Pay attention to standardized diagnosis and treatment of corticosteroid-responsive cough

The global prevalence of chronic cough in adults is 9.6%.In 2008, the cough special issue of Lancet published a diagnosis and treatment plan to distinguish the causes of chronic cough based on eosinophilic airway inflammation or sensitivity to glucocorticoids therapy. In 2014, Professor Lai Kefang of China first proposed the Chinese name “corticosteroid-responsive cough” (CRC). CRC refers to chronic cough that is effectively treated with glucocorticoids, accounting for 63% of the causes of chronic cough in China, including cough variant asthma, eosinophilic bronchitis, and atopic cough. Cough variant asthma is the most common cause of chronic cough in China, accounting for 30% to 50% Chronic cough has a complex etiology and involves numerous examinations, especially bronchial provocation tests, induced sputum cell analysis, multi-channel esophageal impedance pH monitoring, etc., which have not been carried out in many tertiary hospitals, and not all chronic patients can undergo relevant examinations to confirm diagnosis and receive treatment. The concept of corticosteroid-responsive cough has important guiding significance for the empirical treatment of chronic cough, and is suitable for promotion in grassroots hospitals. In clinical practice, it is only necessary to determine whether it is a CRC based on the clinical characteristics of the patient without the need for further tests, such as induced sputum cell analysis and bronchial provocation tests to distinguish cough variant asthma, eosinophilic bronchitis, and allergic cough, and then empirical treatment can be given. However, there is currently insufficient understanding of the standardized diagnosis and treatment of CRC. For example, there is still a lack of consensus on determining whether it is CRC, how to select hormone treatment and the duration of hormone treatment. It is necessary to further emphasize and promote the relevant concepts and diagnosis and treatment plans of corticosteroid-responsive cough

A study of the effect of suboptimal glycemic control on subclinical myocardial systolic function in patients with T2DM

Objective·To explore the relationship between poor blood glucose control and early impaired cardiac function in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).Methods·Eighty-three patients diagnosed with T2DM in Jiading Branch of Shanghai General Hospital from June 2021 to March 2022 were selected and divided into two groups according to the level of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c): satisfactory control of glycaemia (SCG) group and less satisfactory control of glycaemia (LSCG) group. Fifty-four subjects were in the control group. Echocardiography was performed to obtain left ventricular structural and functional parameters and left ventricular subendocardial, medial and subepicardial global longitudinal strain (GLS): GLSendo, GLSmid, and GLSepi. The parameters were compared by using analysis of variance. The correlation analysis was performed by Pearson correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The diagnostic performance of longitudinal strain in differentiating subclinical myocardial dysfunction in patients with T2DM was analyzed by receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve.Results·The thickness of the ventricular septum and the posterior wall of the left ventricle were thicker in the LSCG group than in the SCG group and the control group (all P0.05). Compared with the control group, the left ventricular diastolic function index E/e (early peak flow velocity by Doppler/early and atrial diastolic velocity of the mitral annulus by tissue Doppler imaging) was higher in both the LSCG group and the SCG group (all P 0.05). There was no significant difference in left ventricular ejection fraction among the three groups (P>0.05). Compared with LSCG group, GLSendo, GLSmid and GLSepi were higher in the SCG group and control group (all P0.05). HbA1c was an independently negative factor of GLSmid and GLSepi (β= -0.198 and -0.239, all P<0.05). GLSendo, GLSmid and GLSepi had moderate diagnostic performance between the LSCG group and SCG group, with areas under the curve (AUC) of 0.754 (95%CI 0.624‒0.884), 0.755 (95%CI 0.624‒0.885), and 0.751 (95%CI 0.619‒0.882), respectively.Conclusions·T2DM patients with unsatisfactory glycemic control have reduced myocardial contractility, and this subclinical myocardial damage is independently negatively correlated with the level of HbA1c

Neuroprotective Effects of Ginsenoside-Rg1 Against Depression-Like Behaviors via Suppressing Glial Activation, Synaptic Deficits, and Neuronal Apoptosis in Rats

Depression is considered a neuropsychiatric disease associated with various neuronal changes within specific brain regions. We previously reported that ginsenoside-Rg1, a potential neuroprotective agent extracted from ginseng, significantly alleviated depressive-like disorders induced by chronic stress in rats. However, the mechanisms by which ginsenoside-Rg1 exerts its neuroprotective effects in depression remain largely uncharacterized. In the present study we confirm that ginsenoside-Rg1 significantly prevented the antidepressant-like effects in a rat model of chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) and report on some of the underlying mechanisms associated with this effect. Specifically, we found that chronic pretreatment with ginsenoside-Rg1 prior to stress exposure significantly suppressed inflammatory pathway activity via alleviating the overexpression of proinflammatory cytokines and the activation of microglia and astrocytes. These effects were accompanied with an attenuation of dendritic spine and synaptic deficits as associated with an upregulation of synaptic-related proteins in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). In addition, ginsenoside-Rg1 inhibited neuronal apoptosis induced by CUMS exposure, increased Bcl-2 expression and decreased cleaved Caspase-3 and Caspase-9 expression within the vmPFC region. Furthermore, ginsenoside-Rg1 could increase the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (Nrf2) expression and inhibit p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p-p38 MAPK) and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) p65 subunit activation within the vmPFC. Taken together, these results suggest that the neuroprotective effects of ginsenoside-Rg1, which may assume the antidepressant-like effect in this animal model of depression, appears to result from amelioration of a CUMS-dependent neuronal deterioration within the vmPFC. Moreover, they also provide support for the therapeutic potential of ginsenoside-Rg1 in the treatment of stress-related mental disorders

EVIL AND THE THINKING WORLD OF EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (FASS

Effects of Pr and Yb Dual Doping on the Thermoelectric Properties of CaMnO3

There has been research on CaMnO3 with natural abundance, low toxicity, and low cost as promising candidates for n-type thermoelectric (TE) materials. In this paper, Ca1&minus;2xPrxYbxMnO3 with different Pr and Yb contents (x = 0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04 and 0.05) were synthesized by means of coprecipitation. With X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), researchers characterized the phase structure and morphology of all the samples. The oxidation states of manganese were determined by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS). The role of Ca-site dual doping in the TE properties was also investigated. Increasing the Pr and Yb contents leads to decreases in the electrical resistivity and Seebeck coefficient, leading to a power factor of 3.48 &times; 10&minus;4 W&middot;m&minus;1&middot;K&minus;2 for x = 0.04 at 773 K, which is its maximum. Furthermore, the thermal conductivity (&kappa;) decreases with increasing x, and &kappa; = 1.26 W&middot;m&minus;1&middot;K&minus;1 is obtained for x = 0.04 at 973 K. Ca0.92Pr0.04Yb0.04MnO3 exhibit a ZT (thermoelectric figure of merit) value of 0.24 at 973 K, approximately 3 times more than that of the pristine CaMnO3. Thus, the reported method is a new strategy to enhance the TE performance of CaMnO3

Hair pyrrole adducts serve as biomarkers for peripheral nerve impairment induced by 2,5-hexanedione and n-hexane in rats.

Pyrrole adducts are specific reaction products of 2,5-hexadione (2,5-HD) in vivo and are considered highly relevant to the pathogenesis of peripheral nerve impairments after exposure to n-hexane, though the exact mechanism remains unclear. In this study, 40 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three experimental groups and one control group, in which all rat's hair were shaved completely at the beginning. The rats in three experimental groups were treated with 2,5-HD by gavage at dosages of 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg per day respectively, six times per week for 8 weeks. Abnormality of gait and changes in the rota-rod latency were surveilled. Pyrrole adducts in hair, urine and serum of all rats were measured at the endpoint. Results showed that the increased pyrrole adducts in hair, urine and serum accumulated in dose-response relationship. Spearman's correlation analysis between pyrrole adducts and gait scores showed that hair pyrrole adducts were highly relevant to the gait scores. Moreover, we treated rats with n-hexane and succeed to verify the results aforesaid. Further, multiply linear regression analysis showed that hair pyrrole adducts have higher partial correlation coefficients than these in serum and urine in both 2,5-HD and n-hexane treated models. Our findings draw the conclusion that the hair pyrrole adducts might serve as a promising biomarker of n-hexane induced peripheral neuropathy

The Research on Intelligent Control of AC Drive System Based on Neural Network

Aiming at the disadvantage that traditional PID controller parameter canâ??t be adjusted online timely, control effect is not ideal. this paper introduces a PID control algorithm based on the BP neural network by melting the regular PID controller and the self-turning learning neural network. The algorithm uses the BP neural network to build system parameter model, is able to track the changes of the controlled object, achieves a higher recognition accuracy. It amends the BP neural network weight coefficients by the BP algorithm, realizes adjustment of the PID parameters online. The results of the simulation show that these formulae has fast convergence ?high precision? and robustness

Remaining Useful Life Prediction of Aircraft Turbofan Engine Based on Random Forest Feature Selection and Multi-Layer Perceptron

The accurate prediction of the remaining useful life (RUL) of aircraft engines is crucial for improving engine safety and reducing maintenance costs. To tackle the complex issues of nonlinearity, high dimensionality, and difficult-to-model degradation processes in aircraft engine monitoring parameters, a new method for predicting the RUL of aircraft engines based on the random forest algorithm and a Bayes-optimized multilayer perceptron (MLP) was proposed here. First, the random forest algorithm was used to evaluate the importance of historical monitoring parameters of the engine, selecting the key features that significantly impact the engine’s lifetime operation cycle. Then, the single exponent smoothing (SES) algorithm was introduced for smoothing the extracted features to reduce the interference of original noise. Next, an MLP-based RUL prediction model was established using a neural network. The Bayes’ online parameter updating formula was used to solve the objective function and return the optimal parameters of the MLP training model and the minimum value of the evaluation index RMSE. Finally, the probability density function of the predicted RUL value of the aircraft engine was calculated to obtain the RUL prediction results.The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified and analyzed using the C-MAPSS dataset for turbofan engines. Experimental results show that, compared with several other methods, the RMSE of the proposed method in the FD001 test set decreases by 6.1%, demonstrating that the method can effectively improve the accuracy of RUL prediction for aircraft engines