Infection and Drug Resistance of Mycoplasma Pneumoniae: an Analysis of Influenza-like Illness

BackgroundInfluenza and Mycoplasma pneumonia (MP) infection are common winter diseases in northern China, both of which have similar clinical symptoms. There are few studies on the infection of MP in individuals with influenza-like illness (ILI) .ObjectiveTo study the presence and drug resistance of MP in throat swabs from ILI patients.MethodsThroat swab specimens of 915 outpatients with ILI were collected from 17 grade A tertiary healthcare institutions in 15 regions of China (Weifang, Kaifeng, Harbin, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Tianjin, Tongchuan, Xianyang, Qinhuangdao, Dandong, Hanzhong, Taiyuan, Benxi, Luohe, Nanyang) during two winters (one was from December 2018 to February 2019, and the other from December 2019 to February 2020) . The Influenza A+B Antigen Test Kit (Colloidal Gold) was used to identify influenza viral antigens. PCR was used to detect the nucleic acid from pneumonia pathogens. DNA sequencing was used to detect the drug-resistant gene associated with MP.ResultsOf the specimens, 578 were from children (<18 years) and 337 from adults (≥18 years) . The overall detection rate of influenza viral antigens was 45.25% (414/915) . The positive rate of influenza A was 91.06% (377/414) . Pediatric and adult cases had no statistical difference in the detection rate of influenza viral antigens〔44.29% (256/578) vs 46.88% (158/337) , χ2=0.577, P=0.447〕. The overall detection rate of MP was 11.91% (109/915) . Pediatric and adult cases had no statistical difference in the detection rate of MP〔4.34% (25/578) vs 24.93% (84/337) , χ2= 86.094, P<0.001〕. Of the MP-positive specimens, 74.31% (81/109) had A2063G mutations, 1.83% (2/109) had A2064G mutations, and 1.83% (2/109) had A2063G and A2064G mutations. In children's MP-positive specimens, 48.00% (12/25) had A2063G mutations, 8.00% (2/25) had A2064G mutations, and 8.00% (2/25) had A2063G and A2064G mutations, the other 36.00% (9/25) had drug-susceptible strains. Of the adult MP-positive specimens, 82.14% (69/84) had A2063G mutation, 17.86% (15/84) had drug-susceptible strains, and no A2064G mutation was found. The rate of presence of drug-resistant gene A2063G mutations in adult specimens was higher than that in pediatric specimens (χ2=11.765, P=0.001) . Both influenza viruses and MP were detected in 2.84% (26/915) of the specimens. The rate of co-presence of influenza viruses and MP in adult specimens was higher than that in pediatric specimens〔4.75% (16/337) vs 1.73% (10/578) , χ2=7.022, P=0.008〕.ConclusionDuring winters in 2018—2020, influenza A was the major type of influenza prevailing in northern China. MP infection was not rare in patients with ILI, and it was more common in adults than in children. The resistance rate of MP to macrolide antibiotics was relatively high. A2063G mutation in the 23SrRNA gene was the major type of mutations. Some cases were coinfected with influenza viruses and MP

Ratiometric G-quadruplex assay for robust lead detection in food samples

Lead (Pb2+) pollution is a serious food safety issue, rapid detection of Pb2+ residual in food is vital to guarantee food quality and safety. Here we proposed ratiometric aptamer probes, allowing robust Pb2+ supervision in food samples. Pb2+ specific aptamer can bolster a transition of G-quadruplex structural response to Pb2+; this process can be monitored by N-methyl mesoporphyrin IX (NMM), which is highly specific to G-quadruplex. Particularly, the utilization of G-quadruplex specific dye and terminal-labeled fluorophore allowed to endue ratiometric signal outputs towards Pb2+, dramatically increase the robustness for lead detection. The ratiometric G-quadruplex assay allowed a facile and one-pot Pb2+ detection at room temperature using a single-stranded DNA aptamer. We demonstrated its feasibility for detecting lead pollution in fresh eggs and tap water samples. The ratiometric G-quadruplex design is expected to be used for on-site Pb2+ testing associated with food safet

Biological control of Fusarium crown rot of wheat with Chaetomium globosum 12XP1-2-3 and its effects on rhizosphere microorganisms

Chaetomium globosum is a common plant endophytic fungi that exhibits great biocontrol potential in plant disease. Fusarium crown rot (FCR) is an important disease in wheat that seriously threatens wheat production worldwide. The control effect of C. globosum against wheat FCR remains unclear. In this study, we introduced an identified C. globosum 12XP1-2-3 and tested its biological control potential against wheat FCR. The hypha and fermentation broth exhibited an antagonistic effect against Fusarium pseudograminearum. Results from indoor experiments showed that C. globosum 12XP1-2-3 might delay the onset of symptoms of brown stem base and significantly reduced the disease index (37.3%). Field trials showed that wheat seeds coated with a spore suspension of 12XP1-2-3 grew better than the control seeds, had control effects of 25.9–73.1% on FCR disease, and increased wheat yield by 3.2–11.9%. Analysis of rhizosphere microorganisms revealed that seeds coated with C. globosum (‘Cg’ treatment) had a greater effect on fungal rather than on bacterial alpha diversity and may improve the health state of rhizosphere microorganisms, as reflected by the significantly increased fungal Shannon index at Feekes 11 and the increased complexity of the bacterial co-occurrence network but decreased complexity of the fungal network. Moreover, the accumulation of beneficial bacteria such as Bacillus and Rhizobium at Feekes 3, and Sphingomonas at Feekes 7 in the ‘Cg’ treatment may be the important contributions to healthier wheat growth state, significantly reduced relative abundance of Fusarium at Feekes 11, and reduced occurrence of FCR disease. These results provide a basis for further research on the mechanism of action of C. globosum and its application in the biological control of FCR in the field

Safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of single and multiple doses of aficamten in healthy Chinese participants: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 1 study

Objectives: Aficamten is a selective, small-molecule allosteric inhibitor of cardiac sarcomere being developed as a chronic oral treatment for patients with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This was the first-in-Chinese study aiming to investigate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of aficamten in healthy adults.Methods: This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, phase 1 study was conducted in 28 healthy male and female Chinese participants after single ascending dose (SAD) and multi-dose (MD) administrations of aficamten. In the SAD cohort, 16 participants were randomized to receive a single oral dose of aficamten: 10 mg, 20 mg, or placebo. In the MD cohort, 12 participants were randomized to receive multiple doses of aficamten: 5 mg or placebo once daily for 14 days. Safety was monitored throughout the study with electrocardiograms, echocardiograms, clinical laboratory tests, and reporting of adverse events (AEs). Pharmacokinetic profiles of aficamten and metabolites, as well as CYP2D6 genetic impact, were evaluated.Results: A total of 35 treatment-emergent AEs were reported by 14 (50%) participants with mild severity. There were no serious AEs or adverse decreases in left ventricular ejection fraction below 50% during the study. Aficamten was dose-proportional over the dose range of 5–20 mg and accumulated in the MD cohort.Conclusion: Aficamten was safe and well-tolerated in the healthy Chinese adult participants. The pharmacokinetics of aficamten in the Chinese population was comparable to those previously found in Western participants. These phase 1 data support the progression of aficamten into future clinical studies in Chinese patients.Clinical Trial registration:https://clinicaltrials.gov, identifier: NCT04783766

Clock synchronization based on pulse with propagation delay eliminated in wireless sensor networks

Abstract Clock synchronization is indispensable for numerous applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). When no common reference clock is available, the nodes must employ distributed synchronization techniques. This paper proposes, a distributed pulse‐based clock synchronisation approach, wherein the propagation delay is eliminated through signal ping‐pongs between neighbouring nodes. Such an approach can jointly estimate the clock skew and offset without requiring any reference clock. The whole synchronization process is completed at the physical (PHY) layer, effectively avoiding the random delay caused by packet queuing and retransmission. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can achieve higher synchronization accuracy compared with other existing methods

Global Marine Gravity Gradient Tensor Inverted from Altimetry-derived Deflections of the Vertical: CUGB2023GRAD

<p>CUGB2023GRAD is a dataset consisting of all six components of Earth's gravity gradient tensor over the oceans. The gravity gradient tensor is inverted from 1 arc-minute grid of altimetry-derived north-south and east-west components of deflection of the vertical. CUGB2023GRAD has a longitudinal extent of 180° W ~180° E and a latitudinal extent of 80° S ~ 80° N.</p> <p>This version used a merge of deflections of the vertical (north_32.1.nc and east_32.1.nc) developed by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and DTU21GRA-derived deflections of the vertical. DTU21GRA is a highly accurate gravity anomaly model developed by Technical University of Denmark. Both sets of deflections of the vertical were developed from multiple satellite altimetry observations which include: Jason-1, Jason-2, Cryosat-2, SARAL/AltiKa, and Sentinel-3A/B.</p&gt

Author Name Disambiguation on Heterogeneous Information Network with Adversarial Representation Learning

Author name ambiguity causes inadequacy and inconvenience in academic information retrieval, which raises the necessity of author name disambiguation (AND). Existing AND methods can be divided into two categories: the models focusing on content information to distinguish whether two papers are written by the same author, the models focusing on relation information to represent information as edges on the network and to quantify the similarity among papers. However, the former requires adequate labeled samples and informative negative samples, and are also ineffective in measuring the high-order connections among papers, while the latter needs complicated feature engineering or supervision to construct the network. We propose a novel generative adversarial framework to grow the two categories of models together: (i) the discriminative module distinguishes whether two papers are from the same author, and (ii) the generative module selects possibly homogeneous papers directly from the heterogeneous information network, which eliminates the complicated feature engineering. In such a way, the discriminative module guides the generative module to select homogeneous papers, and the generative module generates high-quality negative samples to train the discriminative module to make it aware of high-order connections among papers. Furthermore, a self-training strategy for the discriminative module and a random walk based generating algorithm are designed to make the training stable and efficient. Extensive experiments on two real-world AND benchmarks demonstrate that our model provides significant performance improvement over the state-of-the-art methods

Proteomic and Phenotypic Studies of Mycoplasma pneumoniae Revealed Macrolide-Resistant Mutation (A2063G) Associated Changes in Protein Composition and Pathogenicity of Type I Strains

ABSTRACT Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MP) is an important respiratory pathogen, the prevalence of macrolide-resistant MP (mainly containing A2063G mutation in 23S rRNA) increased in recent years. Epidemiological studies suggest a higher prevalence of type I resistant (IR) strains than corresponding sensitive (IS/IIS) strains, but not type II resistant (IIR) strains. Here, we aimed to analyze the factors underlying the altered prevalence of IR strains. First, proteomic analyses exhibit the protein compositions were type specific, while more differential proteins were detected between IS and IR (227) than IIS and IIR strains (81). mRNA level detection suggested posttranscriptional regulation of these differential proteins. Differential protein-related phenotypic changes were also detected: (i) P1 abundance was different between genotypes (I 0.05). Correlations of P1 abundance to caspase-3 activity and proliferation rate to the level of IL-8 were obtained. These results suggest changes in protein composition influenced the pathogenicity of MP, especially in IR strains, which may impact the prevalence of MP strains of different genotypes. IMPORTANCE The prevalence of macrolide-resistant MPs increased the difficulty in treatment of MP infections and posed potential threats to children's health. Epidemiological studies showed a high prevalence of IR-resistant strains (mainly A2063G in 23S rRNA) in these years. However, the trigger mechanisms for this phenomenon are not clear. In this paper, proteomic and phenotypic studies suggest that IR strains have reduced levels of multiple adhesion proteins and increased proliferation rate, which may lead to higher transmission rate of IR strains in the population. This suggests that we should pay attention to the prevalence of IR strains

Construction of a miRNA-Based Nomogram Model to Predict the Prognosis of Endometrial Cancer

Objective: To investigate the differential expression of microRNA (miRNA) in patients with endometrial cancer and its relationship with prognosis and survival. Method: We used The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database to analyze differentially expressed miRNAs in endometrial cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues. In addition, we successfully screened out key microRNAs to build nomogram models for predicting prognosis and we performed survival analysis on the key miRNAs as well. Result: We identified 187 differentially expressed miRNAs, which includes 134 up-regulated miRNAs and 53 down-regulated miRNAs. Further univariate Cox regression analysis screened out 47 significantly differentially expressed miRNAs and selected 12 miRNAs from which the prognostic nomogram model for ECA patients by LASSO analysis was constructed. Survival analysis showed that high expression of hsa-mir-138-2, hsa-mir-548f-1, hsa-mir-934, hsa-mir-940, and hsa-mir-4758 as well as low-expression of hsa-mir-146a, hsa-mir-3170, hsa-mir-3614, hsa-mir-3616, and hsa-mir-4687 are associated with poor prognosis in EC patients. However, significant correlations between the expressions levels of has-mir-876 and hsa-mir-1269a and patients’ prognosis are not found. Conclusion: Our study found that 12 significantly differentially expressed miRNAs might promote the proliferation, invasion, and metastasis of cancer cells by regulating the expression of upstream target genes, thereby affecting the prognosis of patients with endometrial cancer