Search

Background The prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) among the middle-aged and elderly population in China increases with age, serum uric acid to high density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (UHR) is closely associated with various metabolic diseases, however, there are few studies on the relationship between UHR and MS in middle-aged and elderly people. Objective To explore the correlation between UHR and MS in middle-aged and elderly people in China, and evaluate the predictive value of UHR for MS. Methods This study used public data from the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) and included 9 233 subjects. General data, physical examination indexes and blood biochemical examination indexes were collected from the study subjects and their UHR was calculated. The subjects were divided into the non-MS group (n=7 006) and MS group (n=2 227) according to whether they had MS. At the same time, the subjects were divided into the Q1 group (UHR≤7.32%, n=2 308), Q2 group (7.32%12.20%, n=2 308) according to the level of the quartiles of UHR. Pearson correlation analysis was used to explore the correlation between UHR and metabolic indexes. The relationship between UHR and MS was studied by multivariate Logistic regression analysis. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for the risk of MS predicted by UHR in the overall and by different genders were plotted separately and the areas under the ROC curve (AUC) were calculated. Results The average age of the subjects was (60.3±9.6) years. The proportion of females, age, urban household proportion, history of hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia, proportion of taking lipid-lowering drugs, glycated hemoglobin, C-reactive protein, triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), SUA, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), BMI, waist circumference (WC) and UHR in the MS group were higher than the non-MS group, while HDL-C, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) were lower than those in the non-MS group, and there were statistically significant differences in education level, smoking and alcohol consumption between the two groups (P

Microplastics in agricultural soils have become the research hotspot in recent years, however, the quantitative methods based on the traditional visual inspection may have a high false detection rate. Here we combined the laser direct infrared (LDIR) and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) methods to investigate the microplastics in farmland with long-term agricultural activities. The results showed that the total abundance of microplastics reached 1.98 ± 0.41 × 105, 1.57 ± 0.28 × 105, 1.78 ± 0.27 × 105, and 3.20 ± 0.41 × 105 particles/kg soil in cotton fields with film mulching of 5, 10, 20, and >30 years, respectively. LDIR results indicated that microplastics ranging from 10 to 500 μm accounted for 96.5-99.9 % of the total microplastic amounts in the soils. Additionally, a total of 26 polymer types of microplastics were detected, among which polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyamide (PA), and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) were dominantly observed. For the microplastics detected by FTIR (500 μm-5 mm), PE polymer was majorly observed (88.0-98.9 %). Most microplastics were films (88.2 %), while fibers and pellets were also found. The reclaimed water from sewage treatment plants, the drip irrigation utilities, and the residual plastic film are the potential sources of microplastics in the farmland soils. By using the automated quantitative and identifiable approaches, this study suggested that the commonly used visual counting method may underestimate the microplastic contamination in agricultural soils.

Lead-free dielectric energy storage ceramics have attracted much attention in the fields of medicine, electronic components and military because of their ultra-high efficiency and high energy storage density. In this study, (1-x)(Bi0.5Na0.5)0.7Ba0.3TiO3-xLiTa0.97Nb0.03O3 (BNBT-xLTN) lead-free relaxation energy storage ceramics have been prepared by solid-phase high-temperature sintering.XRD analysis confirms that all the components of BNBT-xLTN ceramics are in a single-phase chalcocite structure, and no heterogeneous phases are detected. With the increase of LTN doping, the relaxation and energy storage properties of the ceramics were significantly improved, while the microscopic morphology showed a dense state with uniform particle size and no pores, which improved the breakdown strength (Eb) of the ceramics. Analysis of the experimental results 0p showed that the LTN-doped ceramics displayed finer electric hysteresis return lines (P-E) as compared to the undoped BNBT (x = 0).The electrical performance of the ceramics is significantly enhanced at 30 kV/mm field strength when LTN doping x = 0.10. Its recoverable energy storage density is as high as Wrec = 4.95 J/cm3 and η = 93.2% with ultra-high energy storage efficiency. The ceramic also has an ultra-short discharge time of t0.9 = 0.38 μs. This study demonstrates the great potential of this ceramic system for practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of health literacy in China is relatively slow, and there are fewer health literacy scales, which is difficult to measure. Therefore, this study aims to promote the development of health literacy in China through the translation and application of the European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q47). The scale was translated into Chinese, back-translated, culturally adapted and finally subjected to psychometric evaluation. A multi-stage stratified sampling method was used to select 2504 residents to test the reliability and validity of a questionnaire on health literacy. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to evaluate the validity of the results, and the back consistency was calculated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The EFA revealed that health care, disease prevention and health promotion explained 78.68% of the total variance in health literacy. The scale and its subscales demonstrated strong internal consistency, with high Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from 0.947 to 0.983. CFA confirmed the three-factor model's goodness-of-fit for the Chinese population. The dimensions of healthcare, disease prevention and health promotion showed high convergent validity with an average variance extracted values ranging from 0.52 to 0.60 and composite reliability values ranging from 0.94 to 0.96. The reliable and valid Chinese version of the HLS-EU-Q47 (HLS19-Q47-CN) developed and evaluated in this study is an important tool for assessing health literacy levels in the Chinese population. Furthermore, as this tool has global applicability, it has the potential to assess health literacy levels across different countries, enabling practical international comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To study the effect of high glucose concentration on the transcriptome expression profile of islet β cells derived from type 1 diabetes (T1D) mice and to explore the possible mechanism of high glucose environment in the pathogenesis of T1D. Methods The non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice-derived islet β cell line NIT-1 in logarithmic growth phase were divided into high glucose-treated (HG) and control (NIT1) group. The cells in the NIT1 group were routinely cultured in F-12K medium, while HG group were treated with 20 mmol/L glucose. Whole transcriptome profile was analyzed using RNA-sequencing technology to obtain the differentially expressed genes (DEGs). And the DEGs were further analyzed by GO annotation and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis. Results A total of 5 548 DEGs were detected between the NIT1 group and HG group. Among them, 2 701 DEGs were up-regulated in the HG group, which were significantly enriched in endoplasmic reticulum stress, endoplasmic reticulum protein processing, ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, autophagy and apoptosis pathways. And the 2 847 down-regulated genes were mainly concentrated in ribosome, metabolism, biosynthesis, cell cycle and DNA replication. Moreover, the mRNA levels of some important T1D auto-antigens were significantly increased in the HG group. Conclusion High glucose environment significantly changes the whole-transcriptome profile of islet β cells, and promotes the abilities of antigen processing and presentation, suggesting that high glucose might be associated with the induction of autoimmune response of islet cells and the incidence and development of T1D.

BackgroundRecurrent hypoglycemia (RH) is well known to impair awareness of hypoglycemia and increase the risk of severe hypoglycemia; the underlying mechanism requires further understanding. We aimed to investigate the metabolic characteristic profile for RH in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients and explore the potential metabolic mechanism and prevention strategies.MethodsWe screened 553 community-based T2DM patients. T2DM with RH (DH group, n=40) and T2DM without hypoglycemia (DC group, n=40) were assigned in the case-control study, matched by propensity score matching. Non-targeted, global metabolite profiling was conducted using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Principal component analysis and supervised projections to latent structures-discriminant analysis were constructed to evaluate the potential biomarkers. Metabolites with a fold change of >2.0 or 1 were identified as significantly differential metabolites. MetaboAnalyst was performed to analyze the related metabolic pathways.ResultsWe identified 12 significantly distinct metabolites as potential biomarkers of RH, which were enriched in five pathways; the caffeine metabolic pathway was the most dominant related one. Caffeine and its main downstream metabolites (theophylline and paraxanthine, all q

The sweet potato weevil (Cylas formicarius) is a critical pest producing enormous global losses in sweet potato crops. Traditional pest management approaches for sweet potato weevil, primarily using chemical pesticides, causes pollution, food safety issues, and harming natural enemies. While RNA interference (RNAi) is a promising environmentally friendly approach to pest control, its efficacy in controlling the sweet potato weevil has not been extensively studied. In this study, we selected a potential target for controlling C. formicarius, the Troponin I gene (wupA), which is essential for musculature composition and crucial for fundamental life activities. We determined that wupA is abundantly expressed throughout all developmental stages of the sweet potato weevil. We evaluated the efficiency of double‐stranded RNAs in silencing the wupA gene via microinjection and oral feeding of sweet potato weevil larvae at different ages. Our findings demonstrate that both approaches significantly reduced the expression of wupA and produced high mortality. Moreover, the 1st instar larvae administered dswupA exhibited significant growth inhibition. We assessed the toxicity of dswupA on the no‐target insect silkworm and assessed its safety. Our study indicates that wupA knockdown can inhibit the growth and development of C. formicarius and offer a potential target gene for environmentally friendly control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]