Clinical analysis of high myopia in 320 cases in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

AIM: To analyze the clinical manifestations and etiological factors of high myopia in 320 cases. <p>METHODS:A total of 320 patients(640 eyes)with high myopia treated in Ningxia Eye Hospital from January 2011 to November 2012 were studied. All of them underwent thorough eye examination and relevant environmental factors were recorded. The following data were analyzed, including gender, ethnicity, age of onset, refractive error, axial length, best corrected visual acuity(BCVA), educational level and living environment. <p>RESULTS: Bilateral high myopia was present in 320 patients(130 men and 190 women; 250 being of Han nationality and 70 of Hui nationality)with a mean age of 42.65±16.51 years(range: 3-80 years); the male to female ratio was 1:1.5. The age of onset was lower than 20 years in 237 patients, higher than 21 yeas in 83 patients, the difference was statistically significant(<i>P</i><0.001). There was no significant difference between diopter and educational level(<i>P</i>>0.05). The patients with BCVA higher than 0.3 increased with diopter increased, while BCVA lower than 0.8 and between 0.4～0.7 reduced. Refraction was significantly negatively correlated with BCVA(<i>r</i>=-0.196, <i>P</i><0.05)and positive correlated with axial length(<i>r</i>=0.681, <i>P</i><0.05). <p>CONCLUSION: In the study, patients with high myopia tend to have early onset, low educational level, and spacious living environment. Such results indicate that the genetic factors may be the main cause of high myopia in this group. The higher the degree of myopia was, the worse BCVA and the longer AL would be

Effects of orthographic consistency and homophone density on Chinese spoken word recognition

Studies of alphabetic language have shown that orthographic knowledge influences phonological processing during spoken word recognition. This study utilized the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to differentiate two types of phonology-to-orthography (P-to-O) mapping consistencies in Chinese, namely homophone density and orthographic consistency. The ERP data revealed an orthographic consistency effect in the frontal-centrally distributed N400, and a homophone density effect in central-posteriorly distributed late positive component (LPC). Further source analyses using the standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) demonstrated that the orthographic effect was not only localized in the frontal and temporal-parietal regions for phonological processing, but also in the posterior visual cortex for orthographic processing, while the homophone density effect was found in middle temporal gyrus for lexical-semantic selection, and in the temporal-occipital junction for orthographic processing. These results suggest that orthographic information not only shapes the nature of phonological representations, but may also be activated during on-line spoken word recognition

The feedback consistency effect in Chinese character recognition:evidence from a psycholinguistic norm

Researchers have demonstrated the importance of phonology in literacy acquisition and in visual word recognition. For example, the spelling-to-sound consistency effect has been observed in visual word recognition tasks, in which the naming responses are faster and more accurate for words with the same letters that also have the same pronunciation (e.g. -ean is always pronounced /in/, as in lean, dean, and bean). In addition, some studies have reported a much less intuitive feedback consistency effect when a rime can be spelled in different ways (e.g. /ip/ in heap and deep) in lexical decision tasks. Such findings suggest that, with activation flowing back and forth between orthographic and phonological units during word processing, any inconsistency in the mappings between orthography and phonology should weaken the stability of the feedback loop, and, thus, should delay recognition. However, several studies have failed to show reliable feedback consistency in printed word recognition. One possible reason for this is that the feedback consistency is naturally confounded with many other variables, such as orthographic neighborhood or bigram frequency, as these variables are difficult to tease apart. Furthermore, there are challenges in designing factorial experiments that perfectly balance lexical stimuli on all factors besides feedback consistency. This study aims to examine the feedback consistency effect in reading Chinese characters by using a normative data of 3,423 Chinese phonograms. We collected the lexical decision time from 180 college students. A linear mixed model analysis was used to examine the feedback consistency effect by taking into account additional properties that may be confounded with feedback consistency, including character frequency, number of strokes, phonetic combinability, semantic combinability, semantic ambiguity, phonetic consistency, noun-to-verb ratios, and morphological boundedness. Some typical effects were observed, such as the more frequent and familiar a character, the faster one can decide it is a real character. More importantly, the linear mixed model analysis revealed a significant feedback consistency effect while controlling for other factors, which indicated that the pronunciation of phonograms might accommodate the organization of Chinese orthographic representation. Our study disentangled the feedback consistency from the many other factors, and supports the view that phonological activation would reverberate to orthographic representation in visual word recognition

Toll-like receptor-4 (TLR-4) expression on polymorphonuclear neutrophil leukocytes during perinatal period of dairy cow

To establish a foundation for further researches on the improvement of polymorphonuclear neutrophil leukocytes (PMN) functions in dairy cow during perinatal period, the counting of PMN, as well as the mRNA and protein expression of toll-like receptor-4 (TLR-4) on PMN was studied during this critical period. Blood samples were taken 21, 14 and 7 days, and at calving (0) day before expected calving time, and 7, 14 and 21 days after calving. The PMN changes were measured by automatic blood cell analyzer, and mRNA and protein expression of TLR-4 were analyzed by quantity real-time PCR (RT-PCR) and western blot. The results show that the quantity of neutrophil leukocytes reached the peak (3.12 ± 0.26 × 109, p&lt;0.05) at 0 day. The mRNA expression of TLR-4 was down-regulated from the -21days before calving to the 14 day after calving (P&lt;0.01). The protein of expression TLR-4 was lower from 7 to 14 days. The down-regulation of TLR-4 expression may be the major factor of PMN dysfunction of cows from 7 to 14 days after calving.Keywords: Cow, hematology, perinatals period, toll-like receptor-4 (TLR-4) pathwayAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(16), pp. 2100-210

The Protective Effect of Cordymin, a Peptide Purified from the Medicinal Mushroom Cordyceps sinensis, on Diabetic Osteopenia in Alloxan-Induced Diabetic Rats

The aim of this study was to investigate the protective effect of cordymin on diabetic osteopenia in alloxan-induced diabetic rats and the possible mechanisms involved. The diabetic rats received daily intraperitoneal injection with cordymin (20, 50, and 100 mg/kg/day) for 5 weeks. Cordymin could restore the circulating blood glucose, glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP), tartrate resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP), and insulin levels in a dose-dependent manner. Also, the treatment of diabetic rats with cordymin could partially reverse the β cells death and decrease the total antioxidant status (TAOS) in the diabetic rats. The results may directly and indirectly account for the possible mechanism of the beneficial effect of cordymin on diabetic osteopenia, which was confirmed with the increased bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) in diabetic rats (P<0.05). All those findings indicate that cordymin may play a protective role in diabetic osteoporosis

An ultra-long and quite thin coronal loop without significant expansion

Context. Coronal loops are the basic building blocks of the solar corona, which are related to the mass supply and heating of solar plasmas in the corona. However, their fundamental magnetic structures are still not well understood. Most coronal loops do not expand significantly, whereas the diverging magnetic field would have an expansion factor of about 5-10 over one pressure scale height. Aims. In this study, we investigate a unique coronal loop with a roughly constant cross section, it is ultra long and quite thin. A coronal loop model with magnetic helicity is presented to explain the small expansion of the loop width. Methods. This coronal loop was predominantly detectable in the 171 A channel of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA). Then, the local magnetic field line was extrapolated by a Potential-Field-Source-Surface model. Finally, the differential emission measure analysis made from six AIA bandpasses was applied to obtain the thermal properties of this loop. Results. This coronal loop has a projected length of roughly 130 Mm, a width of about 1.5 +(-) 0.5 Mm and a lifetime of around 90 minutes. It follows an open magnetic field line. The cross section expanded very little (i.e., 1.5-2.0) along the loop length during its whole lifetime. This loop has a nearly constant temperature at about 0.7 +(-) 0.2 MK, whereas its density exhibits the typical structure of a stratified atmosphere. Conclusions. We use a thin twisted flux tube theory to construct a model for this non-expanding loop, and find that indeed with sufficient twist a coronal loop can attain equilibrium. However, we can not rule out other possibilities such as footpoint heating by small-scale reconnection, elevated scale height by a steady flow along the loop etc.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

Metformin plus megestrol acetate compared with megestrol acetate alone as fertility‐sparing treatment in patients with atypical endometrial hyperplasia and well‐differentiated endometrial cancer: a randomised controlled trial

Objective: To assess the efficacy of metformin in megestrol acetate (MA)-based fertility-sparing treatment for patients with atypical endometrial hyperplasia (AEH) and endometrioid endometrial cancer (EEC). Design: A randomised, single-centre, open-label, controlled trial conducted between October 2013 and December 2017. Setting: Shanghai OBGYN Hospital of Fudan University, China. Population: A total of 150 patients (18-45 years old) with primary AEH or well-differentiated EEC were randomised into an MA group (n = 74) and an MA plus metformin group (n = 76). Methods: Patients with AEH or EEC were firstly stratified, then randomised to receive MA (160 mg orally, daily) or MA (160 mg orally, daily) plus metformin (500 mg orally, three times a day). Main outcomes and measures: The primary efficacy parameter was the cumulate complete response (CR) rate within 16 weeks of treatment (16w-CR rate); the secondary efficacy parameters were 30w-CR rate and adverse events. Results: The 16w-CR rate was higher in the metformin plus MA group than in the MA-only group (34.3 versus 20.7%, odds ratio [OR] 2.0, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.89-4.51, P = 0.09) but the difference was more significant in 102 AEH patients (39.6 versus 20.4%, OR 2.56, 95% CI 1.06-6.21, P = 0.04). This effect of metformin was also significant in non-obese (51.4 versus 24.3%, OR 3.28, 95% CI 1.22-8.84, P = 0.02) and insulin-sensitive (54.8 versus 28.6%, OR 3.04, 95% CI 1.03-8.97, P = 0.04) subgroups of AEH women. No significant result was found in secondary endpoints. Conclusion: As a fertility-sparing treatment, metformin plus MA was associated with a higher early CR rate compared with MA alone in AEH patients. Tweetable abstract For AEH patients, metformin plus MA might be a better fertility-sparing treatment to achieve a higher early CR rate compared with MA alone

DTNBP1, a schizophrenia susceptibility gene, affects kinetics of transmitter release

Schizophrenia is one of the most debilitating neuropsychiatric disorders, affecting 0.5–1.0% of the population worldwide. Its pathology, attributed to defects in synaptic transmission, remains elusive. The dystrobrevin-binding protein 1 (DTNBP1) gene, which encodes a coiled-coil protein, dysbindin, is a major susceptibility gene for schizophrenia. Our previous results have demonstrated that the sandy (sdy) mouse harbors a spontaneously occurring deletion in the DTNBP1 gene and expresses no dysbindin protein (Li, W., Q. Zhang, N. Oiso, E.K. Novak, R. Gautam, E.P. O'Brien, C.L. Tinsley, D.J. Blake, R.A. Spritz, N.G. Copeland, et al. 2003. Nat. Genet. 35:84–89). Here, using amperometry, whole-cell patch clamping, and electron microscopy techniques, we discovered specific defects in neurosecretion and vesicular morphology in neuroendocrine cells and hippocampal synapses at the single vesicle level in sdy mice. These defects include larger vesicle size, slower quantal vesicle release, lower release probability, and smaller total population of the readily releasable vesicle pool. These findings suggest that dysbindin functions to regulate exocytosis and vesicle biogenesis in endocrine cells and neurons. Our work also suggests a possible mechanism in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia at the synaptic level