Investigating the relationship between hepatitis B virus infection and postpartum depression in Chinese women: a retrospective cohort study

BackgroundPostpartum depression (PPD) is associated with several psychological and obstetric factors. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection has been linked with a high risk of depression, but little is known about the relationship between maternal HBV infection and PPD. We aimed to investigate the association between HBV infection and PPD.MethodsThis retrospective cohort study included 3,808 mothers who gave birth in a hospital in southern China. Self-reported Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was used to assess PPD. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine whether maternal HBV infection was associated with PPD risk.ResultsOf the 3,808 participants, 11.9% of mothers had PPD at 6 weeks postpartum. Two hundred and seventy-eight (7.3%) and 3,530 (92.7%) were in the HBV and control groups, respectively. Women with HBV infection were more likely to test positive for PPD (14.7 vs.11.7%). The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that HBV-infected women did not have a significantly higher incidence of PPD (OR = 1.23; 95% CI, 0.82–1.84) than those without HBV infection in the study cohort. Parity and postpartum hemorrhage were found to be associated with PPD. In addition, our study showed that e antigen positivity was not associated with PPD risk (OR = 0.56, 95% CI 0.19–1.63).ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this is the first investigation of the relationship between maternal HBV infection and PPD. In a cohort of women without prior history or family history of mental illness, having HBV infection was not significantly associated with self-reporting of PPD compared to not having HBV infection

Multimodal transformer augmented fusion for speech emotion recognition

Speech emotion recognition is challenging due to the subjectivity and ambiguity of emotion. In recent years, multimodal methods for speech emotion recognition have achieved promising results. However, due to the heterogeneity of data from different modalities, effectively integrating different modal information remains a difficulty and breakthrough point of the research. Moreover, in view of the limitations of feature-level fusion and decision-level fusion methods, capturing fine-grained modal interactions has often been neglected in previous studies. We propose a method named multimodal transformer augmented fusion that uses a hybrid fusion strategy, combing feature-level fusion and model-level fusion methods, to perform fine-grained information interaction within and between modalities. A Model-fusion module composed of three Cross-Transformer Encoders is proposed to generate multimodal emotional representation for modal guidance and information fusion. Specifically, the multimodal features obtained by feature-level fusion and text features are used to enhance speech features. Our proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches on the IEMOCAP and MELD dataset

Characteristics and clinical treatment outcomes of chronic hepatitis B children with coexistence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and antibodies to HBsAg

Abstract Background The coexistence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and hepatitis B surface antibody (HBsAb) represents an uncommon serological pattern observed in patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, and its underlying mechanism and clinical significance have not been well established. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between this serological profile and clinical treatment outcomes in children with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). Methods This retrospective cohort study included 372 treatment-naïve CHB children from the Hunan Children’s Hospital. The participants were categorized into HBsAb-positive group and HBsAb-negative group. The associations between HBsAb positive status to clinical outcomes were assessed using Cox proportional hazard regression. Receiver operating characteristic curve was conducted to evaluate the prediction ability in HBsAg loss. Results The coexistence of HBsAg and HBsAb accounted for 23.39% (87/372) of the participants. The crude incidence rates of HBsAg loss, hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) clearance, and HBV-DNA undetectability were higher in the HBsAb-positive group compared with the HBsAb-negative group (37.46 vs. 17.37, 49.51 vs. 28.66, 92.11 vs. 66.54 per 100 person-years, respectively, all P < 0.05). The Cox regression analysis revealed a significant association between this serological profile and an increased likelihood of HBsAg loss (HR = 1.78, P = 0.001), and HBeAg clearance (HR = 1.78, P = 0.001). In addition, a combination of HBsAb ≥ 0.84 log10 IU/L and age ≤ 5 years can help identify patients likely to achieve HBsAg loss after antiviral therapy, with an AUC of 0.71. Conclusions Children who are positive for both HBsAg and HBsAb demonstrate a higher probability of favorable outcomes after antiviral treatment. Thus, children with HBsAb-positive CHB should be actively treated to achieve functional cure

Additional file 1 of Characteristics and clinical treatment outcomes of chronic hepatitis B children with coexistence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and antibodies to HBsAg

Additional file 1: Table S1. Multivariate analysis of HBsAb-positive status at baseline. Table S2. Crude incidence rate (per 100 PY) of ALT normalization. Figure S1. Kaplan-Meier curves of ALT normalization between HBsAb-positive group and HBsAb-negative group

Widespread reduction in gross primary productivity caused by the compound heat and drought in Yangtze River Basin in 2022

Terrestrial ecosystems play a pivotal role in the global carbon sequestration process, and their photosynthetic capacity is highly susceptible to fluctuations in climate conditions. In 2022, the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) in China experienced an extensive and severe compounded heat and drought event. Compared with the past two decades, our results revealed that the temperature increased by approximately 0.78 ± 0.45 °C and precipitation decreased by about 45.20 ± 30.10 mm from July to October 2022 over the whole YRB. Region I (west from the Sichuan Basin and east to the easternmost of the basin) experienced a more severe temperature increase (0.98 ± 0.35 °C) and precipitation decrease (−60.27 ± 23.75 mm) compared to the other regions in the YRB. Changes in temperature and precipitation resulted in an increase of 0.14 ± 0.06 kPa in vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and a decrease of 5.28 ± 2.09 m ^3 m ^−3 in soil moisture, ultimately leading to a total loss of 26.12 ± 16.09 Tg C (about −6.08% compared to the 2001–2021 mean) in gross primary productivity (GPP) of July to October in 2022. It is noteworthy that broadleaf forests, which comprise 12.03% of the natural vegetation in region I, contributed only 6.46% of the GPP loss between July and October compared to other vegetation types, showing greater resistance to this climate event. Our findings from multiple linear regressions highlight that high temperatures and reduced soil moisture together contribute up to 94% photosynthesis loss in July–October in natural vegetation in region I, while the contribution of reduced VPD is minimal. In the future, we will further explore the impacts of compound heat and drought events on the coupled carbon and water cycles across different ecosystems, in order to better understand the ecosystem response mechanisms to extreme climates

CO₂‑Controllable Foaming and Emulsification Properties of the Stearic Acid Soap Systems

Fatty acids, as a typical example of stearic acid, are a kind of cheap surfactant and have important applications. The challenging problem of industrial applications is their solubility. Herein, three organic aminesethanolamine (EA), diethanolamine (DEA), and triethanolamine (TEA)were used as counterions to increase the solubility of stearic acid, and the phase behaviors were investigated systematically. The phase diagrams were delineated at 25 and 50 °C, respectively. The phase-transition temperature was measured by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements, and the microstructures were vesicles and planar sheets observed by cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM) observations. The apparent viscosity of the samples was determined by rheological characterizations. The values, <i>r</i>_cmc, for the three systems were less than 30 mN·m^–1. Typical samples of bilayers used as foaming agents and emulsifiers were investigated for the foaming and emulsification assays. CO₂ was introduced to change the solubility of stearic acid, inducing the transition of their surface activity and further achieving the goal of defoaming and demulsification