Electro-acupuncture up-regulates astrocytic MCT1 expression to improve neurological deficit in middle cerebral artery occlusion rats.

Aims: Cerebral ischemia is one of the common diseases treated by electro-acupuncture (EA). Although the clinical efficacy has been widely affirmed, the mechanisms of action leading to the health benefits are not understood. In this study, the role of EA in modulating the lactate energy metabolism and lactate transportation was explored on the middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) ischemic rat model.

Automated prostate cancer detection using T2-weighted and high-b-value diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging.

Purpose: The authors propose a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for prostate cancer to aid in improving the accuracy, reproducibility, and standardization of multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Methods: The proposed system utilizes two MRI sequences [T2-weighted MRI and high-b-value (b = 2000 s/mm(2)) diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI)] and texture features based on local binary patterns. A three-stage feature selection method is employed to provide the most discriminative features.

Polymorphism of klotho G-395A and susceptibility of coronary artery disease in East-Asia population: a meta-analysis.

Objective: To investigate the association between polymorphism of Klotho G-395A and susceptibility of coronary artery disease (CAD) in East-Asia population.

Methods: A total of 6 case-control studies involving 1560 patients and 1459 controls were analyzed in the study. PubMed, Embase, CBM disc, Wanfang database were searched for published case-control studies investigating the association between Klotho G-395A and CAD that were available before Dec.

Losartan treatment for hypertensive patients with hyperuricaemia in Chinese population: a meta-analysis.

Objectives: Many studies have compared losartan with other antihypertensive agents in the management of hypertensive patients with hyperuricaemia in China. However, systematic assessment of efficacy and safety between losartan and other antihypertensive agents is still lacking. This meta-analysis sought to evaluate the available randomized controlled trials (RCTs) regarding losartan treatment for hypertensive patients with hyperuricaemia in China.

α-Synuclein, a chemoattractant, directs microglial migration via H2O2-dependent Lyn phosphorylation.

Malformed α-Synuclein (α-syn) aggregates in neurons are released into the extracellular space, activating microglia to induce chronic neuroinflammation that further enhances neuronal damage in α-synucleinopathies, such as Parkinson's disease. The mechanisms by which α-syn aggregates activate and recruit microglia remain unclear, however. Here we show that α-syn aggregates act as chemoattractants to direct microglia toward damaged neurons.

Combination Treatment With Antihypertensive Agents Enhances the Effect of Qiliqiangxin on Chronic Pressure Overload-induced Cardiac Hypertrophy and Remodeling in Male Mice.

We previously showed that Qiliqiangxin (QL) capsules could ameliorate cardiac hypertrophy and remodeling in a mouse model of pressure overload. Here, we compared the effects of QL alone with those of QL combined with the following 3 types of antihypertensive drugs on cardiac remodeling and dysfunction induced by pressure overload for 4 weeks in mice: an angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1-R) blocker (ARB), an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI), and a β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) blocker (BB). Adult male mice (C57B/L6) were subjected to either transverse aortic constriction or sham operation for 4 weeks, and the drugs (or saline) were orally administered through gastric tubes.

Qiliqiangxin inhibits angiotensin II-induced transdifferentiation of rat cardiac fibroblasts through suppressing interleukin-6.

Qiliqiangxin (QL), a traditional Chinese medicine, had long been used to treat chronic heart failure. Recent studies revealed that differentiation of cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) into myofibroblasts played an important role in cardiac remodelling and development of heart failure, however, little was known about the underlying mechanism and whether QL treatment being involved. This study aimed to investigate the effects of QL on angiotensin II (AngII)-induced CFs transdifferentiation.

A novel role of microglial NADPH oxidase in mediating extra-synaptic function of norepinephrine in regulating brain immune homeostasis.

Although the peripheral anti-inflammatory effect of norepinephrine (NE) is well documented, the mechanism by which this neurotransmitter functions as an anti-inflammatory/neuroprotective agent in the central nervous system (CNS) is unclear. This article aimed to determine the anti-inflammatory/neuroprotective effects and underlying mechanisms of NE in inflammation-based dopaminergic neurotoxicity models. In mice, NE-depleting toxin N-(2-chloroethyl)-N-ethyl-2-bromobenzylamine (DSP-4) was injected at 6 months of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced neuroinflammation.

Atlas based AAM and SVM model for fully automatic MRI prostate segmentation.

Automatic prostate segmentation in MR images is a challenging task due to inter-patient prostate shape and texture variability, and the lack of a clear prostate boundary. We propose a supervised learning framework that combines the atlas based AAM and SVM model to achieve a relatively high segmentation result of the prostate boundary. The performance of the segmentation is evaluated with cross validation on 40 MR image datasets, yielding an average segmentation accuracy near 90%.

Computer-aided detection of renal calculi from noncontrast CT images using TV-flow and MSER features.

Purpose: Renal calculi are common extracolonic incidental findings on computed tomographic colonography (CTC). This work aims to develop a fully automated computer-aided diagnosis system to accurately detect renal calculi on CTC images.

Methods: The authors developed a total variation (TV) flow method to reduce image noise within the kidneys while maintaining the characteristic appearance of renal calculi.

Computer aided-diagnosis of prostate cancer on multiparametric MRI: a technical review of current research.

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the United States. In this paper, we survey computer aided-diagnosis (CADx) systems that use multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MP-MRI) for detection and diagnosis of prostate cancer. We review and list mainstream techniques that are commonly utilized in image segmentation, registration, feature extraction, and classification.

[Effect of electroacupuncture intervention on neurological function, cerebral blood flow and cerebral cytochrome P 450 2 C 11 mRNA expression in rats with focal cerebral ischemia].

Objective: To observe the effect of electroacupuncture(EA) intervention on changes of neurological function and expression of cerebral cytochrome P 450 2 C 11 (CYP 2 0 11) mRNA in focal cerebral ischemia (FCI) rats, so as to explore its mechanism underlying improvement of ischemic cerebral vascular disease.

Methods: Wistar rats were randomly divided into normal, model, EA and EA+ 17-ODYA (17-Octadecynoic acid, an inhibitor for the metabolism of arachidonic acid by cytochrome P 450) groups. Focal cerebral ischemia rats were induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) with thread embolus.

Sequential Monte Carlo tracking of the marginal artery by multiple cue fusion and random forest regression.

Given the potential importance of marginal artery localization in automated registration in computed tomography colonography (CTC), we have devised a semi-automated method of marginal vessel detection employing sequential Monte Carlo tracking (also known as particle filtering tracking) by multiple cue fusion based on intensity, vesselness, organ detection, and minimum spanning tree information for poorly enhanced vessel segments. We then employed a random forest algorithm for intelligent cue fusion and decision making which achieved high sensitivity and robustness. After applying a vessel pruning procedure to the tracking results, we achieved statistically significantly improved precision compared to a baseline Hessian detection method (2.

A silicon-based photocathode for water reduction with an epitaxial SrTiO3 protection layer and a nanostructured catalyst.

The rapidly increasing global demand for energy combined with the environmental impact of fossil fuels has spurred the search for alternative sources of clean energy. One promising approach is to convert solar energy into hydrogen fuel using photoelectrochemical cells. However, the semiconducting photoelectrodes used in these cells typically have low efficiencies and/or stabilities.

CXCR6 deficiency attenuates pressure overload-induced monocytes migration and cardiac fibrosis through downregulating TNF-α-dependent MMP9 pathway.

An immerging role of TNF-α in collagen synthesis and cardiac fibrosis implies the significance of TNF-α production in the development of myocardial remodeling. Our previous study showed a reduction of TNF-α and attenuated cardiac remodeling in CXCR6 knockout (KO) mice after ischemia/reperfusion injury. However, the potential mechanism of TNF-α-mediated cardiac fibrosis with pressure overload has not been well elucidated.

Optimizing area under the ROC curve using semi-supervised learning.

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is a standard methodology to evaluate the performance of a binary classification system. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) is a performance metric that summarizes how well a classifier separates two classes. Traditional AUC optimization techniques are supervised learning methods that utilize only labeled data (i.

A protective role of ciglitazone in ox-LDL-induced rat microvascular endothelial cells via modulating PPARγ-dependent AMPK/eNOS pathway.

Thiazolidinediones, the antidiabetic agents such as ciglitazone, has been proved to be effective in limiting atherosclerotic events. However, the underlying mechanism remains elucidative. Ox-LDL receptor-1 (LOX-1) plays a central role in ox-LDL-mediated atherosclerosis via endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) uncoupling and nitric oxide reduction.

2D view aggregation for lymph node detection using a shallow hierarchy of linear classifiers.

Enlarged lymph nodes (LNs) can provide important information for cancer diagnosis, staging, and measuring treatment reactions, making automated detection a highly sought goal. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm representation of decomposing the LN detection problem into a set of 2D object detection subtasks on sampled CT slices, largely alleviating the curse of dimensionality issue. Our 2D detection can be effectively formulated as linear classification on a single image feature type of Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG), covering a moderate field-of-view of 45 by 45 voxels.

A new 2.5D representation for lymph node detection using random sets of deep convolutional neural network observations.

Automated Lymph Node (LN) detection is an important clinical diagnostic task but very challenging due to the low contrast of surrounding structures in Computed Tomography (CT) and to their varying sizes, poses, shapes and sparsely distributed locations. State-of-the-art studies show the performance range of 52.9% sensitivity at 3.

Mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 plays protective roles in heart failure after myocardial infarction via suppression of the cytosolic JNK/p53 pathway in mice.

Background: Increasing evidence suggests a critical role for mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) in protection against cardiac injuries; however, the downstream cytosolic actions of this enzyme are largely undefined.

Methods And Results: Proteomic analysis identified a significant downregulation of mitochondrial ALDH2 in the heart of a rat heart failure model after myocardial infarction. The mechanistic insights underlying ALDH2 action were elucidated using murine models overexpressing ALDH2 or its mutant or with the ablation of the ALDH2 gene (ALDH2 knockout) and neonatal cardiomyocytes undergoing altered expression and activity of ALDH2.

[Effect of yanghe huayan decoction on precancerosis of breast cancer, protein and mRNA expression of ki67: an experimental research].

Objective: To explore the effect of Yanghe Huayan Decoction (YHD, a representative recipe for warming yang mass dissipating) in inhibiting precancerosis of breast cancer (PBC) and on the protein and mRNA expression of ki67.

Methods: The PBC rat model was established by dimethylbenzanthracene (DMBA), and 9 weeks later rats were randomly divided into the blank control group, the model group, the YHD group, the Sanjie Huatan Decoction group (SHD), the Pingxiao Tablet group (PT), and the tamoxifen group. Rats in the model group were administered with water by gastrogavage.

PGE2 Inhibits IL-10 Production via EP2-Mediated β-Arrestin Signaling in Neuroinflammatory Condition.

Regulatory mechanisms of the expression of interleukin-10 (IL-10) in brain inflammatory conditions remain elusive. To address this issue, we used multiple primary brain cell cultures to study the expression of IL-10 in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-elicited inflammatory conditions. In neuron-glia cultures, LPS triggered well-orchestrated expression of various immune factors in the following order: tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), and lastly IL-10, and these inflammatory mediators were mainly produced from microglia.

Computer-aided detection of exophytic renal lesions on non-contrast CT images.

Renal lesions are important extracolonic findings on computed tomographic colonography (CTC). They are difficult to detect on non-contrast CTC images due to low image contrast with surrounding objects. In this paper, we developed a novel computer-aided diagnosis system to detect a subset of renal lesions, exophytic lesions, by (1) exploiting efficient belief propagation to segment kidneys, (2) establishing an intrinsic manifold diffusion on kidney surface, (3) searching for potential lesion-caused protrusions with local maximum diffusion response, and (4) exploring novel shape descriptors, including multi-scale diffusion response, with machine learning to classify exophytic renal lesions.