Publications by authors named "Liu Qicai"

Background: Understanding factors associated with antiretroviral treatment (ART) adherence is crucial for ART success among people living with HIV (PLHIV) in the "test and treat" era. Multiple psychosocial factors tend to coexist and have a syndemic effect on ART adherence. We aimed to explore factors associated with ART adherence and the syndemic effect of multiple psychosocial factors on ART adherence among PLHIV newly starting ART in Guangdong Province, China.

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Background: The incidence and mortality of lung cancer is the highest in China and the world. Brain is the most common distant metastasis site of lung cancer. Its transfer mechanism and predictive biomarkers are still unclear.

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Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury stands out among cardiovascular diseases, and current treatments are considered unsatisfactory. For cardiomyocytes (CMs) in ischemic tissues, the upregulation of Limb-bud and Heart (LBH) and αB-crystallin (CRYAB) and their subsequent downregulation in the context of cardiac fibrosis have been verified in our previous research. Here, we focused on the effects and mechanisms of activated LBH-CRYAB signaling on damaged CMs during I/R injury, and confirmed the occurrence of mitochondrial apoptosis and ferroptosis during I/R injury.

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Repeated implantation failure (RIF) is one of the most prominent problems in the field of assisted reproduction. Neu5Gc on the surface of decidual macrophages (dMΦ) leads to different activation patterns of dMΦ, which affects embryo implantation and development. Cmah (Neu5Gc-deficient) mice induced to produce anti-Neu5Gc antibodies in vivo were given a special diet rich in Neu5Gc and their fertility was monitored.

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In response to the pressing need for robust disease diagnosis from gastrointestinal tract (GIT) endoscopic images, we proposed FLATer, a fast, lightweight, and highly accurate transformer-based model. FLATer consists of a residual block, a vision transformer module, and a spatial attention block, which concurrently focuses on local features and global attention. It can leverage the capabilities of both convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and vision transformers (ViT).

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The aim of this study was to describe the effects of adropin deficiency on the distribution, phenotype and pathological phenotype of macrophages in colonic and mesenteric tissues of AdrKO (Enho) mice, so as to explore the mechanism of adropin deficiency in spontaneous and experimental colitis. In this study, RNA-seq and metabonomics were used to screen the regulatory mechanism of adropin on the phenotypic transformation of macrophages. We found that adropin levels in active UC patients were significantly lower than those in normal subjects and remission UC patients, and at the same time, a large number of proinflammatory M1-type macrophages were infiltrated in the mesenteric tissue of colonic tissues from UC and CD patients.

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Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) were one of the most commonly used drugs in daily life. The adverse effects of long-term use of PPIs have aroused widespread controversy. It was of great significance to explore the molecular mechanism of sperm abnormality caused by PPIs.

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Ischemic stroke is the most common type of cerebrovascular disease with high disability and mortality rates, which severely burdens patients, their families, and society. At present, thrombolytic therapy is mainly used for the treatment of ischemic strokes. Even though it can achieve a good effect, thrombolytic recanalization can cause reperfusion injury.

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Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute respiratory infection and a global public health event. The level of aβGPI is significantly up-regulated in COVID-19 patients. The impact of inactivated vaccination against COVID-19 on aβGPI and in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET) remains unknown amidst the universal administration of COVID-19 vaccines.

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Purpose: To explore the mechanisms by which abnormal female BMI affects oocyte quality, particularly whether it involves the alteration of gene expression patterns and how these patterns may impact clinical outcomes.

Methods: In Part 1, we performed a retrospective study to compare the clinical outcomes between the female BMI ≥25 kg/m and female BMI ≤20 kg/m groups. In Part 2, we performed the transcriptome analyses based on the GSE87201 dataset.

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Actinic keratosis (AK) is a common precancerous skin lesion with significant harm, and it is often confused with non-actinic keratoses (NAK). At present, the diagnosis of AK mainly depends on clinical experience and histopathology. Due to the high difficulty of diagnosis and easy confusion with other diseases, this article aims to develop a convolutional neural network that can efficiently, accurately, and automatically diagnose AK.

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Objective: Welding fume exposure is inevitable of welding workers and poses a severe hazard to their health since welding is a necessary industrial process. Thus, preclinical diagnostic symptoms of worker exposure are of great importance. The aim of this study was to screen serum differential metabolites of welding fume exposure based on UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS.

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Artificial oocyte activation (AOA) is considered an effective method to improve clinical outcomes in patients with some forms of male factor infertility and does not increase the risk of birth defects. However, the effects of AOA on patients with multiple morphological abnormalities of the sperm flagella (MMAF) caused by a mutation are still unknown. To explore the effects, our study analyzed a case with MMAF due to homozygous mutation that underwent testicular sperm extraction (TESE) combined with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

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α-Synuclein phosphorylation and mitochondrial calcium homeostasis are important mechanisms underlying mitochondrial dysfunction in Parkinson's disease, but the network regulating these mechanisms remains unclear. We identified the role of key phosphokinases and the pathological effects of α-synuclein phosphorylation on mitochondrial calcium influx and mitochondrial function in Parkinson's disease. The function of the key phosphokinase, calcium/calmodulin-dependent serine protein kinase, was investigated through loss- and gain-of-function experiments using a cell model of Parkinson's disease.

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Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) is a systemic autoimmune disease that is prone to respiratory and renal failures. Its major target antigens are serine protease 3 (PR3) and myeloperoxidase (MPO), but the determinants of PR3 and MPO subtypes are still unclear. Uncoupling protein-1 (UCP-1) and adropin (Adr) regulate mutually and play an important role in endothelial cell injury.

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Benzo(a)pyrene-7,8-dihydrodiol-9,10-epoxide (BPDE) leads to dysfunctions of human trophoblast cells and further induces miscarriage. In our previous study, we have found that lnc-HZ03 and miR-hz03 are upregulated in BPDE-exposed human trophoblast cells and in recurrent miscarriage tissues; and the upregulated miR-hz03 caused by lnc-HZ03 further promotes the apoptosis of human trophoblast cells and induces miscarriage. However, how lnc-HZ03 upregulates miR-hz03 is completely unknown.

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The clinical translation of therapeutic peptides is generally challenged by multiple issues involving absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion. In this study, a macrophage membrane-coated poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanodelivery system was developed to enhance the bioavailability of the somatostatin (SST) peptide, which faces the hurdles of short half-life and potential side effects in the treatment of chronic pancreatitis. Using a facile nanoprecipitation strategy, SST was loaded in the nanoparticles with an encapsulation efficiency (EE) and a loading efficiency (LE) of 73.

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Organ (stem cell) transplantation is the most effective treatment for advanced organ failure. Neu5Gc (N-hydroxyacetylneuraminic acid) is a pathogenic non-human sialic acid, which is very similar to the molecular structure of Neu5Ac (N-acetylneuraminic acid) in human body. Neu5Gc has the function of "immune disguise", which is the main obstacle to transplantation.

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The activation of cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) after myocardial infarction (MI) is essential for post-MI infarct healing, during which the regulation of transforming growth factor beta1 (TGF-1) signaling is predominant. We have demonstrated that TGF-1-mediated upregulation of LBH contributes to post-MI CF activation via modulating B-crystallin (CRYAB), after being upregulated by TGF-1. In this study, the effect of LBH-CRYAB signaling on the cardiac microenvironment via exosome communication and the corresponding mechanisms were investigated.

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Late testing and antiretroviral therapy (ART) prevailed among people living with HIV (PLHIV) and impacted the benefit of immediate ART. This study aimed to identify the benefit of the test-and-immediate-treat policy in China, the effect of immediate ART, and the influence of late testing and ART on the whole PLHIV in Guangdong Province, China. We designed two tendency analyses in aggregative form and two cohorts (surveillance and ART cohort) in individuals' perspectives based on the HIV/AIDS Comprehensive Response Information Management System.

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Trypsin is a protease-activated receptor-2 (PAR2) activator that upregulates the interleukin (IL)-17 receptor signal in the airway epithelial cells and amplifies the inflammatory response, but does not modify the growth kinetics of the metapneumovirus. How does the coronavirus spread from cell to cell is yet an enigma. The present study analyzed the possible role of trypsin in the activation of coronavirus in vitro and in vivo.

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The venoms of toxic animals are chemical pools composed of various proteins, peptides, and small organic molecules used for predation and defense, in which the peptidic toxins have been intensively pursued mining modulators targeting disease-related ion channels and receptors as valuable drug pioneers. In the present study, we uncovered the molecular diversity of peptide toxins in the venom of the spider by using a combinatory strategy of venom gland cDNA library and transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq). An amount of 991 high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were identified from 1138 generated sequences, which fall into three categories, such as the toxin-like ESTs (531, 53.

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Stem cells have the ability of self-replication and multidirectional differentiation, but the mechanism of how stem cells "maintain" this ability and how to "decide" to give up this state and differentiate into cells with specific functions is still unknown. The Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 2021 was awarded to "temperature and tactile receptor," which made the pain receptor TRPV1-calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) pathway active again. The activation and blocking technology of CGRP has been applied to many clinical diseases.

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Structural modification of natural products is the effective option to improve their pharmacological effects and drug properties. DLF is a lead compound of antitumor drug, which is a broad-spectrum, low toxic and high-efficient component isolated from Selaginella doederleinii Hieron by our research group. Here, we report the structural modification method of this component, and find that the acetylated product of C4'''- OH (C4'''-acetyl-delicaflavone, 4'''ADLF) has better inhibitory effect on the selected cancer cell lines, including, lung, liver, colon and cervical cancer cell lines.

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