Changes in Nitric Oxide Level and Thickness Index of Synovial Fluid in Osteoarthritis Patients following Intraarticular Injection of Sodium Hyaluronate

Purpose: To monitor the changes in nitric oxide levels and synovium thickness index in synovial fluid following intra-articular injection of sodium hyaluronate.Methods: One hundred patients diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the knee from April 2014 to January 2015 in The Third Hospital of Jinan, Jinan, Shandong, China were selected and categorized into three phases; namely, mild, moderate and severe. Patients received a 20 mL sodium hyaluronate injection into the articular cavity of the knee once per week for 15 weeks, with continuous observation. The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Western Ontario and McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) scores were recorded after five weeks. A total of 56 patients (78 knees) remaining in serious condition after 5 weeks were divided into mild, moderate, and severe groups and treated with sodium hyaluronate once a week. Internationally reorganized VAS and WOMAC scores were adopted as clinical observation indices to indicate the curative effect of sodium hyaluronate among the 56 patients after 15 weeks of treatment. The conditions of the patients in the two phases were compared.Results: After 5 weeks of treatment, treatment effective rate in the mild, moderate and severe groups was 72.92, 66.10 and 28.57 %, respectively, with an overall effective rate of 78 %. After 15 weeks of treatment, treatment effective rate in mild, moderate, and severe groups was 96.77, 95.45 and 66.67 %, respectively, with an overall effective rate of 67.95 %.Conclusions: Clinically curative effect of sodium hyaluronate is significant for mild and moderate phase patients after intra-articular injection of sodium hyaluronate, while the effect is insignificant in severe patients. Thus, sodium hyaluronate can effectively improve nitric oxide levels in synovial fluid, reduce synovium thickness, enhances articular cavity lubrication and effectively alleviates disease severity.Keywords: Osteoarthritis, Knee, Intra-articular injection, Sodium hyaluronate, Nitric oxide, Synovium thickness, WOMA

Thermoelectric performance of P-type Bi85Sb15-xSnx alloys prepared by mechanical alloying and pressureless sintering at low temperatures

AbstractIn the present study, the Bi85Sb15-xSnx (x=0, 1, 2, 3) thermoelectric materials have been fabricated through mechanical alloying followed by pressureless sintering. The phase composition and the microstructure were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis. Electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient and thermal conductivity were measured in the temperature range of 77∼300K. The electrical conductivity was characterized by using four-probe method. The Seebeck coefficient was determined from measured temperature and electric potential difference between the two ends of the bar-shape specimen. The thermal conductivity was measured by means of a heat and sink steady state method. Then the power factor and ZT were calculated according to the measurement values. The results showed that the Sn-doped samples changed from n-type to p-type at low temperature. A maximum power factor of 1.67 ×10-3W/mK2 and a minimum thermal conductivity of 1.8W/mK were obtained. The optimum ZT value of 0.15 was obtained at 300K

Thermoelectric performance of co-doped SnTe with resonant levels

Some group III elements such as Indium are known to produce the resonant impurity states in IV-VI compounds. The discovery of these impurity states has opened up new ways for engineering the thermoelectric properties of IV-VI compounds. In this work, resonant states in SnTe were studied by co-doping with both resonant (In) and extrinsic (Ag, I) dopants. A characteristic nonlinear relationship was observed between the Hall carrier concentration (n_H) and extrinsic dopant concentration (N_I, N_(Ag)) in the stabilization region, where a linear increase of dopant concentration does not lead to linear response in the measured n_H. Upon substituting extrinsic dopants beyond a certain amount, the nH changed proportionally with additional dopants (Ag, I) (the doping region). The Seebeck coefficients are enhanced as the resonant impurity is introduced, whereas the use of extrinsic doping only induces minor changes. Modest zT enhancements are observed at lower temperatures, which lead to an increase in the average zT values over a broad range of temperatures (300–773 K). The improved average zT obtained through co-doping indicates the promise of fine carrier density control in maximizing the favorable effect of resonant levels for thermoelectric materials

Optimization of thermoelectric efficiency in SnTe: the case for the light band

p-Type PbTe is an outstanding high temperature thermoelectric material with zT of 2 at high temperatures due to its complex band structure which leads to high valley degeneracy. Lead-free SnTe has a similar electronic band structure, which suggests that it may also be a good thermoelectric material. However, stoichiometric SnTe is a strongly p-type semiconductor with a carrier concentration of about 1 × 10^(20) cm^(−3), which corresponds to a minimum Seebeck coefficient and zT. While in the case of p-PbTe (and n-type La3Te4) one would normally achieve higher zT by using high carrier density in order to populate the secondary band with higher valley degeneracy, SnTe behaves differently. It has a very light, upper valence band which is shown in this work to provide higher zT than doping towards the heavier second band. Therefore, decreasing the hole concentration to maximize the performance of the light band results in higher zT than doping into the high degeneracy heavy band. Here we tune the electrical transport properties of SnTe by decreasing the carrier concentration with iodine doping, and increasing the carrier concentration with Gd doping or by making the samples Te deficient. A peak zT value of 0.6 at 700 K was obtained for SnTe0.985I0.015 which optimizes the light, upper valence band, which is about 50% higher than the other peak zT value of 0.4 for Gd_zSn_(1−zT)e and SnTe_(1+y) which utilize the high valley degeneracy secondary valence band

Thermoelectric performance of co-doped SnTe with resonant levels

Some group III elements such as Indium are known to produce the resonant impurity states in IV-VI compounds. The discovery of these impurity states has opened up new ways for engineering the thermoelectric properties of IV-VI compounds. In this work, resonant states in SnTe were studied by co-doping with both resonant (In) and extrinsic (Ag, I) dopants. A characteristic nonlinear relationship was observed between the Hall carrier concentration (n_H) and extrinsic dopant concentration (N_I, N_(Ag)) in the stabilization region, where a linear increase of dopant concentration does not lead to linear response in the measured n_H. Upon substituting extrinsic dopants beyond a certain amount, the nH changed proportionally with additional dopants (Ag, I) (the doping region). The Seebeck coefficients are enhanced as the resonant impurity is introduced, whereas the use of extrinsic doping only induces minor changes. Modest zT enhancements are observed at lower temperatures, which lead to an increase in the average zT values over a broad range of temperatures (300–773 K). The improved average zT obtained through co-doping indicates the promise of fine carrier density control in maximizing the favorable effect of resonant levels for thermoelectric materials

Profiling the peripheral blood T cell receptor repertoires of gastric cancer patients

Cancer driven by somatic mutations may express neoantigens that can trigger T-cell immune responses. Since T-cell receptor (TCR) repertoires play critical roles in anti-tumor immune responses for oncology, next-generation sequencing (NGS) was used to profile the hypervariable complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) of the TCR-beta chain in peripheral blood samples from 68 gastric cancer patients and 49 healthy controls. We found that most hyper-expanded CDR3 are individual-specific, and the gene usage of TRBV3-1 is more frequent in the tumor group regardless of tumor stage than in the healthy control group. We identified 374 hyper-expanded tumor-specific CDR3, which may play a vital role in anti-tumor immune responses. The patients with stage IV gastric cancer have higher EBV-specific CDR3 abundance than the control. In conclusion, analysis of the peripheral blood TCR repertoires may provide the biomarker for gastric cancer prognosis and guide future immunotherapy

The anti-resection activity of the X protein encoded by Hepatitis Virus B

Chronic infection of hepatitis virus B (HBV) is associated with an increased incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HBV encodes an oncoprotein (HBx) that is crucial for viral replication and interferes with multiple cellular activities including gene expression, histone modifications and genomic stability. To date, it remains unclear how disruption of these activities contributes to hepatocarcinogenesis. Here, we report that HBV exhibits a novel anti‐resection activity by disrupting DNA end resection, thus impairing the initial steps of homologous recombination (HR). This anti‐resection activity occurs in primary human hepatocytes (PHHs) undergoing a natural viral infection‐replication cycle, as well as in cells with integrated HBV genomes. Among the seven HBV‐encoded proteins, we identified HBx as the sole viral factor that inhibits resection. By disrupting an evolutionarily conserved Cullin4A‐DDB1‐RING type of E3 ligase, CRL4WDR70, via its H‐box, we show that HBx inhibits H2B monoubiquitylation at lysine 120 (uH2B) at double strand breaks, thus reducing the efficiency of long‐range resection. We further show that directly impairing H2B monoubiquitylation elicited tumorigenesis upon engraftment of deficient cells in athymic mice, confirming that the impairment of CRL4WDR70 function by HBx is sufficient to promote carcinogenesis. Finally, we demonstrated that lack of H2B monoubiquitylation is manifest in human HBV‐associated HCC (HBVHCC) when compared with HBV‐free HCC, implying corresponding defects of epigenetic regulation and end resection. We conclude that the anti‐resection activity of HBx induces an HR defect and genome instability and contributes to tumorigenesis of host hepatocytes