Interaction between smoking during pregnancy and gestational diabetes mellitus and the risk of cesarean delivery: evidence from the National Vital Statistics System 2019

To explore the interaction between smoking during pregnancy (SDP) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) on the risk of cesarean delivery. This retrospective cohort study utilized data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) 2019. The NVSS database provides data on births and deaths as well as maternal characteristics in the United States. The duration of follow-up was 38.74 ± 2.12 weeks. The outcome was the method of delivery, including vaginal and cesarean delivery. The multivariate logistic regression model was adopted to assess the associations of SDP and GDM with the method of delivery. The interaction between SDP and GDM was examined via calculating the relative excess risk of interaction (RERI), the attributable proportion of interaction (API) and the synergy index (S). Subgroup analyses were conducted based on age, race, prepregnancy body mass index (BMI), and primiparity. The study included 3352615 puerperae. Compared with women who did not smoke during pregnancy, those who smoked during pregnancy had a significantly higher risk of cesarean delivery [odds ratio (OR)=1.07, 95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.05–1.10, p p p S = 1.17, 95%CI: 1.001–1.36), in white women (RERI = 0.08, 95%CI: 0.004-0.16; API = 0.05, 95%CI: 0.01–0.10; S = 1.19, 95%CI: 1.02–1.39), in women who were overweight before pregnancy (RERI = 0.13, 95%CI: 0.05–0.21; API = 0.08, 95%CI: 0.04–0.13; S = 1.33, 95%CI: 1.14–1.55), and in primiparae (RERI = 0.20, 95%CI: 0.08–0.31; API = 0.12, 95%CI: 0.06–0.19; S = 1.50, 95%CI: 1.23–1.84). SDP and GDM were associated with an increased risk of cesarean delivery, and a synergistic effect existed between SDP and GDM on the risk of cesarean delivery, especially in women of non-advanced age, white women, women who were overweight before pregnancy, and primiparae.</p

Summary statistics: household head characteristics for the whole cohort and subgroups with different illness conditions.

*<p>Other occupation includes: government, student, self-employed, public or private company and others.</p

Multivariate logistic regression analysis of illness conditions.

<p>In each cell, odds ratio (p-value). Inpatient: presence of inpatient treatment for a household; Outpatient: per person outpatient treatments>2; Self-treatment: per person self-treatment>5. Other occupation includes: government, student, self-employed, public or private company and others.</p

Multivariate linear regression analysis of per capita medical expense.

<p>In each cell, regression coefficient (p-value).Other occupation includes: government, student, self-employed, public or private company and others.</p

Multivariate analysis of the percentage of per capita medical expense (as of per capita total expense).

<p>In each cell, odds ratio (p-value). Other occupation includes: government, student, self-employed, public or private company and others.</p

Modulating Viscoelasticity, Stiffness, and Degradation of Synthetic Cellular Niches via Stoichiometric Tuning of Covalent versus Dynamic Noncovalent Cross-Linking

Viscoelasticity, stiffness, and degradation of tissue matrices regulate cell behavior, yet predictive synergistic tuning of these properties in synthetic cellular niches remains elusive. We hypothesize that reversible physical cross-linking can be quantitatively introduced to synthetic hydrogels to accelerate stress relaxation and enhance network stiffness, while strategic placement of isolated labile linkages near cross-linking sites can predict hydrogel degradation, both of which are essential for creating adaptive cellular niches. To test these hypotheses, chondrocytes were encapsulated in hydrogels formed by biorthogonal covalent and noncovalent physical cross-linking of a pair of hydrophilic building blocks. The stiffer and more viscoelastic hydrogels with DBCO–DBCO physical cross-links facilitated proliferation and chondrogenic ECM deposition of encapsulated cells by dissipating stress imposed by expanding cell mass/ECM via dynamic disruption/reformation of physical cross-links. Degradation of labile linkages near covalent cross-linkers further facilitated cell proliferation and timed cell release while maintaining chondrogenic phenotype. This work presents new chemical tools for engineering permissive synthetic niches for cell encapsulation, 3D expansion, and release

Summary statistics: household characteristics for the whole cohort and subgroups with different illness conditions.

<p>Summary statistics: household characteristics for the whole cohort and subgroups with different illness conditions.</p

Table2_Transcriptome-Wide Annotation of m5C RNA Modifications Using Machine Learning.XLSX

<p>The emergence of epitranscriptome opened a new chapter in gene regulation. 5-methylcytosine (m⁵C), as an important post-transcriptional modification, has been identified to be involved in a variety of biological processes such as subcellular localization and translational fidelity. Though high-throughput experimental technologies have been developed and applied to profile m⁵C modifications under certain conditions, transcriptome-wide studies of m⁵C modifications are still hindered by the dynamic and reversible nature of m⁵C and the lack of computational prediction methods. In this study, we introduced PEA-m5C, a machine learning-based m⁵C predictor trained with features extracted from the flanking sequence of m⁵C modifications. PEA-m5C yielded an average AUC (area under the receiver operating characteristic) of 0.939 in 10-fold cross-validation experiments based on known Arabidopsis m⁵C modifications. A rigorous independent testing showed that PEA-m5C (Accuracy [Acc] = 0.835, Matthews correlation coefficient [MCC] = 0.688) is remarkably superior to the recently developed m⁵C predictor iRNAm5C-PseDNC (Acc = 0.665, MCC = 0.332). PEA-m5C has been applied to predict candidate m⁵C modifications in annotated Arabidopsis transcripts. Further analysis of these m⁵C candidates showed that 4nt downstream of the translational start site is the most frequently methylated position. PEA-m5C is freely available to academic users at: https://github.com/cma2015/PEA-m5C.</p

Anionic and Zwitterionic Residues Modulate Stiffness of Photo-Cross-Linked Hydrogels and Cellular Behavior of Encapsulated Chondrocytes

Photo-cross-linked poly­(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEGDMA) hydrogels have been widely utilized for cartilage tissue engineering. However, strategies for improving their stiffness have been predominantly limited to increasing the degree of photo-cross-linking or weight fraction of the polymer. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that covalent incorporation of anionic sulfonate or zwitterionic sulfobetaine residues into photo-cross-linked PEGDMA hydrogels could enhance their mechanical properties without altering overall polymer content or swelling behavior. In addition, we investigated whether and how covalent incorporation of these chemical residues would affect cartilage extracellular matrix secretion by encapsulated chondrocytes. With the incorporation of 5–10% anionic or zwitterionic residues, the compressive moduli of PEGDMA hydrogels increased and the stress relaxation expedited while the swelling behavior and overall polymer fraction were kept the same. The incorporation of anionic residues exerted a more profound incorporation content-dependent impact on compressive moduli than zwitterionic residues. Higher-content incorporation of the anionic residue (10% vs 5%) also reduced the metabolic activity and type II collagen secretion by encapsulated murine chondrocytes and limited the pericellular diffusion of secreted proteoglycans within the 3D hydrogel. Although encapsulated human chondrocytes exhibited different sensitivity to serum level in culture than murine chondrocytes, the general trend of the impact of covalent incorporation of the chemical residues on their ECM secretion was the same. Overall, covalent incorporation of anionic and zwitterionic residues at an appropriate content presents a viable alternative to increasing the degree of photo-cross-linking for modulating the stiffness of PEGDMA hydrogels and the metabolism and phenotypical matrix secretion by encapsulated chondrocytes. It underscores the significance of noncovalent interactions imposed by charged residues in modulating biomechanical and cellular properties in tissue engineering scaffold designs