Relationship between the cumulative exposure to atherogenic index of plasma and ischemic stroke: A retrospective cohort study

Background: Atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) has been demonstrated as a surrogate marker for ischemic stroke, but there is limited evidence for the effect of long-term elevation of AIP on ischemic stroke. Therefore, we aimed to characterize the relationship between cumulative exposure to AIP and the risk of ischemic stroke. Methods: A total of 54,123 participants in the Kailuan Study who attended consecutive health examinations in 2006, 2008, and 2010 and had no history of ischemic stroke or cancer were included. The time-weighted cumulative AIP (cumAIP) was calculated as a weighted sum of the mean AIP values for each time interval and then normalized to the total duration of exposure (2006–2010). Participants were divided into four groups according to quartile of cumAIP: the Q1 group, ≤ −0.50; Q2 group, − 0.50 to − 0.12; Q3 group, − 0.12 to 0.28; and Q4 group, ≥ 0.28. Cox proportional hazard models were used to evaluate the relationship between cumAIP and ischemic stroke by calculating hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). Results: After a median follow-up of 11.03 years, a total of 2,742 new ischemic stroke events occurred. The risk of ischemic stroke increased with increasing quartile of cumAIP. After adjustment for potential confounders, Cox regression models showed that participants in the Q2, Q3, and Q4 groups had significantly higher risks of ischemic stroke than those in the Q1 group. The HRs (95% CIs) for ischemic stroke in the Q2, Q3, and Q4 groups were 1.17 (1.03, 1.32), 1.33 (1.18, 1.50), and 1.45 (1.28, 1.64), respectively. The longer duration of high AIP exposure was significantly associated with increased ischemic stroke risk. Conclusions: High cumulative AIP is associated with a higher risk of ischemic stroke, which implies that the long-term monitoring and maintenance of an appropriate AIP may help prevent such events

Visit-to-visit variability in triglyceride-glucose index and diabetes:A 9-year prospective study in the Kailuan Study

Instruction/Aims: It is unknown whether variability in the triglyceride-glucose index (TyG-index) is associated with the risk of diabetes. Here, we sought to characterize the relationship between TyG-index variability and incident diabetes. Methods: We performed a prospective study of 48,013 participants in the Kailuan Study who did not have diabetes. The TyG-index was calculated as ln [triglyceride (TG, mg/dL) concentration × fasting blood glucose concentration (FBG, mg/dL)/2]. The TyG-index variability was assessed using the standard deviation (SD) of three TyG-index values that were calculated during 2006/07, 2008/09, and 2010/11. We used the Cox proportional hazard models to analyze the effect of TyG-index variability on incident diabetes. Results: A total of 4,055 participants were newly diagnosed with diabetes during the study period of 8.95 years (95% confidence interval (CI) 8.48–9.29 years). After adjustment for confounding factors, participants in the highest and second-highest quartiles had significantly higher risks of new-onset diabetes versus the lowest quartile, with hazard ratios (95% CIs) of 1.18 (1.08–1.29) and 1.13 (1.03–1.24), respectively (P trend< 0.05). These higher risks remained after further adjustment for the baseline TyG-index. Conclusions: A substantial fluctuation in TyG-index is associated with a higher risk of diabetes in the Chinese population, implying that it is important to maintain a normal and consistent TyG-index

Association of Cardiovascular Health Score Trajectory With Incident Myocardial Infarction in Hypertensive Patients

Background: The association between changes in cardiovascular health score (CHS) over time and myocardial infarction (MI) risk in hypertensive patients remains unclear. Method: This was a prospective study comprising 17 374 hypertensive patients from the Kailuan study cohort who underwent 3 surveys and were identified to be free of MI, stroke, or cancer from 2006 to 2010. CHS consisted of 7 cardiovascular health metrics (plasma glucose, total cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking, body mass index, physical activity, salt intake), ranging from 0 (worst) to 13 (best) in the study. CHS trajectories were developed during 2006 to 2010 to predict the MI risk from 2010 to 2020. Additionally, the Cox proportional hazard model was established to calculate the hazard ratio and 95% CI of incident MI in different trajectory groups. Result: This study identified the 5 CHS trajectories from 2006 to 2010: low-stable (n=1161; range, 4.7-4.5), moderate-decreasing (n=3928; decreased from 6.9 to 6.0), moderate-increasing (n=1014; increased from 5.6 to 7.8), high-stable I (n=7940; range, 8.1-8.2), and high-stable II (n=3331; range, 9.2-9.7). During the median follow-up of 10.04 years, 288 incident MI cases were identified. After adjusting for potential confounders, compared with low-stable group, the hazard ratio and 95% CI of MI were 0.24 (0.15-0.40) for high-stable II, 0.36 (0.24-0.54) for high-stable I, 0.46 (0.25-0.83) for moderate-increasing, and 0.61 (0.41-0.90) for moderate-decreasing, respectively. Conclusions: In hypertensive patients, high-stable CHS or improvement in CHS is associated with a lower risk of incident MI, when compared with low-stable CHS trajectory over time.</p

Association of Age of Metabolic Syndrome Onset With Cardiovascular Diseases:The Kailuan Study

BACKGROUND: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is associated with an increased risk of incident cardiovascular diseases (CVD), but the association between the new-onset MetS at different ages and the CVD risk remain unclear. METHODS: This was a prospective study comprising a total of 72,986 participants without MetS and CVD who participated in the Kailuan study baseline survey (July 2006 to October 2007). All participants received the biennial follow-up visit until December 31, 2019. In addition, 26,411 patients with new-onset MetS were identified from follow-up, and one control participant was randomly selected for each of them as a match for age ( ± 1 year) and sex. In the end, a total of 25,125 case-control pairs were involved. Moreover, the Cox proportional hazard model was established to calculate the hazard ratios (HR) for incident CVD across the onset age groups. RESULTS: According to the median follow-up for 8.47 years, 2,319 cases of incident CVD occurred. As MetS onset age increased, CVD hazards gradually decreased after adjusting for potential confounders. Compared with non-MetS controls, the HR and the 95% confidence interval (CI) for CVD were 1.84 (1.31–2.57) in the MetS onset age <45 years group, 1.67 (1.42–1.95) for the 45–54 years group, 1.36 (1.18–1.58) for the 55–64 years group, and 1.28 (1.10–1.50) for the ≥65 years group, respectively (p for interaction = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: The relative risks of CVD differed across MetS onset age groups, and the associations was more intense in the MetS onset group at a younger age

VIMA: General Robot Manipulation with Multimodal Prompts

Prompt-based learning has emerged as a successful paradigm in natural language processing, where a single general-purpose language model can be instructed to perform any task specified by input prompts. Yet task specification in robotics comes in various forms, such as imitating one-shot demonstrations, following language instructions, and reaching visual goals. They are often considered different tasks and tackled by specialized models. We show that a wide spectrum of robot manipulation tasks can be expressed with multimodal prompts, interleaving textual and visual tokens. Accordingly, we develop a new simulation benchmark that consists of thousands of procedurally-generated tabletop tasks with multimodal prompts, 600K+ expert trajectories for imitation learning, and a four-level evaluation protocol for systematic generalization. We design a transformer-based robot agent, VIMA, that processes these prompts and outputs motor actions autoregressively. VIMA features a recipe that achieves strong model scalability and data efficiency. It outperforms alternative designs in the hardest zero-shot generalization setting by up to $2.9\times$ task success rate given the same training data. With $10\times$ less training data, VIMA still performs $2.7\times$ better than the best competing variant. Code and video demos are available at https://vimalabs.github.io/Comment: ICML 2023 Camera-ready version. Project website: https://vimalabs.github.io

Triglyceride-glucose index trajectory and stroke incidence in patients with hypertension:a prospective cohort study

Background It has been suggested that the baseline triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index, a simple surrogate measure for insulin resistance, is significantly associated with the occurrence of stroke. Nevertheless, the impact of longitudinal patterns of TyG on the stroke risk in hypertensive patients is still unknown. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the association between TyG index trajectory and stroke risk among hypertensive patients. Methods This prospective study included 19,924 hypertensive patients from the Kailuan Study who underwent three waves survey and were free of myocardial infarction, cancer and stroke before or during 2010. The TyG index was calculated as ln [fasting triglyceride (mg/dL) x fasting plasma glucose (mg/dL)/2], and latent mixed modelling was used to identify the trajectory of TyG during the exposure period (2006-2010). Furthermore, the Cox proportional hazard models were applied to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for incident stroke of different trajectory groups. Results Five distinct TyG trajectory were identified during 2006-2010: low-stable (n = 2483; range, 8.03-8.06), moderate low-stable (n = 9666; range, 8.58-8.57), moderate high-stable (n = 5759; range, 9.16-9.09), elevated-stable (n = 1741; range, 9.79-9.75), and elevated-increasing (n = 275; range, 10.38-10.81). During the median follow-up of 9.97 years, 1,519 cases of incident stroke were identified, including 1,351 with ischemic stroke and 215 with hemorrhage stroke. After adjusting for confounding variables, the HR and 95% CI of stroke were 2.21 (1.49,3.28) for the elevated-increasing group, 1.43 (1.13,1.83) for the elevated-stable group, 1.35 (1.10,1.64) for the moderate high-stable group, 1.26 (1.06,1.52) for the moderate low-stable group, respectively, when compare with the low-stable group. Similar results were observed in ischemic stroke, but a significant association was not found between TyG trajectory and risk of hemorrhage stroke. Conclusion A long-term elevated TyG index in hypertensive patients is associated with an increased risk of stroke, especially ischemic stroke. This finding implies that regular monitoring of TyG index may assist in identifying individuals at a higher risk of stroke among patients with hypertension

Changes in Impaired Fasting Glucose and Borderline High Low-Density Lipoprotein-Cholesterol Status Alter the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease:A 9-Year Prospective Cohort Study

BackgroundWe aimed to characterize the relationships of the changes in impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and borderline high low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) status with cardiovascular disease (CVD). MethodsA total of 36,537 participants who did not have previous CVD, diabetes mellitus, or high LDL-C (>= 4.1 mmol/L), nor were taking lipid-lowering drugs were recruited from the Kailuan study. The participants were allocated to six groups according to their baseline and follow-up fasting blood glucose (FBG) and LDL-C concentrations: (1) both were normal; (2) both normal at baseline, one abnormality subsequently; (3) both normal at baseline, both abnormal subsequently; (4) at least one abnormality that became normal; (5) at least one abnormality at baseline, a single abnormality subsequently; and (6) at least one abnormality, two abnormalities subsequently. The outcomes were CVD and subtypes of CVD (myocardial infarction and stroke). Multiple Cox regression models were used to calculate adjusted hazard ratio (HR) and confidence interval (95% CI). ResultsDuring a median follow-up period of 9.00 years, 1,753 participants experienced a CVD event. After adjustment for covariates, participants with IFG in combination with a borderline high LDL-C status at baseline and follow-up had higher risks of CVD (HR: 1.52; 95% CI: 1.04-2.23 and HR: 1.38, 95% CI: 1.13-1.70, respectively) compared with those with normal fasting blood glucose and LDL-C. Compared with participants that remained normal, those who changed from normality to having two abnormalities were at a higher risk of CVD (HR: 1.26; 95% CI: 0.98-1.61), as were those who changed from at least one abnormality to two abnormalities (HR: 1.48, 95% CI: 1.02-2.15). ConclusionChanges in IFG and borderline high LDL-C status alter the risk of CVD and its subtype, implying that it is important to focus on such individuals for the prevention and control of CVD

Relationship between the cumulative exposure to atherogenic index of plasma and ischemic stroke:a retrospective cohort study

Background: Atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) has been demonstrated as a surrogate marker for ischemic stroke, but there is limited evidence for the effect of long-term elevation of AIP on ischemic stroke. Therefore, we aimed to characterize the relationship between cumulative exposure to AIP and the risk of ischemic stroke. Methods: A total of 54,123 participants in the Kailuan Study who attended consecutive health examinations in 2006, 2008, and 2010 and had no history of ischemic stroke or cancer were included. The time-weighted cumulative AIP (cumAIP) was calculated as a weighted sum of the mean AIP values for each time interval and then normalized to the total duration of exposure (2006–2010). Participants were divided into four groups according to quartile of cumAIP: the Q1 group, ≤−0.50; Q2 group, − 0.50 to − 0.12; Q3 group, − 0.12 to 0.28; and Q4 group, ≥ 0.28. Cox proportional hazard models were used to evaluate the relationship between cumAIP and ischemic stroke by calculating hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). Results: After a median follow-up of 11.03 years, a total of 2,742 new ischemic stroke events occurred. The risk of ischemic stroke increased with increasing quartile of cumAIP. After adjustment for potential confounders, Cox regression models showed that participants in the Q2, Q3, and Q4 groups had significantly higher risks of ischemic stroke than those in the Q1 group. The HRs (95% CIs) for ischemic stroke in the Q2, Q3, and Q4 groups were 1.17 (1.03, 1.32), 1.33 (1.18, 1.50), and 1.45 (1.28, 1.64), respectively. The longer duration of high AIP exposure was significantly associated with increased ischemic stroke risk. Conclusions: High cumulative AIP is associated with a higher risk of ischemic stroke, which implies that the long-term monitoring and maintenance of an appropriate AIP may help prevent such events.</p

Psychological characteristics in high-risk MSM in China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Men who have sex with men (MSM) have become a high-risk group of HIV infection in China. To date, little is known regarding the behavioral, social and psychological characteristics in Chinese MSM, which makes the implementation of preventive and therapeutic strategies for this high-risk subpopulation of people extremely difficult.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 714 questionnaires were retrieved from the database of a Chinese government-sponsored National Key Research Project titled "Risk Analysis and Strategic Prevention of HIV Transmission from MSM to the General Population in China". The respondents were categorized into a high-risk group and a control group. Their behavioral, social and psychological characteristics were comparatively analyzed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the 714 MSM analyzed, 59 (8.26%) had high-risk homosexual behaviors. This sub-group of MSM had a higher in-marriage rate, a higher monthly income, heavier alcohol consumption and more serious problems with sexual abuse in childhood, intentional suicide attempts and mistaken assumption on condom's role in protecting HIV infection, as compared with the control group (<it>P </it>< 0.05). In contrast, the two groups did not differ significantly the sexual orientation, level of education, types of profession, drug use, condom use and experience of social stigma and discrimination (<it>P </it>> 0.05). A vast majority of the individuals in both behavior categories expressed support of legally protected gay clubs as well as gay marriage legislation in China. There was a strong correlation between high-risk behaviors and sexual abuse in childhood, alcohol drinking, income level and a mistaken belief in perfect HIV protection through the use of condoms.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>MSM with and without high-risk homosexual behaviors have different social and psychological characteristics, which should be taken into account when implementing behavioral and therapeutic interventions aimed at preventing HIV/AIDS transmission among MSM as well as from MSM to the general population in China.</p

SYNERGISTIC BACTERIOSTATIC EFFECT OF TERPINEN-4-OL AND α-BISABOLOL ON STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS AND CUTIBACTERIUM ACNES

Objective To investigate the synergistic bacteriostatic effect of terpinen-4-ol (T4O) and α-bisabolol (Bis) on Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) and Cutibacterium acnes (C.acnes). Methods The microdilution checkerboard technique was used to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of T4O combined with Bis on the two etu perimental bacteria, and fractional inhibitory concentration index (FICI) was calculated. An MIC group (T4O and Bis at a concentration of MIC), a 2×MIC group (T4O and Bis at a concentration of 2×MIC), and a negative control group (no T4O or Bis added) were set up for each experimental bacterium; the time-bactericidal curve was plotted for each experimental bacterium after the addition of both T4O and Bis; each group of the two experimental bacteria was measured in terms of Zeta potential (ZP) on the surface of the strain, leakage of intracellular nucleic acid and protein, damage of bacterial biofilm, and respiratory chain dehydrogenase activity in S.aureus after the addition of both T4O and Bis; a transmission electron microscope was used to observe the influence of T4O combined with Bis on the morphology of the two experimental bacteria. Results The combination of T4O and Bis for S.aureus and C.acnes had an FICI of &lt;0.5, and T4O had an MIC of 0.31 g/L for C.acnes and 0.62 g/L for S.aureus. The time-bactericidal curve showed that the combination of T4O and Bis significantly inhibited the growth of both bacteria. Compared with the negative control group, the combination group had a significant reduction in ZP, a significant increase in the leakage of intracellular nucleic acid and protein, loss of the normal morphology of bacterial body, damage of bacterial biofilm, and a reduction in respiratory chain dehydrogenase activity in S.aureus. Conclusion T4O and Bis have a synergistic bacteriostatic effect on S.aureus and C.acnes, and the combination of T4O and Bis may become an effective component of antibacterial products