The Prevalence of Immunologic Injury in Renal Allograft Recipients with De Novo Proteinuria

Post-transplant proteinuria is a common complication after renal transplantation; it is associated with reduced graft and recipient survival. However, the prevalence of histological causes has been reported with considerable variation. A clinico-pathological re-evaluation of post-transplant proteinuria is necessary, especially after dismissal of the term “chronic allograft nephropathy,” which had been considered to be an important cause of proteinuria. Moreover, urinary protein can promote interstitial inflammation in native kidney, whether this occurs in renal allograft remains unknown. Factors that affect the graft outcome in patients with proteinuria also remain unclear. Here we collected 98 cases of renal allograft recipients who developed proteinuria after transplant, histological features were characterized using Banff scoring system. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used for graft survival predictors. We found that transplant glomerulopathy was the leading (40.8%) cause of post-transplant proteinuria. Immunological causes, including transplant glomerulopathy, acute rejection, and chronic rejection accounted for the majority of all pathological causes of proteinuria. Nevertheless, almost all patients that developed proteinuria had immunological lesions in the graft, especially for interstitial inflammation. Intraglomerular C3 deposition was unexpectedly correlated with the severity of proteinuria. Moreover, the severity of interstitial inflammation was an independent risk factor for graft loss, while high level of hemoglobin was a protective factor for graft survival. This study revealed a predominance of immunological parameters in renal allografts with post-transplant proteinuria. These parameters not only correlate with the severity of proteinuria, but also with the outcome of the graft

Importance of community containment measures in combating the COVID-19 epidemic: From the perspective of urban planning

To contain the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, unprecedented interventions, including city lockdown and community closure, have been implemented. However, most of the current studies focused on evaluation of the city lockdown, but paid limited attention to the impacts of the community containment measures within the city. This research addressed this important issue from the perspective of urban planning, based on the epidemic and remote sensing data of 194 communities of Wuhan. We found that the number of confirmed cases of communities is highly related to urban planning factors, e.g. area percentage of buildings and density of neighboring markets. These factors are relevant to the residents’ activity patterns, which therefore impact the mode of virus transmission. Our research confirmed the effectiveness of the community-oriented control strategies, provided a valuable reference for other cities that are suffering from the epidemic, and exhibited new thoughts into future urban planning

Adaptive Self-Paced Collaborative and 3-D Adversarial Multitask Network for Semantic Change Detection Using Zhuhai-1 Orbita Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Imagery

In recent years, numerous change detection methodologies have been proposed, with a predominant focus on binary change detection. Furthermore, there exists a paucity of research addressing semantic change detection in scenarios where solely binary change labels are available. This article introduces a multitask network for semantic change detection. First, 3-D ResUnet model is employed to generate initial multitemporal land cover results through postclassification comparison. Subsequently, the multitask network, encompassing two subtasks—binary change detection and multitemporal semantic segmentation—is proposed. Specifically, the shared branch of the network employs 3-D residual blocks to extract joint spectral-spatial features. In the subsequent task-specific branch, a 3-D GAN is incorporated for the binary change detection task to enhance the discrimination ability of latent high-level features for changes. Novel adaptive self-paced learning and certainty-weighted focal loss are proposed for multitemporal semantic segmentation to mitigate adverse effects from noisy semantic labels by considering sample complexity and reliability in the network optimization process. Experiments conducted on the Orbita Hyperspectral dataset in the Xiong'an New Area demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method, achieving 99.28% and 76.60% for overall accuracy and kappa, respectively. This outperformance is notable when compared to other methods, such as Str4 and Bi-SRNet, showing an increase of 39.82% and 54.17% for kappa. Moreover, comparative experiments on SECOND further confirm the advantage of the proposed method, achieving 54.62% for kappa and outperforming other comparative methods, such as Bi-SRNet (47.61%)

The Roles of Microtubule-Associated Protein 4 in Wound Healing and Human Diseases

Microtubules (MTs) are essential structural elements of cells. MT stability and dynamics play key roles in integrity of cell morphology and various cellular activities. The MT-associated proteins (MAPs) are specialized proteins that interact with MT and induce MT assemble into distinct arrays. Microtubule-associated protein 4 (MAP4), a member of MAPs family, ubiquitously expressed in both neuronal and non-neuronal cells and tissues, plays a key role in regulating MT stability. Over the past 40 years or so, the mechanism of MAP4 regulating MT stability has been well studied. In recent years, more and more studies have found that MAP4 affects the activities of sundry human cells through regulating MT stability with different signaling pathways, plays important roles in the pathogenesis of a number of disorders. The aim of this review is to outline the detailed regulatory mechanisms of MAP4 in MT stability, and to focus on its specific mechanisms in wound healing and various human diseases, thus to highlight the possibility of MAP4 as a future therapeutic target for accelerating wound healing and treating other disorders

A Study on the Quantity of Shallow Sea Benthos in Great Wall Bay, Antarctica

Based on the investigation material acquired during the three cruises of the 4 Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition at 19 quantitative dredging stations and 4 trawling stations from the period December 1987 to March 1988, this paper studies the quantity of the benthos in Great Wall Bay, the distributive characteristics and variations, and points out that the stock number of the benthos in the bay is extremely large and that there are two ranged high mass area and 2-3 low small ranged mass area. The instability of the sediments is the cause for the low, mass areas. The warm season is the vigorous reproductive period of the various kinds of the benthos and the monthly variation of the quantity is remarkable

Community Analysis of Shallow Sea Benthos in Great Wall Bay, Antarctica

The data used in this paper were acquired at 19 quantitative dredging stations and 4 trawling stations during the three crusies of the 4th Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition for investigating the shallow sea benthos in Great Wall Bay, in the period from December 1987 to March 1988. Based on environmental characteristics, diversity of species composition and the eveness of interspecific distribution of individuals, cluster methods were used to divide the investigated area into three benthic community distribution areas. The structures of the various communities were further divided into 3 structure types, namely, high diversity, intermediate diversity and low diversity types. From the study of the relationship between community structure and environmental factors it was pointed out that there was an extremely close relationship between benthic communities structure and the stability of the bottom types and sediments, whereas in sea areas where the depth gradient is not large, there is no obvious relationship between benthic communities structure and depth gradient

Picking transplant glomerulopathy out of the CAN: evidence from a clinico-pathological evaluation

Abstract Background Since the term chronic allograft nephropathy (CAN) was removed from the Banff scheme in 2005, transplant glomerulopathy (TG) has been regarded as a clinicopathological entity that is one of the major causes of graft loss. To assess the distinction between CAN and TG, we performed a comprehensive evaluation comparing TG with traditional CAN. Methods We compared the clinicopathological features of 43 cases of TG with 43 matched cases of non-TG CAN (non-TG group) after renal transplantation. TG was diagnosed by light microscopy based on the double contours of the glomerular basement membranes, and the Banff 97 classification system was used to score TG severity (cg0-3). Results Compared to the control group, we found a significantly higher incidence of positivity for human leukocyte antigen class-I and II antibodies, a higher incidence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, and poorer graft survival in TG patients. Clinically, TG was associated with a higher prevalence of proteinuria, hematuria, anaemia and hypoalbuminemia. Histologically, TG strongly correlated with antibody related microcirculatory injuries, including glomerulitis, peritubular capillaritis and peritubular capillary (PTC) C4d deposition. Interestingly, the TG patients showed a significantly higher incidence of IgA deposition than the control patients. C4d-positive TG was correlated with higher TG and PTC scores, and PTC C4d deposition was correlated with a more rapid progression to graft dysfunction. TG accompanied by HCV infection was associated with heavier proteinuria, higher TG and C4d scores, and poorer graft survival. Conclusions TG presents clinicopathological features that are distinct from non-TG cases and leads to poorer outcomes. PTC C4d deposition is related to a more rapid progression to graft loss, suggesting ongoing antibody reactivity. HCV-positive TG is a more severe sub-entity, that requires further investigation.</p