The Specific Characteristics of Childhood Obesity and the Effective Strategies to Combat Childhood Obesity in Hong Kong: A Short Review

Childhood obesity is a serious public health problem all around the world. The problem also currently exists in Hong Kong. Unhealthy lifestyle behavior may be one of key factors contributing to childhood obesity. The review revealed the specific characteristics of childhood obesity and the effective strategies in prevention of childhood obesity in Hong Kong context. Hong Kong is a metropolitan city which is interwoven eastern and western culture. The historical reasons and the complex political issues lead to overcrowded of people living in a small place. The environmental factors and the lifestyle pattern are the crucial causes contributing to childhood obesity. Parents have significant influence in shaping lifestyle behavior of children. While Chinese culture, informal childcare and more energy-dense food consumptions are the specific factors affecting children in lifestyle behavior as shown in the previous studies. The finding of the present review paper is expected to realize root causes of the prevalence of childhood obesity. On the other hand, many studies regarding to the treatment of childhood obesity were also reviewed. It was found that fewer studies were conducted to provide the combined intervention to combat childhood obesity. Generally, parental education was not the focus of childhood obesity intervention programs and parent-oriented approach was not commonly adopted in these programs. While limited childhood obesity intervention programs have been conducted in Hong Kong, it is recommended to conduct an appropriate program for children specifically in Hong Kong context. The design of preventive strategies should take into consideration of these specific characteristics in Hong Kong to reverse the increased prevalence of childhood obesity

In vivo sub-femtoliter resolution photoacoustic microscopy with higher frame rates

Microscopy based on non-fluorescent absorption dye staining is widely used in various fields of biomedicine for 400 years. Unlike its fluorescent counterpart, non-fluorescent absorption microscopy lacks proper methodologies to realize its in vivo applications with a sub-femtoliter 3D resolution. Regardless of the most advanced high-resolution photoacoustic microscopy, sub-femtoliter spatial resolution is still unattainable, and the imaging speed is relatively slow. In this paper, based on the two-photon photoacoustic mechanism, we demonstrated a in vivo label free laser-scanning photoacoustic imaging modality featuring high frame rates and sub-femtoliter 3D resolution simultaneously, which stands as a perfect solution to 3D high resolution non-fluorescent absorption microscopy. Furthermore, we first demonstrated in vivo label-free two-photon acoustic microscopy on the observation of non-fluorescent melanin distribution within mouse skin

Bacterial Microbiota Profiling in Gastritis without Helicobacter pylori Infection or Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Use

Recent 16S ribosomal RNA gene (rRNA) molecular profiling of the stomach mucosa revealed a surprising complexity of microbiota. Helicobacter pylori infection and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use are two main contributors to gastritis and peptic ulcer. However, little is known about the association between other members of the stomach microbiota and gastric diseases. In this study, cloning and sequencing of the 16S rRNA was used to profile the stomach microbiota from normal and gastritis patients. One hundred and thirty three phylotypes from eight bacterial phyla were identified. The stomach microbiota was found to be closely adhered to the mucosa. Eleven Streptococcus phylotypes were successfully cultivated from the biopsies. One to two genera represented a majority of clones within any of the identified phyla. We further developed two real-time quantitative PCR assays to quantify the relative abundance of the Firmicutes phylum and the Streptococcus genus. Significantly higher abundance of the Firmicutes phylum and the Streptococcus genus within the Firmicutes phylum was observed in patients with antral gastritis, compared with normal controls. This study suggests that the genus taxon level can largely represent much higher taxa such as the phylum. The clinical relevance and the mechanism underlying the altered microbiota composition in gastritis require further functional studies

Social Support, Resilience, and Mental Health Among Three High-Risk Groups in Hong Kong: A Mediation Analysis

ObjectivesTo compare the prevalence of anxiety/depression, resilience, and social support among nurses, foreign domestic helpers (FDHs), and residents living in subdivided units (SDUs), and to examine their associations in these high-risk groups in Hong Kong during Omicron waves.MethodsWe recruited 1,014 nurses, 621 FDHs, and 651 SDU residents from December 2021 to May 2022 in this cross-sectional survey. The depression, anxiety, social support, and resilience levels were measured by the validated scales. The multivariate binary logistic regression and causal mediation analysis were applied to examine the associations.ResultsWe observed a prevalence of 17.7% in anxiety and 21.6% in depression which were the highest in SDU residents, followed by FDHs, and lowest in nurses. Social support was associated with increased resilience levels and decreased risks of anxiety/depression. The association of social support with mental disorders was partly mediated by resilience, accounting for 30.9% and 20.9% of the total effect of social support on anxiety and depression, respectively.ConclusionPublic health strategies should target improving social support and providing resilience-promoting interventions to help reduce mental disorders in vulnerable groups

Carboxyl-terminal truncated HBx regulates a distinct microRNA transcription program in Hepatocellular carcinoma development

Background: The biological pathways and functional properties by which misexpressed microRNAs (miRNAs) contribute to liver carcinogenesis have been intensively investigated. However, little is known about the upstream mechanisms that deregulate miRNA expressions in this process. In hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), hepatitis B virus (HBV) X protein (HBx), a transcriptional trans-activator, is frequently expressed in truncated form without carboxyl-terminus but its role in miRNA expression and HCC development is unclear. Methods: Human non-tumorigenic hepatocytes were infected with lentivirus-expressing full-length and carboxyl-terminal truncated HBx (Ct-HBx) for cell growth assay and miRNA profiling. Chromatin immunoprecipitation microarray was performed to identify the miRNA promoters directly associated with HBx. Direct transcriptional control was verified by luciferase reporter assay. The differential miRNA expressions were further validated in a cohort of HBV-associated HCC tissues using real-time PCR. Results: Hepatocytes expressing Ct-HBx grew significantly faster than the full-length HBx counterparts. Ct-HBx decreased while full-length HBx increased the expression of a set of miRNAs with growth-suppressive functions. Interestingly, Ct-HBx bound to and inhibited the transcriptional activity of some of these miRNA promoters. Notably, some of the examined repressed-miRNAs (miR-26a, -29c, -146a and -190) were also significantly down-regulated in a subset of HCC tissues with carboxyl-terminal HBx truncation compared to their matching non-tumor tissues, highlighting the clinical relevance of our data. Conclusion: Our results suggest that Ct-HBx directly regulates miRNA transcription and in turn promotes hepatocellular proliferation, thus revealing a viral contribution of miRNA deregulation during hepatocarcinogenesis. © 2011 Yip et al.published_or_final_versio

NTIRE 2023 Quality Assessment of Video Enhancement Challenge

This paper reports on the NTIRE 2023 Quality Assessment of Video Enhancement Challenge, which will be held in conjunction with the New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement Workshop (NTIRE) at CVPR 2023. This challenge is to address a major challenge in the field of video processing, namely, video quality assessment (VQA) for enhanced videos. The challenge uses the VQA Dataset for Perceptual Video Enhancement (VDPVE), which has a total of 1211 enhanced videos, including 600 videos with color, brightness, and contrast enhancements, 310 videos with deblurring, and 301 deshaked videos. The challenge has a total of 167 registered participants. 61 participating teams submitted their prediction results during the development phase, with a total of 3168 submissions. A total of 176 submissions were submitted by 37 participating teams during the final testing phase. Finally, 19 participating teams submitted their models and fact sheets, and detailed the methods they used. Some methods have achieved better results than baseline methods, and the winning methods have demonstrated superior prediction performance