Metalloestrogens exposure and risk of gestational diabetes mellitus: Evidence emerging from the systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Metalloestrogens are metals and metalloid elements with estrogenic activity found everywhere. Their impact on human health is becoming more apparent as human activities increase.

Objective: Our aim is to conduct a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies exploring the correlation between metalloestrogens (specifically As, Sb, Cr, Cd, Cu, Se, Hg) and Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM).

Early-life exposure to di (2-ethyl-hexyl) phthalate: Role in children with endocrine disorders.

Di (2-ethyl-hexyl) phthalate (DEHP), one of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), has widespread concern due to its serious health hazards. Exposure to DEHP in the early stage of life affects fetal metabolic and endocrine function, which even would cause genetic lesions. To date, it is widely believed that the increasing incidence of childhood obesity and diabetes in adolescents is related to the impact of DEHP on glucose and lipid homeostasis in children.

Roles of osteoprotegerin in endocrine and metabolic disorders through receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand/receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B signaling.

Endocrine and metabolic diseases show increasing incidence and high treatment costs worldwide. Due to the complexity of their etiology and mechanism, therapeutic strategies are still lacking. Osteoprotegerin (OPG), a member of the tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily, appears to be a potential candidate for the treatment of these diseases.

Bullous pemphigoid-What do we know about the most recent therapies?

Introduction: Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is the most common subtype of autoimmune blistering diseases that primarily affects the elderly and is classically defined by the presence of IgG and/or complement C3 against the BP180 and BP230 hemidesmosome proteins. However, most recent studies have introduced the role of specific eosinophil receptors and chemokine mediators in the pathogenesis of BP which are helpful in identifying new targets for future treatments.

Areas Covered: This review will focus on the involvement of eosinophils in BP, including the processes that lead to their recruitment, activation, and regulation.

Side effects of steroid-sparing agents in patients with bullous pemphigoid and pemphigus: A systematic review.

Background: Systemic glucocorticoids are first-line treatment options for autoimmune blistering diseases; however, their long-term use is associated with significant toxicities.

Objective: To evaluate the side effects of steroid-sparing agents and compare them with those of steroids.

Methods: We searched Cochrane Reviews, Embase, MEDLINE, and Scopus between October 1978 and May 2020 using the keywords "bullous pemphigoid," "pemphigus," "autoimmune blistering diseases," and "side effects.

Evaluation of the toxicity of glucocorticoids in patients with autoimmune blistering disease using the Glucocorticoid Toxicity Index: A cohort study.

Background: Glucocorticoids are the mainstay of treatment for autoimmune blistering diseases (AIBDs). The Glucocorticoid Toxicity Index (GTI) is a novel, outcome-based glucocorticoid-induced adverse effects monitoring instrument.

Objective: To investigate whether the GTI score was able to accurately quantify the glucocorticoid-induced toxicity in patients with AIBDs.

State-of-the-art review of human autoimmune blistering diseases (AIBD).

Autoimmune blistering diseases (AIBDs) are a heterogenous group of skin conditions, broadly classified into two categories depending on the location of blister formation: intraepidermal blistering in the pemphigus group and subepidermal blistering in the pemphigoid group. Although AIBDs occur in both humans and animals, the arsenal of data for human AIBDs far exceeds those of their animal counterpart. Therefore, the main purpose of this review is to highlight existing knowledge, and recent advances in the diagnosis and management of AIBDs in humans - to serve as a road map for veterinary dermatologists.

Placenta-Derived Osteoprotegerin Is Required for Glucose Homeostasis in Gestational Diabetes Mellitus.

Osteoprotegerin (OPG) is involved in various biological processes, including bone remodeling, vascular calcification and pancreatic β-cell function. Although some clinical studies have shown an increase in serum OPG level during pregnancy, the role of OPG in gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is largely unknown. Therefore, we explored the effect of OPG in metabolic homeostasis during pregnancy.

Histone Demethylase KDM4C Is Required for Ovarian Cancer Stem Cell Maintenance.

Ovarian cancer is a highly deadly disease, which is often diagnosed at a late stage with metastases. However, most ovarian cancers relapse after surgery combined with platinum-based chemotherapy. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are stem-like cells that possess high tumorigenic capability and display higher resistant capability against current therapies.

[Human facial shape related SNP analysis in Han Chinese populations].

Human facial morphology is one of the important visible biological characteristics. Understanding the genetic basis underlying facial shape traits has important implications in population genetics, developmental biology, and forensic science. This study extracted 136 Euclidean distance phenotypes from 17 facial features of high-resolution 3D facial images in 1177 Chinese Han adult males.

Role of DRAM1 in mitophagy contributes to preeclampsia regulation in mice.

Preeclampsia (PE) is a complication during pregnancy that is diagnosed by a new onset of hypertension and proteinuria. Although the pathogenesis of PE is not fully understood, a growing body of evidence indicates that oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction might contribute to the progression of PE. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to determine the role of mitophagy in mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress in PE, and to evaluate the role of DNA damage‑regulated autophagy modulator 1 (DRAM1) in the development of PE.

Simultaneous measurement of displacement, pitch, and yaw angles of a cavity output mirror based on phase measuring deflectometry.

Accurate and high dynamic range measurement of the three attitude variations (i.e., displacement, pitch, yaw angles) has been widely researched based on various approaches to meet different application requirements.

High precision wavefront correction using an influence function optimization method based on a hybrid adaptive optics system.

A hybrid adaptive optics (AO) system with an influence function (IF) optimization method is presented for high precision wavefront correction of a traditional Shack-Hartmann AO system. The hybrid AO system consists of a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SHWFS) and a deflectometry system (DS) to measure the wavefront of the laser beam and the IF of the deformable mirror, respectively. An IF optimization method is used to generate a hybrid IF (H-IF) through a position-calibration algorithm and a resolution-conversion algorithm by use of the original IFs measured by the SHWFS (S-IF) and the DS (D-IF).

Beam alignment based on two-dimensional power spectral density of a near-field image.

Beam alignment is crucial to high-power laser facilities and is used to adjust the laser beams quickly and accurately to meet stringent requirements of pointing and centering. In this paper, a novel alignment method is presented, which employs data processing of the two-dimensional power spectral density (2D-PSD) for a near-field image and resolves the beam pointing error relative to the spatial filter pinhole directly. Combining this with a near-field fiducial mark, the operation of beam alignment is achieved.

Process-oriented adaptive optics control method in the multi-pass amplifiers.

In this talk, we propose and demonstrate the process-oriented adaptive optics (AO) wavefront control method, for optimizing the beam quality in the multi-pass amplifiers. Different from the conventional target-oriented wavefront control approach, the novel method divides the aberration correction process into several steps, to optimize the wavefront quality in time during the courses of the beam's transport and amplification. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively prevent the beam quality from worsening and ensure the successful reality of multi-pass amplification, so it has obvious advantages both in efficiency and accuracy over the traditional target-oriented method.

Interferometric spherical surface testing with unknown phase shifts.

A general method is presented for spherical surface testing with unknown phase shifts based on a physical model of the interferometer cavity, which describes the phase shifts taking into account the rigid cavity motions and the radial imaging distortion of the interferometer. The captured interferograms are processed frame by frame with the regularized frequency-stabilizing method, so as to get the phase shifts between the frames. These phase shift data are subsequently fitted, and the initial estimations for the wavefront, direct current and interference contrast terms are calculated by the least-squares method.

Phase extraction from interferograms with unknown tilt phase shifts based on a regularized optical flow method.

A novel method is presented to extract phase distribution from phase-shifted interferograms with unknown tilt phase shifts. The proposed method can estimate the tilt phase shift between two temporal phase-shifted interferograms with high accuracy, by extending the regularized optical flow method with the spatial image processing and frequency estimation technology. With all the estimated tilt phase shifts, the phase component encoded in the interferograms can be extracted by the least-squares method.

Hybrid iterative phase retrieval algorithm based on fusion of intensity information in three defocused planes.

Study of phase retrieval technology is quite meaningful, for its wide applications related to many domains, such as adaptive optics, detection of laser quality, precise measurement of optical surface, and so on. Here a hybrid iterative phase retrieval algorithm is proposed, based on fusion of the intensity information in three defocused planes. First the conjugate gradient algorithm is adapted to achieve a coarse solution of phase distribution in the input plane; then the iterative angular spectrum method is applied in succession for better retrieval result.

Photon migration in the presence of a single defect: a perturbation analysis.

We present an analytical perturbation analysis for studying the sensitivity of diffusive photon flux to the addition of a small spherical defect object in multiple-scattering media such as human tissues. As a first simple application of our perturbation method, we derive analytically the photon migration path distributions and the shapes of the so-called banana regions in which the photon migration paths are concentrated. We then derive analytically the sensitivity of detected photon flux densities to the inclusion of small spherical defects in the multiple-scattering medium for both single-source and two-source configurations, at both steady-state (dc) and frequency-modulation conditions, and compare the results with Monte Carlo simulations.