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Eye deformity, a noteworthy embryopathy, is intricately linked with maternal diabetes, frequently resulting in embryonic malformation or even death. In this investigation, a hyperglycemic chick embryo model was established to delve into the protective potential of tamarind shell extract (TSE) on eye development. Chick embryos were administered with TSE (at dosages of 1, 2, and 4 µg/egg) through air sac injection on embryo development day 0 (EDD0) and later exposed to D-glucose (0.4 mmol/egg) on EDD1. To validate our findings, we replicated hyperglycemic environment using D-glucose in ARPE-19 cell model. Our research unveiled that TSE proficiently counters O-GlcNAcylation of proteins in the presence of D-glucose, thereby reinstating levels of key proteins involved in eye development, including Pax6, Daam1, mTOR, and Cdc42. Furthermore, TSE was pinpointed to curtail the D-glucose concentration within the embryo eye, considerably decreasing the accumulation of reactive oxygen species and malondialdehyde accumulation in both the ARPE-19 cells and chick embryos. Beyond its fundamental role in boosting the cellular antioxidative activity, the improved expression of apoptosis-related proteins like Caspase-3, BAX, BCL-2 and other like PI3K and AKT were observed. This suggests a probable activation of the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway on ARPE-19 cells by TSE, thereby downregulating apoptotic proteins in ARPE-19 cells during oxidative stress. TSE may become a potent natural countermeasure against D-glucose-induced eye malformation.

The long-term survival rate of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is poor. One of the reasons for the poor rate of survival is the high rate of recurrence caused by intrahepatic metastas is that adversely affects long-term outcome. Many studies have indicated that microRNAs play an important role in HCC, but there has been no research of clonal origins on recurrent HCC (RHCC) by analzing microRNAs. In the present study, we found that miR-483-5p was significantly upregulated in RHCC tissues of short-term recurrence (≤ 2 years) by miRNA microarray screening, and can significantly promote migration and invasion of HCC cells in vitro and increase intrahepatic metastasis in nude mice in vivo. Furthermore, we demonstrated that activated leukocyte cell adhesion molecule (ALCAM), which significantly suppressed migration and invasion of HCC cells, was a direct target of miR-483-5p, and the re-introduction of ALCAM expression could antagonize the promoting effects of miR-483-5p on the capacity of HCC cells for migration and invasion. In addition, expression level of ALCAM was negatively correlated with microvascular invasion and tumor size recognized as prognostic factors. The cases which were negative for ALCAM expression had shorter time to recurrence than positive cases, and univariate and multivariate survival analyses showed that ALCAM was an independent risk factor of HCC recurrence. qRT-PCR and Western blotting showed that the expression of EMT related genes (MMP-2, MMP-9, E-caherin and vimentin) significantly changed as a result of interfering or overexpression of ALCAM, and ALCAM was significantly associated with EMT in HCC. These results suggest that the miR-483-5p/ALCAM axis is an important regulator in invasion and metastasis and biomarker for recurrence risk assessment of HCC.

Abstract Objective Brachytherapy has been indicated as an alternative option for treating cystic craniopharyngiomas (CPs). The potential benefits of brachytherapy for CPs have not yet been clarified. The purpose of this work was to conduct a meta-analysis to analyze the long-term efficacy and adverse reactions profile of brachytherapy for CPs. Materials and methods The relevant databases were searched to collect the clinical trials on brachytherapy in patients with CPs. Included studies were limited to publications in full manuscript form with at least 5-year median follow-up, and adequate reporting of treatment outcomes and adverse reactions data. Stata 12.0 was used for data analysis. Results According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 6 clinical trials involving 266 patients with CPs were included in this meta-analysis. The minimum average follow-up was 5 years. The results of the meta-analysis showed that 1-year, 2–3 years and 5 years progression free survival rates (PFS) are 75% (95%CI: 66-84%), 62% (95%CI: 52-72%) and 57% (95%CI: 22-92%), respectively. At the last follow-up, less than 16% of patients with visual outcomes worser than baseline in all included studies. While, for endocrine outcomes, less than 32% of patients worser than baseline level. Conclusion In general, based on the above results, brachytherapy should be considered as a good choice for the treatment of CP.

Abstract Voice activity detection remains a significant challenge in the presence of transients since transients are more dominant than speech, though it has achieved satisfactory performance in quasi-stationary noisy environments. This paper studies the differences between speech and transients in nonlinear dynamic characteristics and proposes a new method for accurately detecting speech and transients. Limited by algorithm complexity, previous research has proposed few detectors to model speech and transients based on contextual information and thus failing to detect transient frames accurately. To address this challenge, our study proposes to map features of audio signals to a time series complex network, a kind of graph data, analyzed by the Laplacian and adjacency matrix of graphs, then classified by the support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The proposed algorithm can analyze a more extended speech period, allowing the full utilization of contextual information of preceding and following frames. The experimental results show that the performance of this method has obvious superiority over other existing algorithms.

Background: As an acute phase protein, α1-antitrypsin (AAT) has been extensively studied in acute coronary syndrome, but it is unclear whether a relationship exists between AAT and stable angina pectoris (SAP). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the association between AAT plasma levels and SAP. Methods: Overall, 103 SAP patients diagnosed by coronary angiography and clinical manifestations and 118 control subjects matched for age and gender were enrolled in this case-control study. Plasma levels of AAT, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), lipid profiles and other clinical parameters were assayed for all participants. The severity of coronary lesions was evaluated based on the Gensini score (GS) assessed by coronary angiography. Results: Positively correlated with the GS (r = 0.564, P < 0.001), the plasma AAT level in the SAP group was significantly higher than that in the control group (142.08 ± 19.61 mg/dl vs. 125.50 ± 19.67 mg/dl, P < 0.001). The plasma AAT level was an independent predictor for both SAP (odds ratio [OR] = 1.037, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.020-1.054, P < 0.001) and a high GS (OR = 1.087, 95% CI: 1.051-1.124, P < 0.001) in a multivariate logistic regression model. In the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, plasma AAT level was found to have a larger area under the curve (AUC) for predicting a high GS (AUC = 0.858, 95% CI: 0.788-0.929, P < 0.001) than that of hsCRP (AUC = 0.665, 95% CI: 0.557-0.773, P = 0.006; Z = 2.9363, P < 0.001), with an optimal cut-off value of 137.85 mg/dl (sensitivity: 94.3%, specificity: 68.2%). Conclusions: Plasma AAT levels correlate with both the presence and severity of coronary stenosis in patients with SAP, suggesting that it could be a potential predictive marker of severe stenosis in SAP patients.