Arsenic speciation in saliva of acute promyelocytic leukemia patients undergoing arsenic trioxide treatment

Arsenic trioxide has been successfully used as a therapeutic in the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Detailed monitoring of the therapeutic arsenic and its metabolites in various accessible specimens of APL patients can contribute to improving treatment efficacy and minimizing arsenic-induced side effects. This article focuses on the determination of arsenic species in saliva samples from APL patients undergoing arsenic treatment. Saliva samples were collected from nine APL patients over three consecutive days. The patients received 10 mg arsenic trioxide each day via intravenous infusion. The saliva samples were analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Monomethylarsonous acid and monomethylmonothioarsonic acid were identified along with arsenite, dimethylarsinic acid, monomethylarsonic acid, and arsenate. Arsenite was the predominant arsenic species, accounting for 71.8 % of total arsenic in the saliva. Following the arsenic infusion each day, the percentage of methylated arsenicals significantly decreased, possibly suggesting that the arsenic methylation process was saturated by the high doses immediately after the arsenic infusion. The temporal profiles of arsenic species in saliva following each arsenic infusion over 3 days have provided information on arsenic exposure, metabolism, and excretion. These results suggest that saliva can be used as an appropriate clinical biomarker for monitoring arsenic species in APL patients. [Figure: see text

Association between social support and depressive symptoms among Chinese nurses with formal employment versus contract-based employment

BackgroundInequalities may exist in social and health status among nurses with different employment types. Few studies have investigated the relationship between social support and depressive symptoms among formally employed nurses compared with those in contract-based employment. This study aimed to examine the associations between social support and depressive symptoms among Chinese nurses with different forms of employment.MethodsThe present cross-sectional study was performed with 1,892 nurses from 12 tertiary hospitals in Shandong Province, China. The Social Support Rating Scale and the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale were used to measure social support and depressive symptoms, respectively. The association between social support and depressive symptoms among participants was explored using multiple linear regression analysis.ResultsThe prevalence of depressive symptoms was 45.7%. The mean score for total social support was 40.16 (SD = 7.47), which was lower than the norms in the general Chinese population. Formally employed participants’ total social support scores were statistically significantly higher than those of contract-based employees (p ≤ 0.05). After controlling for confounding factors, the multiple linear regression analysis showed that subjective support and support utilization scores were inversely associated with depressive symptoms. Objective support scores were negatively associated with depressive symptoms only among contract-employment nurses.ConclusionChinese nurses have a higher prevalence of depressive symptoms and lower social support than the Chinese general population. Compared with contract-employment nurses, formally employed nurses had higher social support. Inverse associations exist between social support and depressive symptoms among nurses with different types of employment. It is suggested that improving Chinese nurses’ social support levels and reducing their depressive symptoms, especially for nurses employed through contracts, are critical

Psychological distress among women undergoing in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer: A cross-sectional and longitudinal network analysis

BackgroundWomen undergoing in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET) treatment were generally found to experience varying degrees of psychological distress across the treatment. Existing studies focused on total scores and diagnostic thresholds to characterize the symptoms’ severity, which might hinder scientific progress in understanding and treating psychological distress.AimsWe aimed to investigate (a) how depression and anxiety symptoms are interconnected within a network, and (b) the changes of the network (symptom connections and network centralities) over time, in women undergoing in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer.MethodsA 4-wave longitudinal study was designed with 343 eligible women recruited from the Reproductive Medicine Center of a tertiary hospital in China. The network models were created to explore the relationship and changes between psychopathology symptoms both within and across anxiety and depression, with anxiety measured by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 and depression measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Symptom network analysis was conducted to evaluate network and network properties, network centrality, and bridge centrality, as well as change trajectory network.ResultsFor the strength centrality, “inability to control worry” and “worrying too much” were the most central symptoms at T1; however, these symptoms decreased. The centrality of “sadness” and “guilt” tended to increase steadily and became dominant symptoms. For bridge centrality indices, several bridge symptoms were identified separately from T1 to T4: “irritability,” “concentration difficulties,” “nervousness,” and “restlessness;” “guilt” exhibited increased bridge symptoms. Furthermore, the change trajectory network indicated that “suicide ideation” became more closely related to guilt but not to worrying too much over time.ConclusionThis study provides novel insights into the changes in central features, connections, and bridge symptoms during IVF-ET treatment and identified several bridge symptoms separately at different stages, which could activate the connection between psychopathology symptoms. The results revealed that sense of guilt was associated with worsening psychopathology symptoms, indicating that future psychological interventions should target guilt-related symptoms as a priority

Antihyperglycemic Effect of Ganoderma Lucidum Polysaccharides on Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Mice

The current study evaluated the glucose-lowering effect of ganoderma lucidum polysaccharides (Gl-PS) in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mice. The diabetic mice were randomly divided into four groups (8 mice per group): diabetic control group, low-dose Gl-PS treated group (50 mg/kg, Gl-PS), high-dose Gl-PS treated group (150 mg/kg, Gl-PS) and positive drug control treated group (glibenclamide, 4 mg/kg), with normal mice used as the control group. Body weights, fasting blood glucose (FBG), serum insulin and blood lipid levels of mice were measured. After 28 days of treatment with Gl-PS, body weights and serum insulin levels of the Gl-PS treated groups was significantly higher than that of the diabetic control group, whereas FBG levels was significantly lower. Moreover, total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels of the Gl-PS treated groups had dropped, whereas the high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels had increased. In addition, according to acute toxicity studies, Gl-PS did not cause behavioral changes and any death of mice. These data suggest that Gl-PS has an antihyperglycemic effect. Furthermore, considering the Gl-PS effects on lipid profile, it may be a potential hypolipidaemic agent, which will be a great advantage in treating diabetic conditions associated with atherosclerosis or hyperlipidemia

Who can help me? Understanding the antecedent and consequence of medical information seeking behavior in the era of bigdata

IntroductionThe advent of bigdata era fundamentally transformed the nature of medical information seeking and the traditional binary medical relationship. Weaving stress coping theory and information processing theory, we developed an integrative perspective on information seeking behavior and explored the antecedent and consequence of such behavior.MethodsData were collected from 573 women suffering from infertility who was seeking assisted reproductive technology treatment in China. We used AMOS 22.0 and the PROCESS macro in SPSS 25.0 software to test our model.ResultsOur findings demonstrated that patients’ satisfaction with information received from the physicians negatively predicted their behavior involvement in information seeking, such behavior positively related to their perceived information overload, and the latter negatively related to patient-physician relationship quality. Further findings showed that medical information seeking behavior and perceived information overload would serially mediate the impacts of satisfaction with information received from physicians on patient-physician relationship quality.DiscussionThis study extends knowledge of information seeking behavior by proposing an integrative model and expands the application of stress coping theory and information processing theory. Additionally, it provides valuable implications for patients, physicians and public health information service providers

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Poly[[aqua(&amp;#956;2-4,4&amp;#8242;-bipyridine-&amp;#954;2N:N&amp;#8242;)[&amp;#956;3-3-bromo-2-(carboxylatomethyl)benzoato-&amp;#954;3O1:O1&amp;#8242;:O2]cadmium] monohydrate]

In the title compound, {[Cd(C9H5BrO4)(C10H8N2)(H2O)]&amp;#183;H2O}n, the CdII atom has a distorted octahedral coordination geometry. Two N atoms from two 4,4&amp;#8242;-bipyridine (bipy) ligands occupy the axial positions, while the equatorial positions are furnished by three carboxylate O atoms from three 3-bromo-2-(carboxylatomethyl)benzoate (bcb) ligands and one O atom from a water molecule. The bipy and bcb ligands link the CdII atoms into a three-dimensional network. O&amp;#8212;H...O hydrogen bonds and &amp;#960;&amp;#8211;&amp;#960; interactions between the pyridine and benzene rings [centroid&amp;#8211;centroid distance = 3.736&amp;#8197;(4)&amp;#8197;&amp;#197;] are present in the crystal

Associations between parenting burnout and maternal adverse childhood experiences among postnatal women

This study aims at exploring the relationships between adverse childhood experience (ACEs) and parental burnout. A total of 583 postnatal Chinese mothers were recruited in this cross-sectional study. Maternal ACEs were measured by Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire-Revised and parental burnout was measured by Parental Burnout Assessment. Multiple linear and binary logistic regression, and latent class analysis were used to explore the association between each type and cumulative ACEs and parental burnout. We found ACEs were associated with a higher risk of parental burnout. However, the association differed in the type of ACEs. The higher levels of physical abuse (B = 0.971 ~ 0.459, all p &lt; 0.05) and emotional neglect (B = 1.010 ~ 1.407, all p &lt; 0.05) in childhood were correlated with more serious parental burnout. The higher levels of self-threatened (B = 0.429 ~ 0.559, all p &lt; 0.05) and self-deprived experience (B = 0.384 ~ 0.462, all p &lt; 0.05), higher number of ACEs type (B = 2.909 ~ 3.918, all p &lt; 0.05) were associated with more serious parental burnout. Results were consistent after combining four dimensions of parental burnout as a whole in LCA. This study indicated that maternal ACEs were associated with parental burnout. Women with self-deprived, self-threatened and more types of ACEs should be paid special attention.</p

Experimental study and first-principles calculation of structural characteristics and dielectric properties of BaTi1-xCexO3 ceramics

BaTiO3 has advantages of high permittivity, low dielectric loss, low cost and environment friendly. However, due to the nonlinear dielectric behavior occurred around the phase transition temperature of BaTiO3 ceramic, its availability in the field of temperature-stable capacitor is limited. To modify the dielectric-temperature properties of BaTiO3, a series of BaTi1-xCexO3 (x=0-0.20) ceramics was synthesized by solid-state reaction method. Ce dopant was introduced into the B-site (Ti-site) of BaTiO3. The effects of Ce dopant on the phase evolution, defect state, microstructure and dielectric properties were investigated. The modifying mechanism was also discussed with the help of first-principles calculation method. In all ceramic samples, it is revealed that Ce element completely enters the B-site of BaTiO3 in the form of Ce4+ ion. With the increase of Ce doping concentration, the room temperature structure of BaTi1-xCexO3 ceramics transforms from tetragonal/pseudo-cubic structure into orthorhombic/tetragonal structure, then into pseudo-cubic structure. Owing to the radius difference between Ce4+ and Ti4+ ions, Ce doping will lead to the rising of lattice parameters, accompanied by the appearance of local distortion and the decrease of long-range ferroelectric order, the variation of band structure, density of states and charge density configuration, as well as the generation of Ba and Ti vacancies. Compared with pure BaTiO3 ceramic, the average grain size of Ce-doped ceramics decreases first and then increases with the increase of Ce content, while the relative density of ceramics increases gradually. The peak dielectric constant of BaTi1-xCexO3 ceramic increases first and then decreases as the Ce concentration increasing. The corresponding temperature is slowly reduced from 122 ℃ to 112 ℃ in the x value range of 0-0.08, then rapidly declines to -3 ℃ in the x value range of 0.08-0.20. BaTi1-xCexO3 ceramics with x≥0.06 have the dielectric behavior of diffused phase transition (DPT). And the x=0.20 ceramic exhibits the typical characteristic of relaxor ferroelectric, with the room temperature dielectric constant of 3258.38, and the |Δεr/εr25 ℃|≤22% temperature range of -60-87 ℃, which matches the requirement of EIA X5S standard. Therefore, it can be concluded that B-site Ce doping will effectively enhance the permittivity stability of BaTiO3 in a variable temperature environment. This will provide some new ideas to develop dielectric materials with stable dielectric properties in wide temperature range