Polydatin up-regulates clara cell secretory protein to suppress phospholipase A2 of lung induced by LPS in vivo and in vitro

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Lung injury induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in children. The damage to membrane phospholipids leads to the collapse of the bronchial alveolar epithelial barrier during acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Phospholipase A₂(PLA₂), a key enzyme in the hydrolysis of membrane phospholipids, plays an important traumatic role in pulmonary inflammation, and Clara cell secretory protein (CCSP) is an endogenous inhibitor of PLA₂. Our previous study showed that polydatin (PD), a monocrystalline extracted from a traditional Chinese medicinal herb (Polygonum cuspidatum Sieb, et Zucc), reduced PLA₂activity and sPLA₂-IIA mRNA expression and mitigated LPS-induced lung injury. However, the potential mechanism for these effects has not been well defined. We have continued to investigate the effect of PD on LPS-induced expression of CCSP mRNA and protein in vivo and in vitro.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our results suggested that the CCSP mRNA level was consistent with its protein expression. CCSP expression was decreased in lung after LPS challenge. In contrast, PD markedly increased CCSP expression in a concentration-dependent manner. In particular, CCSP expression in PD-pretreated rat lung was higher than in rats receiving only PD treatment.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results indicated that up-regulation of CCSP expression causing inhibition of PLA₂activation may be one of the crucial protective mechanisms of PD in LPS-induced lung injury.</p

Evaluation of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health service utilization in China: A study using auto-regressive integrated moving average model

BackgroundThe outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 presented a major challenge to the healthcare system in China. This study aimed to quantitatively evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on health services utilization in China in 2020.MethodsHealth service-related data for this study were extracted from the China Health Statistical Yearbook. The Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average model (ARIMA) was used to forecast the data for the year 2020 based on trends observed between 2010 and 2019. The differences between the actual 2020 values reported in the statistical yearbook and the forecast values from the ARIMA model were used to assess the impact of COVID-19 on health services utilization.ResultsIn 2020, the number of admissions and outpatient visits in China declined by 17.74 and 14.37%, respectively, compared to the ARIMA model’s forecast values. Notably, public hospitals experienced the largest decrease in outpatient visits and admissions, of 18.55 and 19.64%, respectively. Among all departments, the pediatrics department had the greatest decrease in outpatient visits (35.15%). Regarding geographical distribution, Beijing and Heilongjiang were the regions most affected by the decline in outpatient visits (29.96%) and admissions (43.20%) respectively.ConclusionThe study’s findings suggest that during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, one in seven outpatient services and one in six admissions were affected in China. Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish a green channel for seeking medical treatment without spatial and institutional barriers during epidemic prevention and control periods

Qi-Dong-Huo-Xue-Yin balances the immune microenvironment to protect against LPS induced acute lung injury

COVID-19 induces acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and leads to severe immunological changes that threatens the lives of COVID-19 victims. Studies have shown that both the regulatory T cells and macrophages were deranged in COVID-19-induced ALI. Herbal drugs have long been utilized to adjust the immune microenvironment in ALI. However, the underlying mechanisms of herbal drug mediated ALI protection are largely unknown. This study aims to understand the cellular mechanism of a traditional Chinese medicine, Qi-Dong-Huo-Xue-Yin (QD), in protecting against LPS induced acute lung injury in mouse models. Our data showed that QD intrinsically promotes Foxp3 transcription via promoting acetylation of the Foxp3 promoter in CD4+ T cells and consequently facilitates CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ Tregs development. Extrinsically, QD stabilized β-catenin in macrophages to expedite CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ Tregs development and modulated peripheral blood cytokines. Taken together, our results illustrate that QD promotes CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ Tregs development via intrinsic and extrinsic pathways and balanced cytokines within the lungs to protect against LPS induced ALI. This study suggests a potential application of QD in ALI related diseases

A HALP score-based prediction model for survival of patients with the upper tract urothelial carcinoma undergoing radical nephroureterectomy

The combination of hemoglobin, albumin, lymphocyte, and platelet (HALP) score has been confirmed as an important risk biomarker in several cancers. Hence, we aimed at evaluating the prognostic value of the HALP score in patients with non-metastatic upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC). We retrospectively enrolled 533 of the 640 patients from two centers (315 and 325 patients, respectively) who underwent radical nephroureterectomy (RNU) for UTUC in this study. The cutoff value of HALP was determined using the Youden index by performing receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. The relationship between postoperative survival outcomes and preoperative HALP level was assessed using Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox regression analysis. As a result, the cutoff value of HALP was 28.67 and patients were then divided into HALP<28.67 group and HALP≥28.67 group. Kaplan-Meier analysis and log-rank test revealed that HALP was significantly associated with overall survival (OS) (P<0.001) and progression-free survival (PFS) (P<0.001). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that lower HALP score was an independent risk factor for OS (HR=1.54, 95%CI, 1.14-2.01, P=0.006) and PFS (HR=1.44, 95%CI, 1.07-1.93, P=0.020). Nomograms of OS and PFS incorporated with HALP score were more accurate in predicting prognosis than without. In the subgroup analysis, the HALP score could also stratify patients with respect to survival under different pathologic T stages. Therefore, pretreatment HALP score was an independent prognostic factor of OS and PFS in UTUC patients undergoing RNU

Effects of Concentration and Adsorption Product on the Adsorption of SO2 and NO on Activated Carbon

The effects of various SO2 and NO concentrations on the adsorption capacity of activated carbon were measured experimentally for sequential and simultaneous adsorption of SO2 and NO in a fixed bed using an area integral calculation method. The results show that higher NO concentrations increase SO2 adsorption, especially for C-NO > 200 ppm; however, higher SO2 concentrations restrict NO adsorption with little NO adsorbed for CO2 > 700 ppm. The NO adsorption capacity decreases as the SO2/NO ratio increases, while the total adsorption capacity for SO2 and NO has a peak at SO2/NO = 1.7. The product analysis by XPS supports that NO promotes SO2 chemisorption, SO2 occupies both C-O and C=O groups, but NO occupies the C-O group. The TPD-MS measurement shows that most of the SO2 is chemisorbed, and the ion chromatography measurement indicates that 66.0% of the total adsorbed SO2 is oxidized to SO3. SO2 replaces the physisorbed NO, which is 94.3% of the total adsorbed NO, but cannot desorb the chemisorbed NO. TPD experiments show two NO desorption peaks at 200 and 280 degrees C, and almost all the NO desorbed as the temperature increases to 500 degrees C, with the chemisorbed NO being 5.6% of the total adsorbed NO

Resistant and Susceptible <i>Pinus thunbergii</i> ParL. Show Highly Divergent Patterns of Differentially Expressed Genes during the Process of Infection by <i>Bursaphelenchus xylophilus</i>

Pine wilt disease (PWD) is a devastating disease that threatens pine forests worldwide, and breeding resistant pines is an important management strategy used to reduce its impact. A batch of resistant seeds of P. thunbergii was introduced from Japan. Based on the resistant materials, we obtained somatic plants through somatic embryogenesis. In this study, we performed transcriptome analysis to further understand the defense response of resistant somatic plants of P. thunbergii to PWD. The results showed that, after pine wood nematode (PWN) infection, resistant P. thunbergii stimulated more differential expression genes (DEGs) and involved more regulatory pathways than did susceptible P. thunbergii. For the first time, the alpha-linolenic acid metabolism and linoleic acid metabolism were intensively observed in pines resisting PWN infection. The related genes disease resistance protein RPS2 (SUMM2) and pathogenesis-related genes (PR1), as well as reactive oxygen species (ROS)-related genes were significantly up-expressed in order to contribute to protection against PWN inoculation in P. thunbergii. In addition, the diterpenoid biosynthesis pathway was significantly enriched only in resistant P. thunbergii. These findings provided valuable genetic information for future breeding of resistant conifers, and could contribute to the development of new diagnostic tools for early screening of resistant pine seedlings based on specific PWN-tolerance-related markers

Influence of pollutants' control facilities on PM2.5 profiles emitted from an iron and steel plant

A typical long process in an iron and steel plant has been investigated with four main manufacturing processes, and nine sample sites were selected, in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the PM2.5 profile changes caused by the pollutants' control facilities. The result shows pollutants' control facilities have not only affected PM2.5 concentrations, but also the PM2.5 profiles. PM2.5 concentration was increased 1.89 times after Flue gas desulfurization (FGD) in the sintering process, the Ca content in PM2.5 increased to 21.1% caused by the desulfurizing agent; compared with electrostatic precipitator (ESP), bag filter (BF) is more effective for removal of fine particles, especially the condensable particles. The chemical compositions of Cl, K, Pb and Sb decreased after ESP in the sintering process, Fe decreased to 38.0% after ESP in the pelletizing process, and and Organic carbon (OC) increased in both processes. Different from ESP, Fe content increased obviously after BF in both blast furnace and converter processes, while S, K, , and OC are all decreased after BF. The coefficient of divergence (CD) values has been calculated at 0.42 similar to 0.60, showing giant influences of pollutants' control facilities on PM2.5 chemical profiles. Sixteen Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in PM2.5 have been analysed, the result shows that de-dusting facilities (ESP and BF) are quite effective for PAHs removal, and the PAHs' concentration significantly increased after FGD. More efforts are still needed to complete the accurate profile data with the rapid development of pollutants' control technologies. [GRAPHICS]

Segmentation method of the abnormal area of coal infrared thermal image

Infrared radiation can reflect the damage of coal and rock under load, and can be used to monitor and prevent the dynamic disaster of coal and rock. But the infrared thermal image generated by the infrared thermal imager has low pixel resolution and large noise, which leads to the detection result being greatly affected by subjective factors. Therefore, the damaged area of the coal body cannot be accurately identified. It has become a trend to combine deep learning with infrared thermal imaging for nondestructive testing. But the research on the identification and detection of coal damage under load by combining deep learning and infrared thermal imaging is relatively few. In order to solve the above problems, a segmentation method of the abnormal area of coal infrared thermal image based on multi-scale channel attention module (MS-CAM) U-Net model is proposed. The MS-CAM is introduced into the encoder of the traditional U-Net model, and the U-Net model structure based on MS-CAM is designed. The model not only pays attention to the major characteristics of the coal infrared thermal image abnormal area, but also pays attention to the small target characteristics of the abnormal area, so as to improve the segmentation accuracy of the abnormal area. In order to reduce the influence of the lack of coal infrared thermal image data set on the accuracy and applicability of the model, the data enhancement operation is carried out on the created coal infrared thermal image data set. The MS-CAM-based U-Net model is pre-trained by using the MS COCO data set. Then the coal infrared thermal image data set is used for training to obtain the final network weight. The experimental result shows that the method can effectively segment the abnormal areas of the infrared thermal image of the coal body. The accuracy rate, the F1 score, the Dice coefficient and the average cross-combination ratio are 94.75%, 94.94%, 94.65%, and 90. 03% respectively. The results are superior to the Deeplab model, the U-Net model and the U-Net model based on the attention mechanism of the SENet

Modeling of dioxin adsorption on activated carbon

The adsorption of dioxin-modeling compounds on activated carbon has been investigated in this manuscript. A series of benzene compounds with different numbers and types of substituent groups were chosen as the dioxin-modeling compounds, and the gas adsorption behaviors were evaluated using a fixed-bed reactor. The adsorption results showed that the methyl, chlorine and phenolic substituent groups on a benzene ring can greatly promote gas adsorption, especially the phenolic group, the addition of which increased the adsorption capacity to more than 1.5 times that of benzene. The adsorbed AC samples were detected by TPD-MS with the combines between adsorbate and adsorbent analyzed, the methyl and chlorine groups enhanced the attraction between the gaseous compounds and AC, while the phenolic group reduced the combine force due to its oxidation on AC. The effect of an increasing number of chlorine substituents on the adsorption of gases and the combine forces were investigated. On average, the capacity of gas adsorption doubled and the desorption temperature increased by 20 K with one chlorine substituent on a benzene ring. The attachment of chlorine substituent groups to the AC lactone and quinone groups has been verified again, and the increasing chloric substituent groups consumed more oxygen groups. According to the linear relationships between gas properties and adsorption behaviors, the actual dioxin adsorption capacity has been inferred to be 600 mg/g or greater, showing that dioxin is much more easily adsorbed on AC than the conventional organic gases. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Adsorption of SO2 and chlorobenzene on activated carbon

Activated carbon is very effective for simultaneous removal of multiple pollutants. The adsorption of SO2 and chlorobenzene modeling of VOCs on activated carbon was investigated in a fixed-bed reactor by four kinds of activated carbon. The results show that the SO2 adsorption is affected by the BET surface and basic functional groups as C=O and pi-pi* groups of the carbon, while the chlorobenzene adsorption is strongly affected by the carbon pore structure, with the micropore volume deciding the adsorption amount and larger pores increasing the adsorption rate. The chlorobenzene adsorption is little affected by the chemical properties of activated carbon as the O/C ratio detected by XPS. The effect of SO2 on the chlorobenzene adsorption was investigated, with the results showing the SO2 seriously restricts the individual chlorobenzene adsorption and this effect becomes smaller in the presence of O-2. The adsorption products were analyzed by TPD-MS and the initial decomposition temperatures are 380 K for chlorobenzene and 500 K for SO2, showing that SO2 is much more stable adsorbed than chlorobenzene. The changes of the carbon functional groups that the CO2 desorption peak emerges at 700 K and decreases at 1000 K with the chlorobenzene adsorption, were observed by TPD-MS, indicating that the lactone and quinone groups on the carbon are likely to combine with the chlorobenzene and form weakly chemisorbed chlorobenzene