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Background: Acquired hydrocephalus (AH) is a common complication in patients with severe brain injury. Brain tissue injury has been proposed to induce a neuroinflammatory reaction reflected by cytokines release, particularly interleukin-6 (IL-6), which associates with early brain damage. The present study measured IL-6 in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of AH patients and determined its relationship to functional outcome following shunt operation.Methods: The study included a total of 32 patients with a shunt operation due to hydrocephalus. CSF samples from 26 AH subjects and 6 iNPH patients were collected via lumbar puncture before surgery. IL-6 level was measured using the micro ELISA immunoassay method. AH subjects were dichotomized into good versus poor outcomes based on modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at 3 months after shunting.Results: CSF analysis demonstrated that IL-6 was significantly elevated in the CSF of the AH group compared to controls (p = 0.023). Within the AH group, eighteen (69.2%) had a good outcome while eight (30.8%) patients had a poor outcome. Mean IL-6 level in the good outcome group was approximately four-times higher than the poor outcome group (p = 0.004). Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) on admission was significantly different between the two groups (p = 0.014). IL-6 level and admission GCS were significantly correlated with improvement of mRS score (r = 0.473, p = 0.015 and r = 0.691, p＜0.0001, respectively). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that both factors can accurately differentiate between patients with good versus poor functional outcome (AUC = 0.861, p = 0.0039 and AUC = 0.823, p = 0.0098, respectively). Conclusions: The CSF level of IL-6 is elevated in AH patients and higher levels correlate with improvement of post-shunt functional outcome. Therefore, IL-6 CSF level might serve as a complementary surrogate parameter for operative indication. A possible IL-6 threshold in clinical routine might be a 6.98-pg/ml cutoff value to rule out unresponsive and poor outcome AH patients that are under the 6.98-pg/ml threshold.

Hierarchical flower-like TiO2 microspheres (FMS) and TiO2 nanorice (NR) were obtained, respectively, by controlling the dosage of Ti precursor via a simple hydrothermal process. Flower-like TiO2 microspheres consist of nanopetals grown from the center radially, the nanopetals are about several nm in average thickness, and each nanopetal has a thinned tip with an average size of 15 nm. The unique hierarchical TiO2 microspheres with large surface area (118.6 m2 g−1) suggested its potential application in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The power conversion efficiency of FMS-based DSSCs (9.58%) is much higher than that of NR-based DSSCs (7.13%), which could be ascribed to its excellent light-scattering and dye absorption ability, shorter electron transport pathway and longer electron recombination time derived from the thin thickness and large specific surface area of nanopetals.

Nanowire-constructed hierarchical TiO2 nanomaterials (HTN) are prepared by a facile non-hydrothermal method at atmospheric pressure. The product is characterized in detail using powder X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and UV–Vis spectrophotometer. The synthesized TiO2 hierarchical nanomaterials consist of nanowires of 15 nm in diameter, it possesses a high surface area of 144.65 m2/g, and demonstrate an excellent dye absorption ability (155.55 nmol/cm2), which is 2.7 times more than that of the Degussa P25. Corresponding photovoltaic performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) fabricated from HTN is also investigated. It exhibits an overall light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 8.9% accompanying a short-circuit current density of 20.43 mA/cm2, an open-circuit voltage of 720 mV and fill factor of 0.61, which is much higher than that of P25 (5.5%). The significant enhancement of short-circuit current density and power conversion efficiency of HTN can be attributed to its larger dye loading amount, better charge transportation ability and excellent light scattering ability.

Objectives: This study aims to elicit the relative importance of treatment attributes that influence residents&rsquo, choice, assuming they are suffering severe non-communicable diseases (NCDs), to explore how they make trade-offs between these attributes and to estimate the monetary value placed on different attributes and attribute levels. Methods: A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted with adults over 18 years old in China. Preferences were evaluated based on four treatment attributes: care provider, mode of service, distance to practice and cost. A mixed logit model was used to analyze the relative importance of the four attributes and to calculate the willingness to pay (WTP) for a changed attribute level. Results: A total of 93.47% (2019 of 2160) respondents completed valid questionnaires. The WTP results suggested that participants would be willing to pay CNY 822.51 (USD 124.86), CNY 470.54 (USD 71.41) and CNY 68.20 (USD 10.35) for services provided by experts, with integrated traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine (WM) and with a service distance &lt, =30 min, respectively. Conclusions: The results suggested that mode of service, care provider, distance to practice and cost should be considered in priority-setting decisions. The government should strengthen the curative service capability in primary health facilities and give full play to the role of TCM in the prevention and treatment of severe chronic diseases.

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a malignant tumour originating from biliary epithelial cells, and is increasing in incidence. Radical surgery is the main treatment. However, the pathogenesis of CCA is unclear. Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are non‑protein‑coding RNAs produced by genomic transcription that include microRNAs (miRNAs), circular RNAs (circRNAs) and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). They play important roles in gene expression, epigenetic modification, cell proliferation, differentiation and reproduction. ncRNAs also serve key roles in cancer development. Numerous studies have been carried out on ncRNAs, and associated publications have shown that ncRNAs are closely associated with the physiological and pathological mechanisms of CCA. The findings of these studies can provide new insights into the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of CCA. The present review summarizes the pathophysiological mechanisms of different types of ncRNAs, including miRNAs, circRNAs and lncRNAs in CCA, and their applications in the diagnosis and treatment of CCA.

Metal oxide has been the focus of research for decades. In this work, besides the trigonal-structure Al2O3 nanotubes and orthorhombic-structure Al2O3 nanosheets, novel Mg-Al-O/Al2O3 heterostructure nanowires were successfully synthesized at high temperature. The structural characteristics of these oxides were investigated based on electron microscopy and group theory analysis. More importantly, it was found that incorporating the orthorhombic-structure Al2O3 could effectively modulate the occurrence of monoclinic domains and thus the related properties of Mg-Al-O/Al2O3 heterostructures. This work provides a reference for understanding and modulating the complex structures with multiple domain variants in Mg-Al-O oxides.

Pancreatic cancer is a malignant disease that develops rapidly and carries a poor prognosis. Currently, surgery is the only radical treatment. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are protein-free RNAs produced by genome transcription; they play important roles in regulating gene expression, participating in epigenetic modification, cell proliferation, differentiation and reproduction. ncRNAs also play key roles in the development of cancer; microRNA (miRNA) and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) may lead the way to new treatments for pancreatic cancer. miRNAs are short-chain ncRNAs (19-24 nt) that inhibit the degradation of protein translation or their target gene mRNAs to regulate gene expression. lncRNAs contain >200 nt of ncRNA and play important regulatory roles in a number of malignant tumors, in terms of tumor cell proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and distant metastasis. lncRNAs can be exploited for the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer and have substantial prospects for clinical application. Nevertheless, the molecular mechanism of their regulation and function, as well as the significance of other ncRNAs, such as piwi-interacting RNA, in the pathogenesis of pancreatic cancer, are largely unknown. In this review, the structures of ncRNAs with various classifications, as well as the functions and important roles of ncRNAs in the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer are reviewed.

Aims Liver cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer mortality worldwide. Inspired by the biological structure and function of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), in this study, an ApopB-100 based targeted lipid nanoparticles was synthesized to improve the therapeutic efficacy in liver cancer treatment. Main methods The biological composition of ApopB is similar to LDL which can effectively increase the targeting efficiency of nanoparticles in LDL receptor (LDLR)-overexpressed liver tumors. Keyfindings We have demonstrated that the co-administration of sorafenib (SRF) and Dihydroartemisinin (DHA) could exhibit synergistic anticancer effect in HepG2 liver cancer cells. DHA produced excessive cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and induced greater apoptosis of cancer cells. LDL-based SRF/DHA-loaded lipid nanoparticles (LD-SDN) showed remarkable decrease in the cell viability compared to that of either of single drug treated cancer cells. Combination of SRF+DHA resulted in predominant SubG1 proportion of cells. LD-SDN exhibited the highest SubG1 (%) of cells compared to that of any of the individual drugs. Most importantly, robust antitumor response and delayed tumor growth was observed for LD-SDN treated xenograft tumor model. Ki67 proliferation index of LD-SDN (22.1 ± 5.6%) is significantly lesser compared to that of either control (86.2 ± 6.9%) or SRF (75.4 ± 4.89%) or DHA (69.4 ± 6.9%). Significances These data provide strong evidence that LDL-mimetic lipid nanoformulations could be utilized as a biocompatible and tumor targeted platform for the delivery of multiple anticancer drugs in cancer treatment.

Pancreatic cancer is a malignant disease that develops rapidly and carries a poor prognosis. Currently, surgery is the only radical treatment. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are protein-free RNAs produced by genome transcription; they play important roles in regulating gene expression, participating in epigenetic modification, cell proliferation, differentiation and reproduction. ncRNAs also play key roles in the development of cancer; microRNA (miRNA) and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) may lead the way to new treatments for pancreatic cancer. miRNAs are short-chain ncRNAs (19–24 nt) that inhibit the degradation of protein translation or their target gene mRNAs to regulate gene expression. lncRNAs contain >200 nt of ncRNA and play important regulatory roles in a number of malignant tumors, in terms of tumor cell proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and distant metastasis. lncRNAs can be exploited for the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer and have substantial prospects for clinical application. Nevertheless, the molecular mechanism of their regulation and function, as well as the significance of other ncRNAs, such as piwi-interacting RNA, in the pathogenesis of pancreatic cancer, are largely unknown. In this review, the structures of ncRNAs with various classifications, as well as the functions and important roles of ncRNAs in the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer are reviewed.