BMP9-Induced Osteogenetic Differentiation and Bone Formation of Muscle-Derived Stem Cells

Efficient osteogenetic differentiation and bone formation from muscle-derived stem cells (MDSCs) should have potential clinical applications in treating nonunion fracture healing or bone defects. Here, we investigate osteogenetic differentiation ability of MDSCs induced by bone morphogenetic protein 9 (BMP9) in vitro and bone formation ability in rabbit radius defects repairing model. Rabbit's MDSCs were extracted by type I collagenase and trypsin methods, and BMP9 was introduced into MDSCs by infection with recombinant adenovirus. Effects of BMP9-induced osteogenetic differentiation of MDSCs were identified with alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and expression of later marker. In stem-cell implantation assay, MDSCs have also shown valuable potential bone formation ability induced by BMP9 in rabbit radius defects repairing test. Taken together, our findings suggest that MDSCs are potentiated osteogenetic stem cells which can be induced by BMP9 to treat large segmental bone defects, nonunion fracture, and/or osteoporotic fracture

Lateral retroperitoneoscopic adrenalectomy for complicated adrenal tumor larger than 5 centimeters

Background: The role of lateral retroperitoneoscopic adrenalectomy (LRA) for complicated tumor with large diameter remains controversial, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of this procedure on the management of tumor larger than 5cm in diameter.Methods: A retrospective comparison was conducted of 67 patients with large complicated adrenal tumor (>5cm). 41 patients received LRA, and 26 received open adrenalectomy (OA) in our hospital between January 2011 and June 2015. Basic characteristics regarding mean age, gender, body mass index (BMI), tumor size, tumor side, previous abdominal surgery, resection method, pathology were preferentially analyzed. Operative indicators regarding operation time, estimated blood loss (EBL), conversion to ICU, complications, post-operative hospitalization, duration of drain, time to first oral intake and ambulation were compared between groups.Results: There were no significant differences between the two groups in the basic characteristics. The mean operation time for LRA was shorter than OA (98.7±32.3 min vs 152.7±72.3 min, P = 0.001). EBL was 31.9±20.0 ml for LRA and 590.0±1181.1 ml for OA (P = 0.03). There was no complication in LRA group and one patient in OA group had complications, but this difference was not significant (P = NS). The post-operative hospitalization in LRA was 7.4±2.8 days, and shorter than 9.8±2.7 days in OA group (P = 0.00). The time to first oral intake and ambulation for LRA was shorter than OA (first oral intake, 1.9±0.8 days vs 3.1±1.3 days, P = 0.00; time to ambulation, 2.6±1.4 days vs 4.2±1.6 days, P = 0.00). While the difference between groups were not significant in terms of ICU conversion (3/41 vs 4/26, P = NS) and duration of drain (3.9±2.2 days vs 4.7±1.9 days, P = NS).Conclusion: Our study shows that LRA can be performed safely and effectively for complicated adrenal tumors larger than 5 cm in diameter, but it remains technically demanding.Keywords: Retroperitoneoscopic adrenalectomy; adrenal tumor; lateral positio

A Theoretically Guaranteed Quaternion Weighted Schatten p-norm Minimization Method for Color Image Restoration

Inspired by the fact that the matrix formulated by nonlocal similar patches in a natural image is of low rank, the rank approximation issue have been extensively investigated over the past decades, among which weighted nuclear norm minimization (WNNM) and weighted Schatten $p$-norm minimization (WSNM) are two prevailing methods have shown great superiority in various image restoration (IR) problems. Due to the physical characteristic of color images, color image restoration (CIR) is often a much more difficult task than its grayscale image counterpart. However, when applied to CIR, the traditional WNNM/WSNM method only processes three color channels individually and fails to consider their cross-channel correlations. Very recently, a quaternion-based WNNM approach (QWNNM) has been developed to mitigate this issue, which is capable of representing the color image as a whole in the quaternion domain and preserving the inherent correlation among the three color channels. Despite its empirical success, unfortunately, the convergence behavior of QWNNM has not been strictly studied yet. In this paper, on the one side, we extend the WSNM into quaternion domain and correspondingly propose a novel quaternion-based WSNM model (QWSNM) for tackling the CIR problems. Extensive experiments on two representative CIR tasks, including color image denoising and deblurring, demonstrate that the proposed QWSNM method performs favorably against many state-of-the-art alternatives, in both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. On the other side, more importantly, we preliminarily provide a theoretical convergence analysis, that is, by modifying the quaternion alternating direction method of multipliers (QADMM) through a simple continuation strategy, we theoretically prove that both the solution sequences generated by the QWNNM and QWSNM have fixed-point convergence guarantees.Comment: 46 pages, 10 figures; references adde

Tetrakis[μ-3-(3-pyridyl)acrylato-κ2 O:O′]bis{(1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)[3-(3-pyridyl)acrylato-κ2 O,O′]europium(III)} pentahydrate

The europiumIII ion in the title compound, [Eu2(C8H6NO2)6(C12H8N2)2]·5H2O, is coordinated by seven carboxyl­ate O atoms and two N atoms from one phenanthroline mol­ecule. The carboxyl­ate groups of 3-(3-pyrid­yl)acrylate link pairs of europium(III) ions, forming centrosymmetric dinuclear units, which further assemble into a sheet parallel to the (001) plane through hydrogen-bonding inter­actions involving the uncoordinated water mol­ecules. One water molecule is disordered

Leukotriene B4, administered via intracerebroventricular injection, attenuates the antigen-induced asthmatic response in sensitized guinea pigs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Despite intensive studies focused on the pathophysiology of asthmatic inflammation, little is known about how cross-talk between neuroendocrine and immune systems regulates the inflammatory response during an asthmatic attack. We recently showed corresponding changes of cytokines and leukotriene B₄(LTB₄) in brain and lung tissues of antigen-challenged asthmatic rats. Here, we investigated how LTB₄interacts with the neuroendocrine-immune system in regulating antigen-induced asthmatic responses in sensitized guinea pigs.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Ovalbumin-sensitized guinea pigs were challenged by inhalation of antigen. Vehicle, LTB₄or U75302 (a selective LTB₄BLT1 receptor inhibitor) was given via intracerebroventricular injection (i.c.v.) 30 min before challenge. Airway contraction response was evaluated using Penh values before and after antigen challenge. The inflammatory response in lung tissue was evaluated 24 h after challenge. The LTB₄content of lung and brain homogenate preparations was detected by reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). Plasma levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and corticosterone (CORT) were measured using ELISA kits.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Antigen challenge impaired pulmonary function and increased inflammatory cell infiltration in lung tissue. These responses could be significantly suppressed by LTB₄, 30 ng i.c.v., in ovalbumin-sensitized guinea pigs. LTB₄content of lung and brain homogenates from antigen-challenged guinea pigs was significantly increased. In addition, administration of LTB₄via i.c.v. markedly increased CORT and ACTH level in plasma before antigen challenge, and there were further increases in CORT and ACTH levels in plasma after antigen challenge. U75302, 100 ng i.c.v., completely blocked the effects of LTB₄. In addition, U75302, 100 ng via i.c.v. injection, markedly decreased LTB₄content in lung homogenates, but not in brain homogenates.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Increased LTB₄levels in brain during asthmatic attacks down-regulates airway contraction response and inflammation through the BLT1 receptor. Stimulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis by LTB₄may result in an increase in systemic glucocorticoids which, in turn, would feed back to suppress the asthmatic response.</p