The effects of venlafaxine on depressive-like behaviors and gut microbiome in cuprizone-treated mice

BackgroundCuprizone (CPZ)-treated mice show significant demyelination, altered gut microbiome, and depressive-like behaviors. However, the effects of venlafaxine (Ven) on the gut microbiome and depressive-like behavior of CPZ-treated mice are largely unclear.MethodsMale C57BL/6J mice were fed a chow containing 0.2% cuprizone (w/w) for 5 weeks to induce a model of demyelination. Meanwhile, the gut microbiota and depressive-like behaviors were assessed after the mice were fed with Ven (20 mg/kg/day) or equal volumes of distilled water for 2 weeks by oral gavage from the third week onward during CPZ treatment.ResultsCPZ treatment decreased the sucrose preference rate in the sucrose preference test and increased the immobility time in the tail-suspension test, and it also induced an abnormality in β-diversity and changes in microbial composition. Ven alleviated the depressive-like behavior and regulated the composition of the gut microbiota, such as the increase of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium in CPZ-treated mice.ConclusionThe anti-depressant effects of Ven might be related to the regulation of gut microbiota in the CPZ-treated mice

Sclerotic injection in the treatment of lymphatic malformation in children: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Lymphatic malformation is a rare vascular malformation, which is more common in children. It was mainly treated by surgery in the past, but there were many side effects and the recurrence rate was high. Sclerosing agent injection therapy is another important treatment, which has been used in clinic, but the evaluation of its efficacy and safety is lack of reliable evidence-based medicine. This study aims to systematically study the efficacy and safety of sclerotherapy injection in the treatment of lymphatic malformations in children. Methods: CNKI, Wanfang, VIP and China Biomedical Database, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, will be searched by computer. Randomized controlled Trials (RCTs), Controlled clinical Trials (CCTs), cohort studies and case series studies will be searched from the establishment of the database to December 2020 for the treatment of lymphatic malformations in children. The language is limited to English and Chinese. Two researchers independently carry out data extraction and literature quality evaluation of the included studies, qualitatively and systematically evaluate the studies that cannot be analyzed by meta, and analyze the studies suitable by meta-analysis with Stata 14.0 software. Results: This study will evaluate the efficacy and safety of sclerosing agent injection in the treatment of lymphatic malformations in children by evaluating the total effective rate, incidence of adverse reactions and recurrence rate. Conclusion: This study will provide evidence-based evidence for the treatment of children with lymphatic malformations by sclerosing injectio

Stretchable conductive fibers based on a cracking control strategy for wearable electronics

Stretchability plays an important role in wearable devices. Repeated stretching often causes the conductivity dramatically decreasing due to the damage of the inner conductive layer, which is a fatal and undesirable issue in this field. Herein, a convenient rolling strategy to prepare conductive fibers with high stretchability based on a spiral structure is proposed. With the simple rolling design, low resistance change can be obtained due to confined elongation nof the gold thin-film cracks, which is caused by the encapsulated effect in such a structure. When the fiber is under 50% strain, the resistance change (R/R0) is about 1.5, which is much lower than a thin film at the same strain (R/R0 ≈ 10). The fiber can even afford a high load strain (up to 100%), but still retain good conductivity. Such a design further demonstrates its capability when it is used as a conductor to confirm signal transfer with low attenuation, which can also be woven into textile to fabricate wearable electronics.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore

Interfacial electronic structures revealed at the rubrene/CH3NH3PbI3 interface

The electronic structures of rubrene films deposited on CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite have been investigated using in situ ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). It was found that rubrene molecules interacted weakly with the perovskite substrate. Due to charge redistribution at their interface, a downward 'band bending'-like energy shift of [similar]0.3 eV and an upward band bending of [similar]0.1 eV were identified at the upper rubrene side and the CH3NH3PbI3 substrate side, respectively. After the energy level alignment was established at the rubrene/CH3NH3PbI3 interface, its highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO)-valence band maximum (VBM) offset was found to be as low as [similar]0.1 eV favoring the hole extraction with its lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO)-conduction band minimum (CBM) offset as large as [similar]1.4 eV effectively blocking the undesired electron transfer from perovskite to rubrene. As a demonstration, simple inverted planar solar cell devices incorporating rubrene and rubrene/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) hole transport layers (HTLs) were fabricated in this work and yielded a champion power conversion efficiency of 8.76% and 13.52%, respectively. Thus, the present work suggests that a rubrene thin film could serve as a promising hole transport layer for efficient perovskite-based solar cells

Enhanced Crystalline Phase Purity of CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> Film for High-Efficiency Hysteresis-Free Perovskite Solar Cells

Despite rapid successful developments toward promising perovskite solar cells (PSCs) efficiency, they often suffer significant hysteresis effects. Using synchrotron-based grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) with different probing depths by varying the incident angle, we found that the perovskite films consist of dual phases with a parent phase dominant in the interior and a child phase with a smaller (110) interplanar space (<i>d</i>₍₁₁₀₎) after rapid thermal annealing (RTA), which is a widely used post treatment to improve the crystallization of solution-processed perovskite films for high-performance planar PSCs. In particular, the child phase composition gradually increases with decreasing depth till it becomes the majority on the surface, which might be one of the key factors related to hysteresis in fabricated PSCs. We further improve the crystalline phase purity of the solution-processed CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> perovskite film (referred as <i>g</i>-perovskite) by using a facile gradient thermal annealing (GTA), which shows a uniformly distributed phase structure in pinhole-free morphology with less undercoordinated Pb and I ions determined by synchrotron-based GIXRD, grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Regardless of device structures (conventional and inverted types), the planar heterojunction PSCs employing CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> <i>g</i>-perovskite films exhibit negligible hysteresis with a champion power conversion efficiency of 17.04% for TiO₂-based conventional planar PSCs and 14.83% for poly­(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene:poly­(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS)-based inverted planar PSCs. Our results indicate that the crystalline phase purity in CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> perovskite film, especially in the surface region, plays a crucial role in determining the hysteresis effect and device performance