Disrupted Asymmetry of Inter- and Intra-Hemispheric Functional Connectivity at Rest in Medication-Free Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Disrupted functional asymmetry of cerebral hemispheres may be altered in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, little is known about whether anomalous brain asymmetries originate from inter- and/or intra-hemispheric functional connectivity (FC) at rest in OCD. In this study, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was applied to 40 medication-free patients with OCD and 38 gender-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls (HCs). Data were analyzed using the parameter of asymmetry (PAS) and support vector machine methods. Patients with OCD showed significantly increased PAS in the left posterior cingulate cortex, left precentral gyrus/postcentral gyrus, and right inferior occipital gyrus and decreased PAS in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), bilateral middle cingulate cortex (MCC), left inferior parietal lobule, and left cerebellum Crus I. A negative correlation was found between decreased PAS in the left DLPFC and Yale–Brown Obsessive-compulsive Scale compulsive behavior scores in the patients. Furthermore, decreased PAS in the bilateral MCC could be used to distinguish OCD from HCs with a sensitivity of 87.50%, an accuracy of 88.46%, and a specificity of 89.47%. These results highlighted the contribution of disrupted asymmetry of intra-hemispheric FC within and outside the cortico-striato-thalamocortical circuits at rest in the pathophysiology of OCD, and reduced intra-hemispheric FC in the bilateral MCC may serve as a potential biomarker to classify individuals with OCD from HCs

Maternal Transfer and Protective Role of the Alternative Complement Components in Zebrafish Danio rerio

Embryos of most fish develop externally and are exposed to an aquatic environment full of potential pathogens, whereas they have little or only limited ability to mount an efficient and protective response. How fish embryos survive pathogenic attacks remains poorly defined. Here we demonstrate that the maternal immunization of female zebrafish with formalinkilled Aeromonas hydrophila causes a significant increase in C3 and Bf contents in the mother, a corresponding rise in the offspring, and induces a remarkable increase in the hemolytic activities in both the mother and offspring. In addition, the embryos derived from the immunized mother are significantly more tolerant to A. hydrophila challenge than those from the unimmunized fish, and blocking C3 and Bf activities by injection of the antibodies against C3 and Bf into the embryos render them more susceptible to A. hydrophila. These results clearly show that the protection of zebrafish embryos against A. hydrophila can be achieved by the maternally-transferred immunity of the complement system operating via the alternative pathway. This appears to be the first report providing in vivo evidences for the protective role of the alternative complement components in the early embryos of zebrafish, paving the way for insights into the in vivo function of othe

Increased expression of the P2Y12 receptor is involved in the failure of autogenous arteriovenous fistula caused by stenosis

AbstractObjective This study investigated the role of the P2Y12 receptor in autogenous arteriovenous fistula (AVF) failure resulting from stenosis.Methods Stenotic venous tissues and blood samples were obtained from patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) together with AVF stenosis, while venous tissues and blood samples were collected from patients with ESRD undergoing initial AVF surgery as controls. Immunohistochemistry and/or immunofluorescence techniques were utilized to assess the expression of P2Y12, transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), monocyte chemotactic protein 1 (MCP-1), and CD68 in the venous tissues. The expression levels of P2Y12, TGFβ1, and MCP-1 were quantified using quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction and western blot analyses. Double and triple immunofluorescence staining was performed to precisely localize the cellular localization of P2Y12 expression.Results Expression levels of P2Y12, TGFβ1, MCP-1, and CD68 were significantly higher in stenotic AVF venous tissues than in the control group tissues. Double and triple immunofluorescence staining of stenotic AVF venous tissues indicated that P2Y12 was predominantly expressed in α-SMA-positive vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and, to a lesser extent, in CD68-positive macrophages, with limited expression in CD31-positive endothelial cells. Moreover, a subset of macrophage-like VSMCs expressing P2Y12 were observed in both stenotic AVF venous tissues and control venous tissues. Additionally, a higher number of P2Y12+/TGF-β1+ double-positive cells were identified in stenotic AVF venous tissues than in the control group tissues.Conclusion Increased expression of P2Y12 in stenotic AVF venous tissues of patients with ESRD suggests its potential involvement in the pathogenesis of venous stenosis within AVFs

Effect of Preoperative Nutritional Risk Screening on Postoperative Recovery in Patients with Laparoscopic-Assisted Radical Resection for Colorectal Cancer

Background and Objectives. This study investigated the effect of preoperative nutrition on the recovery and prognosis of colorectal cancer patients after laparoscopic radical resection. Methods and Study Design. A retrospective analysis was conducted on 120 colorectal cancer patients between January 2015 and August 2017. Patients were divided into two groups: those without nutritional risk (NRS 20020.05). However, patients with nutritional risk had higher postoperative blood transfusion volumes, albumin infusions, weight difference before and after surgery, and postoperative hospital stays than the nonnutritional risk group (all P<0.05). Smoking, diabetes, and preoperative nutritional risk were the risk factors by the univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses. Conclusions. The postoperative complication rate was increased, and the short-term efficacy was decreased in the preoperative nutritional risk group compared with those without nutritional risk

Fusion of 2D CNN and 3D DenseNet for Dynamic Gesture Recognition

Gesture recognition has been applied in many fields as it is a natural human&ndash;computer communication method. However, recognition of dynamic gesture is still a challenging topic because of complex disturbance information and motion information. In this paper, we propose an effective dynamic gesture recognition method by fusing the prediction results of a two-dimensional (2D) motion representation convolution neural network (CNN) model and three-dimensional (3D) dense convolutional network (DenseNet) model. Firstly, to obtain a compact and discriminative gesture motion representation, the motion history image (MHI) and pseudo-coloring technique were employed to integrate the spatiotemporal motion sequences into a frame image, before being fed into a 2D CNN model for gesture classification. Next, the proposed 3D DenseNet model was used to extract spatiotemporal features directly from Red, Green, Blue (RGB) gesture videos. Finally, the prediction results of the proposed 2D and 3D deep models were blended together to boost recognition performance. The experimental results on two public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method

Nonlinear Dynamic Stability of Cylindrical Reticulated Shells with Initial Damage

As large-span structures, reticulated shells are widely used in large-scale public building and act as emergency shelters in the event of sudden disasters. However, spatial reticulated shells are dynamic-sensitive structures; the effect of the initial structural damage on dynamic stability should be considered. In this study, a new nonlinear dynamic model of cylindrical reticulated shells with initial damage is proposed to investigate the effect of initial damage accurately. Firstly, the damage constitutive relations of the building steels are built based on the irreversible thermodynamic theory; furthermore, its fundamental equations are obtained using simulated shell methods. Then, the nonlinear vibration differential equations with damage are obtained and studied with support. Meanwhile, the nonlinear natural vibration frequency with initial damage is derivatized. After that, a bifurcation problem with initial damage is studied by using Flouquet Index, and the dynamic stability state at the equilibrium point is analyzed in depth. It is found that the local dynamic stability of the system is determined via its initial condition, geometric parameters, and initial damage. Moreover, the initial damage dominates over other influence factors due to its strong randomness and uncertainty for the same structure. The damage accumulation results in the transition of the equilibrium point. In addition, the nonlinear natural vibration frequency decreases to zero with the accumulation of the damage reaching 0.618; the local stability of cylindrical reticulated shells fails and they even lose whole stability. This study provides a theoretical foundation for the future investigation of whole stability with initial damage

Increased expression of the P2Y₁₂ receptor is involved in the failure of autogenous arteriovenous fistula caused by stenosis

This study investigated the role of the P2Y12 receptor in autogenous arteriovenous fistula (AVF) failure resulting from stenosis. Stenotic venous tissues and blood samples were obtained from patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) together with AVF stenosis, while venous tissues and blood samples were collected from patients with ESRD undergoing initial AVF surgery as controls. Immunohistochemistry and/or immunofluorescence techniques were utilized to assess the expression of P2Y12, transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), monocyte chemotactic protein 1 (MCP-1), and CD68 in the venous tissues. The expression levels of P2Y12, TGFβ1, and MCP-1 were quantified using quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction and western blot analyses. Double and triple immunofluorescence staining was performed to precisely localize the cellular localization of P2Y12 expression. Expression levels of P2Y12, TGFβ1, MCP-1, and CD68 were significantly higher in stenotic AVF venous tissues than in the control group tissues. Double and triple immunofluorescence staining of stenotic AVF venous tissues indicated that P2Y12 was predominantly expressed in α-SMA-positive vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and, to a lesser extent, in CD68-positive macrophages, with limited expression in CD31-positive endothelial cells. Moreover, a subset of macrophage-like VSMCs expressing P2Y12 were observed in both stenotic AVF venous tissues and control venous tissues. Additionally, a higher number of P2Y12+/TGF-β1+ double-positive cells were identified in stenotic AVF venous tissues than in the control group tissues. Increased expression of P2Y12 in stenotic AVF venous tissues of patients with ESRD suggests its potential involvement in the pathogenesis of venous stenosis within AVFs.</p

Thermally Induced Reversible Double Phase Transitions in an Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Iodoplumbate C4H12NPbI3 with Symmetry Breaking

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Influence of maternal immunization on C3 and Bf levels in the WBHs and egg extracts.

<p>Three immunized female <i>D. rerio</i> and three control females as well as their released eggs were sampled every 7 days after the primary immunization. Whole body homogenates (WBHs) and egg extracts were prepared, and used for the measurement of complement component levels. The complement component contents are presented as percentages of total protein of the WBHs and egg extracts. The symbol * represents a significant difference (<i>p</i><0.05).</p