Transporters are traditionally considered to transport small molecules rather than large-sized nanoparticles due to their small pores. In this study, we demonstrate that the upregulated intestinal transporter (PCFT), which reaches a maximum of 12.3-fold expression in the intestinal epithelial cells of diabetic rats, mediates the uptake of the folic acid-grafted nanoparticles (FNP). Specifically, the upregulated PCFT could exert its function to mediate the endocytosis of FNP and efficiently stimulate the traverse of FNP across enterocytes by the lysosome-evading pathway, Golgi-targeting pathway and basolateral exocytosis, featuring a high oral insulin bioavailability of 14.4% in the diabetic rats. Conversely, in cells with relatively low PCFT expression, the positive surface charge contributes to the cellular uptake of FNP, and FNP are mainly degraded in the lysosomes. Overall, we emphasize that the upregulated intestinal transporters could direct the uptake of ligand-modified nanoparticles by mediating the endocytosis and intracellular trafficking of ligand-modified nanoparticles via the transporter-mediated pathway. This study may also theoretically provide insightful guidelines for the rational design of transporter-targeted nanoparticles to achieve efficient drug delivery in diverse diseases.

Neuronal intranuclear inclusion disease (NIID) is a slowly progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by eosinophilic hyaline intranuclear inclusions in the central and peripheral nervous system, and also in the visceral organs. Although in recent years skin biopsy is useful for the antemortem diagnosis of this disease, it is often misdiagnosed due to its highly variable clinical manifestations. A case of NIID is reported here. The patient had a long course of disease, mainly presenting as dysfunction of autonomic nervous system. No significant cognitive impairment was found. Thus, a new idea is provided for the diagnosis of this disease.

The previous investigation has proved that their existed pharmacokinetic difference between the different crystal forms of the polymorphic drugs after oral administration. However, no systemic investigations have been made on the change of this pharmacokinetic difference, resulted either from the physiological or from the pathological factors. In this paper, we used polymorphic nimodipine (Nim) as a model drug and investigated the effect of age difference (2- and 9-month old) on the pharmacokinetics after oral delivery in rats. As the results shown, for L-form of Nim (L-Nim), the AUCin 2-month-old rats was 343.68±47.15 ng·h/mL, which is 23.36% higher than that in 9-month-old rats. For H-form of Nim (H-Nim), the AUCin 2-month-old rats was 140.91±19.47 ng·h/mL, which is 54.64% higher than that in 9-month-old rats. The AUCratio between H-Nim and L-Nim was 2.44 in 2-month-old rats and 3.06 in 9-month-old rats. Since age difference could result in unparallelled change of the absorption and bioavailability of the polymorphic drugs, the results in this experiment are of value for further investigation of crystal form selection in clinical trials and rational clinical application of the polymorphic drugs.

AIM:To investigate the role of lipopolysaccharide binding protein (LBP) for diagnosis and prog-nosis prediction in the septic patients.METHODS:A total number of 80 ICU patients were enrolled.The patients were divided into systemic inflammatory response syndrome ( SIRS) group and sepsis group, the patients in sepsis group were di-vided into non-survivor sub-group and survivor sub-group.We collected the serum samples and analyzed acute physiology and chronic health evaluation ( APACHE) II score on the first day of the patients hospitalized in ICU.In addition, we also selected 10 healthy volunteers and collected their serum samples.The serum concentrations of LBP, C-reactive protein ( CRP) and procalcitonin ( PCT) were measured by ELISA.ROC analysis of LBP, CRP, PCT and APACHE II score was conducted to discriminate among critically ill patients with sepsis and predict the prognosis of the patients with sepsis.RE-SULTS:The levels of the 4 indicators in the septic patients were higher than those in the patients of SIRS (P<0.05).In addition, serum LBP and APACHE II score in the non-survivor sub-group were higher than those in the survivor sub-group (P<0.05), whereas no difference of the PCT and CRP levels between survivors and non-survivors with sepsis was ob-served.LBP levels greater than 26.84 mg/L had 97.1% sensitivity and 95.9% specificity to discriminate between SIRS and sepsis.LBP levels greater than 54.16 mg/L had 85.2%sensitivity and 80.0%specificity for prognosis of unfavorable outcome.CONCLUSION:LBP level was more accurately correlated with diagnosis or prognosis prediction than CRP or PCT in patients with sepsis.

Vigilance is defined as the ability to maintain attention or alertness over prolonged periods of time. Since Mid-20th century, following the increasing man-machine communication, high level of vigilance has been demanded in many areas including driving safety, medical care and therapy, aerospace and military affairs, etc. Therefore, finding quick methods to improve the level of vigilance has become a key issue in medical study. Based on physical regulation, chemical regulation and physiological regulation, the research progress has been summarized in this paper. We, furthermore, also try to predict the future trend in this academic area and develop some tentative ideas about seeking more effective and convenient ways to improve the level of brain vigilance.
Arousal ; physiology ; Attention ; Brain ; physiology ; Coffee ; Humans ; Light ; Rest ; physiology ; Sound

Vigilance is the body level of awareness for objective things. It has been used in security, medical and other fields since people used it as an objective indicator. Therefore automatical vigilance detection has become a major issue needed to be resolved as soon as possible. The methods of vigilance detection at home and abroad in recent years was analyzed in this paper, which will benefit the research and the people dedicated in vigilance detection.
Arousal ; physiology ; Awareness ; physiology ; Brain ; physiology ; Electrocardiography ; Electroencephalography ; Humans ; Neural Networks (Computer) ; Pulse ; Signal Detection, Psychological ; physiology ; Task Performance and Analysis

Liquid level detection (LLD) is necessary for eliminating carry-over of needle's outside by limiting the depth the needle probes into liquid in auto clinical laboratory analyzers. This paper listed various demands of liquid-handling system under different situations; reviewed various LLD techniques, such as capacitive, air pressure, mechanical vibration, ultrasound, light reflection, CCD imaging etc.; briefly introduced the working principles, features, and limitation of the LLDs; and recapitulated the characteristics of contact and non-contact LLDs. Lastly, the next generation technique of LLD is prospected.
Automation ; Clinical Laboratory Techniques ; instrumentation ; methods

This investigation was made on the characteristic of the N400 event-related potentials in excessive internet users by analyzing the N400 difference between the excessive internet users (trial team) and normal subjects (control team); the aim was to provide a theoretic basis for the diagnosis and treatment of excessive internet users. Ten right-handed excessive internet users and ten healthy right-handed volunteers aged 20 to 25 years were recruited to attend the experimentation of single Chinese character with semantically matching or mismatching ending strokes. The N400 displayed obvious difference between the excessive internet users and normal subjects when they were confronted with mis-matching ending strokes of single simple Chinese character. The N400 amplitude of the trial team was significantly lower than that of the control team (P<0.05), and the N400 latency of the trial team was significantly earlier than that of the control team (P<0.05). In addition, the distribution of the N400 in the brain was more wide-spread in the control team than in the trial team. These results showed there was significant difference in N400 between the excessive internet users and the normal subjects.
Behavior, Addictive ; physiopathology ; psychology ; Electroencephalography ; methods ; Evoked Potentials ; physiology ; Female ; Humans ; Internet ; utilization ; Male ; Psychomotor Performance ; physiology ; Young Adult

At present, young people's internet addiction has become a serious social problem and on important concern in China. Comparison studies of auditory event-related potential (ERP) between 9 excessive internet users and 9 common internet users were carried out. The obvious influences of excessive internet use on the users were observed. The result suggests that excessive internet use may have some influences on cerebral cognitive function.
Attitude to Computers ; Behavior, Addictive ; physiopathology ; psychology ; Event-Related Potentials, P300 ; Evoked Potentials, Auditory ; Humans ; Internet ; Male ; Young Adult

Research on the effect of sleep deprivation (SD) is an approach to shedding light on the working mechanism of sleep for cognitive brain function. To explore how SD affects cognitive function, a number of measures involving psychology, brain imaging and electrophysiology, have been adopted in this area. Research groups from domestic and verseas have focused on many aspects of cognitive science and have acquired initial results, but uniform conclusion has not been made because of mixed factors. Starting from the mechanism of SD, this paper summarizes the progress in the search of effect of SD, including the neurophysiologic change by brain imaging and the use of EEG for evaluating the decline of cognitive function, and then analyzes the main influential factors and orientation of future research in this area.
Brain ; physiopathology ; Cognition ; physiology ; Cognition Disorders ; etiology ; physiopathology ; Electroencephalography ; methods ; Event-Related Potentials, P300 ; physiology ; Humans ; Sleep Deprivation ; complications ; physiopathology