Objective To research the protective effect of Ento-I against cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats, and to evaluate its analgesic and anticoagulating effects in mice. Methods The ischemic model was established with line embolism to block the middle cerebral artery of male rats. The 56 rats were randomly assigned into 7 groups of sham-operation, blank-matrix, normal saline, Ento-I plastic of 3 doses (6.67, 3.33, 1.67 mg/kg), and ozagrel sodium (8.3 mg/kg, ip). The effect of Ento-I plastic on anti-cerebral ischemia was measured by nervous function scores and the areas of cerebral infarction were determined by TTC staining for the calculation of cerebral infarction rates. The analgesic effect of Ento-I plastic was determined with acetic acid-induced twisting experiment. Sixty KM mice were randomly allocated into blank-matrix, aspirin, aspirin-plastic, and Ento-I plastic of 3 doses (5, 10 and 20 mg/kg), the number of mouse twisting were recorded right after intraperitoneal injection of 0.7% acetic acid solution at the time of 1 h after the last administration. Moreover, the anticoagulant activity of Ento-I plastic was tested by glass capillary method. Results The results of acetic acid-induced twisting experiment displayed that Ento-I plastic of all 3 dose groups (5, 10 and 20 mg/kg) could significantly reduce the number of body torsion and increase the inhibitory rates of twisting, compared with that of blank matrix group (the inhibitory rates of twisting for 3 dose groups were 21.79%, 48.89%, and 56.15%, respectively), with dose-response manner. According to the results of glass capillary test, the clotting time of mouse blood could be significantly prolonged by mid- (10 mg/ kg) and low-dose (5 mg/kg) of Ento-I plastic with corresponding clotting time of (155.20±54.19) s and (155.80±73.84) s, compared with normal saline group at (92.10±24.61) and blank-matrix group at (80.40±48.09, P<0.05). The experiment results of the isch emia-reperfusion injury by line embolism method in rats exhibited that Ento-I plastic in mid-dose (3.33 mg/kg) could significantly re duce the neurological scores after 24 h of reperfusion injury, from (2.33±0.52) of normal saline group to (1.00±0.00) of mid-dose group (P<0.01). The results from TTC staining revealed that the cerebral infarction rates of normal saline group and blank- matrix group were (24.89±7.24) % and (27.72±7.89)%, respectively, whereas those of 6.67 mg/kg and 3.33 mg/kg group of Ento-I plastic were (14.01±2.65) % and (14.73±4.94)%, respectively. Compared to the 2 negative-control groups, both the high- and mid-dose of Ento-I plastic could significantly reduce the cerebral infarction rates after ischemic reperfusion injury in rats (P<0.01). Conclusion Ento-I plastic demonstrates strong analgesic and anticoagulant effects, and could substantially reduce the neurological scores and reduce cerebral infarction rates for ischemia-reperfusion injured rats. These are likely to be the mechanism of action for Ento-I plastic realizing its anti-cerebral ischemia effect.

Objective: To explore the association between the consumption of chemical fertilizers and the risk of low birth weight (LBW), to provide references for prevention programs on LBW and to improve the birth outcomes. Methods: Stratified multivariate logistic regression method was used in this study involving 153 preterm LBW infants, 179 term LBW infants and 204 normal control infants that were randomly selected from the birth monitoring data between October 2007 and September 2012 in Pingding county, Shanxi province. Associations between the risk of LBW and maternal exposure to chemical fertilizers during pregnancy were identified. A normal control group was set up to compare results between preterm and term LBW groups. Results: Totally, 18 749 infants were born between 2007 and 2012, with the total incidence rates of LBW as 48.5‰, preterm LBW as 19.4‰, and term LBW as 29.1‰. Concerning the case control study on preterm LBW, after adjustment for confounding factors, the risk of preterm LBW appeared 2.51 (95%CI: 1.05-5.99) times higher in villages with annual consumption of chemical fertilizer ≥100 tons than those villages that using chemical fertilizer less than 50 tons. No significant statistical associations were found between the amounts of household chemical fertilizer consumption and the risks of preterm LBW. Regarding the case control study on term LBW, after adjustment for confounding factors, in villages with ≥100 tons annual consumption of chemical fertilizers, the risk of term LBW was 4.03 (95%CI: 1.63-9.92) times of the risk in villages where the annal use of chemical fertilizers was less than 50 tons. There was no significant association between household consumption of chemical fertilizers and the risk of term LBW. Conclusions: Maternal exposure to chemical fertilizers during pregnancy was associated with the risk of LBW. Our findings suggested that the amount of chemical fertilizer consumption in rural areas seemed also associated with the risks of other adverse pregnancy outcomes. Women should avoid the chance of exposure to chemical fertilizers during pregnancy and the consumption of chemical fertilizers should be carefully managed.
Adult ; Case-Control Studies ; Environmental Exposure/adverse effects* ; Female ; Fertilizers/adverse effects* ; Humans ; Infant ; Infant, Low Birth Weight ; Infant, Newborn ; Maternal Exposure ; Pregnancy ; Premature Birth/epidemiology* ; Random Allocation ; Risk Factors

This study aims to investigate whether displacement force on stents can accurately represents the displacement of the stent after endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) by comparing the measured stent displacement with the displacement forces calculated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). And the effect of cross-limb and parallel-limb EVAR on stent displacements is further studied. Based on our objective, in this study, ten cross-limb EVAR patients and ten parallel-limb EVAR patients in West China Hospital of Sichuan University were enrolled. Patient-specific models were first reconstructed based on the computed tomography angiography images, then the stent displacements were measured, and the displacement forces acting on the stents were calculated by CFD. Finally, the cosα value of the angle between the displacement force and the displacement vector was used to analyze the matching degree between the displacement and the displacement force. The results showed that the displacement forces on cross-limb stents and parallel-limb stents were (2.67 ± 2.14) N and (1.36 ± 0.48) N, respectively. Displacements of stent gravity center, stent displacements relative to vessel, and vessel displacements of cross-limb and parallel-limb stents were (4.43 ± 2.81) mm and (6.39 ± 2.62) mm, (0.88 ± 0.67) mm and (1.11 ± 0.71) mm, (3.55 ± 2.88) mm and (5.28 ± 2.52) mm, respectively. The mean cosα for cross-limb and parallel-limb stents were 0.02 ± 0.66 and - 0.10 ± 0.73, respectively. This study indicates that the displacement force on the stent can't accurately represent the displacement of the stent after EVAR. In addition, the cross-limb EVAR is probably safer and more stable than the parallel-limb EVAR.
Aortic Aneurysm, Abdominal/surgery* ; Blood Vessel Prosthesis ; Blood Vessel Prosthesis Implantation ; Endovascular Procedures/methods* ; Humans ; Prosthesis Design ; Retrospective Studies ; Stents ; Treatment Outcome

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) refers to a procedure to genetically analyze embryos prior to implantation, in order to prevent the occurrence of specific inherited disorders before conception and improve the outcome of high-risk pregnancy with genetic disorders. In recent years, with the advance of molecular biology techniques, more and more genetic diseases have been elucidated, and PGD has been gradually expanding its scope and applications. New technologies, such as microarray comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH), are developed to improve the accuracy of diagnosis. However, the safety of this procedure has aroused great attention. In this article, authors will review the safety of zona opening procedures, different biopsy procedures at different stages, and removal of one or two cells from cleavage-stage embryos. The reliability of genetic analysis technologies will be discussed as well.
Embryo Implantation ; Female ; Fertilization in Vitro ; methods ; Humans ; Pregnancy ; Preimplantation Diagnosis ; adverse effects ; methods ; Reproducibility of Results ; Safety

OBJECTIVETo identify genes associated with metastasis suppression and to investigate the molecular mechanism of osteosarcoma metastasis.

METHODSThe subtracted cDNA library of low metastatic human osteosarcoma cell line SOSP-9607 was constructed using suppression subtractive hybridization. Partial clones were sequenced. The acquired sequence data were aligned against the GenBank nucleotide database using Blastn to search for sequence matches. The interested clone was used to perform Northern blot and reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR) analysis on mRNA isolated from low metastatic cell line SOSP-9607 and OS-9901, high metastatic cell line SOSP-M and three pulmonic metastatic nodules of nude mice.

RESULTSA cDNA clone from low metastatic cell line SOSP-9607 subtracted cDNA library was identified as telomeric repeat binding factor 2 (TERF2) by sequence analysis and Blastn search. Northern blot and RT-PCR analysis demonstrated that TERF2 expressed highly in low metastatic cell line SOSP-9607 and OS-9901, but not in high metastatic cell line SOSP-M and three pulmonic metastatic nodules.

CONCLUSIONTERF2 may be important for suppressing metastasis of osteosarcoma.

Animals ; Base Sequence ; Blotting, Northern ; DNA-Binding Proteins ; genetics ; Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic ; Humans ; Mice ; Mice, Nude ; Molecular Sequence Data ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; genetics ; Neoplasm Transplantation ; Nucleic Acid Hybridization ; methods ; Osteosarcoma ; genetics ; pathology ; RNA, Messenger ; genetics ; metabolism ; Telomeric Repeat Binding Protein 2 ; Transplantation, Heterologous ; Tumor Cells, Cultured

To explore the effects of plasma jet (PJ) and plasma activated water (PAW) on the sterilization of Streptococcus mutans ( S. mutans) and compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two methods, so as to provide a basis for plasma treatment of dental caries and to enrich the treatment means of dental caries, an atmospheric pressure plasma excitation system was built, and the effects of PJ and PAW on the sterilization rate of S. mutans and the changes of temperature and pH during treatment were studied under different excitation voltage ( U _e ) and different excitation time ( t _e ). The results showed that in the PJ treatment, the difference in the survival rate of S. mutans between the treatment group and the control group was statistically significant ( P = 0.007, d=2.66) when U _e = 7 kV and t _e = 60 s, and complete sterilization was achieved at U _e = 8 kV and t _e = 120 s in the PJ treatment. In contrast, in the PAW treatment, the difference in the survival rate of S. mutans between the treatment group and the control group was statistically significant ( P = 0.029, d = 1.71) when U _e = 7 kV and t _e = 30 s, and complete sterilization was achieved with PAW treatment when U _e = 9 kV and t _e = 60 s. Results of the monitoring of temperature and pH showed that the maximum temperature rise during PJ and PAW treatment did not exceed 4.3 °C, while the pH value after PAW treatment would drop to a minimum of 3.02. In summary, the optimal sterilization parameters for PJ were U _e =8 kV and 90 s < t _e ≤ 120 s, while the optimal sterilization parameters for PAW were U _e = 9 kV and 30 s< t _e ≤ 60 s. Both treatment methods achieved non-thermal sterilization of S. mutans, where PJ required only a smaller U _e to achieve complete sterilization, while at pH < 4.7, PAW only required a shorter t _e to achieve complete sterilization, but its acidic environment could cause some chemical damage to the teeth. This study can provide some reference value for plasma treatment of dental caries.
Humans ; Streptococcus mutans ; Dental Caries/therapy* ; Sterilization ; Temperature ; Water

In clinical, manually scoring by technician is the major method for sleep arousal detection. This method is time-consuming and subjective. This study aimed to achieve an end-to-end sleep-arousal events detection by constructing a convolutional neural network based on multi-scale convolutional layers and self-attention mechanism, and using 1 min single-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) signals as its input. Compared with the performance of the baseline model, the results of the proposed method showed that the mean area under the precision-recall curve and area under the receiver operating characteristic were both improved by 7%. Furthermore, we also compared the effects of single modality and multi-modality on the performance of the proposed model. The results revealed the power of single-channel EEG signals in automatic sleep arousal detection. However, the simple combination of multi-modality signals may be counterproductive to the improvement of model performance. Finally, we also explored the scalability of the proposed model and transferred the model into the automated sleep staging task in the same dataset. The average accuracy of 73% also suggested the power of the proposed method in task transferring. This study provides a potential solution for the development of portable sleep monitoring and paves a way for the automatic sleep data analysis using the transfer learning method.
Sleep ; Sleep Stages ; Arousal ; Data Analysis ; Electroencephalography

This paper studies the active force characteristics of the neck muscles under the condition of rapid braking, which can provide theoretical support for reducing the neck injury of pilots when carrier-based aircraft blocks the landing. We carried out static loading and real vehicle braking experiments under rapid braking conditions, collected the active contraction force and electromyography (EMG) signals of neck muscles, and analyzed the response characteristics of neck muscle active force response. The results showed that the head and neck forward tilt time was delayed and the amplitude decreased during neck muscle pre-tightening. The duration of the neck in the extreme position decreased, and the recovery towards the seat direction was faster. The EMG signals of trapezius muscle was higher than sternocleidomastoid muscle. This suggests that pilots can reduce neck injury by pre-tightening the neck muscles during actual braking flight. In addition, we can consider the design of relevant fittings for pre-tightening the neck muscles.
Neck Muscles ; Neck ; Electromyography ; Head

Objective To explore the clinical value of fibrinogen-albumin-ratio (FAR) in adult extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) hemorrhage. Methods The clinical data of adult patients receiving ECMO in the West China Hospital from 2018 to 2020 were analyzed retrospectively. Patients were divided into a bleeding group and a non-bleeding group based on whether they experienced bleeding after ECMO. Logistic regression analysis was used to study the relationship between FAR and bleeding, as well as risk factors for death. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and area under the curve (AUC) were used to analyze the predictive ability of FAR. According to the optimal cut-off value of FAR for predicting hemorrhage, patients were divided into a high-risk group and a low-risk group, and the occurrence of bleeding was compared between the two groups. Results A total of 125 patients were enrolled in this study, including 85 males and 40 females, aged 46.00 (31.50, 55.50) years. Among them, 58 patients received veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) and 67 patients received veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VV-ECMO). There were 49 patients having bleeding, and the lactate level was higher (P=0.026), the platelet count before ECMO initiation and 24 h after ECMO initiation was lower (P=0.031, 0.020), the fibrinogen level 24 h after ECMO initiation was lower (P=0.049), and the proportion of myocarditis patients was higher (P=0.017) in the bleeding group than those of the non-bleeding group. In the subgroup analysis of ECMO mode, the higher D-Dimer, lactate level and lower FAR before and 24 h after ECMO initiation were associated with bleeding in the VA-ECMO group (P=0.017, 0.011, 0.033, 0.005). The 24 h FAR was independently correlated with bleeding (P=0.048), and AUC was 0.714. The cut-off value was 55.73. According to this optimal cut-off value, 25 patients were divided into the high-risk group (≤55.73) and 33 into the low-risk group (>55.73). There was a higher incidence of bleeding in the high-risk group compared to the low-risk group (unadjusted P=0.002; P=0.013 for multivariable adjustment). In the VV-ECMO group, the relationship between FAR and bleeding events was not significant (P>0.05). Conclusion Low 24 h FAR is an independent risk factor for bleeding in VA-ECMO patients, and the diagnostic cut-off value is 55.73.

bjective    To use machine learning technology to predict the recurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF) after radiofrequency ablation, and try to find the risk factors affecting postoperative recurrence. Methods    A total of 300 patients with valvular AF who underwent radiofrequency ablation in West China Hospital and its branch (Shangjin Hospital) from January 2017 to January 2021 were enrolled, including 129 males and 171 females with a mean age of 52.56 years. We built 5 machine learning models to predict AF recurrence, combined the 3 best performing models into a voting classifier, and made prediction again. Finally, risk factor analysis was performed using the SHApley Additive exPlanations method. Results    The voting classifier yielded a prediction accuracy rate of 75.0%, a recall rate of 61.0%, and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.79. In addition, factors such as left atrial diameter, ejection fraction, and right atrial diameter were found to have an influence on postoperative recurrence. Conclusion    Machine learning-based prediction of recurrence of valvular AF after radiofrequency ablation can provide a certain reference for the clinical diagnosis of AF, and reduce the risk to patients due to ineffective ablation. According to the risk factors found in the study, it can provide patients with more personalized treatment.