Progress in molecular diagnosis and treatment of chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis

Chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis (CMC) is characterized by recurrent or persistent infections with Candida of the skin, nails, and mucous membrane. It is a rare and severe disease resulting from autoimmune defects or immune dysregulations. Nonetheless, the diagnosis and treatment of CMC still pose significant challenges. Erroneous or delayed diagnoses remain prevalent, while the long-term utility of traditional antifungals often elicits adverse reactions and promotes the development of acquired resistance. Furthermore, disease relapse can occur during treatment with traditional antifungals. In this review, we delineate the advancements in molecular diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to CMC. Genetic and biomolecular analyses are increasingly employed as adjuncts to clinical manifestations and fungal examinations for accurate diagnosis. Simultaneously, a range of therapeutic interventions, including Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), cytokines therapy, novel antifungal agents, and histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors, have been integrated into clinical practice. We aim to explore insights into early confirmation of CMC as well as novel therapeutic options for these patients

Analysis of Additives in Milk Powders with SPE-HPLC or 2D-HPLC Method

Dairy products are beneficial to human health, especially for formula-fed newborns. According to the regulation of FDA and China national food safety standard, food additives such as benzoic acid, sorbic acid, natamycin, lysozyme, saccharin sodium, and aspartame are not permitted to be added to milk powder. So, the establishment of accurate and convenient methods for the analysis of these food additives in milk powder is critical to people’s health. For the reason of the complex matrix of infant milk powders, we compared six sample pretreatment methods (liquid-liquid extraction, organic precipitation, heavy precipitation, and three different solid-phase extraction (SPE) methods (C18, HLB, MAX)) from recovery, easy operation, time cost, and organic solvent usage aspects. Finally, Poly-Sery HLB cartridge was confirmed as the most appropriate material for its high recovery and time cost merits. We are also introducing two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2DLC) method for the simultaneous determination of five major proteins and seven food additives in milk powders. Optimization of switching mode, choice of columns, mobile phase, and flow speed was discussed. We also compared limit of detection (LOD), recovery, and sample treatment with the results of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Results show that 2DLC is simpler, faster, and more accurate than the HPLC method

Interactions between dislocations and three-dimensional annealing twins in face centered cubic metals

Annealing twins often form in metals with a face centered cubic structure during thermal and mechanical processing. Here, we conducted molecular dynamic (MD) simulations for copper and aluminum to study the interaction processes between {1 1 1}1/2 \u3c1 1 0\u3e dislocations and a three-dimensional annealing twin. Twin boundaries are characterized with Σ3{1 1 1} coherent twin boundaries (CTBs) and Σ3{1 1 2} incoherent twin boundaries (ITBs). MD results revealed that dislocation-ITB interactions affect slip transmission for a dislocation crossing CTBs, facilitating the nucleation of Lomer dislocation

HeteFedRec: Federated Recommender Systems with Model Heterogeneity

Owing to the nature of privacy protection, federated recommender systems (FedRecs) have garnered increasing interest in the realm of on-device recommender systems. However, most existing FedRecs only allow participating clients to collaboratively train a recommendation model of the same public parameter size. Training a model of the same size for all clients can lead to suboptimal performance since clients possess varying resources. For example, clients with limited training data may prefer to train a smaller recommendation model to avoid excessive data consumption, while clients with sufficient data would benefit from a larger model to achieve higher recommendation accuracy. To address the above challenge, this paper introduces HeteFedRec, a novel FedRec framework that enables the assignment of personalized model sizes to participants. In HeteFedRec, we present a heterogeneous recommendation model aggregation strategy, including a unified dual-task learning mechanism and a dimensional decorrelation regularization, to allow knowledge aggregation among recommender models of different sizes. Additionally, a relation-based ensemble knowledge distillation method is proposed to effectively distil knowledge from heterogeneous item embeddings. Extensive experiments conducted on three real-world recommendation datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of HeteFedRec in training federated recommender systems under heterogeneous settings

Artemisia anomala extracts enhance the viability and antioxidation capacity of human keratinocytes

Purpose: To investigate the effect of extracts of Artemisia anomala S. Moore tissues on viability, apoptosis and antioxidant capacity of human keratinocytes.Methods: Human keratinocyte cell line HaCaT were treated with extracts of A. anomala for 12 h or 24 h. Cell viability, level of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and incidence of apoptosis were measured by flow cytometry. Levels of mRNA and key proteins in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway were determined by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Key proteins of caspase pathways were assessed by western blot. The influence of the extract on the MAPK pathway was further probed by treating cells with MAPK activator in the presence and absence of the extract.Results: Treatment of cells with extracts of A. anomala enhanced viability and reduced apoptosis in a time-dependent manner, and increased ROS level, compared with control. mRNA and protein expressions of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), extracellular regulated protein kinase (ERK), and p38 MAPK decreased in extract-treated cells. The extracts also reversed the inhibitory effects of the MAPK pathway activator, actinomycin, on cell viability and ROS, and inhibited protein-cleaved caspase-8 and cleaved caspase-3.Conclusion: A. anomala extract increases cell viability and antioxidant capacity via inactivation of MAPK pathway, and also inhibits cell apoptosis via inactivation of caspase pathways. Hence, the extract may serve as a promising drug for the treatment of psoriasis.Keywords: Artemisia anomala, MAPK pathway, Anti-oxidation, Keratinocyte, Psoriasi

Applied Research of Cleaner Production Evaluation System in Wig Industry

An assessment indicator system of cleaner production in wig industry was built in this article, which intended to meet the shortage of corresponding standards of cleaner production evaluation in the national wig industry. An assessment route of cleaner production index system of the wig industry was established. Based on analysis of the production process and pollution node of the wig industry, the cleaner production index system of wig industry was established for the first time, which contained 6 first-level indicators and 22 second-level indicators. The evaluation indicator baselines were set out in accordance with the cleaner production standards and index systems in other areas when the actual data of each index of the wig enterprises was analyzed statistically. Then, the importance of every index was confirmed by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and an AHP-Fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model was introduced by utilizing the fuzzy mathematics method. What is more, in order to test and verify the accuracy of the evaluation system, this evaluation system was applied to estimate the cleaner production level of a wig enterprise in Henan province. It was found that the advanced level of this wig company should be 0.1352, as against the membership of the general level was 0.0391, which could be compared to the basic level of 0.0298. The result is consistent with the actual situation of the enterprise, which proves that the system is feasible and can be used to tap the cleaner production potential of wig enterprises and promote the sustainable development of the wig enterprises

α-Mangostin Induces Apoptosis and Suppresses Differentiation of 3T3-L1 Cells via Inhibiting Fatty Acid Synthase

α-Mangostin, isolated from the hulls of Garcinia mangostana L., was found to have in vitro cytotoxicity against 3T3-L1 cells as well as inhibiting fatty acid synthase (FAS, EC 2.3.1.85). Our studies showed that the cytotoxicity of α-mangostin with IC50 value of 20 µM was incomplicated in apoptotic events including increase of cell membrane permeability, nuclear chromatin condensation and mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm) loss. This cytotoxicity was accompanied by the reduction of FAS activity in cells and could be rescued by 50 µM or 100 µM exogenous palmitic acids, which suggested that the apoptosis of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes induced by α-mangostin was via inhibition of FAS. Futhermore, α-mangostin could suppress intracellular lipid accumulation in the differentiating adipocytes and stimulated lipolysis in mature adipocytes, which was also related to its inhibition of FAS. In addition, 3T3-L1 preadipocytes were more susceptible to the cytotoxic effect of α-mangostin than mature adipocytes. Further studies showed that α-mangostin inhibited FAS probably by stronger action on the ketoacyl synthase domain and weaker action on the acetyl/malonyl transferase domain. These findings suggested that α-mangostin might be useful for preventing or treating obesity

Comprehensive molecular diagnosis of 67 Chinese Usher syndrome probands: high rate of ethnicity specific mutations in Chinese USH patients

Both Novel missense alleles identified in MYO7A genes are conserved between human, zebrafish and Drosophila melanogaster. (PPTX 676 kb