Neutrophil extracellular traps mediate deep vein thrombosis: from mechanism to therapy

Deep venous thrombosis (DVT) is a part of venous thromboembolism (VTE) that clinically manifests as swelling and pain in the lower limbs. The most serious clinical complication of DVT is pulmonary embolism (PE), which has a high mortality rate. To date, its underlying mechanisms are not fully understood, and patients usually present with clinical symptoms only after the formation of the thrombus. Thus, it is essential to understand the underlying mechanisms of deep vein thrombosis for an early diagnosis and treatment of DVT. In recent years, many studies have concluded that Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs) are closely associated with DVT. These are released by neutrophils and, in addition to trapping pathogens, can mediate the formation of deep vein thrombi, thereby blocking blood vessels and leading to the development of disease. Therefore, this paper describes the occurrence and development of NETs and discusses the mechanism of action of NETs on deep vein thrombosis. It aims to provide a direction for improved diagnosis and treatment of deep vein thrombosis in the near future

Validity and reliability of the semi-quantitative self-report Home Food Availability Inventory Checklist (HFAI-C) in White and South Asian populations.

Despite interest in the importance of the home food environment and its potential influence on children's diets and social norms, there remain few self-report checklist methods that have been validated against the gold standard of researcher-conducted inventories. This study aimed to assess the criterion validity and reliability of the 'Home Food Availability Inventory Checklist' (HFAI-C), a 39-item checklist including categories of fruit, vegetables, snacks and drinks.The HFAI-C was completed by 97 participants of White and Pakistani origin in the UK. Validity was determined by comparing participant-reported HFAI-C responses to data from researcher observations of home food availability using PABAK and weighted kappa statistics. The validity of measuring the amount of items (in addition to presence/absence) available was also determined. Test-retest reliability compared repeated administrations of the HFAI-C using intra-class correlation coefficients.Validity and reliability was fair to moderate overall. For validity, the average category-level PABAK ranged from 0.31 (95 % CI: 0.25, 0.37) for vegetables to 0.44 (95 % CI: 0.40, 0.49) for fruits. Assessment of the presence/absence of items demonstrated higher validity compared to quantity measurements. Reliability was increased when the HFAI-C was repeated close to the time of the first administration. For example, ICCs for reliability of the measurement of fruits were 0.52 (95 %CI: 0.47, 0.56) if re-administered within 5 months, 0.58 (95 % CI: 0.51, 0.64) within 30 days and 0.97 (95 %CI: 0.94, 1.00) if re-administered on the same day.Overall, the HFAI-C demonstrated fair to moderate validity and reliability in a population of White and South Asian participants. This evaluation is consistent with previous work on other checklists in less diverse, more affluent populations. Our research supports the use of the HFAI-C as a useful, albeit imperfect, representation of researcher-conducted inventories. The feasibility of collecting information using the HFAI-C in large, multi-ethnic samples can facilitate examination of home food availability in relation to exposures such as ethnicity and outcomes including behavioural, social and health outcomes. Future work using the HFAI-C could provide important insights into a modifiable influence with potential to impact health

Guided waves in pre-stressed hyperelastic plates and tubes: Application to the ultrasound elastography of thin-walled soft materials

In vivo measurement of the mechanical properties of thin-walled soft tissues (e.g., mitral valve, artery and bladder) and in situ mechanical characterization of thin-walled artificial soft biomaterials in service are of great challenge and difficult to address via commonly used testing methods. Here we investigate the properties of guided waves generated by focused acoustic radiation force in immersed pre-stressed plates and tubes, and show that they can address this challenge. To this end, we carry out both (i) a theoretical analysis based on incremental wave motion in finite deformation theory and (ii) finite element simulations. Our analysis leads to a novel method based on the ultrasound elastography to image the elastic properties of pre-stressed thin-walled soft tissues and artificial soft materials in a non-destructive and non-invasive manner. To validate the theoretical and numerical solutions and demonstrate the usefulness of the corresponding method in practical measurements, we perform (iii) experiments on polyvinyl alcohol cryogel phantoms immersed in water, using the Verasonics V1 System equipped with a L10-5 transducer. Finally, potential clinical applications of the method have been discussed. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11572179, 11172155, 11432008, and 81561168023) and from the Irish Research Council.peer-reviewed2019-02-1

Peripheral blood mononuclear CD133 mRNA levels correlates with response to treatment in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

CD133 is a marker that identifies/enriches cancer stem cell implicated in tumor initiation. We hypothesize that changes in the CD133 mRNA expression levels and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) may correlate tumor response in GIST.After informed consent, we obtained peripheral blood samples from 24 evaluable patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). There were 7 -paired samples before and after treatment, We measured CD133 mRNA levels by real time RT-PCR method and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels by ELISA. All measurements were done in duplicates in two separate experiments. The treatment resulted in significant reduction of CD133 mRNA expression (p = 0.048) as well as the level of VEGF (p = 0.003). The mean CD133 mRNA levels for GIST patients was 615. We found no correlation between the CD133 mRNA levels and VEGF levels. (p = 0.826). Logistic regression analysis suggested a relationship between elevated CD133 mRNA levels and fitted probability of eventual progressive disease (PD) and mixed response at 37% for CD133 mRNA of 2.25, and the probability of eventual PD/MR is 84% for a CD133 of 2072 (p = 0.08).CD133 mRNA expression levels in GIST patients measured by real time RT-PCR assay appeared to correlate with tumor response to surgery or imatinib and may be used to predict tumor progression. Additional prospective studies are warranted

A Knowledge Concept Recommendation Model Based on Tensor Decomposition and Transformer Reordering

To help students choose the knowledge concepts that meet their needs so that they can learn courses in a more personalized way, thus improving the effectiveness of online learning, this paper proposes a knowledge concept recommendation model based on tensor decomposition and transformer reordering. Firstly, the student tensor, knowledge concept tensor, and interaction tensor are created based on the heterogeneous data of the online learning platform are fused and simplified as an integrated tensor; secondly, we perform multi-dimensional comprehensive analysis on the integrated tensor with tensor-based high-order singular value decomposition to obtain the student personalized feature matrix and the initial recommendation sequence of knowledge concepts, and then obtain the latent embedding matrix of knowledge concepts via Transformer that combine initial recommendation sequence of knowledge concepts and knowledge concept learning sequential information; finally, the final Top-N knowledge concept recommendation list is generated by fusing the latent embedding matrix of knowledge concepts and the students’ personalized feature matrix. Experiments on two real datasets show that the model recommendation performance of this paper is better compared to the baseline model

Guided waves in pre-stressed hyperelastic plates and tubes: Application to the ultrasound elastography of thin-walled soft materials

In vivo measurement of the mechanical properties of thin-walled soft tissues (e.g., mitral valve, artery and bladder) and in situ mechanical characterization of thin-walled artificial soft biomaterials in service are of great challenge and difficult to address via commonly used testing methods. Here we investigate the properties of guided waves generated by focused acoustic radiation force in immersed pre-stressed plates and tubes, and show that they can address this challenge. To this end, we carry out both (i) a theoretical analysis based on incremental wave motion in finite deformation theory and (ii) finite element simulations. Our analysis leads to a novel method based on the ultrasound elastography to image the elastic properties of pre-stressed thin-walled soft tissues and artificial soft materials in a non-destructive and non-invasive manner. To validate the theoretical and numerical solutions and demonstrate the usefulness of the corresponding method in practical measurements, we perform (iii) experiments on polyvinyl alcohol cryogel phantoms immersed in water, using the Verasonics V1 System equipped with a L10-5 transducer. Finally, potential clinical applications of the method have been discussed. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11572179, 11172155, 11432008, and 81561168023) and from the Irish Research Council.peer-reviewed2019-02-1

CD69 serves as a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract The prevalence and mortality of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are still increasing. This study aimed to identify potential therapeutic targets related to patient prognosis. Data were downloaded from TCGA, GSE25097, GSE36376, and GSE76427 datasets. Differential analysis and enrichment analysis were performed in HCC. Cell deaths were evaluated, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression (LASSO) regression was analyzed to screen candidate genes. Additionally, immune cell infiltration in HCC was assessed. We identified 4088 common DEGs with the same direction of differential expression in all four datasets, they were mainly enriched in immunoinflammation and cell cycle pathways. Apoptosis was significantly suppressed in HCC in GSEA and GSVA. After LASSO regression analysis, we screened CD69, CDC25B, MGMT, TOP2A, and TXNIP as candidate genes. Among them, CD69 significantly influenced the overall survival of HCC patients in both TCGA and GSE76427. CD69 may be a protective factor for outcome of HCC patients. In addition, CD69 was positive correlation with T cells and CD3E. CD69, CDC25B, MGMT, TOP2A, and TXNIP were potential diagnostic and prognostic target for HCC, especially CD69

Bivariate relationships of log CD133 mRNA and disease outcomes.

<p>Patients with progression disease and mix response had higher CD133 mRNA level than patients with stable disease.</p

Association Analysis Between Two Indicators, CD133 mRNA and VEGF Value^*.

*<p>Pearson correlation</p