Serum level of fibroblast growth factor 21 in type 2 diabetic patients with and without metabolic syndrome

Effect of FGF21 on metabolic syndrome patients is not exactly clear. In the present study, we assessed serum level of fibroblast growth factor 21 in type 2 diabetic patients with and without metabolic syndrome in Gorgan. The study groups consisted of 120 patients with type 2 diabetes and 60 healthy subjects. Diabetic patients divided into two groups. All subjects were matched according to age and sex. The mean waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, triglyceride and fasting blood glucose levels and body mass index were significantly higher in the subjects with metabolic syndrome than control group, but the mean HDL-cholesterol was significantly lower (p = 0.0001). Mean serum level of FGF21 was higher in type 2 diabetic subjects with and without metabolic syndrome than that of control subject (p = 0.0001). There were significant negative correlation between FGF21 and BMI, diastolic blood pressure and HDL-cholesterol in subjects with metabolic syndrome (p<0.05). There were also significant negative correlation between FGF21 and cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol in control group (p<0.05). The findings of this study suggest that serum FGF21 are higher in patients with type 2 diabetes with and without metabolic syndrome than in age and sex matched control group. Our study shows that some of metabolic syndrome components (especially HDL-cholesterol) are associated with high serum FGF21 levels. Because of different effects of FGF21 in rodents, primates and in humans, it may require more investigating on metabolic effects of FGF21 in human's samples. © 2015, Asian Network for Scientific Information. All rights reserved

Data supporting development and validation of liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for the quantitative determination of bile acids in feces

Measuring bile acids in feces has an important role in disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and can be considered a measure of health status. Therefore, the primary aim was to develop a sensitive, robust, and high throughput liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method with minimal sample preparation for quantitative determination of bile acids in human feces applicable to large cohorts. Due to the chemical diversity of bile acids, their wide concentration range in feces, and the complexity of feces itself, developing a sensitive and selective analytical method for bile acids is challenging. A simple extraction method using methanol suitable for subsequent quantification by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry has been reported in, “Extraction and quantitative determination of bile acids in feces” [1]. The data highlight the importance of optimization of the extraction procedure and the stability of the bile acids in feces post-extraction and prior to analysis and after several freeze-thaw cycles

PHARMACOKINETICS AND BIOAVAILABILITY OF ORTHOSIPHON STAMINEUS ETHANOLIC EXTRACT AND ITS-NANO LIPOSOMES IN SPRAGUE-DAWLEY RATS

Objective: This study aimed to perform pharmacokinetic profile of rosmarinic acid (RA), sinensitin (SIN), eupatorin (EUP) and 3΄-hydroxy-5,6,7,4΄-tetramethoxyflavone (TMF) in Orthosiphon stamineus ethanolic extract (OS-E) and its nanoliposomes (OS-EL) after oral and intravenous administration in Sprague-Dawley rat's plasma by developing and validating a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with ultraviolet (UV) detection.Methods: An isocratic elution program consisting of methanol: tetrahydrofuran: water (0.1% H3PO4) mixture in the volume ratio 55: 5: 40 on Nucleosil C18 column (250 × 4.6 mm internal diameter × 5 µm particles size) was applied. The current study followed a two-ways crossover study design. OS-E and OS-EL were administered orally at 1000 and 500 mg/kg, respectively. They were also administered intravenously at 250 mg/kg via the tail vein.Results: The HPLC-UV method was successfully developed and validated for simultaneous determination of major chemical constituent from OS-E and OS-EL in rat's plasma. The method recorded the mean recoveries from extraction were between 91.39 and 100.32%. With regards to the intravenous administration of OS-EL, all four marker compounds appeared to be poorly distributed and cleared slowly from the body compared to OS-E. Whilst in oral administration of OS-EL, the bioavailability of all marker compounds were higher than OS-E due to higher solubility of encapsulation in phospholipids.Conclusion: The higher solubility and bioavailability of OS-EL may contribute to encapsulation in phospholipids

Antiangiogenic Effect of Ficus deltoidea Jack Standardised Leaf Extracts

Purpose: To standardise the methanol and aqueous extracts of Ficus deltoidea leaf by developing a reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) for determination of the ursolic acid content and to investigate their antiangiogenic activity.Methods: To prepare the water extract (FD-A), the powder of the plant was extracted with water under reflux for 24 h at 50 ˚C. The methanol extract (FD-M) was prepared using Soxhlet extractor for 24 h at 50 ˚C. The extracts were standardised for ursolic acid content by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), as well as by total phenolic and flavonoid contents. Antiangiogenic activity was studied using ex vivo rat aortic rings and in vivo chick chorioallantoic membrane angiogenesis models. The anti-proliferative effect of the extracts against normal human endothelial cells and two cancer cell lines was assessed by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay.Results: In rat aortic rings, methanol and water extracts inhibited the outgrowth of microvessels with IC50 values of 48.2 ± 1.1 and 62.7 ± 1.4 μg ml-1, respectively. Methanol and water extracts at doses of 100 μg disc-1 also inhibited vascularisation of chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane with inhibition values of of 62.0 ± 6.3 and 43.3 ± 4.8 %, respectively. In addition, both extracts showed potent cytotoxicity against breast and colon cancer cells while demonstrating non-cytotoxic activity against normal endothelial cells. Furthermore, the two extracts showed relatively high concentration of ursolic acid, total phenolics and flavonoids associated with potent antiangiogenic activity.Conclusion: The inhibition of angiogenesis by F. deltoidea extracts may be attributed to the relatively high ursolic acid content as well as the presence of antioxidant compounds of phenolics and flavonoids in the extracts.Keywords: Ficus deltoidea, Antiangiogenesis, Ursolic acid, Cytotoxicity, Antioxidan

How direct is the link between words and images?

Current word embedding models despite their success, still suffer from their lack of grounding in the real world. In this line of research, Gunther et al. 2022 proposed a behavioral experiment to investigate the relationship between words and images. In their setup, participants were presented with a target noun and a pair of images, one chosen by their model and another chosen randomly. Participants were asked to select the image that best matched the target noun. In most cases, participants preferred the image selected by the model. Gunther et al., therefore, concluded the possibility of a direct link between words and embodied experience. We took their experiment as a point of departure and addressed the following questions. 1. Apart from utilizing visually embodied simulation of given images, what other strategies might subjects have used to solve this task? To what extent does this setup rely on visual information from images? Can it be solved using purely textual representations? 2. Do current visually grounded embeddings explain subjects' selection behavior better than textual embeddings? 3. Does visual grounding improve the semantic representations of both concrete and abstract words? To address these questions, we designed novel experiments by using pre-trained textual and visually grounded word embeddings. Our experiments reveal that subjects' selection behavior is explained to a large extent based on purely text-based embeddings and word-based similarities, suggesting a minor involvement of active embodied experiences. Visually grounded embeddings offered modest advantages over textual embeddings only in certain cases. These findings indicate that the experiment by Gunther et al. may not be well suited for tapping into the perceptual experience of participants, and therefore the extent to which it measures visually grounded knowledge is unclear.Comment: Accepted in the Mental Lexicon Journal: https://benjamins.com/catalog/m

Analysis of L-citrulline and L-arginine in Ficus deltoidea leaf extracts by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography

Ficus deltoidea (FD) is one of the native plants widely distributed in several countries in Southeast Asia. Previous studies have shown that FD leaf possess antinociceptive, wound healing and antioxidant properties. These beneficial effects have been attributed to the presence of primary and secondary metabolites such as polyphenols, amino acids and flavonoids. Objective: The aim was to develop a reverse phase high-performance liquid chromatography method with ultraviolet detection that involves precolumn derivatisation with O-phthaladehyde for simultaneous analysis of two amino acids L-citrulline and L-arginine in FD leaf extracts. Materials and Methods: An isocratic elution program consisting of methanol: acetonitrile: Water at 45:45:10 v/v (solvent A) and 0.1 M phosphate buffer pH 7.5 (solvent B) at A: B v/v ratio of 80:20 on Zorbax Eclipse C18 SB-Aq column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) were used. The flow rate was set at 1 ml/min and detection was carried out at 338 nm with 30 min separation time. Results: Good linearity for L-citrulline and L-arginine was obtained in the range 0.1-1000 μg/ml at R2 ≥ 0.998. The limit of detection and limit of quantification values for both L-citrulline and L-arginine were 1 and 5 μg/ml, respectively. The average of recoveries was in the range 94.94-101.95%, with relative standard deviation (%RSD) less than 3%. Intra- and inter-day precision was in the range 96.36-102.43% with RSD less than 2%. Conclusion: All validation parameters of the developed method indicate the method is reliable and efficient for simultaneous determination of L-citrulline and L-arginine for routine analysis of FD

Language with Vision: a Study on Grounded Word and Sentence Embeddings

Grounding language in vision is an active field of research seeking to construct cognitively plausible word and sentence representations by incorporating perceptual knowledge from vision into text-based representations. Despite many attempts at language grounding, achieving an optimal equilibrium between textual representations of the language and our embodied experiences remains an open field. Some common concerns are the following. Is visual grounding advantageous for abstract words, or is its effectiveness restricted to concrete words? What is the optimal way of bridging the gap between text and vision? To what extent is perceptual knowledge from images advantageous for acquiring high-quality embeddings? Leveraging the current advances in machine learning and natural language processing, the present study addresses these questions by proposing a simple yet very effective computational grounding model for pre-trained word embeddings. Our model effectively balances the interplay between language and vision by aligning textual embeddings with visual information while simultaneously preserving the distributional statistics that characterize word usage in text corpora. By applying a learned alignment, we are able to indirectly ground unseen words including abstract words. A series of evaluations on a range of behavioural datasets shows that visual grounding is beneficial not only for concrete words but also for abstract words, lending support to the indirect theory of abstract concepts. Moreover, our approach offers advantages for contextualized embeddings, such as those generated by BERT, but only when trained on corpora of modest, cognitively plausible sizes. Code and grounded embeddings for English are available at https://github.com/Hazel1994/Visually_Grounded_Word_Embeddings_2

Sulfur compounds: From plants to humans and their role in chronic disease prevention

Sulfur is essential for the health of plants and is an indispensable dietary component for human health and disease prevention. Its incorporation into our food supply is heavily reliant upon the uptake of sulfur into plant tissue and our subsequent intake. Dietary requirements for sulfur are largely calculated based upon requirements for the sulfur-containing amino acids (SAA), cysteine and methionine, to meet the demands for synthesis of proteins, enzymes, co-enzymes, vitamins, and hormones. SAA are found in abundance in animal sources and are relatively low in plants. However, some plants, particularly cruciferous and allium vegetables, produce many protective sulfur-containing secondary metabolites, such as glucosinolates and cysteine sulfoxides. The variety and quantity of these sulfur-containing metabolites are extensive and their effects on human health are wide-reaching. Many benefits appear to be related to sulfur’s role in redox biochemistry, protecting against uncontrolled oxidative stress and inflammation; features consistent within cardiometabolic dysfunction and many chronic metabolic diseases of aging. This narrative explores the origins and importance of sulfur, its incorporation into our food supply and dietary sources. It also explores the overarching potential of sulfur for human health, particularly around the amelioration of oxidative stress and chronic inflammation, and subsequent chronic disease prevention

Anti-uterine fibroid effect of standardized labisia pumila var. Alata extracts in vitro and in human uterine fibroid cancer xenograft model

Background: Uterine fibroids are a common type of solid tumor presenting in women of reproductive age. There are very few alternative treatment available from conventional treatment involving surgeries. Labisia pumila var. alata or locally known as ‘Kacip Fatimah’ was widely used as traditional medicine in Malaysia. This plant has been used to maintain a healthy female reproductive system. The present study aimed to evaluate anti fibroid potential of L. pumila extracts through in vitro apoptosis activity against uterine leiomyoma cells (SK-UT-1) and in uterine leiomyoma xenograft model. Evaluation of bioactive markers content were also carried out. Methods: Apoptotic induction of the extracts was determined by morphological examination of AO/PI dual staining assay by flourescent microscopy and flow cytometry analysis on Annexin V-FITC/PI stained cells. In vivo study was done in immune-compromised mouse xenograft model. HPLC analysis was employed to quantify marker compounds. Results: Morphological analysis showed L. pumila induced apoptosis in a dose dependent manner against SK-UT-1 cells. In vivo study indicated that L. pumila significantly suppressed the growth of uterine fibroid tumor. All tested extracts contain bioactive marker of gallic acid and cafeic acid. Conclusion: This work provide significant data of the potential of L. pumila in management of uterine fibroids