Associations between circulating proteins and cardiometabolic diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational and Mendelian randomisation studies

Background: Integration of large proteomics and genetic data in population-based studies can provide insights into discovery of novel biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for cardiometabolic diseases (CMD). We aimed to synthesise existing evidence on the observational and genetic associations between circulating proteins and CMD. Methods: PubMed, Embase and Web of Science were searched until July 2023 for potentially relevant prospective observational and Mendelian randomisation (MR) studies investigating associations between circulating proteins and CMD, including coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and atherosclerosis. Two investigators independently extracted study characteristics using a standard form and pooled data using random effects models. Results: 50 observational, 25 MR and 10 studies performing both analyses were included, involving 26 414 160 non-overlapping participants. Meta-analysis of observational studies revealed 560 proteins associated with CMD, of which 133 proteins were associated with ≥2 CMDs (ie, pleiotropic). There were 245 potentially causal protein biomarkers identified in MR pooled results, involving 23 pleiotropic proteins. IL6RA and MMP12 were each causally associated with seven diseases. 22 protein-disease pairs showed directionally concordant associations in observational and MR pooled estimates. Addition of protein biomarkers to traditional clinical models modestly improved the accuracy of predicting incident CMD, with the highest improvement for heart failure (ΔC-index ~0.2). Of the 245 potentially causal proteins (291 protein-disease pairs), 3 pairs were validated by evidence of drug development from existing drug databases, 288 pairs lacked evidence of drug development and 66 proteins were drug targets approved for other indications. Conclusions: Combined analyses of observational and genetic studies revealed the potential causal role of several proteins in the aetiology of CMD. Novel protein biomarkers are promising targets for drug development and risk stratification. PROSPERO registration number: CRD42022350327

Device-measured movement behaviours in over 20,000 China Kadoorie Biobank participants

Background: Movement behaviours, including physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep have been shown to be associated with several chronic diseases. However, they have not been objectively measured in large-scale prospective cohort studies in low-and middle-income countries. We aim to describe the patterns of device-measured movement behaviours collected in the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) study. Methods: During 2020 and 2021, a random subset of 25,087 surviving CKB individuals participated in the 3rd resurvey of the CKB. Among them, 22,511 (89.7%) agreed to wear an Axivity AX3 wrist-worn triaxial accelerometer for seven consecutive days to assess their habitual movement behaviours. We developed a machine-learning model to infer time spent in four movement behaviours [i.e. sleep, sedentary behaviour, light intensity physical activity (LIPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA)]. Descriptive analyses were performed for wear-time compliance and patterns of movement behaviours by different participant characteristics. Results: Data from 21,897 participants (aged 65.4 ± 9.1 years; 35.4% men) were received for demographic and wear-time analysis, with a median wear-time of 6.9 days (IQR: 6.1–7.0). Among them, 20,370 eligible participants were included in movement behavior analyses. On average, they had 31.1 mg/day (total acceleration) overall activity level, accumulated 7.7 h/day (32.3%) of sleep time, 8.8 h/day (36.6%) sedentary, 5.7 h/day (23.9%) in light physical activity, and 104.4 min/day (7.2%) in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. There was an inverse relationship between age and overall acceleration with an observed decline of 5.4 mg/day (17.4%) per additional decade. Women showed a higher activity level than men (32.3 vs 28.8 mg/day) and there was a marked geographical disparity in the overall activity level and time allocation. Conclusions: This is the first large-scale accelerometer data collected among Chinese adults, which provides rich and comprehensive information about device-measured movement behaviour patterns. This resource will enhance our knowledge about the potential relevance of different movement behaviours for chronic disease in Chinese adults

Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Confidence on Dietary Practices among Chinese Residents

Healthy diets promote immune functions and have been shown to reduce COVID-19 severity. In 2021, COVID-19 vaccines have become available to the general public. However, whether vaccination status could affect individual and populational health behaviors is unknown. This study aimed to investigate the impacts of vaccination status and confidence on dietary practices. An online survey was conducted in August 2021. We collected data on dietary intake, diversity and behaviors, vaccination status and confidence and socio-demographic characteristics. Among the 5107 responses received, a total of 4873 study participants were included in the final analysis. Most of our participants aged between 18 and 45 years and 82% of them were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Household level dietary diversity was found to be higher among people who were fully vaccinated (β = 0.321, 95%CI: 0.024 to 0.618) or who were more confident in the protectiveness of the vaccine (β for tertile 3 comparing with lowest tertile = 0.544, 95%CI: 0.407, 0.682). Vaccination promoted the intake of seafood, but it was also positively associated with the consumption of sugar, preserved, fried and barbequed foods and reduced vegetable intake. Higher vaccination confidence was associated with increased consumption of seafood, bean, fruits and vegetables and reduced fat intake. Changes in dietary behaviors compared with early 2021 (when vaccination was not common) were observed and differed by vaccination status and confidence level. Conclusion: COVID-19 vaccination status and confidence had varied, and possibly negative, impacts on dietary intake and behaviors. Our results suggest that vaccination status and confidence might be significant influencing factors affecting people’s health behaviors and highlight that healthy eating should be consistently promoted to prevent poor dietary practices during global health crisis

Effect of Solid Bases Catalyst on Conversion of Acrylonitrile into Acrylic Acid by Hydrothermal Reaction

This study aims at the shortcomings of the current industrial application of acrylonitrile wastewater treatment, using alkali-catalyzed hydrothermal technology to convert acrylonitrile into acrylic acid for achieving resource utilization. In this study, alkali metal, alkaline earth metal hydroxide and composite solid base were used as catalysts to investigate catalytic effects of these solid based on the hydrothermal reaction. The results show when using the alkali and alkaline-earth metal hydroxides as catalysts, the best effect of treatment was KOH and the highest yield of acrylic acid reached 56.60%. It was also found that, among the three kinds of solid base catalysts (Ca-O-Mg, K-O-Al, K-O-Si) adopted with the same mass and various loading capacity, K-O-Si (15%) was the most effective catalyst for the conversion of acrylonitrile, and the highest yield of acrylic acid reached 57.78%. This process provides an environmentally friendly method toward the synthesis of useful acrylic acid from acrylonitrile within a very short time

Dietary Behaviors in the Post-Lockdown Period and Its Effects on Dietary Diversity: The Second Stage of a Nutrition Survey in a Longitudinal Chinese Study in the COVID-19 Era

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has imposed enormous challenges on people’s lifestyles. People in China have gradually returned to normal life; however, in the protracted pandemic, people may still follow certain dietary behaviors to cope with COVID-19. This study was the second stage of a longitudinal nutritional survey conducted in post-lockdown China that was aimed at exploring post-lockdown dietary behaviors and their effects on dietary diversity. In line with the first stage of the survey, the current dietary behaviors used to cope with COVID-19 and ways of purchasing food were determined. In addition, changes in dietary behavior compared to the same period in 2019 and those behaviors recommended to ensure food safety were also investigated. The Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) was used to assess dietary diversity; this was also used in the first stage of the survey. Linear regression was used to model the associations between the HDDS, participants’ characteristics, and dietary behaviors. The data of 1994 participants were included in the analysis. The overall mean HDDS was 9.2 ± 2.0. Compared to the same period in 2019, a substantial proportion of participants self-reported that they had recently decreased eating in restaurants (61.6%) and reduced intakes of seafood (53.1%), imported frozen food (57.1%), and raw food (60.5%), while 64.8% of participants reported increased cooking at home. People with an increased consumption of seafood (adjusted OR (95%CI) = 0.56 (0.07, 1.04)) and raw food (adjusted OR (95%CI) = 0.74 (0.27, 1.21)) had a significantly higher HDDS. Participants who changed their consumption of imported frozen food (both increased and decreased) had a higher HDDS (adjusted OR (95%CI) = 0.56 (0.07, 1.04) and 0.27 (0.09, 0.44), respectively). People who depended more on purchasing food online had a significantly higher HDDS (adjusted OR (95%CI) = 0.29 (0.02, 0.55)). Compared to the data from stage 1, the proportion of people choosing healthy products to cope with COVID-19 did not greatly change and those people had a higher HDDS (adjusted OR (95%CI) = 0.31 (0.19, 0.42)). Although this study found that the proportion of people who chose to use alcohol or vinegar to prevent COVID-19 had decreased substantially compared to during lockdown, there were still 5.3% and 9.8% who followed these irrational behaviors. Regarding the dietary behavior regarding food safety, except for cooking food fully, fewer than half of participants followed the recommended dietary behaviors, including individual food servings (44.2%), using serving chopsticks and spoons (44.8%), and preparing raw and cooked food separately (43.3%). People who followed these behaviors had a better dietary diversity. In conclusion, during the post-lockdown period, people still followed certain dietary behaviors to cope with COVID-19. While some dietary behaviors were adopted to help prevent infection, irrational dietary behaviors were still followed. These behaviors were associated with the dietary diversity in Chinese adults

Multi-label spacecraft electrical signal classification method based on DBN and random forest

<div><p>In spacecraft electrical signal characteristic data, there exists a large amount of data with high-dimensional features, a high computational complexity degree, and a low rate of identification problems, which causes great difficulty in fault diagnosis of spacecraft electronic load systems. This paper proposes a feature extraction method that is based on deep belief networks (DBN) and a classification method that is based on the random forest (RF) algorithm; The proposed algorithm mainly employs a multi-layer neural network to reduce the dimension of the original data, and then, classification is applied. Firstly, we use the method of wavelet denoising, which was used to pre-process the data. Secondly, the deep belief network is used to reduce the feature dimension and improve the rate of classification for the electrical characteristics data. Finally, we used the random forest algorithm to classify the data and comparing it with other algorithms. The experimental results show that compared with other algorithms, the proposed method shows excellent performance in terms of accuracy, computational efficiency, and stability in addressing spacecraft electrical signal data.</p></div

An effective method and pathways of acrylonitrile degradation to acrylic acid through an alkaline hydrothermal system

<p>Degradation of pollution for specific chemicals represents an optimal approach to high-strength wastewater treatment. One-pot selective conversion of acrylonitrile to acrylic acid in a hydrothermal system with NaOH as a catalyst was carried out. The influence factors were evaluated, including initial acrylonitrile concentration, reaction temperature, reaction time and amount of alkali. Experimental results showed that the highest yield of acrylic acid (55%) was obtained at the initial acrylonitrile concentration of 3 × 10³ mg/L, 300°C for 90 s with 1.0 M NaOH. To determine the reaction path, intermediates analysis and calculation of carbon and nitrogen balance were carried out by means of HPLC, GC and TOC/TN methods. Two probable reaction pathways were proposed as follows: (1) Acrylonitrile was hydrolyzed into acrylamide, and acrylic acid was obtained via further hydrolysis. (2) Acrylonitrile was converted into 3-hydroxy-propionitrile via additive reaction, and this product was readily converted to 3-hydroxy-propionic acid through two steps of hydrolysis, followed by dehydration reaction to produce acrylic acid. This study offered not only an efficient method to transfer highly toxic pollutants into valuable chemical, but also a better understanding of hydrothermal alkali catalytic reaction.</p