 and WA2020 was significantly longer and hatchability was significantly lower compared to pymetrozine-susceptible strain (Pym-S)., Conclusions: N. lugens has developed high level of resistance to pymetrozine. Pymetrozine-resistance brown planthopper had cross-resistance with some of neonicotinoids such as dinotefuran, nitenpyram and sulfoxaflor. The autosomal, incompletely dominant and polygenic resistance to pymetrozine in N. lugens and the fitness costs associated with this resistance can be exploited in IRM strategies to preserve the lifetime of pymetrozine for control of N. lugens in China. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry., (© 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.)

Gonadal somatic cell-derived factor (Gsdf) is a member of the TGF-β superfamily, which exists mainly in fishes. Homozygous gsdf mutations in Japanese medaka and zebrafish resulted in infertile females, and the reasons for their infertility remain unknown. This study presents functional studies of Gsdf in ovary development using CRISPR/Cas9 in Nile tilapia ( Oreochromis niloticus ). The XX wild type (WT) female fish regularly reproduced from 12 months after hatching (mah), while the XX gsdf -/- female fish never reproduced and were infertile. Histological observation showed that at 24 mah, number of phase IV oocyte in the XX gsdf -/- female fish was significantly lower than that of the WT fish, although their gonadosomatic index (GSI) was similar. However, the GSI of the XX gsdf -/- female at 6 mah was higher than that of the WT. The mutated ovaries were hyperplastic with more phase I oocytes. Transcriptome analysis identified 344 and 51 up- and down-regulated genes in mutants compared with the WT ovaries at 6 mah. Some TGF-β signaling genes that are critical for ovary development in fish were differentially expressed. Genes such as amh and amhr2 were up-regulated, while inhbb and acvr2a were down-regulated in mutant ovaries. The cyp19a1a , the key gene for estrogen synthesis, was not differentially expressed. Moreover, the serum 17β-estradiol (E 2 ) concentrations between XX gsdf -/- and WT were similar at 6 and 24 mah. Results from real-time PCR and immunofluorescence experiments were similar and validated the transcriptome data. Furthermore, Yeast-two-hybrid assays showed that Gsdf interacts with TGF-β type II receptors (Amhr2 and Bmpr2a). Altogether, these results suggest that Gsdf functions together with TGF-β signaling pathway to control ovary development and fertility. This study contributes to knowledge on the function of Gsdf in fish oogenesis., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Jiang, Peng, Liu, Mustapha, Huang, Shi, Li, Li and Wang.)

Background: Currently, high expression of WD repeat and HMG-box DNA binding protein 1 (WDHD1) has been found in a variety of tumors; but there is no research has been conducted concerning the expression of WDHD1 in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC). Our purpose is to investigate the expression and the latent mechanism of WDHD1 in LSCC., Methods: Firstly, 9 data sets from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and ArrayExpress were statistically analyzed to explore the expression of WDHD1 in LSCC; immunohistochemistry was performed in 79 LSCC tissues and 44 non-cancer tissues to further verify the result. In addition, the target gene of WDHD1 was predicted and immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of the target gene. The potential mechanism of WDHD1 in LSCC was investigated by Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses and protein-protein interaction network (PPI)., Results: The WDHD1 mRNA was expressed at higher levels in the LSCC tissue than in the normal tissue (SMD=1.90, 95% CI=1.50-2.30); and the results of immunohistochemistry were consistent with the conclusion. Using chip-seq analysis, we found that S-phase kinase-associated protein 2 (Skp2) had a significant binding peak with WDHD1, and the expression of these two genes was significantly positively correlated. Immunohistochemistry showed that Skp2 was also highly expressed in LSCC. In addition, GO and KEGG analysis revealed the WDHD1 positively correlated genes was closely related to cell cycle, and PPI analysis identified 10 hub genes: COL7A1, COL4A2, COL4A1, COL4A6, COL11A1, COL5A2, COL1A1, COL13A1, COL8A1 and COL10A1, which may be critical to the progression of LSCC., Conclusions: WDHD1 was overexpressed in LSCC tissues. Meanwhile, WDHD1 and its target gene Skp2 for transcriptional regulation may play a role in the progression of LSCC by regulating the cell cycle., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH.. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To explore the main causes of hypertrophied ligamentum flavum (HLF) and the possibility of using bipedal standing mouse model to simulate the pathological changes in human HLF., Methods: Thirty-two 8-week-old C57BL/6 male mice were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 16) and control group (n = 16). In the experimental group, mice were induced to adopt a bipedal standing posture by their hydrophobia. The experimental mice were maintained bipedal standing for 8 h a day with an interval of 2 h to consume food and water. The control mice were placed in a similar environment without bipedal standing. Eight 18-month-old C57BL/6 male mice were compared to evaluate the LF degeneration due to aging factor. Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction and finite element models were carried out to analyze the stress and strain distribution of the mouse LF in sprawling and bipedal standing postures. Hematoxylin and Eosin (HE), Verhoeff-Van Gieson (VVG), and immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining were used to evaluate the LF degeneration of mice and humans. RT-qPCR and immunofluorescence analysis were used to evaluate the expressions of fibrosis-related factors and inflammatory cytokines of COL1A1, COL3A1, α-SMA, MMP2, IL-1β, and COX-2., Results: The von Mises stress (8.85 × 10 -2 MPa) and maximum principal strain (6.64 × 10 -1 ) in LF were increased 4944 and 7703 times, respectively, in bipedal standing mice. HE staining showed that the mouse LF area was greater in the bipedal standing 10-week-old group ([10.01 ± 2.93] × 10 4 μm 2 ) than that in the control group ([3.76 ± 1.87] × 10 4 μm 2 ) and 18-month-old aged group ([6.09 ± 2.70] × 10 4 μm 2 ). VVG staining showed that the HLF of mice (3.23 ± 0.58) and humans (2.23 ± 0.31) had a similar loss of elastic fibers and an increase in collagen fibers. The cell density was higher during the process of HLF in mice (39.63 ± 4.81) and humans (23.25 ± 2.05). IHC staining showed that the number of α-SMA positive cells were significantly increased in HLF of mice (1.63 ± 0.74) and humans (3.50 ± 1.85). The expressions of inflammatory cytokines and fibrosis-related factors of COL1A1, COL3A1, α-SMA, MMP2, IL-1β, and COX-2 were consistently higher in bipedal standing group than the control group., Conclusion: Our study suggests that 3D finite element models can help analyze the abnormal stress and strain distributions of LF in modeling mice. Mechanical stress is the main cause of hypertrophied ligamentum flavum compared to aging. The bipedal standing mice model can reflect the pathological characteristics of human HLF. The bipedal standing mice model can provide a standardized condition to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of mechanical stress-induced HLF in vivo., (© 2021 The Authors. Orthopaedic Surgery published by Chinese Orthopaedic Association and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Schisanhenol (SAL), a biphenyl cyclooctene-type lignin compound which can be extracted and isolated from many plants of the Schisandra family, exhibits a variety of biological activities including anti chronic cough, night sweating, thirst, diabetes, and obesity. However, its effects on the female reproductive system are unclear. Previous studies showed that SAL had potential antioxidant activity in heart, liver, and brain. Therefore, we hypothesized that SAL could improve porcine early development by reducing oxidative stress. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of SAL on preimplantation porcine embryos and the potential mechanisms. In this study, we analyzed the effects of SAL on embryo quality, reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation, mitochondrial function, cell proliferation and apoptosis, and the activation of MAPK pathway. The results showed that 10 μM SAL significantly increased the blastocyst formation rate, proliferation ability, and mitochondrial activity while reducing ROS accumulation and apoptosis level. During this process, the phosphorylation levels of ERK1/2, JNK1/2/3, and p38 were decreased. In summary, 10 μM SAL improves porcine preimplantation embryo development by reducing ROS accumulation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Temporal lobe epilepsy is a group of neurological diseases caused by the repeated abnormal discharge of brain neurons. Patients with this disease are often accompanied with cognitive impairment. However, the pathogenesis of the cognitive impairment remains unclear. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging is a kind of magnetic resonance imaging method based on blood oxygen level dependence. This can reflect the spontaneous brain functional activity of a human brain in the resting state. In recent years, a number of researchers have used resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the changes in resting spontaneous brain function in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy with cognitive impairment (TLE-CI). However, due to the differences in sample and methodology, the results of these studies were inconsistent. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the characteristics of the resting spontaneous brain function in patients with TLE-CI through a meta-analysis., Methods: A search was conducted on electronic databases, including PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WANGFANG DATA and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and Baidu scholar Database, from the establishment of the database to April 20, 2021. Randomized controlled trials that employed amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations/regional homogeneity to investigate the changes in resting spontaneous brain function in patients with TLE-CI were selected. Anisotropic effect size version of signed differential mapping was applied to perform the data analysis., Results: The study summarized the changes in spontaneous brain function in patients with TLE-CI., Conclusion: The conclusion for the functional cerebral alterations based on the latest studies will be provided., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

The objective of this study was to understand the influence of rotating shifts and fixed night shifts on the sleep quality of nurses using a systematic literature review and meta-analysis and to determine whether the sleep quality of nurses working rotating shifts or fixed night shifts differs from that of nurses working fixed day shifts. We conducted a meta-analysis on literature that had used the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) to gauge sleep quality and had been published between 2000 and 2020 in the Cochrane Library, CINAHL, MEDLINE, and PubMed databases. This study was conducted in accordance with PRISMA, and the quality of the literature was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklist for Analytical Cross Sectional Studies. CMA 3.0 was employed for data analysis, and meta-regression analysis was conducted to examine the differences between the PSQI scores of nurses working fixed day shifts and those working rotating shifts or fixed night shifts. Following assessment, a total of 29 papers (34 items of data) were analyzed. The papers included a total of 3,935 nurses who worked fixed day shifts, 3,777 nurses who worked rotating shifts, and 1,559 nurses who worked fixed night shifts. Our subgroup analysis indicated that the sleep quality of nurses working rotating shifts was poorer than the sleep quality of nurses working fixed day shifts; the standardized mean difference (SMD) was 0.38 (95% CI: 0.24-0.52, p < .001), and the meta-regression analysis found that the difference in sleep quality between nurses over 40 years old working rotating shifts and those working fixed day shifts was significantly smaller than the difference in sleep quality between nurses 40 years old or younger working rotating shifts and those working fixed day shifts (β = -0.368, p = .011). The sleep quality of nurses working fixed night shifts was also poorer than the sleep quality of nurses working fixed day shifts; the SMD was 0.58 (95% CI: 0.38-0.78, p < .001), and the meta-regression analysis revealed that the difference in sleep quality between nurses over 40 years old working fixed night shifts and those working fixed day shifts was not significantly different from the difference in sleep quality between nurses 40 years old or younger working fixed night shifts and those working fixed day shifts (β = -0.118, p = .608). This meta-analysis found that both nurses working rotating shifts and those working fixed night shifts had poorer sleep quality than those working fixed day shifts and that age influenced the difference in sleep quality only between nurses working rotating shifts and those working fixed day shifts; the difference in sleep quality between nurses 40 years old or younger working rotating shifts and those working fixed day shifts was greater than the difference in sleep quality between nurses over 40 years old working rotating shifts and those working fixed day shifts.

Necroptosis is an alternative form of programmed cell death that generally occurs under apoptosis-deficient conditions. Our previous work showed that connexin32 (Cx32) promotes the malignant progress of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by enhancing the ability of resisting apoptosis in vivo and in vitro. Whether triggering necroptosis is a promising strategy to eliminate the apoptosis-resistant HCC cells with high Cx32 expression remains unknown. In this study, we found that Cx32 expression was positively correlated with the expression of necroptosis protein biomarkers in human HCC specimens, cell lines, and a xenograft model. Treatment with shikonin, a well-used necroptosis inducer, markedly caused necroptosis in HCC cells. Interestingly, overexpressed Cx32 exacerbated shikonin-induced necroptosis, but downregulation of Cx32 alleviated necroptosis in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, Cx32 was found to bind to Src and promote Src-mediated caspase 8 phosphorylation and inactivation, which ultimately reduced the activated caspase 8-mediated proteolysis of receptor-interacting serine-threonine protein kinase 1/3, the key molecule for necroptosis activation. In conclusion, we showed that Cx32 contributed to the activation of necroptosis in HCC cells through binding to Src and then mediating the inactivation of caspase 8. The present study suggested that necroptosis inducers could be more favorable than apoptosis inducers to eliminate HCC cells with high expression of Cx32., (© 2021 The Authors. Cancer Science published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Japanese Cancer Association.)

The maintenance of constant karyoplasmic ratios suggests that nuclear size has physiological significance. Nuclear size anomalies have been linked to malignant transformation, although the mechanism remains unclear. By expressing dominant-negative TER94 mutants in Drosophila photoreceptors, here we show disruption of VCP (valosin-containing protein, human TER94 ortholog), a ubiquitin-dependent segregase, causes progressive nuclear size increase. Loss of VCP function leads to accumulations of MDC1 (mediator of DNA damage checkpoint protein 1), connecting DNA damage or associated responses to enlarged nuclei. TER94 can interact with MDC1 and decreases MDC1 levels, suggesting that MDC1 is a VCP substrate. Our evidence indicates that MDC1 accumulation stabilizes p53A, leading to TER94 K2A -associated nuclear size increase. Together with a previous report that p53A disrupts autophagic flux, we propose that the stabilization of p53A in TER94 K2A -expressing cells likely hinders the removal of nuclear content, resulting in aberrant nuclear size increase., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

This study comprised a review and compilation of literature to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of rotating shift work on gastrointestinal health. PubMed, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library were searched for studies published between January 1, 1985, and June 30, 2020. Fixed day shifts were defined as work shifts that began between 7:00 and 9:00 in the morning. Shifts beginning at any other time were classified as rotating shifts. A meta-analysis was performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Software (CMA) version 3. In the end, 16 studies were included in the meta-analysis. An odds ratio (OR) of 1.56 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.24-1.95), indicating that gastrointestinal problems are more common in rotating shift workers than in fixed day shift workers. Four gastrointestinal problems, namely, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, indigestion, and peptic ulcers, were then analyzed separately. Significant differences between rotating shift workers and fixed day shift workers were found only for indigestion and peptic ulcers. For indigestion, the OR was 1.72 (95% CI: 1.28-2.30). For peptic ulcers, the OR was 1.66 (95% CI: 1.19-2.30). Thus, research indicates that rotating shift work may increase the risk of gastrointestinal problems, particularly indigestion and peptic ulcers.

Objectives: Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are common occupational injuries for nurses. Furthermore, rotating and irregular shift work may exacerbate muscle tension and pain in nurses. The objective of this study was to examine the differences between fixed day shift (FDS) nurses and rotating and irregular shift (RS + IS) nurses in WMSDs using a systematic literature review and meta-analysis., Methods: Databases including PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, EBSCOhost, and Google Scholar were searched for relevant studies published between 2010 and 2020 using the target keywords., Results: This study obtained data on a total of 18 199 nurses, among which 12 786 comprised the RS + IS group and 5413 constituted the FDS group. The result of the heterogeneity test was Q = 79.27 (P < .001) and I squared = 57.11%, indicating that heterogeneity existed among the studies. Subgroup analyses were also conducted with four groups: neck pain (n = 1818), shoulder and upper limb pain (n = 2525), back pain (n = 11 962), and hip and lower limb pain (n = 1894). Significant differences were found between the RS + IS group and the FDS group with regard to back pain, with the forest plot presenting an odds ratio equaling 1.40 (95% CI: 1.19-1.64, P < .001)., Conclusions: This meta-analysis indicated that RS + IS nurses are more likely to experience back pain associated with WMSD than are FDS nurses. The results can serve as a reference to the clinical management for work improvement and thereby reduce or prevent the adverse effects of rotating and irregular shift work on back pain experienced by nurses., (© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Occupational Health published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of The Japan Society for Occupational Health.)

Objectives: This study was to conduct a meta-analysis of studies that used actigraphs to compare the influence of day and night shifts on the sleep quality of workers as well as examine the moderating effect of age., Methods: Databases including PubMed, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, and EBSCOhost were searched for relevant studies published in English between January 1st, 2000 and April 30st, 2021. Our main targets were studies that used actigraphs to assess the sleep quality of night shift workers. This meta-analysis included 12 papers and was performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) Version 3.0. Effect sizes were displayed in a forest plot using standardized mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI)., Results: Among the sleep quality indices of the day and night shift workers, no significant difference existed in terms of sleep efficiency (SE) (SMD = 0.27, 95% CI: -0.03-0.57), whereas night shift workers presented longer sleep-onset latency (SOL) (SMD = 0.62, 95% CI: 0.15-1.08), greater wake after sleep onset (WASO) (SMD = 0.41, 95% CI: 0.12-0.70), and longer total sleep time (TST) (SMD = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.32-1.39) than did day shift workers. The differences between the day and night shift workers in SOL, WASO, and TST did not vary with age., Conclusions: Among the sleep quality indices, night shift workers presented longer SOL and greater WASO than did day shift workers. However, night shift workers could regulate their rest time and had adequate TST; thus, their SE was not different from that of day shift workers., (© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Occupational Health published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of The Japan Society for Occupational Health.)

Carnosic acid (CA), a natural catechol rosin diterpene, is used as an additive in animal feeds and human foods. However, the effects of CA on mammalian reproductive processes, especially early embryonic development, are unclear. In this study, we added CA to parthenogenetically activated porcine embryos in an in vitro culture medium to explore the influence of CA on apoptosis, proliferation, blastocyst formation, reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, glutathione (GSH) levels, mitochondrial membrane potential, and embryonic development-related gene expression. The results showed that supplementation with 10 μM CA during in vitro culture significantly improved the cleavage rates, blastocyst formation rates, hatching rates, and total numbers of cells of parthenogenetically activated porcine embryos compared with no supplementation. More importantly, supplementation with CA also improved GSH levels and mitochondrial membrane potential, reduced natural ROS levels in blastomeres, upregulated Nanog, Sox2, Gata4, Cox2, Itga5, and Rictor expression, and downregulated Birc5 and Caspase3 expression. These results suggest that CA can improve early porcine embryonic development by regulating oxidative stress. This study elucidates the effects of CA on early embryonic development and their potential mechanisms, and provides new applications for improving the quality of in vitro-developed embryos.

Prothioconazole is a fungicide that has a wide number of applications in agriculture, and it can ensure the safety of crops, users, and the environment. Prothioconazole, as a suppressor of copper dissolution in 0.5 M H 2 SO 4 solution, has been evaluated using electrochemical experiments, weight loss tests, quantum chemical calculations, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The electrochemical test results showed that prothioconazole was an excellent inhibitor, and the anticorrosion ability increased with the inhibitor concentration. The interaction of prothioconazole with copper is a spontaneous adsorption process accompanied by typical chemisorption. The number of water molecules ( X ) displaced by one prothioconazole molecule was obtained using diverse substitutional adsorption models based on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) data. In addition, the Fukui functions indicate that the triazole and benzene rings and the -C[double bond, length as m-dash]S atoms were the main active sites for the adsorption process., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Background: During the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), consistent and considerable differences in disease severity and mortality rate of patients treated in Hubei province compared to those in other parts of China have been observed. We sought to compare the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients being treated inside and outside Hubei province, and explore the factors underlying these differences., Methods: Collaborating with the National Health Commission, we established a retrospective cohort to study hospitalised COVID-19 cases in China. Clinical characteristics, the rate of severe events and deaths, and the time to critical illness (invasive ventilation or intensive care unit admission or death) were compared between patients within and outside Hubei. The impact of Wuhan-related exposure (a presumed key factor that drove the severe situation in Hubei, as Wuhan is the epicentre as well the administrative centre of Hubei province) and the duration between symptom onset and admission on prognosis were also determined., Results: At the data cut-off (31 January 2020), 1590 cases from 575 hospitals in 31 provincial administrative regions were collected (core cohort). The overall rate of severe cases and mortality was 16.0% and 3.2%, respectively. Patients in Hubei (predominantly with Wuhan-related exposure, 597 (92.3%) out of 647) were older (mean age 49.7 versus 44.9 years), had more cases with comorbidity (32.9% versus 19.7%), higher symptomatic burden, abnormal radiologic manifestations and, especially, a longer waiting time between symptom onset and admission (5.7 versus 4.5 days) compared with patients outside Hubei. Patients in Hubei (severe event rate 23.0% versus 11.1%, death rate 7.3% versus 0.3%, HR (95% CI) for critical illness 1.59 (1.05-2.41)) have a poorer prognosis compared with patients outside Hubei after adjusting for age and comorbidity. However, among patients outside Hubei, the duration from symptom onset to hospitalisation (mean 4.4 versus 4.7 days) and prognosis (HR (95%) 0.84 (0.40-1.80)) were similar between patients with or without Wuhan-related exposure. In the overall population, the waiting time, but neither treated in Hubei nor Wuhan-related exposure, remained an independent prognostic factor (HR (95%) 1.05 (1.01-1.08))., Conclusion: There were more severe cases and poorer outcomes for COVID-19 patients treated in Hubei, which might be attributed to the prolonged duration of symptom onset to hospitalisation in the epicentre. Future studies to determine the reason for delaying hospitalisation are warranted., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest: Wen-hua Liang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Wei-jie Guan has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Cai-chen Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yi-min Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Heng-rui Liang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yi Zhao has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Xiao-qing Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ling Sang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ru-chong Chen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Chun-li Tang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Tao Wang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Wei Wang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Qi-hua He has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zi-sheng Chen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Sook-San Wong has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Mark Zanin has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jun Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Xin Xu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jun Huang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jian-fu Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Li-min Ou has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Bo Cheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shan Xiong has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zhan-hong Xie has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zheng-yi Ni has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yu Hu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Lei Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Hong Shan has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Chun-liang Lei has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yi-xiang Peng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Li Wei has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yong Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ya-hua Hu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Peng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jian-ming Wang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ji-yang Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zhong Chen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Gang Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zhi-jian Zheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shao-qin Qiu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jie Luo has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Chang-jiang Ye has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shao-yong Zhu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Lin-ling Cheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Feng Ye has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shi-yue Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jin-ping Zheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Nuo-fu Zhang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Nan-shan Zhong has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jian-xing He has nothing to disclose., (Copyright ©ERS 2020.)

Objective: To quantitatively describe the stress of the ligamentum flavum (LF) using the finite element method and to compare the stress at different parts of the healthy LF., Methods: Based on the high resolution computed tomography imaging data of a healthy 22-year-old man, three-dimensional nonlinear L 4-5 lumbar finite element model (FEM) representing intact condition was developed. The LF, as the object of the present research, was incorporated into the spinal model in the form of solid three-dimensional structure. The model's validity is verified by comparing its biomechanical indices, such as range of motion and axial compression pressure displacement, with published results under specific loading conditions. To authenticate the accuracy of the solid LF, the lamina attachments, the central cross-section, and other anatomy indicators were compared with figures in the published literature. After the average and maximum von Mises stress on the surface of LF under various working conditions were measured using ANSYS and AutoCAD software, the surface stress difference in the LF between the ventral and dorsal sides as well as the lateral and lamina parts were determined., Results: The FEM predicted a similar tendency for biomechanical indices as shown in previous studies. The lamina attachments, the central cross-section, and the height as well as the width of the LF in the healthy FEM were in accordance with published results. In the healthy model, the average and maximum von Mises stress in the shallow layer of the LF were, respectively, 1.40, 2.28, 1.76, 1.48, 1.38 and 1.79, 2.41, 1.46, 1.42, 1.71 times that in the deep layer under a compressive preload of 500 N incorporated with flexion, extension, and lateral and rotational moments (10 Nm). The most conspicuous difference in surface stress was observed with the flexion motion, with a nearly 241% difference in the maximum stress and a 228% difference in the average stress compared to those in other states. As far as the whole dorsal side of the LF was concerned, the maximum surface stress was almost all concentrated in the dorsal neighboring facet joint portion. In addition, the maximum and average stress were, respectively, 77%, 72%, 15%, 11%, 71% and 153%, 39%, 54%, 200%, 212% higher in the lateral part than in the lamina part., Conclusion: Based on the predisposition of LF hypertrophy in the human spine and the stress distribution of this study, the positive correlation between LF hypertrophy and its stress was confirmed., (© 2020 The Authors. Orthopaedic Surgery published by Chinese Orthopaedic Association and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is evolving rapidly worldwide., Objective: To evaluate the risk of serious adverse outcomes in patients with COVID-19 by stratifying the comorbidity status., Methods: We analysed data from 1590 laboratory confirmed hospitalised patients from 575 hospitals in 31 provinces/autonomous regions/provincial municipalities across mainland China between 11 December 2019 and 31 January 2020. We analysed the composite end-points, which consisted of admission to an intensive care unit, invasive ventilation or death. The risk of reaching the composite end-points was compared according to the presence and number of comorbidities., Results: The mean age was 48.9 years and 686 (42.7%) patients were female. Severe cases accounted for 16.0% of the study population. 131 (8.2%) patients reached the composite end-points. 399 (25.1%) reported having at least one comorbidity. The most prevalent comorbidity was hypertension (16.9%), followed by diabetes (8.2%). 130 (8.2%) patients reported having two or more comorbidities. After adjusting for age and smoking status, COPD (HR (95% CI) 2.681 (1.424-5.048)), diabetes (1.59 (1.03-2.45)), hypertension (1.58 (1.07-2.32)) and malignancy (3.50 (1.60-7.64)) were risk factors of reaching the composite end-points. The hazard ratio (95% CI) was 1.79 (1.16-2.77) among patients with at least one comorbidity and 2.59 (1.61-4.17) among patients with two or more comorbidities., Conclusion: Among laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19, patients with any comorbidity yielded poorer clinical outcomes than those without. A greater number of comorbidities also correlated with poorer clinical outcomes., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest: Wei-jie Guan has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Wen-hua Liang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yi Zhao has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Heng-rui Liang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zi-sheng Chen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yi-min Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Xiao-qing Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ru-chong Chen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Chun-li Tang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Tao Wang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Chun-quan Ou has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ping-yan Chen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ling Sang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Wei Wang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jian-fu Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Cai-chen Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Li-min Ou has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Bo Cheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shan Xiong has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zheng-yi Ni has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jie Xiang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yu Hu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Lei Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Hong Shan has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Chun-liang Lei has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yi-xiang Peng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Li Wei has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Yong Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ya-hua Hu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Peng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jian-ming Wang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Ji-yang Liu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zhong Chen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Gang Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Zhi-jian Zheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shao-qin Qiu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jie Luo has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Chang-jiang Ye has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shao-yong Zhu has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Lin-ling Cheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Feng Ye has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Shi-yue Li has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Jin-ping Zheng has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Nuo-fu Zhang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Nan-shan Zhong reports grants from the National Health Commission and Dept of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: Jian-xing He has nothing to disclose., (Copyright ©ERS 2020.)

Background: Since December 2019, when coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) emerged in Wuhan city and rapidly spread throughout China, data have been needed on the clinical characteristics of the affected patients., Methods: We extracted data regarding 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 from 552 hospitals in 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in mainland China through January 29, 2020. The primary composite end point was admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), the use of mechanical ventilation, or death., Results: The median age of the patients was 47 years; 41.9% of the patients were female. The primary composite end point occurred in 67 patients (6.1%), including 5.0% who were admitted to the ICU, 2.3% who underwent invasive mechanical ventilation, and 1.4% who died. Only 1.9% of the patients had a history of direct contact with wildlife. Among nonresidents of Wuhan, 72.3% had contact with residents of Wuhan, including 31.3% who had visited the city. The most common symptoms were fever (43.8% on admission and 88.7% during hospitalization) and cough (67.8%). Diarrhea was uncommon (3.8%). The median incubation period was 4 days (interquartile range, 2 to 7). On admission, ground-glass opacity was the most common radiologic finding on chest computed tomography (CT) (56.4%). No radiographic or CT abnormality was found in 157 of 877 patients (17.9%) with nonsevere disease and in 5 of 173 patients (2.9%) with severe disease. Lymphocytopenia was present in 83.2% of the patients on admission., Conclusions: During the first 2 months of the current outbreak, Covid-19 spread rapidly throughout China and caused varying degrees of illness. Patients often presented without fever, and many did not have abnormal radiologic findings. (Funded by the National Health Commission of China and others.)., (Copyright © 2020 Massachusetts Medical Society.)

Imperatorin (IMP), a furanocoumarin derivative with many biological properties and pharmacological activities, is widely used as an antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anticancer, cardiovascular and neuroprotective agent. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of IMP on early embryo development in pigs as well as the potential mechanisms. Our results showed that IMP can enhance the developmental competence of porcine early embryos. Supplementation of in vitro culture medium with 40 μM IMP significantly increased the blastocyst rate and total cell number. At the same time, apoptosis of blastocysts was also significantly decreased in the supplemented group compared with the control group, in accordance with the subsequent results of FAS and CASP3 gene expression analysis. Furthermore, IMP attenuated intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, increased fluorescein diacetate (FDA) and glutathione (GSH) levels. Importantly, IMP not only improved the activity of mitochondria but also inhibited the occurrence of autophagy. In addition, pluripotency-related genes (OCT4, NANOG, and SOX2) and a growth and metabolism regulatory gene (mTOR) were upregulated after IMP supplementation on Day 7. These results demonstrate that IMP exerts a beneficial effect on preimplantation embryo development by reducing oxidative stress and autophagy., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In this study, the Beta regression models of sapwood, heartwood, and bark density of Larix olgensis were constructed. A total of 35 trees were destructively sampled from plantations in three different sites, Linkou Forestry Bureau of Heilongjiang Province, Dongjingcheng Forestry Bureau, and Maoershan Experimental Forest Farm of Northeast Forestry University. AIC, R 2 , BIAS, RMSE and LRT were used as the goodness-of-fit statistics to compare and select the most optimal models for sapwood, heartwood, and bark density. The jackknife resampling technique was used to verify and evaluate the developed models. The results showed that the independent variables of the optimal sapwood, heartwood, and bark density model were not identical. Sapwood density had a good relationship with tree age, tree height, relative height, and the square of relative height. The independent variables of the optimal heartwood density model were annual growth, relative height, and the square of relative height. The independent variables of the optimal bark density model were tree age, annual growth, relative height, and the square of relative height. The analysis of the optimal model showed that from the base to the tip of the trunk, sapwood density decreased gradually, heartwood density initially decreased and then increased regularly, bark density initially increased and then decreased gradually. The established Beta regression models could predict sapwood, heartwood, and bark density of L. olgensis at any position in the research area and be an essential basis for the study of trunk average density and biomass.

Objective: To observe the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) on diaphragmatic function based on conventional treatment in patients with post - stroke tracheotomy tube., Methods: A total of 70 patients were randomized into an observation group (35 cases) and a control group (34 cases, 1 case dropped off). Internal medical basic treatment and breathing training were given in both groups. Besides, Xingnao Kaiqiao acupuncture was applied at Neiguan (PC 6), Shuigou (GV 26), Sanyinjiao (SP 6), Jiquan (HT 1), Chize (LU 5) and Weizhong (BL 40) in the control group, the needles were sustained for 30 min. On the basis of treatment in the control group, EA was applied at Tianding (LI 17), Fengchi (GB 20) and Jiaji (EX - B 2, C 3 -C 5 ) in the observation group, with continuous wave, 10-20 Hz, 30 min each time. The treatment was given once a day, 6 times a week for 4 weeks in both groups. Before and after treatment, the diaphragmatic motility was measured by SonoSite ultrasound system (M-Turbo) in the two groups., Results: Compared before treatment, the diaphragmatic motility after treatment was increased in both groups ( P <0.01), and the improvement in the observation group was superior to the control group ( P <0.01)., Conclusion: Electroacupuncture can promote the recovery of diaphragmatic function in patients with post-stroke tracheotomy tube.