In recent years, China has been facing the dual challenges of declining fertility rates and births, with male reproductive health issues, especially the decline in semen quality, identified as a pivotal contributor to this phenomenon. Meanwhile, accumulating evidence indicates that air pollutants, an increasingly severe environmental problem, can damage semen quality not only directly through their biological toxicity but also indirectly by disrupting the composition of microbial communities in the gut and semen, thereby dysregulating immune function, endocrine homeostasis, and oxidative stress responses. The gut microbiota and semen microbiota, as important components of the human microecosystem, play crucial roles in maintaining reproductive health. This article comprehensively reviewed the research progress on the potential effects of air pollutants (particulate matter and gaseous pollutants), gut microbiota, and semen microbiota on semen quality. Specifically, it elucidated the mechanisms of interaction between these factors and explored how they affect male fertility.

Objective:To explore the genetic etiology of pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) mortality cases and summarize their clinical characteristics.Methods:This was a retrospective cohort study. The study population consisted of 234 children who died within 7 d after admitted to the PICU of Children′s Hospital of Fudan University from January 2017 to December 2021. The clinical diagnoses, laboratory test results, and genetic testing results were collected. These patients were divided into the pathogenic gene variation positive (PGVP) group and the pathogenic gene variation negative (PGVN) group according to the results of genetic testing. The Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson′s chi-square test or Fisher′s exact probability method were used to compare the clinical characteristics between the groups. Results:A total of 234 cases were enrolled, including 139 (59.4%) males and 95 (40.6%) females. The age at death was 1.0 (0.4, 3.7) years old and the length of PICU stay was 16 (6, 33) days. There were 62 cases (26.5%) PGVP, and the mutated pathogenic genes included immune genes (23 cases (37.1%)), metabolic genes (11 cases (17.7%)), neuromuscular genes (11 cases (17.7%)), cardiovascular genes (4 cases (6.5%)), and genes of other systems (13 cases (21.0%)). The age at death in PGVP cases was significantly lower than in PGVN cases (0.6 (0.3, 1.4) vs. 1.3(0.5, 4.3) years old, Z=3.85, P<0.001). Compared with the PGVN group, the PGVP group had a higher incidence of family history and chronic complex conditions (CCC) than the PGVN group (6.5% (4/62) vs. 0.6% (1/172) and 93.5% (58/62) vs. 76.2% (131/172), χ2=8.87, P=0.018 and 0.003, respectively). Children in the PGVP group were admitted with higher incidence of severe infection, decreased consciousness or coma, moderate-to-severe anemia, thrombocytopenia, protracted diarrhea, and abnormalities in muscle strength or tone than those in the PGVN group (74.2%(46/62) vs. 45.9%(79/172), 50.0%(31/62) vs. 35.5%(61/172), 32.3%(20/62) vs. 18.0%(31/172), 21.0%(13/62) vs. 10.5%(18/172), 25.8%(16/62) vs. 4.1%(7/172), 16.1%(10/62) vs. 5.2%(9/172), χ2=14.63, 4.04, 5.41, 4.37, 24.30, 7.25, all P<0.05). Pathogenic genes that occurred more than twice included IL2RG (5 cases), SMN1 (4 cases), and SH2D1A (3 cases, including 2 single gene varients and 1 copy number varient). Conclusions:Among the deceased cases in the PICU, the main genetic causes are immune-related, metabolic, and neuromuscular genetic disorders. Critically ill children with a family history, CCC, and early features such as severe infections, decreased consciousness or coma, moderate to severe anemia, thrombocytopenia, protracted diarrhea, or abnormalities in muscle strength or tone should be closely monitored and undergo early genetic testing.

As a potential vectored vaccine,Newcastle disease virus(NDV)has been subject to various studies for vaccine development,while relatively little research has outlined the immunomodulatory effect of the virus in antigen presentation.To elucidate the key inhibitory factor in regulating the interaction of infected dendritic cells(DCs)and T cells,DCs were pretreated with the NDV vaccine strain LaSota as an inhibitor and stimulated with lipopolysaccharide(LPS)for further detection by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA),flow cytometry,immunoblotting,and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction(qRT-PCR).The results revealed that NDV infection resulted in the inhibition of interleukin(IL)-12p40 in DCs through a p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase(MAPK)-dependent manner,thus inhibiting the synthesis of IL-12p70,leading to the reduction in T cell proliferation and the secretion of interferon-γ(IFN-γ),tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α),and IL-6 induced by DCs.Consequently,downregulated cytokines accelerated the infection and viral transmission from DCs to T cells.Furthermore,several other strains of NDV also exhibited inhibitory activity.The current study reveals that NDV can modulate the intensity of the innate?adaptive immune cell crosstalk critically toward viral invasion improvement,highlighting a novel mechanism of virus-induced immunosuppression and providing new perspectives on the improvement of NDV-vectored vaccine.

The E protein of dengue virus type Ⅱ was presented on ferritin of Helicobacter pylori to construct a novel dengue nanoparticle vaccine candidate,and the immunological indexes of the vac-cine were evaluated,aiming to provide new ideas for the development of dengue vaccine.The re-combinant plasmid of E-Ferritin was optimized and synthesized,and then transfected into HEK-293F cells.The recombinant protein was expressed,identified,purified and analyzed.Mice were im-munized with E-Ferritin nanoparticle vaccine by intramuscular injection on the hind limbs on the day 0,14 and 28.ELISA,neutralization test,flow cytometry and lymphocyte proliferation test were used to detect the levels of specific antibodies,neutralizing antibodies,CD3+,CD4+and CD8+T lymphocytes in spleen cells and the proliferation of spleen lymphocytes after specific stimulation.The target protein with a size of about 69 kDa was expressed in the cells with a single band.The purified protein concentration was 0.407 g/L,and the purity was 82.32％.The results from transmission electron microscopy showed that E-Ferritin protein could be recombined into a particle structure with a particle size of about 50 nm.The results of mouse immune experiments showed that E-Ferritin protein had good immunogenicity.The average specific antibody titer of E-ferritin protein in serum was 1∶92 160 after immunization 42 d.The main subclass of antibody was IgGl.The results of flow cytometry showed that E-Ferritin as an immunogen could induce higher levels of CD4+and CD8+T lymphocyte immune response.In lymphocyte proliferation test,the level of specific stimulation in the vaccine group was significantly higher than that in the non-specific stimulation group.In conclusion,the dengue virus envelope protein ferritin nanoparticle vaccine constructed in this study has good immunogenicity,which can provide reference for the de-velopment of new dengue vaccine candidates.

Objective    To explore the safety and effectiveness of different interventional approaches for the treatment of patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) in children. Methods    The children (≤7 years) who underwent interventional treatment for PDA from 2019 to 2020 in our hospital were retrospectively included. The patients were divided into 3 groups according to the procedures: a conventional arteriovenous approach group, a simple venous approach group, and a retrograde femoral artery approach group. The clinical efficacy of the patients was compared. Results     A total of 220 patients were included. There were 78 males and 142 females, with an average age of 3.21±1.73 years, weight of 14.99±5.35 kg, and height of 96.19±15.77 cm. The average diameter of the PDA was 3.35±1.34 mm. A total of 85 patients received a conventional arteriovenous approach, 104 patients received a simple venous approach, and 31 patients received a retrograde femoral artery approach. The diameter of PDA in the retrograde femoral artery group was smaller than that in the other two groups (3.44±1.43 mm vs. 1.99±0.55 mm; 3.69±1.17 mm vs. 1.99±0.55 mm, P<0.001); the contrast medium usage [40 (30, 50) mL vs. 20 (20, 30) mL; 35 (25, 50) mL vs. 20 (20, 30) mL, P≤0.001] and operation time [32 (26, 44) min vs. 25 (23, 30) min; 29 (25, 38) min vs. 25 (23, 30) min, P<0.05] in the simple venous approach group were significantly less or shorter than those in the other two groups; the length of hospital stay of the conventional arteriovenous group was longer than that in the other two groups [3 (3, 5) d vs. 4 (3, 6) d; 4 (3, 5) d vs. 4 (3, 6) d, P<0.05]. There was no significant difference in postoperative complications. Conclusion    It is safe and effective to close PDA through simple venous approach. The retrograde femoral artery approach has the advantage of simplifying the surgical procedure for PDA with small diameters.

Objective:To explore the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in pregnant women with abnormal fetal induced labor and their spouses.Methods:From August 2020 to October 2021, 80 pregnant women with abnormal fetal labor admitted to the Second Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University were selected as study subjects by convenient sampling. The control group was treated with routine nursing, and the observation group was treated with MBSR. The scores of Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) , Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA) and Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale Ⅰ-Chinese Version (FACES Ⅰ-CV) before and after intervention were compared between the two groups.Results:There were no significant differences in HAMD and HAMA scores between the two groups before intervention ( P>0.05) . After intervention, the scores of HAMD and HAMA of pregnant women and their spouses in the observation group were significantly lower than those in the control group, with statistically significant differences ( P<0.05) . There was no statistically significant difference in FACESⅠ-CV score between the two groups before intervention ( P>0.05) . After intervention, the score of FACESⅠ-CV in the observation group was higher than that in the control group, with a statistically significant difference ( P<0.05) . Conclusions:MBSR can effectively reduce the anxiety and depression of pregnant women with abnormal fetal induced labor and their spouses, and can also improve the family cohesion and adaptability of pregnant women.

Electrocardiogram (ECG) can visually reflect the physiological electrical activity of human heart, which is important in the field of arrhythmia detection and classification. To address the negative effect of label imbalance in ECG data on arrhythmia classification, this paper proposes a nested long short-term memory network (NLSTM) model for unbalanced ECG signal classification. The NLSTM is built to learn and memorize the temporal characteristics in complex signals, and the focal loss function is used to reduce the weights of easily identifiable samples. Then the residual attention mechanism is used to modify the assigned weights according to the importance of sample characteristic to solve the sample imbalance problem. Then the synthetic minority over-sampling technique is used to perform a simple manual oversampling process on the Massachusetts institute of technology and Beth Israel hospital arrhythmia (MIT-BIH-AR) database to further increase the classification accuracy of the model. Finally, the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database is applied to experimentally verify the above algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively solve the issues of imbalanced samples and unremarkable features in ECG signals, and the overall accuracy of the model reaches 98.34%. It also significantly improves the recognition and classification of minority samples and has provided a new feasible method for ECG-assisted diagnosis, which has practical application significance.
Algorithms ; Arrhythmias, Cardiac/diagnosis* ; Electrocardiography ; Humans ; Memory, Short-Term ; Neural Networks, Computer ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted

Objective:To explore the feasibility of three-dimensional CT axial sequence assisted volumetric measurement (CTAS) in evaluating atrial septal defect (ASD).Methods:The patients with single secundum ASD who successfully underwent interventional therapy in Fuwai Hospital from January 2016 to December 2019 were retrospectively collected. The patients underwent coronary CT angiography (CTA) before and on the second day after closures, and DSA examinations during operation. A total of 52 cases met the inclusion conditions, among them, there were 37 patients with large defects which had deficient inferior rims ≤3 mm, and 15 patients with severe pulmonary arterial hypertension that occluded with fenestrated ASD occluder. The CT data of patients before and after operation were reconstructed by CTAS. Then the anatomical structure of ASD before the operation was evaluated, including the long diameter and short diameter of ASD, and the CT three-dimensional volume diameter of ASD was calculated by using the equivalent circle conversion formula of ellipse. The waist diameter of occluder and rims of the ASD were measured after occlusion on postoperative CT three-dimensional volume reconstruction images. Meanwhile, the deployed occluder waist dimension was measured in DSA examination during the operation by simulating the balloon measurement of ASD. Lastly, paired t-test and consistency analysis were carried out among the values of parameters. Results:Before operation, the equivalent circle diameter of ASD was (32.3±5.4) mm measured by CTAS. After ASD occlusion, the size of the waist dimension measured by DSA and CTAS were (32.5±4.9) mm and (32.6±4.9) mm. There were no significant differences between them ( P>0.05). There were also no significant differences for each rims of the ASD pre and post operation on CTAS except for the inferior rims and the total length of atrial septum in superior-inferior direction ( P>0.05). Conclusion:As an alternative to balloon sizing, CTAS can be used as a reference standard to conduct ASD interventional treatment.

Objective:To observe the clinical efficacy of oral glucocorticoids in the treatment of acute non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION).Methods:A prospective clinical study. From December 2017 to June 2020, 40 eyes of 40 patients with acute NAION who were diagnosed in Department of Ophthalmology of Tengzhou Central People's Hospital were included in the study. All the affected eyes underwent best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) examination of optic disc; 35 eyes (BCVA≥0.1) underwent visual field examination at the same time. The BCVA examination was carried out using the international standard decimal visual acuity chart, which was converted into the logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) visual acuity during statistics. The static visual field inspection was performed with Humphrey automatic perimeter to obtain the average mean deviation (MD) value. The thickness of peripapillary retinal nerve fire layer (pRNFL) around the optic disc of the affected eye was measured with an OCT instrument. According to the wishes of patients, they were divided into hormone treatment group and control group. All were given vitamin B1 and methylcobalamin orally; the hormone treatment group was given oral prednisone acetate treatment, 60 mg/d (regardless of body weight); after 2 weeks, the dose was reduced by 5 mg every 5 days, and the dose was reduced to 40 mg and maintained until optic disc edema subsides; thereafter, the dose was quickly reduced until the drug was stopped. Three and 6 months after treatment, the same equipment and methods were used for related examinations before treatment to observe the thickness changes of BCVA, MD, and pRNFL. The thickness of BCVA, MD, and pRNFL between the two groups was compared by Mann-Whitney U test. The thickness of BCVA, MD, and pRNFL before and after treatment within the group was compared by rank analysis of variance. Results:Among 40 eyes of 40 cases, 21 eyes were in the hormone treatment group, and 19 eyes were in the control group. There were differences in age, sex composition, course of disease, associated systemic risk factors, BCVA, MD, and pRNFL thickness between the two groups. There was no statistical significance ( P>0.05). At 3 and 6 months after treatment, the average logMAR BCVA of the eyes of the hormone treatment group and the control group were 0.26±0.32, 0.26±0.34, 0.28±0.30, 0.25±0.32, respectively. The visual field MD were -15.52±6.87, -15.55±6.04 dB and -14.82±7.48, -15.18±6.40 dB; pRNFL thickness was 70.38±10.22, 73.79±11.82 μm and 65.67±10.07, 69.26±10.85 μm. LogMAR BCVA ( Z=-0.014, -0.315; P=1.000, 0.768), visual field MD ( Z=-0.041, -0.068; P=0.979, 0.957), pRNFL thickness ( Z= -0.965, -1.112; P=0.347, 0.270), the difference was not statistically significant. Conclusion:Compared with the control group, oral glucocorticoid treatment of acute NAION fail to improve the visual function and morphological prognosis during the 6-month follow-up period.

The automatic detection of arrhythmia is of great significance for the early prevention and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. Traditional arrhythmia diagnosis is limited by expert knowledge and complex algorithms, and lacks multi-dimensional feature representation capabilities, which is not suitable for wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring equipment. This study proposed a feature extraction method based on autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model fitting. Different types of heartbeats were used as model inputs, and the characteristic of fast and smooth signal was used to select the appropriate order for the arrhythmia signal to perform coefficient fitting, and complete the ECG feature extraction. The feature vectors were input to the support vector machine (SVM) classifier and K-nearest neighbor classifier (KNN) for automatic ECG classification. MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and MIT-BIH atrial fibrillation database were used to verify in the experiment. The experimental results showed that the feature engineering composed of the fitting coefficients of the ARMA model combined with the SVM classifier obtained a recall rate of 98.2% and a precision rate of 98.4%, and the
Algorithms ; Atrial Fibrillation ; Electrocardiography ; Heart Rate ; Humans ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Support Vector Machine