Publications by authors named "Xi Xiong"

Background: High levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) are previously considered protective against cardiovascular diseases (CVD), but recent studies suggest an increased risk of adverse events at very high HDL-C levels in the general population. It remains to be elucidated such a relationship in diabetes, a condition with high cardiovascular risks. We examined the association of HDL-C levels with the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) and mortality in type 2 diabetes.

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Introduction: The detection efficiency of tea diseases and defects ensures the quality and yield of tea. However, in actual production, on the one hand, the tea plantation has high mountains and long roads, and the safety of inspection personnel cannot be guaranteed; on the other hand, the inspection personnel have factors such as lack of experience and fatigue, resulting in incomplete and slow testing results. Introducing visual inspection technology can avoid the above problems.

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  • The study investigates how non-coding RNA variations and immune responses differ in pediatric patients with bacterial versus non-bacterial sepsis, aiming to better understand their clinical features.
  • Using advanced techniques like microarrays and weighted correlation network analysis, researchers identified key long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and mRNAs that are associated with the immune response in these patients.
  • A machine learning model was created to distinguish between bacterial and non-bacterial sepsis based on specific lncRNAs and mRNAs, showing high accuracy in both training and validation sets, and correlating well with inflammatory markers.
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Background: Renal fibrosis is a key process in the progression from acute kidney injury (AKI) to chronic kidney disease (CKD), while the intricate mechanisms of renal fibrosis remain obscure. While the signal-transducing adaptor protein 2 (STAP2) was well-studied for its notable function in inflammation and immune-related disorders, its specific implication in renal fibrosis remains unclear. This study assessed the mechanism by which STAP2 could promote the progression of renal fibrosis.

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Background: Previous studies reveal inconsistent associations between serum lipid traits and the risks of fractures and osteoporosis in the general population.

Methods: This prospective cohort study analysed data from 414 302 UK Biobank participants (223 060 women and 191 242 men, aged 37-73 years) with serum lipid measurements: apolipoprotein A (Apo A), apolipoprotein B (Apo B), total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), triglycerides (TG) and lipoprotein A (Lp(a)). Multivariable Cox proportional hazard models with penalized cubic splines were used to explore potential nonlinear associations of each lipid trait with the risks of fractures and osteoporosis.

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  • Mitochondrial dysfunction plays a crucial role in the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and boosting the mitochondrial stress response (MSR) may help slow neurodegeneration, although research in this area is limited.* -
  • The study investigates how nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), a NAD-boosting agent, enhances MSR in AD models by restoring NAD levels and activating the ATF4-dependent unfolded protein response (UPR). * -
  • NMN supplementation in mouse models of AD shows promising results, including reduced mitochondrial damage, improved hippocampal function, and enhanced overall healthspan, indicating that targeting MSR could be a viable therapeutic strategy for AD.*
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  • * A systematic review and meta-analysis of 11 studies involving nearly 12,000 IS patients showed that high baseline Lp(a) levels significantly increase the risk of unfavorable outcomes, especially right after the stroke and within the first six months.
  • * The findings suggest that monitoring Lp(a) levels could be important in understanding and managing stroke recovery, though the connection is somewhat influenced by the levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C).
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Background: While dietary intervention was an important public health strategy for the prevention and intervention of metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), the effect of diet-induced inflammation on MAFLD has not been studied in detail. Therefore, we aimed to analyze the relationship between dietary inflammatory index (DII) and MAFLD.

Methods: This study included data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2017-2018.

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  • - The article discusses heat stress (HS) in mammals, which disrupts their thermal balance and negatively impacts the development of oocytes and embryos, resulting in economic losses in the livestock industry.
  • - It outlines the mechanisms by which HS affects embryonic development, including the generation of reactive oxygen species, endocrine disruption, and molecular changes.
  • - The article also explores strategies to mitigate HS effects, such as using antioxidants, enhancing mitochondrial function, gene editing, and improving the animals' rearing environment.
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Advanced liver cancer is the most common malignant tumor in the elderly, but it also occurs in young people in areas where hepatitis B virus is prevalent. The aim of the present study was to assess the efficacy of systemic antitumor therapy in young patients with advanced liver cancer and investigate the influencing factors. The baseline demographic and clinical data of 38 young patients (≤35 years old) with liver cancer were collected as group A and that of 79 elderly patients (≥55 years old) with liver cancer were collected as group B.

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Hard-label black-box textual adversarial attacks present a highly challenging task due to the discrete and non-differentiable nature of text data and the lack of direct access to the model's predictions. Research in this issue is still in its early stages, and the performance and efficiency of existing methods has potential for improvement. For instance, exchange-based and gradient-based attacks may become trapped in local optima and require excessive queries, hindering the generation of adversarial examples with high semantic similarity and low perturbation under limited query conditions.

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Kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) is the most common histological type of renal cancer, enhancer RNA plays a significant role in tumor growth, however, it has been less studied in renal cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of eRNA AC003092.1 in KIRC.

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Farnesoid X receptor (FXR) plays critical regulatory roles in cardiovascular physiology/pathology. However, the role of FXR agonist obeticholic acid (OCA) in sepsis-associated myocardial injury and underlying mechanisms remain unclear. C57BL/6J mice are treated with OCA before lipopolysaccharide (LPS) administration.

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Objective: The evidence of thyroid dysfunction in the post-acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection is limited. This study aimed to evaluate the risk of incident thyroid dysfunction in the post-acute phase of COVID-19.

Methods: This retrospective, propensity-score matched, population-based study included COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 individuals between January 2020 and March 2022, identified from the electronic medical records of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority.

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The Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) is a high-valued economic farming species. With the development of high-throughput sequencing technology, cumulative large-scale transcriptomic studies have been revealing molecular landscape of various biological conditions including genetic selection, breeding, evolution, disease landscape, etc. However, no single experiment or databases allow thorough investigations of transcriptomic dynamics for these progressions.

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Background: Chronic liver disease (CLD) was associated with adverse clinical outcomes among people with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.

Aim: To determine the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the incidence and treatment strategy of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) among patients with CLD.

Methods: A retrospective, territory-wide cohort of CLD patients was identified from an electronic health database in Hong Kong.

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Population-based epidemiological studies on post-acute phase coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19)-related fractures in older adults are lacking. This study aims to examine the risk of incident major osteoporotic fractures following SARS-CoV-2 infection among individuals aged ≥50, compared to individuals without COVID-19. It was a retrospective, propensity-score matched, population-based cohort study of COVID-19 patients and non-COVID individuals identified from the electronic database of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority from January 2020 to March 2022.

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Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a prevalent chronic microvascular complication of diabetes and the leading cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Understanding the progressive etiology of DN is critical for the development of effective health policies and interventions. Recent research indicated that polystyrene microplastics (PS-MPs) contaminate our diets and accumulate in various organs, including the liver, kidneys, and muscles.

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The widespread presence of microplastics (MPs) in the environment poses a significant threat to biological survival and human health. However, our understanding of the toxic effects of MPs on the kidneys remains limited. This study aimed to investigate the underlying mechanism of the toxic effects of MPs on the kidneys using an ischemia-reperfusion (IR) mouse model.

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Background: Despite extensive work to identify diagnostic plasma markers for Parkinson's disease (PD), there are still no accepted and validated surrogate biomarkers. Mitophagy-associated proteins (MAPs), including PTEN-induced putative kinase 1 (PINK1), Parkin, phosphoglycerate mutase 5 (PGAM5), BCL2 interacting protein 3 (BNIP3), and phosphorylated-TBK1 (p-TBK1), are, to our best knowledge, not well studied as a panel of biomarkers of neurodegeneration in PD.

Methods: The study population comprised 116 age-matched controls (HC), 179 PD patients, alongside and 90 PD syndromes (PDs) divided between two cohorts: (i) the modeling cohort (cohort 1), including 150 PD, 97 HC, and 80 PDs; and (ii) the validated cohort (cohort 2), including 29 PD, 19 HC, and 10 PDs.

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Nanoplastics (NPs) and Microplastics (MPs) pollution has become a severe threat to the planet and is a growing concern. However, their effects on male reproductive toxicity remain poorly understood. In this study, a series of morphological analyses were completed to explore the influence of NPs and MPs exposure on the testis in mice.

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Background: Immunotherapy, particularly the utilization of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), assumes a pivotal role in the comprehensive management of advanced lung cancer. There has been substantial deliberation regarding the appropriateness of extending ICIs treatment beyond the point of disease progression. This study delves into the potential benefits of sustained utilization of ICIs subsequent to disease progression in patients.

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Background: Cartilage defects remain a challenge in diseases such as osteoarthritis (OA) and fractures. Scientists have explored the use of hydrogels in conjunction with stem cell technology as a tissue engineering method to treat cartilage defects in joints. In recent years, research into hydrogels containing stem cell technology for cartilage repair has mainly focused on two categories: stem cell-loaded hydrogels and endogenous stem cell recruiting hydrogels.

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Background: The risk of incident diabetes following Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination remains to be elucidated. Also, it is unclear whether the risk of incident diabetes after Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is modified by vaccination status or differs by SARS-CoV-2 variants. We evaluated the incidence of diabetes following mRNA (BNT162b2), inactivated (CoronaVac) COVID-19 vaccines, and after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the effectiveness of various ATN (Aβ, tau, neurodegeneration) biomarkers in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease and predicting cognitive decline.
  • Using data from 2,340 participants, researchers found that CSF-A (Aβ in cerebrospinal fluid), neuroimaging-T (tau neuroimaging), and neuroimaging-N (neurodegeneration neuroimaging) ranked highest for accurate diagnosis.
  • The findings reveal significant differences in how plasma, CSF, and neuroimaging biomarkers function within the ATN framework, with neuroimaging-T showing a strong correlation with cognitive performance and the fastest decline seen in CSF-N positive individuals.
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