Objective To investigate the value of coronary computed tomography angiography(CCTA)for the non-invasive discrimination of chronic total occlusion(CTO)and subtotal occlu-sion(SO).Methods A total of 134 elderly patients undergoing CCTA and invasive coronary angio-graphy in our hospital from January 2019 to December 2021 were enrolled,and assigned into CTO group(62 cases)and SO(72 cases)according to the results of the examinations.Occlusion length,shape of proximal stump(blunt/conical),and collateral vessels were measured as anatomical find-ings.Transluminal attenuation gradient was obtained by a post-processing software.Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to explore factors related to CTO.Re-stricted cubic splines with three knots at the 10th,50th,and 90th percentiles were used to flexibly model the association of the factors with CTO,and ROC curve was plotted to evaluate the per-formance.Results Diabetes(OR=0.423,95％CI:0.186-0.963),occlusion length(OR=1.088,95％CI:1.031-1.148)and blunt-shaped stump(OR=2.453,95％CI:1.042-5.773)were inde-pendent predictors for discriminating CTO and SO(P＜0.05,P＜0.01).ROC curve analysis showed that the AUC value of occlusion length in the discrimination was 0.718(95％CI:0.634-0.792,P=0.001).Conclusion CCTA can be used to discriminate CTO and SO in elderly patients.

Lobaria (Schreb.) Hoffm is a common foliose lichen genus found on the Korean Peninsula, yet until now, no revision study has been done on this genus. After careful examination of specimens deposited in the Korean Lichen Research Institute (KoLRI), nine distinct species of Lobaria were confirmed. Morphological characteristics such as the presence or absence of isidia, or whether or not the surface was ridged or smooth, and chemical characteristics such as the result of the medulla reaction were of significant importance in the differentiation of species. Here, we provided detailed descriptions together with a key to all the known Korean species.
Academies and Institutes ; Lichens ; Republic of Korea

Candida albicans is the most abundant fungal species in oral cavity. As a smart opportunistic pathogen, it increases the virulence by switching its forms from yeasts to hyphae and becomes the major pathogenic agent for oral candidiasis. However, the overuse of current clinical antifungals and lack of new types of drugs highlight the challenges in the antifungal treatments because of the drug resistance and side effects. Anti-virulence strategy is proved as a practical way to develop new types of anti-infective drugs. Here, seven artemisinins, including artemisinin, dihydroartemisinin, artemisinic acid, dihydroartemisinic acid, artesunate, artemether and arteether, were employed to target at the hyphal development, the most important virulence factor of C. albicans. Artemisinins failed to affect the growth, but significantly inhibited the hyphal development of C. albicans, including the clinical azole resistant isolates, and reduced their damage to oral epithelial cells, while arteether showed the strongest activities. The transcriptome suggested that arteether could affect the energy metabolism of C. albicans. Seven artemisinins were then proved to significantly inhibit the productions of ATP and cAMP, while reduced the hyphal inhibition on RAS1 overexpression strain indicating that artemisinins regulated the Ras1-cAMP-Efg1 pathway to inhibit the hyphal development. Importantly, arteether significantly inhibited the fungal burden and infections with no systemic toxicity in the murine oropharyngeal candidiasis models in vivo caused by both fluconazole sensitive and resistant strains. Our results for the first time indicated that artemisinins can be potential antifungal compounds against C. albicans infections by targeting at its hyphal development.
Animals ; Mice ; Candida albicans ; Candidiasis, Oral/drug therapy* ; Antifungal Agents/pharmacology* ; Hyphae ; Artemisinins/pharmacology*