Publications by authors named "Bowen Su"
Carbon black nanoparticles (CBNPs) are ubiquitous in our daily ambient environment, either resulting from tobacco combustion or constituting the core of PM. Despite the potential risk of trafficking CBNPs to the fetus, the underlying toxicity of nano-sized carbon black particles in the placenta remains unambiguous. Pregnant C57BL/6 mice received intratracheal instillation of 30 nm or 120 nm CBNPs.
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- * A systematic review explored pandemic fatigue, identifying factors that contribute to it and its impact on personal protective behaviors like mask-wearing and social distancing.
- * Findings highlight that strict health measures can lead to increased pandemic fatigue, while individuals' perceptions of risk also influence their willingness to adhere to protective behaviors, emphasizing the need for informed policy responses during epidemics.
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- Clinical trials are essential for validating new medical treatments, but their execution often faces significant challenges, which The North West London Clinical Trials Alliance (The Alliance) aims to overcome through collaboration among various healthcare and research organizations.
- The Alliance has developed a strategic network that addresses operational issues in clinical trial management, significantly reducing the average time to begin trials from 75 days to just 19 days.
- Their achievements, especially highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic with the Janssen vaccine study, showcase their ability to efficiently recruit diverse participants and utilize digital technology to attract commercial funding.
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- There is growing interest in the additional benefits of metformin, beyond its primary use for managing type 2 diabetes, including potential protective effects against cardiovascular issues, cognitive decline, and cancer.
- This study compared cancer risk in patients using metformin versus those using sulfonylureas, using a large dataset from the UK, to investigate if metformin offers any significant protective effect against cancer over a 6-year period.
- The results indicated that metformin did not significantly reduce cancer risk compared to sulfonylureas, and the analysis faced challenges including the disparity of data overlap and the issue of pre-cancer deaths affecting the outcomes.
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- Carbon black nanoparticles (CBNPs) are linked to cardiovascular disease by damaging heart cells (cardiomyocytes) through inflammation and programmed cell death (apoptosis).
- The research shows that CBNPs can infiltrate heart tissue, disrupt mitochondrial function, and promote damaging processes like oxidative stress and autophagy impairment.
- Antioxidants and autophagy activators were found to help mitigate the harmful effects of CBNPs on heart cells, highlighting potential strategies for reducing heart risks associated with these nanoparticles.
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- Urinary tract infections (UTIs) significantly contribute to hospitalizations and fatalities among individuals with dementia compared to matched controls and those with diabetes.
- A large study analyzed data from over 2.4 million people aged 50+ in Wales between 2000-2021, finding that UTIs in dementia and diabetes were linked to increased mortality rates, especially in those with both conditions.
- Delayed or untreated UTIs led to a notable increase in the risk of death, with 5.4% of untreated individuals with dementia dying within 60 days after diagnosis, rising to 5.9% for those also having diabetes.
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- The study investigates the relationship between psoriasis and coexisting long-term conditions (LTCs) to identify distinct comorbidity clusters in patients with psoriasis.* -
- Using data from the UK Biobank, researchers found five different clusters of LTCs and demonstrated genetic correlations between psoriasis and conditions like heart failure, depression, coronary artery disease, and type 2 diabetes.* -
- The analysis suggests that there may be a causal link where genetic predisposition to coronary artery disease increases the risk of developing psoriasis, supported by various statistical approaches.*
Introduction: Metformin has been suggested as a therapeutic agent for dementia, but the relevant evidence has been partial and inconsistent.
Methods: We established a national cohort of 210,237 type 2 diabetes patients in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink. Risks of incident dementia were compared between metformin initiators and those who were not prescribed any anti-diabetes medication during follow-up.
Antidepressants, while effective in treating depression and anxiety disorders, also induce deficits in sensory (particularly auditory) processing, which in turn may exacerbate psychiatric symptoms. How antidepressants cause auditory signature deficits remains largely unknown. Here, we found that fluoxetine-treated adult female rats were significantly less accurate when performing a tone-frequency discrimination task compared with age-matched control rats.
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- - Metformin, a diabetes medication, shows potential anti-aging effects and may influence the onset of dementia, although previous studies have yielded mixed results.
- - Using a causal inference approach in clinical trials, the study found that metformin use is linked to lower overall mortality and a reduced risk of developing dementia compared to another diabetes drug, sulfonylureas.
- - Additionally, laboratory tests revealed that metformin can decrease levels of two proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease in brain cells, suggesting it could protect against dementia through mechanisms other than just controlling blood sugar levels.
Background And Objectives: Whether chronic autoimmune inflammatory diseases causally affect the risk of Alzheimer disease (AD) is controversial. We characterized the relationship between inflammatory diseases and risk of AD and explored the role of circulating inflammatory biomarkers in the relationships between inflammatory diseases and AD.
Methods: We performed observational analyses for chronic autoimmune inflammatory diseases and risk of AD using data from 2,047,513 participants identified in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD).
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- ACE inhibitors are important medications for heart failure and other conditions, but their relationship with Alzheimer's disease risk is unclear.
- Genetic studies indicate that higher levels of a specific brain enzyme (ACE) may protect against Alzheimer's but not necessarily other neurodegenerative diseases.
- More research is needed to determine if using ACE inhibitors could actually raise the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
Patient transfer has always been a difficult problem, usually requiring multiple caregivers to work together, which is time consuming and can easily cause secondary injuries to the patient. In addition, with the crisis of COVID-19, the issue of patient transfer is even more critical, as caregivers are at a high risk of infection, causing significant damage to healthcare resources. In this paper, a patient transfer assist system named E-pat-plus (Easy Patient Transfer plus) has been proposed; it can assist caregivers in transferring patients, reduce direct contact between them, and avoid secondary injuries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Type 2 diabetes is an established risk factor for dementia. However, the roles of glycemic control and diabetic complications in the development of dementia have been less well substantiated. This large-scale cohort study aims to examine associations of longitudinal HbA levels and diabetic complications with the risk of dementia incidence among patients with type 2 diabetes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevalence of and factors associated with burnout in midwifery: A scoping review.
Eur J Midwifery
February 2020
Article Synopsis
- * A scoping review analyzed 1034 articles, narrowing down to 27 relevant studies discussing burnout prevalence, causes, and potential solutions, highlighting significant variations across different regions and work models.
- * Key findings indicate that burnout is most prevalent in certain countries, reduced in continuity care, and linked to factors like workload and trauma exposure; solutions include better organizational support and education about burnout management.
Elevated cortisol as a measure of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis hyperactivity has emerged as a predictor of clinical progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), in conjunction with amyloid-β (Aβ) abnormalities. Yet factors exist which have the propensity to delay AD symptomatic expression in the face of an AD-type biomarker-based pathological profile. This study sought to determine whether abnormal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) Aβ and elevated cortisol levels are associated with clinical transition to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD in cognitively normal (CN) individuals, and if this association is modified by reserve proxies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCorrection to: Associations between post-operative rehabilitation of hip fracture and outcomes: national database analysis.
BMC Musculoskelet Disord
September 2018
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- * An erratum has been published to address this error.
- * The changes have been made to ensure the article is now correct and accurate.
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- Rehabilitation programs can significantly improve outcomes for hip fracture patients, specifically highlighting the importance of early mobilization.
- The analysis of data from English hospitals suggests that patients who mobilized on the day of or the day after surgery experience better mobility 30 days post-discharge.
- Differences in outcomes based on whether a physical therapist or another healthcare professional conducted the mobilization were negligible, indicating that early mobilization is key regardless of the provider.
The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled "Out-of-home activities, daily travel, and SWB" (Ettema et al., 2010) [1]. The paper provides an online survey questionnaire and data about the public subjective well-being of high occupancy vehicle lanes in China.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: To compare the characteristics of early hand involvement in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using two matched populations, from the UK and China.
Methods: A cohort comparison study was conducted. Sixty Chinese patients recruited from Shanghai, China were matched on gender and age with 60 patients from a prospective early RA cohort from the UK (SARAH trial).