Abstract Introduction: Propofol is a widely used anesthetic and its dose is closely related to aging. Telomere length (TL) is a unique heritable trait, and emerging as a biomarker of aging, health and disease. Telomerase RNA component (TERC) plays an important role in maintaining TL. We proposed a hypothesis that propofol dose in general anesthesia can be predicted by measuring TL before operation, which greatly reduced the risk of anesthesia, especially the elderly. Methods: The association between the propofol dose in anesthesia induction and: TL in the DNA of peripheral blood leukocytes; body weight; sex; difference of the Bispectral Index (BIS) before and after anesthesia induction in patients was evaluated by multivariable linear regression analyses. The mutation at the 5’end or 3’end of TERC was detected. We recruited 100 patients of elective surgery. Results: We found that propofol dose in anesthesia induction was clearly correlated significantly with TL (r = 0.78, p < 0.001), body weight (r = 0.84, p = 0.004), sex (r = 0.83, p= 0.84, p = 0.004), sex (r = 0.83, p = 0.004), and difference of BIS before and after anesthesia induction (r = 0.85, p = 0.029). By comparing the absolute values of standardized regression coefficients (0.58, 0.21, 0.19, and 0.12) of the four variables, it can be seen that TL contributes the most to the propofol dose in anesthesia induction. However, the mutation at the 5’ end or 3’ end of TERC was not found. Conclusions: These findings provide preliminary evidence that the propofol dose in anesthesia induction was clearly correlated with genetically determined TL. TL may be a promising predictor of the propofol dose, which is beneficial to improve the safety of anesthesia and reduce perioperative complications.

Abstract Background: A lot of congenital melanocytic nevi (CMN) carry the somatic mutation in the oncogene BRAF V600E. But the detailed histopathologic characteristics and the proliferative activity of CMN with BRAF V600E gene mutation have not been systematically documented. Objective: To identify the proliferative activity and histopathological features correlating them with BRAF V600E gene mutation status in CMN. Methods: CMN were retrospectively identified from the laboratory reporting system. Mutations were determined by Sanger sequencing. The CMN were divided into a mutant group and control group according to whether there was BRAF gene mutation and were strictly matched according to gender, age, nevus size, and location. Histopathological analysis, analysis of Ki67 expression by immunohistochemistry and laser confocal fluorescence microscopy were performed. Results: The differences in Ki67 index, the depth of nevus cell involvement and the number of nevus cell nests between the mutant group and the control group was statistically significant, with p-values of 0.041, 0.002 and 0.007, respectively. Compared with BRAFV600E negative nevi, BRAF V600E positive nevi often exhibited predominantly nested intraepidermal melanocytes, and larger junctional nests, but the difference in this datasets were not statistically significant. The number of nests (p = 0.001) was positively correlated with the proportion of Ki67 positive cells. Study limitations: A small sample of patients were included and there was no follow-up. Conclusions: BRAF V600E gene mutations were associated with high proliferative activity and distinct histopathological features in congenital melanocytic nevi.

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the sex-specific association between hyperuricemia and the risk of hypertension and whether obesity mediates this association. METHODS: This study included 31,395 (47.0% women) adults without hypertension, cardiovascular disease, or cancer at baseline who completed at least one follow-up annual examination between 2009 and 2016. Cox regression models were performed to calculate hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Mediation analysis was conducted to estimate the effect of body mass index on the association between hyperuricemia and hypertension. RESULTS: During a median 2.9-year follow-up, hyperuricemia was significantly associated with a higher risk of hypertension (HR 1.15, 95%CI 1.07-1.24 for all participants; HR 1.12, 95%CI 1.03-1.22 for men; and HR 1.23, 95%CI 1.02-1.48 for women) after adjustment for potential confounders. Additional adjustment for body mass index attenuated this association (HR 1.09, 95%CI 1.08-1.10 for all participants; HR 1.07; 95%CI 0.98-1.16 for men; HR 1.18; 95%CI 0.96-1.44 for women). Mediation analysis showed that BMI partially mediated the relationship between hyperuricemia and incident hypertension (indirect effect HR 1.09, 95%CI 1.08-1.10; direct effect: HR 1.08, 95%CI 1.02-1.15). The percentage of the mediation effect was 53.2% (95%CI 37.9-84.5). CONCLUSION: Hyperuricemia is associated with a risk of hypertension in both sexes, and BMI partially mediates hyperuricemia-related incident hypertension.

Abstract Mycotoxins exists in foods such as grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, nuts, and meat, which can cause foodborne illnesses seriously harmful to human health. However, people have not paid enough attention to foodborne mycotoxin poisoning. This paper reviews the food in some common mycotoxin cause foodborne disease, the potential danger of mycotoxin contaminated food to human body and other issues related to food science were revealed from the clinical point of view, also concerned with the immunomodulatory effects of mycotoxin and the antitumor properties of patulin, the applicable conditions of several risk assessment models are briefly compared the emergency management measures of food safety problems caused by mycotoxin were also discussed from the perspective of prevention. grains vegetables fruits milk nuts meat health However poisoning disease view patulin prevention

A new fluorescent detection route for chloride ion was designed with Nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots (N-GQDs), which were prepared by a traditional hydrothermal method with citric acid as carbon source and urea as nitrogen source. The prepared N-GQDs solution was light yellow, and the freeze-dried solid was black. It emitted blue light under ultraviolet light. Meanwhile, The N-GQDs were characterized by TEM, XRD, UV-Vis and fluorescence, the results indicated that the N-GQDs had good dispersibility, photostability and excitation independent emission fluorescence. After addition of Ag+ solution, Ag+ combined to the surface functional groups of N-GQDs, resulting in an obvious quenching of the fluorescence intensity of N-GQDs. Nevertheless, the fluorescence intensity recovered significantly with the addition of Cl- to the N-GQDs/Ag+ system, this was because of AgCl was formed due to the “soft hard acid base principle”. The change of fluorescence intensity had a linear response to the chloride ion concentration in the range of 8.5-300 μmol L-1, with a detection limit (LOD) of 0.1 μmol L-1. To authenticate the application, the proposed method has been successfully used for quantitative analysis of chloride ion in real samples, including artificial sweat and environmental water.

Abstract We aimed to evaluate the effect of red meat diet on gut microbiota in mice. Balb/c mice at weaning were randomized into control group and red meat groups with different proportions (25%, 50%, and 75%). Mice were fed with a standard pellet diet as control group, while those were fed with different proportions of red meat diet as red meat groups. After 8 weeks, they were sacrificed and their intestinal contents were obtained for 16S rRNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. Our results showed that there were significant-structural differences among the four groups. The top-two most abundant phylum were Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. In the red meat groups, the abundance of Bacteroidetes was increased, but the abundance of Firmicutes was decreased. At the family level, Bacteroidaceae and Family XIII were significantly higher in the high-dose group than those in the control group. There were also significant differences in abundance of many genera. In conclusion, different proportions of red meat diet may lead to changes in gut microbial flora in mice. These changes may be pathological and may be related to the frequent occurrence of many diseases.

Abstract In this study, the total triterpenoids of raspberry fruit (TTRF) were prepared, and their effects on human hepatocellular carcinoma SMMC-7721 cells were investigated. SMMC-7721 cells were treated with TTRF with concentration of 0 (control), 50, 100, 200 and 400 μg/mL, respectively. The cell proliferation, cycle and apoptosis were detected. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells and the expression levels of B-cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2) and B-cell lymphoma-2 associated X (Bax) in cells were determined. Results showed that, TTRF could obviously inhibit the proliferation of SMMC-7721 cells, arrest most cells in S and G2/M phases, and promote their apoptosis. In addition, TTRF could increase the ROS level, down-regulate the Bcl-2 protein expression and up-regulate the Bax protein expression in cells. In conclusion, cucurbitacin I has inhibitory effect on growth of SMMC-7721cells. The action mechanism may be related to its increasing ROS level and regulating of Bcl-2 and Bax expression in cells.

Abstract Objective To explore the molecular mechanism of neuropathologic damage induced by radiofrequency ablation at different temperatures. Methods This is basic research, and 36 SD rats were used to construct the neuropathological injury model. The rats were subjected to radiofrequency stimulation at different temperatures and were divided into 6 groups according to the temperature injury: 42°, 47°, 52°, 57°, 62°, and 67°C groups. Conduction time, conduction distance, and nerve conduction velocity were recorded after temperature injury. HE-staining was used to observe the histopathological morphology of the sciatic nerve. The expression of SCN9A, SCN3B, and NFASC protein in sciatic nerve tissue were detected by western blot. Results With the increase in temperature, nerve conduction velocity gradually decreased, and neurons were damaged when the temperature was 67°C. HE-staining showed that the degrees of degeneration of neurons in rats at 47°, 52°, 57°, 62°, and 67°C were gradually increased. The expression of SCN9A, SCN3B protein in 57°, 62°, 67°C groups were much higher than that of NC, 42°, 47°, 52°C groups. However, the expression of NFASC protein in 57°, 62°, 67°C groups was much lower than that of the NC, 42°, 47°, 52°C groups. Conclusion There was a positive correlation between temperature caused by the radiofrequency stimulation to neuropathological damage. The mechanism is closely related to the expression of SCN9A, SCN3B, and NFASC protein in nerve tissue caused by heat transfer injury.

Abstract In order to realize the rapid nondestructive detection of mildew peanut in the process of peanuts storage, hyperspectral imaging technology was proposed to detect mildew peanut. A total of 200 peanuts were selected from 5 kinds of peanuts purchased in the market for moldy treatment, and the remaining 400 peanuts were kept sterile. After completion, samples were collected with a hyperspectral instrument to obtain spectral data of the samples. According to the characteristics of the data, 10 pre-processing algorithms were used to de-noise the data, and Median Filtering (MF) had the best effect, with the recognition accuracy reaching 97.7%. GBDT, LightGBM, CatBoost and XGBoost algorithms were used to extract important feature bands in the spectral data pre-processed by MF. GBDT, LightGBM, CatBoost and XGBoost algorithms were used to model the extracted feature bands. The results showed that LightGBM is the best algorithm with a detection rate of 99.10%. Optuna algorithm was used to tune its parameters. Compared with the previous model, the running time of the optimized model was improved by about 0.25 s. The results showed that hyperspectral imaging provides an efficient and nondestructive method for detecting mildew in peanut storage.

Abstract The research constructs a novel structure by integrating two parts of online object detection pipelines into the current state-of-the-art Mask R-CNN algorithm to improve the detection performance. The DJI Mavic Air drone is used to collect low-altitude sensing images of strawberry plant canopies. The data augmentation method is employed to feed more instances into the original image dataset to boost the generalization and robustness of the detection model in the training procedure. A ResNet50 backbone combined with a feature pyramid network is presented to extract the features of strawberry plant canopies. The online hard example mining algorithm is introduced to mine hard samples to learn rich features and update model weights. Soft non-maximum suppression based on recursive application on the remaining detection boxes within the predefined overlap threshold is proposed to improve the performance of identifying the large complex overlapping area of strawberry plant canopies. The qualitative results demonstrate that the improved detection model had an AP50 of 96.9 and an AR of 78.5 on the test set, which are approximately 30% higher than the original values.

ABSTRACT Purpose: The active melanocytes in the skin were affected by hormones and ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. Licorice zinc has a whitening effect, which may have a prominent potential in the treatment of pigmented skin disease. Methods: Modeling chloasma Balb/c mice by daily progesterone injection (15 mg/kg) and ultraviolet B (UVB) irradiation (λ = 312 nm, 2 h/day) for 30 days. Then, mice were given 0.65, 1.3, and 2.6 (g/kg) of licorice zinc and tranexamic acid 250 mg daily by oral administration for 14 days, respectively. Hematoxylin and eosin and Fontana-Masson staining, and Western blotting (WB) were performed to test the inhibitory of melanogenesis and activation of c-Jun-N-terminal (JNK)/p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) for licorice zinc. Melanogenesis was induced by α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone in vitro. Cell counting kit-8, melanin content determination, and WB were performed to verify the inhibitory effect of licorice zinc on melanogenesis. Results: The present study showed that licorice zinc decreased melanin formation, cutaneous tissue injury, and the phosphorylation of JNK and P38MAPK, which was caused by UVB irradiation in vivo. In vitro, licorice zinc showed opposite effects from JNK/p38 activator. Meanwhile, tyrosinase-related protein-1, tyrosinase, and microphthalmia-associated transcription factor were decreased too. Conclusions: Licorice zinc induced a decrease in melanin synthesis by inhibiting the JNK and the P38MAPK signaling pathway, suggesting licorice zinc is a potential agent of anti-chloasma.

ABSTRACT Protecting against the main sugarcane diseases and insect pests requires good control at the base of the plant; therefore, higher droplet penetration is required during plant protection. The objectives of this research were to explore the movement mechanism of droplets in a sugarcane protection operation using a single-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and establish the connection between the UAV downwash flow field and droplet penetration. By considering the downwash flow field of a single-rotor UAV in layers, a theoretical model of the vertical velocities of droplets was established, and verification experiments were carried out in a sugarcane field. The results showed that the velocity of the UAV downwash flow was the main factor affecting the final vertical velocity of the droplets, the final vertical velocity of a droplet was positively correlated with the droplet diameter, and the initial droplet velocity had no significant effect on the final droplet velocity. In the transportation of droplets, the droplet velocity quickly approached the velocity of the airflow, and the smaller the droplet diameter was, the higher the acceleration. These research results can provide guidance for the theoretical study of droplet deposition effects in sugarcane protection operations using single-rotor UAVs.

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE: Polycystic ovary syndrome can be divided into different subtypes, including insulin resistance and hyperandrogenism. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between serum asprosin levels and polycystic ovary syndrome subtypes. METHODS: A total of 93 women with polycystic ovary syndrome and 77 healthy women as controls were selected for this study. The clinical and laboratory data were compared between the Polycystic ovary syndrome group and the control group. The Polycystic ovary syndrome group was further divided into subgroups: (1) women with or without hyperandrogenism (polycystic ovary syndrome hyperandrogenism and Polycystic ovary syndrome none-hyperandrogenism, respectively) and (2) women with or without insulin resistance (polycystic ovary syndrome insulin resistance and Polycystic ovary syndrome none-insulin resistance, respectively). Serum asprosin was measured by using enenzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS: Serum asprosin levels showed no significant difference between the polycystic ovary syndrome and control groups. However, it was significantly lower in the Polycystic ovary syndrome HA and insulin resistance groups compared with the respective Polycystic ovary syndrome none-hyperandrogenism and none-insulin resistance groups (p<0.05). In the Polycystic ovary syndrome group, serum asprosin was negatively correlated with body mass index, luteinizing hormone, testosterone, basal antral follicles, fasting insulin, homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance, and triglycerides. After adjusting for body mass index, the correlations were not significant, and asprosin was only positively correlated with prolactin (prolactin; r=0.426, p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Our study shows that women with polycystic ovary syndrome hyperandrogenism or insulin resistance exhibit significantly lower serum asprosin levels compared with controls, and the lower asprosin level directly correlated with prolactin level.

Resumo Fundamento Existem informações conflitantes sobre se a ultrassonografia pulmonar avaliada por linhas B tem valor prognóstico em pacientes com insuficiência cardíaca (ICa). Objetivos Avaliar o valor prognóstico da ultrassonografia pulmonar avaliada por linhas B em pacientes com ICa. Métodos Quatro bases de dados (PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library e Scopus) foram sistematicamente pesquisadas para identificar artigos relevantes. Reunimos a razão de risco (RR) e o intervalo de confiança de 95% (IC) de estudos elegíveis e realizamos análises de heterogeneidade, avaliação de qualidade e viés de publicação. Os dados foram agrupados usando um modelo de efeitos fixos ou de efeito aleatório. Um valor de p <0,05 foi considerado para indicar significância estatística. Resultados Nove estudos envolvendo 1.212 participantes foram incluídos na revisão sistemática. As linhas B > 15 e > 30 na alta hospitalar foram significativamente associadas ao aumento do risco de desfecho combinado de mortalidade por todas as causas ou hospitalização por ICa (RR, 3,37, IC de 95%, 1,52-7,47; p = 0,003; RR, 4,01, IC de 95%, 2,29-7,01; p <0,001, respectivamente). O ponto de corte da linha B > 30 na alta foi significativamente associado ao aumento do risco de hospitalização por ICa (RR, 9,01, IC de 95%, 2,80-28,93; p <0,001). Além disso, o ponto de corte da linha B > 3 aumentou significativamente o risco de desfecho combinado de mortalidade por todas as causas ou hospitalização por ICa em pacientes ambulatoriais com ICa (RR, 3,21, IC de 95%, 2,09-4,93; I2 = 10%; p <0,00001). Conclusão As linhas B podem predizer mortalidade por todas as causas e hospitalizações por ICa em pacientes com ICa. Outros grandes ensaios clínicos randomizados são necessários para explorar se lidar com as linhas B melhoraria o prognóstico nos ambientes clínicos. (Arq Bras Cardiol. 2020; [online].ahead print, PP.0-0)

Abstract Background There is conflicting information about whether lung ultrasound assessed by B-lines has prognostic value in patients with heart failure (HF). Objectives To evaluate the prognostic value of lung ultrasound assessed by B-lines in HF patients. Methods Four databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Scopus) were systematically searched to identify relevant articles. We pooled the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) from eligible studies and carried out heterogeneity, quality assessment, and publication bias analyses. Data were pooled using a fixed-effects or random-effect model. A p value < 0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance. Results Nine studies involving 1,212 participants were included in the systematic review. B-lines > 15 and > 30 at discharge were significantly associated with increased risk of combined outcomes of all-cause mortality or HF hospitalization (HR, 3.37, 95% CI, 1.52-7.47; p = 0.003; HR, 4.01, 95% CI, 2.29-7.01; p < 0.001, respectively). A B-line > 30 cutoff at discharge was significantly associated with increased risk of HF hospitalization (HR, 9.01, 95% CI, 2.80-28.93; p < 0.001). Moreover, a B-line > 3 cutoff significantly increased the risk for combined outcomes of all-cause mortality or HF hospitalization in HF outpatients (HR, 3.21, 95% CI, 2.09-4.93; I2 = 10%; p < 0.00001). Conclusion B-lines could predict all-cause mortality and HF hospitalizations in patients with HF. Further large randomized controlled trials are needed to explore whether dealing with B-lines would improve the prognosis in clinical settings.