Clin Transl Gastroenterol
April 2024
Background: Vascular aging, as assessed by structural and functional arterial properties, is an independent predictor of cardiovascular outcomes. We aimed to explore the associations of individual cardiovascular risk factors from childhood to midlife and their accumulation over a 30-year span with vascular aging in midlife.
Methods: Using data from the ongoing cohort of Hanzhong Adolescent Hypertension study, 2180 participants aged 6 to 18 years at baseline were followed for over 30 years.
Background: Hypertension can lead to podocyte damage and subsequent apoptosis, eventually resulting in glomerulosclerosis. Although alleviating podocyte apoptosis has clinical significance for the treatment of hypertensive nephropathy, an effective therapeutic target has not yet been identified. The function of septin4, a proapoptotic protein and an important marker of organ damage, is regulated by post-translational modification.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProstate cancer is the most frequent cancer in men and a leading cause of cancer death. Determining a patient's optimal therapy is a challenge, where oncologists must select a therapy with the highest likelihood of success and the lowest likelihood of toxicity. International standards for prognostication rely on non-specific and semi-quantitative tools, commonly leading to over- and under-treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Recent evidence indicates that long-term visit-to-visit blood pressure variability (BPV) may be associated with risk of cardiovascular disease. We, therefore, aimed to determine the potential associations of long-term BPV from childhood to middle age with subclinical kidney damage (SKD) and albuminuria in adulthood.
Methods: Using data from the ongoing cohort of Hanzhong Adolescent Hypertension study, which recruited children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years at baseline, we assessed BPV by SD and average real variability (ARV) for 30 years (6 visits).
Tobacco () is an herbaceous plant originating from South America and processed into cigarettes for consumption. Polyphenols are considered vital components of tobacco in view of their contribution to antioxidant properties. This study aimed to determine the phenolic compounds in different tobacco varieties by applying cold extraction with methanol and distilled water.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEstuary and coastal environments have essential ecosystem functions in greenhouse gas sinks and removal of nitrogen pollution. Methane-oxidizing bacteria (MOB) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) communities play critical functions in the estuary's tidal flat sediments. Therefore, the effects of ammonium on MOB communities and methane on AOB communities need to be further explained.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To explore the ability of liver acquisition with volume acceleration contrast-enhanced sequence (LAVA-ce) to improve the accuracy of reassessing adjacent organ involvement by rectal mucinous adenocarcinoma (MC) after neoadjuvant therapy (NAT).
Methods: This study retrospectively enrolled twenty-five patients with MC who underwent pre- and post-NAT MRI, were staged as T4b using pre-NAT T weighted imaging, received NAT and underwent radical resection. All MR images were divided into two schemes, T weighted plus diffusion weighted imaging (TD protocol) and plus LAVA-ce (TDL protocol).
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a global public health crisis. However, little is known about the pathogenesis and biomarkers of COVID-19. Here, we profiled host responses to COVID-19 by performing plasma proteomics of a cohort of COVID-19 patients, including non-survivors and survivors recovered from mild or severe symptoms, and uncovered numerous COVID-19-associated alterations of plasma proteins.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: To quantify the association between effects of interventions on carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) progression and their effects on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.
Methods: We systematically collated data from randomized, controlled trials. cIMT was assessed as the mean value at the common-carotid-artery; if unavailable, the maximum value at the common-carotid-artery or other cIMT measures were used.
Background: No therapeutics have yet been proven effective for the treatment of severe illness caused by SARS-CoV-2.
Methods: We conducted a randomized, controlled, open-label trial involving hospitalized adult patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, which causes the respiratory illness Covid-19, and an oxygen saturation (Sao) of 94% or less while they were breathing ambient air or a ratio of the partial pressure of oxygen (Pao) to the fraction of inspired oxygen (Fio) of less than 300 mm Hg. Patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive either lopinavir-ritonavir (400 mg and 100 mg, respectively) twice a day for 14 days, in addition to standard care, or standard care alone.
, a recently proposed archaeal phylum, is globally distributed and highly abundant in anoxic sediments. Metabolic pathways of the members are diverse and, hence, this phylum has been proposed to play an important role in global biogeochemical cycles. members are distributed in the estuarine environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Mitochondrial dysfunction plays an important role in heart failure (HF). However, the molecular mechanisms regulating mitochondrial functions via selective mitochondrial autophagy (mitophagy) are poorly understood.
Objective: We sought to determine the role of AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase) in selective mitophagy during HF.
Cryptochromes are flavin-binding proteins that act as blue light receptors in bacteria, fungi, plants, and insects and are components of the circadian oscillator in mammals. Animal and plant cryptochromes are evolutionarily divergent, although the unicellular alga ( throughout) has both an animal-like cryptochrome and a plant cryptochrome (pCRY; formerly designated CPH1). Here, we show that the pCRY protein accumulates at night as part of a complex.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Myocardial infarction is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, triggering irreversible myocardial cell damage and heart failure. The role of low-density lipoprotein receptor-related proteins 5 and 6 (LRP5/6) as coreceptors of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in the adult heart remain unknown. Insulin-like growth factor binding protein 4 and dickkopf-related protein 1 (Dkk1) are 2 secreted LRP5/6 binding proteins that play a crucial role in heart development through preventing Wnt/β-catenin pathway activation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To investigate the top late-onset Alzheimer disease (LOAD) risk loci detected or confirmed by the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project for association with brain gene expression levels to identify variants that influence Alzheimer disease (AD) risk through gene expression regulation.
Methods: Expression levels from the cerebellum (CER) and temporal cortex (TCX) were obtained using Illumina whole-genome cDNA-mediated annealing, selection, extension, and ligation assay (WG-DASL) for ∼400 autopsied patients (∼200 with AD and ∼200 with non-AD pathologies). We tested 12 significant LOAD genome-wide association study (GWAS) index single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for cis association with levels of 34 genes within ±100 kb.
Oncogenic c-ros oncogene1 (ROS1) fusion kinases have been identified in a variety of human cancers and are attractive targets for cancer therapy. The MET/ALK/ROS1 inhibitor crizotinib (Xalkori, PF-02341066) has demonstrated promising clinical activity in ROS1 fusion-positive non-small cell lung cancer. However, emerging clinical evidence has shown that patients can develop resistance by acquiring secondary point mutations in ROS1 kinase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMarker-free transgenic plants can be developed through transposon-mediated transgene reintegration, which allows intact transgene insertion with defined boundaries and requires only a few primary transformants. In this study, we improved the selection strategy and validated that the maize (Zea mays) Activator/Dissociation (Ds) transposable element can be routinely used to generate marker-free transgenic plants. A Ds-based gene of interest was linked to green fluorescent protein in transfer DNA (T-DNA), and a green fluorescent protein-aided counterselection against T-DNA was used together with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based positive selection for the gene of interest to screen marker-free progeny.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Purpose: Single subcortical infarction (SSI) may be classified as proximal SSI (pSSI) or distal SSI (dSSI) according to its location within the middle cerebral artery territory. Few studies have examined the differences in clinical outcome between the two. Our study investigated such differences in patients with pSSI or dSSI and examined their baseline characteristics and indicators for small-vessel disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the rapid increment of protein sequence data, it is indispensable to develop automated and reliable predictive methods for protein function annotation. One approach for facilitating protein function prediction is to classify proteins into functional families from primary sequence. Being the most important group of all proteins, the accurate prediction for enzyme family classes and subfamily classes is closely related to their biological functions.
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