Publications by authors named "Qingfeng Liang"

Article Synopsis
  • - Chlamydia trachomatis infections are on the rise, with an additional 9 million cases annually, and can lead to adult inclusive conjunctivitis (AIC), which often goes underdiagnosed due to its nonspecific symptoms.
  • - Researchers developed six C. trachomatis culture cell lines, particularly the MA104 N*V line, which showed reduced levels of key immune response proteins and the highest bacterial growth post-infection, making it suitable for further study.
  • - In a study with 20 AIC patients, 7 tested positive for C. trachomatis, and the researchers successfully isolated the pathogen, identifying various serovars, which can enhance future diagnostics, treatments, and vaccine development
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Article Synopsis
  • Microbial keratitis (MK) is a major cause of blindness worldwide, and this study assessed the costs incurred by 602 MK patients treated at a Beijing hospital from 2021 to 2023.* -
  • The average treatment cost was approximately USD 1646.8, with the highest expenses reported for Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) patients, particularly in ophthalmic exams and lab tests.* -
  • The study found that treatment costs significantly increased with MK severity and were notably higher for patients who delayed seeking care, emphasizing the need for prompt diagnosis and treatment.*
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During outdoor work in April 2022, a 48-year-old man was stabbed by a tree branch and underwent intraocular foreign body extraction and repair of the scleral wound with sutures and amniotic membrane graft at a local hospital. Steroid therapy with prednisone was prescribed after a diagnosis of uveitis. Vitrectomy was performed in June 2023; a fungal culture was positive, and ITS sequencing identified the organism as Paradictyoarthrinium diffractum.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates Nocardia keratitis, a serious eye infection, by analyzing the virulence and antimicrobial resistance genes of Nocardia strains through whole genome sequencing.
  • Researchers sequenced 141 Nocardia genomes, identifying around 220 virulence genes and categorizing strains into groups based on their growth characteristics and clinical impact on mouse models.
  • Findings suggest that the mce gene family plays a key role in pathogenesis, with certain strains (group C) showing higher virulence and antibiotic resistance, indicating potential implications for treatment strategies.
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Purpose: Bacterial keratitis (BK) is a serious ocular infection that can cause severe inflammation and corneal scarring, leading to vision loss. In this study, we aimed to investigate the involvement of ferroptosis in the pathogenesis of BK.

Methods: Transcriptome analysis was performed to evaluate ferroptosis-related gene expression in human BK corneas.

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Purpose: To investigate the relationship between Acanthamoeba genotypes, clinical manifestations, and outcomes in Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) patients.

Methods: This retrospective study included 159 culture-confirmed AK patients. Patients' data were collected, including demographics, initial diagnosis, treatments, and clinical features.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates corneal nerve fiber damage in patients with optic neuritis (ON), a condition that can indicate more severe diseases like neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (NMOSD) or multiple sclerosis (MS).
  • Researchers used corneal confocal microscopy (IVCM) to analyze nerve fiber counts in 48 ON patients categorized by specific antibodies and compared them to 35 healthy controls.
  • Results showed that patients with ON had significant nerve fiber loss, particularly in the affected eye, with reductions linked to poorer visual acuity, suggesting that ON not only impacts the central nervous system but also the peripheral nerves.
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Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Huang-Qi-Ge-Gen decoction (HGD) is a traditional Chinese medicine prescription that has been used for centuries to treat "Xiaoke" (the name of diabetes mellitus in ancient China). However, the ameliorating effects of HGD on diabetic liver injury (DLI) and its mechanisms are not yet fully understood.

Aim Of The Study: To elucidate the ameliorative effect of HGD on DLI and explore its material basis and potential hepatoprotective mechanism.

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Importance: There is growing interest in expanding integrated models, in which 1 insurer manages Medicare and Medicaid spending for dually eligible individuals. Fully integrated dual-eligible special needs plans (FIDE-SNPs) are one of the largest integrated models, but evidence about their performance is limited.

Objective: To evaluate changes in care associated with integrating Medicare and Medicaid coverage in a FIDE-SNP in Pennsylvania.

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Purpose: The limbal niche supports the self-renewal of limbal epithelial stem cells (LESCs). The corneal stromal stem cell (CSSC) is an important component in the niche that regulates the LESC phenotype. However, the intercellular communication between LESCs and CSSCs has yet to be elucidated.

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Purpose: Increase practitioners' Motivational Interviewing (MI) skill set to develop intrinsic motivation and behavior change competencies.

Design: Pilot comparing intervention group with waitlist-control group.

Setting: Health Plan in northeast of U.

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Diabetic encephalopathy (DE) is a serious complication of diabetes, which affects patients' quality of life. We aimed to explore HLJDD in the treatment of DE by LC/MS and bioinformatics. UPLC-Q Exactive-Orbitrap MS was employed to clarify the compounds.

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Purpose: This study aimed to investigate corneal limbus changes in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) using in vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM) and explore the correlation between their ocular manifestations and systemic status.

Methods: Fifty-five patients with type 2 DM and 20 age-matched controls were included. The following IVCM parameters were compared between the 2 groups: palisades of Vogt (POV), corneal epithelial thickness (CET), basal cell density (BCD), subbasal nerve plexus, and dendritic cell density.

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Objectives: To summarize the clinical manifestations, microbiological profile, treatment, and prognosis of corneal infections after different keratorefractive surgery.

Methods: To obtain relevant studies, English-language databases, including PubMed, Ovid Embase, Web of Science, and CLNAHL, were searched from January 1979 to March 2022. The fundamentals of the literature, clinical characteristics, pathogens, and treatments were retrieved for each included article.

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Diabetic cognitive impairment (DCI) is a serious neurodegenerative disorder caused by diabetes, with chronic inflammation being a crucial factor in its pathogenesis. Pterostilbene is a well-known natural stilbene derivative that has excellent anti-inflammatory activity, suggesting its potential medicinal advantages for treating DCI. Therefore, this study is to explore the beneficial effects of pterostilbene for improving cognitive dysfunction in DCI mice.

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Acanthamoeba keratitis is a rare parasitic infection of the cornea that can lead to permanent blindness if not diagnosed and treated promptly. We collected data on the incidences of Acanthamoeba keratitis from 20 countries and calculated an annual incidence of 23,561 cases, with the lowest rates in Tunisia and Belgium, and the highest in India. We analyzed 3755 Acanthamoeba sequences from the GenBank database across Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania and genotyped them into T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T10, T11, T12, and T15.

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Purpose: To investigate the efficacy and mechanisms of human umbilical cord-derived MSC-derived extracellular vesicles (hucMSC-EVs) in a mouse model of desiccation-induced dry eye disease (DED).

Methods: hucMSC-EVs were enriched by ultracentrifugation. The DED model was induced by desiccating environment combined with scopolamine administration.

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Article Synopsis
  • Fungal keratitis (FK) is a severe eye infection that activates the immune system, which can both fight the fungi and cause damage to the cornea, affecting the infection's severity and outcome.
  • Researchers studied FK in mice, analyzing changes in immune responses over time using various methods including gene expression analysis and immune cell profiling.
  • The study found that FK triggers distinct phases of immune response, with specific immune cells showing different patterns of activity, highlighting the role of PANoptosis in FK, which could lead to new treatment approaches targeting this pathway.
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keratitis (AK) is a blinding corneal infection caused by the protozoan . The long-term course of AK suggests the host immunity could not kill rapidly. The immune status is still unclear in the late stage of AK.

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Horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is a plant-derived glycoprotein that can be developed as a food additive to cross-link proteins or biopolymers. Although has advantages in the production of food-grade HRP, the low expressional level and inefficient secretion hindered its application values. After comparing the effects of constitutive and inducible expression on cell growth, the strength of HRP expression was roughly tuned by replacing core regions of the promoter in the -knockout strain and further finely tuned by terminator screening.

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Background: Fungal keratitis (FK) is a leading cause of corneal blindness in developing countries due to poor clinical recognition and laboratory identification. Here, we aimed to identify the distinct clinical signature of FK and develop a diagnostic model to differentiate FK from other types of infectious keratitis.

Methods: We reviewed the electronic health records (EHRs) of all patients with suspected infectious keratitis in Beijing Tongren Hospital from January 2011 to December 2021.

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Purpose: To examine whether corneal epithelial dendritic cells (CEDC) could serve as an indicator to distinguish obstructive meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) with or without ocular surface inflammation (OSI).

Methods: We performed a case-control study on patients with diagnosed obstructive MGD between August 2017 and November 2019.

Results: 30 MGD cases and 25 healthy controls were recruited.

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Objectives: To analyze the epidemiologic features, culture positivity, the fungal spectrum of different sites of ocular infection in North China over 20 years from 2001 to 2020.

Methods: 11, 635 patients suspected of ocular fungal infection were reviewed. The demographic profile, fungal positive culture rate among different sites, the distribution, and trends of main pathogens among cornea and intraocular fluid were analyzed.

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Background: Infectious keratitis (IK) is an ocular emergency caused by a variety of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites. Culture-based methods were the gold standard for diagnosing IK, but difficult biopsy, delaying report, and low positive rate limited their clinical application.

Objectives: This study aims to construct a deep-learning-based auxiliary diagnostic model for early IK diagnosis.

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Objective: To evaluate the clinical features and inflammatory cytokines of dry eye disease (DED) in patients with schizophrenia.

Methods: This is a case-control study. The modified self-rating depression scale (M-SDS) and the ocular surface disease index (OSDI) were used to evaluate the symptoms of depression and DED, respectively.

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