Self-prescribed nutrition supplements for hair loss following laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy bariatric surgery: extent of the problem in a cohort of Chinese patients

Introductions: Hair loss is common after bariatric surgery. This study analyzes the extent and risk factors of hair loss following laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG), and satisfaction of self-prescribed supplements. Methods: All patients of LSG bariatric surgery during June 2013 to August 2016 at Shanghai East Hospital affiliated to Tongji University, Shanghai, China were included in the study. Study variables were- age, gender, preoperative body mass index, hemoglobin, albumin, total cholesterol, iron, zinc, copper, folic acid, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and postoperative excess weight loss (% EWL), time and degree of hair loss, satisfaction of using supplements. Logistic regression was used to analyze risk factors for hair loss. Results: Total of 86 patients underwent LSG. After exclusion data on 54 patients (M=11, F=43) were analyzed. Hair loss was reported by 42/54 (77.8%, M=6, F=36), starting at 3.43±1.36 months and ending at 8.59±3.38. All of 11 severe hair losses were in female. The female gender, preoperative serum folic acid, and %EWL were significant risk factors for hair loss. Hair regrowth was reported by 39/42 (92.86%). The 15 patients who used various self-prescribed iron and zinc supplements reported no satisfactory benefit.  Conclusions: Hair loss was seen in 3/4th of patents after LSG bariatric surgery. Self-prescribed nutrition supplements were used by 1/3 of patients without satisfaction. Female gender, preoperative serum folic acid, and %EWL were significant risk factors for hair loss. Keywords: bariatric surgery, hair loss, laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy LSG, obesity, nutrition supplement

Long-term whole blood DNA preservation by cost-efficient cryosilicification

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21972047 to W.Z., 52003086 to Q.L.), Guangdong Provincial Pearl River Talents Program (2019QN01Y314 to Q.L.), the Program for Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams (2019ZT08Y318 to W.Z.), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China (2021A1515010724 to Q.L.), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M672625, 2021T140213 to Q.L.), Science and Technology Project of Guangzhou, China (202102020352 to W.Z., 202102020259 to Q.L.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China. The authors thank the support from the Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center and Laboratory Animal Research Center of the South China University of Technology. S.W. acknowledges funding from the Basque Government Industry Department under the ELKARTEK and HAZITEK programs.Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the blueprint of life, and cost-effective methods for its long-term storage could have many potential benefits to society. Here we present the method of in situ cryosilicification of whole blood cells, which allows long-term preservation of DNA. Importantly, our straightforward approach is inexpensive, reliable, and yields cryosilicified samples that fulfill the essential criteria for safe, long-term DNA preservation, namely robustness against external stressors, such as radical oxygen species or ultraviolet radiation, and long-term stability in humid conditions at elevated temperatures. Our approach could enable the room temperature storage of genomic information in book-size format for more than one thousand years (thermally equivalent), costing only 0.5 $/person. Additionally, our demonstration of 3D-printed DNA banking artefacts, could potentially allow 'artificial fossilization'.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Multi-scale semantic enhancement network for object detection

Abstract In the field of object detection, feature pyramid network (FPN) can effectively extract multi-scale information. However, the majority of FPN-based methods suffer from a semantic gap between features of various sizes before feature fusion, which can lead to feature maps with significant aliasing. In this paper, we present a novel multi-scale semantic enhancement feature pyramid network (MSE-FPN) which consists of three effective modules: semantic enhancement module, semantic injection module, and gated channel guidance module to alleviate these problems. Specifically, inspired by the strong ability of the self-attention mechanism to model context, we propose a semantic enhancement module to model global context to obtain the global semantic information before feature fusion. Then we propose the semantic injection module to divide and merge global semantic information into feature maps at various scales to narrow the semantic gap between features at different scales and efficiently utilize the semantic information of high-level features. Finally, to mitigate feature aliasing caused by feature fusion, the gated channel guidance module selectively outputs crucial features via a gating unit. By replacing FPN with MSE-FPN in Faster R-CNN, our models achieve 39.4 and 41.2 Average precision (AP) using ResNet50 and ResNet101 as the backbone network respectively. When using ResNet-101-64x4d as the backbone, MSE-FPN achieved up to 43.4 AP. Our results demonstrate that replacing FPN with MSE-FPN significantly enhances the detection performance of state-of-the-art FPN-based detectors

Dynamic model of respiratory infectious disease transmission by population mobility based on city network

In modern societies, newly emerging infectious diseases spread rapidly between regions owing to frequent contact between people, causing considerable social and economic impacts. In this study, first, a scale-free city network was established, and then the shortest path between any two nodes was determined. Second, the movement path of tourists was designed based on the shortest path. Subsequently, every infected person's information, such as the city, infection time, onset and hospitalization, was confirmed based on their movement path. Third, the features of the transmission path and time distribution of the epidemic were characterized after summarizing the information. Finally, the reliability of the model was verified. The number of citizens and tourists in every city remained stable during this time. The results indicated that a larger basic reproduction number (R0) and population outflow rate signify a faster growth rate of infected people in each city in the network. Compared with small and medium-sized cities, the epidemic spread faster in central cities. Population mobility was the decisive factor causing the spread of the epidemic to other areas. Therefore, the rapid spread of epidemics can be prevented by swiftly reducing the flow of people between cities

Histological Observation and Expression Patterns of antimicrobial peptides during Fungal Infection in Musca domestica (Diptera: Muscidae) Larvae

ABSTRACT Housefly, Musca domestica, has a complicated immune system. However, its underlying operating mechanism remains elusive. Candida albicans is a major pathogen affecting humans by causing deep infection fungous disease, but it is non-symbiotic in houseflies. To investigate the C. albicans infection process in housefly, the changes in morphological and histological and expression patterns of antimicrobial peptide were monitored to indicate the insect's response to fungal infection. The results showed that scattered brown spots were comprising melanized encapsulation and encapsulated fungal cells were initially observed at the inner side of larvae's body wall 3 h post-infection (PI). Between 6 and 36 h PI, the whole body of larvae was densely covered with the brown spots, which then gradually disappeared. The majority had disappeared at 48 h PI. Some fungi colonized in the gaps between the body wall and the muscle layer, as well as among muscle fibers of the muscle layer at 12 h PI and hyphal was observed at 18 h PI. These fungi colonized distribution changed from a continuous line to scattered spots at 24 h PI and virtually disappeared at 48 h. The results of quantitative PCR analysis revealed that in coordination with the variation during the infection, the expression levels of four antimicrobial peptides were up-regulated. In conclusion, C. albicans infection in M. domestica larvae involved the following stages: injection, infection, immune response and elimination of the pathogen. The rapid response of antimicrobial peptides, melanized encapsulation and agglutination played a vital role against the pathogenic invasion

Transcriptional Responses of Candida albicans to Antimicrobial Peptide MAF-1A

Candida albicans is a major fungal pathogen in humans. Novel antifungal agents are urgent demanded due to the challenges of the resistance. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are critical components of the innate immune system against pathogenic microorganism infection. MAF-1A is a novel cationic AMP that comes from Musca domestica and is effective against C. albicans, but the antifungal mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we performed a transcriptomics analysis in C. albicans using RNA-seq technique under the treatment of MAF-1A. A total of 5654 genes were identified. Among these, 1032 were differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 575 up-regulated genes and 457 down-regulated genes. In these DEGs, genes encoding ergosterol metabolism and fatty acid biosynthesis were identified to be significantly down-regulated, while genes associated with oxidative stress response and cell wall were identified to be significantly up-regulated. Using pathway enrichment analysis, 12 significant metabolic pathways were identified, and ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation, citrate cycle were mainly involved. The results revealed that MAF-1A induces complex responses in C. albicans. This study provides evidence that MAF-1A may inhibit the growth through affect multi-targets in C. albicans cells

The appendix for dynamic model of respiratory infectious disease transmission by population mobility based on city network

In modern societies, newly emerging infectious diseases spread rapidly between regions owing to frequent contact between people, causing considerable social and economic impacts. In this study, first, a scale-free city network was established, and then the shortest path between any two nodes was determined. Second, the movement path of tourists was designed based on the shortest path. Subsequently, every infected person's information, such as the city, infection time, onset and hospitalization, was confirmed based on their movement path. Third, the features of the transmission path and time distribution of the epidemic were characterized after summarizing the information. Finally, the reliability of the model was verified. The number of citizens and tourists in every city remained stable during this time. The results indicated that a larger basic reproduction number (R0) and population outflow rate signify a faster growth rate of infected people in each city in the network. Compared with small and medium-sized cities, the epidemic spread faster in central cities. Population mobility was the decisive factor causing the spread of the epidemic to other areas. Therefore, the rapid spread of epidemics can be prevented by swiftly reducing the flow of people between cities

Targeting ZDHHC9 potentiates anti-programmed death-ligand 1 immunotherapy of pancreatic cancer by modifying the tumor microenvironment

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy targeting the programmed death 1/programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-1/PD-L1) axis has achieved considerable success in treating a wide range of cancers. However, most patients with pancreatic cancer remain resistant to ICB. Moreover, there is a lack of optimal biomarkers for the prediction of response to this therapy. Palmitoylation is mediated by a family of 23 S-acyltransferases, termed zinc finger Asp‐His‐His‐Cys-type palmitoyltransferases (ZDHHC), which precisely control various cancer-related protein functions and represent promising drug targets for cancer therapy. Here, we revealed that tumor cell-intrinsic ZDHHC9 was overexpressed in pancreatic cancer tissues and associated with impaired anti-tumor immunity. In syngeneic pancreatic tumor models, the knockdown of ZDHHC9 expression suppressed tumor progression and prolonged survival time of mice by modifying the immunosuppressive (‘cold’) to proinflammatory (‘hot’) tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, ZDHHC9 deficiency sensitized anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy mainly in a CD8+ T cell dependent manner. Lastly, we employed the ZDHHC9-siRNA nanoparticle system to efficiently silence ZDHHC9 in pancreatic tumors. Collectively, our findings indicate that ZDHHC9 overexpression in pancreatic tumors is a mechanism involved in the inhibition of host anti-tumor immunity and highlight the importance of inactivating ZDHHC9 as an effective immunotherapeutic strategy and booster for anti-PD-L1 therapy against pancreatic cancer