Publications by authors named "I-Chun Liu"

Bismuth subsalicylate (BSS), probiotics, rifaximin, and vaccines have been proposed as preventive modalities for patients with travelers' diarrhea (TD), but their comparative effectiveness for prevention has rarely been studied. We aimed to perform a systematic review and network meta-analysis to test whether one of these modalities is more effective than the others in reducing the incidence of TD. We searched Pubmed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Web of Science, and clinical registries from inception of the databases through 18 November 2023, without language restriction, for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the efficacy of BSS, probiotics, rifaximin, and vaccines in preventing TD.

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Licoricidin (LCD) is an activity compound of the roots of Glycyrrhiza uralensis, which has therapeutic efficacy, including anti-virus, anti-cancer, and enhanced immunity in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Herein, this study aimed to clarify the effect of LCD on cervical cancer cells. In the present study, we found that LCD significantly inhibited cell viability via inducing cell apoptosis and companies with cleaved-PARP protein expression and caspase-3/-9 activity.

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Objectives: This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the mobility of the median nerve (MN) in carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) patients compared to healthy people.

Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guideline was followed and the electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library were searched up to April 2022. All published observational studies comparing the excursion of MN between participants with and without CTS were included.

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Dysphagia is one of the most frequent sequelae of stroke. It can result in various complications such as malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, and poor rehabilitation outcomes. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been reported to improve dysphagia after a stroke; however, effective treatment protocols have not been established yet.

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This study aimed to investigate the effect of different injectate volumes on ultrasonographic parameters and the correlation to clinical outcomes under perineural dextrose injection (PDI). In this post hoc analysis of the randomized, double-blinded, three-arm trial, ultrasound-guided PDI with either 1 mL, 2 mL, and 4 mL 5% dextrose water was administered, respectively, in 14, 14, and 17 patients. Ultrasound outcomes included mobility, shear-wave elastography (SWE), and cross-sectional area (CSA) of the median nerve; clinical outcomes were Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Boston Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire (BCTQ) score.

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Post-translational modification by the small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) is an important mechanism regulating protein function. Identification of SUMO conjugation sites on substrates is a challenging task. Here we employed a proteomic method to map SUMO acceptor lysines in budding yeast proteins.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study uses metabolic flux network analysis (MFA) to investigate hydrogen production from Clostridium tyrobutyricum using glucose or lactate/acetate.
  • The results indicate that hydraulic retention time (HRT) significantly influences hydrogen production; specifically, varying HRT affects the balance of key metabolites like lactate, butyrate, and acetate.
  • The findings suggest that MFA can be an effective tool for optimizing and designing processes for fermentative hydrogen production.
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The hypothesis that policy performance affects citizens' satisfaction with public policies could be considered a well-worn topic. However, this paper shows that the extant literature has not adequately conceptualized nor addressed the relationship, which could exist between citizens' satisfaction and importance of the evaluation's indicators. The findings of most previous studies reflect elite perspectives on Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) policy evaluation, and the importance of the evaluation's indicators may not be recognized by the public.

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Background: Cohesion between sister chromatids is fundamental to ensure faithful chromosome segregation during mitosis and accurate repair of DNA damage postreplication. At the molecular level, cohesion establishment involves two defined events, a chromatin binding step and a chromatid entrapment event driven by posttranslational modifications on cohesin subunits.

Results: Here, we show that modification by the small ubiquitin-like protein (SUMO) is required for sister chromatid tethering after DNA damage.

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One of many physiological adjustments in quiescent cells is spatial regulation of specific proteins and RNA important for the entry to or exit from the stationary phase. By examining the localization of epigenetic-related proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we observed the formation of a reversible cytosolic "stationary-phase granule" (SPG) by Hos2, a nuclear histone deacetylase. In the stationary phase, hos2 mutants display reduced viability.

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This study recorded ERPs while participants engaged in a procedure that combined semantic priming and item-method directed forgetting, aiming to investigate the issues of whether intentional forgetting demands cognitive efforts and modulates the semantic processing of to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items. Participants made lexical decisions to semantically related or unrelated prime and target words. A Remember/Forget cue, presented between the prime and target, designated the prime as TBR or TBF.

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This study evaluates the microbial metabolism and energy demand in fermentative biohydrogen production using Clostridium tyrobutyricum FYa102 at different hydraulic retention times (HRT) over a period of 1-18 h. The hydrogen yield shows a positive correlation with the butyrate yield, the B/A ratio, and the Y(H2)/2(Y(HAc)+Y(HBu)) ratio, but a negative correlation with the lactate yield. A decrease in HRT, which is accompanied by an increased biomass growth, tends to decrease the B/A ratio, due presumably to a higher energy demand for microbial growth.

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Microtubule damaging agents (such as paclitaxel and nocodazole (ND)) have been used in the clinical cancer chemotherapy. However, the molecular mechanisms of these agents in the induction of anti-cancer activity are still unclear. In the present study, we demonstrated that 0.

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