Detection and significance of angiogenic factors and vascular endothelial function in patients with hypertensive retinopathy of pregnancy

AIM: To investigate the changes of angiogenic factors and vascular endothelial function in patients with hypertensive retinopathy complicating pregnancy, and to analyze the relationship between the relevant factors and the degree of retinopathy. METHODS: Totally 82 cases of patients with hypertensive retinopathy in pregnancy were selected as the research subjects. According to the Duker-Elder fundus staging criteria, they were divided into stage Ⅰ group(n=42), patients with stage Ⅱ group(n=25)and stage Ⅲ group(n=15), in addition, pregnancy hypertension patients without retinopathy were selected as control group. We compared the levels of angiogenic factors and vascular endothelial function among groups, and analyzed the relationship between the levels of relevant factors and retinopathy. RESULTS:The levels of vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF), insulin like growth factors(IGF-1)and endothelin(ET)-1 in the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group(PPPCONCLUSION: There are obvious angiogenic factors disorder and vascular endotheial dysfunction in patients with hypertensive retinopathy of pregnancy, and its level is correlated with the degree of retinopathy

Nebulization using ZnO/Si surface acoustic wave devices with focused interdigitated transducers

Propagation of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) on bulk piezoelectric substrates such as LiNbO3 and quartz, exhibits an in-plane anisotropic effect due to their crystal cut orientations. Thin film SAW devices, such as those based on ZnO or AlN, offer potential advantages, including isotropic wave velocities in all in-plane directions, higher power handling capability, and potentially lower failure rates. This paper reports experimental and simulation results of nebulization behaviour for water droplets using ZnO/Si surface acoustic wave devices with focused interdigital transducers (IDTs). Post-deposition annealing of the films at various temperatures was applied to improve the quality of the sputtering-deposited ZnO films, and 500 °C was found to be the optimal annealing temperature. Thin film ZnO/Si focused SAW devices were fabricated using the IDT designs with arc angles ranging from 30° to 90°. Nebulization was significantly enhanced with increasing the arc angles of the IDTs, e.g., increased nebulization rate, reduced critical powers required to initialise nebulization, and concentration of the nebulised plume into a narrower size of spray. Effects of applied RF power and droplet size have been systematically studied, and increased RF power and reduced droplet size significantly enhanced the nebulization phenomena