Gut microbiota: a newly identified environmental factor in systemic lupus erythematosus

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease that predominantly affects women of childbearing age and is characterized by the damage to multiple target organs. The pathogenesis of SLE is complex, and its etiology mainly involves genetic and environmental factors. At present, there is still a lack of effective means to cure SLE. In recent years, growing evidence has shown that gut microbiota, as an environmental factor, triggers autoimmunity through potential mechanisms including translocation and molecular mimicry, leads to immune dysregulation, and contributes to the development of SLE. Dietary intervention, drug therapy, probiotics supplement, fecal microbiome transplantation and other ways to modulate gut microbiota appear to be a potential treatment for SLE. In this review, the dysbiosis of gut microbiota in SLE, potential mechanisms linking gut microbiota and SLE, and immune dysregulation associated with gut microbiota in SLE are summarized

Cardiovascular outcomes and safety of SGLT2 inhibitors in chronic kidney disease patients

BackgroundSodium–glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors provide cardiovascular protection for patients with heart failure (HF) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, there is little evidence of their application in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Furthermore, there are inconsistent results from studies on their uses. Therefore, to explore the cardiovascular protective effect of SGLT2 inhibitors in the CKD patient population, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the cardiovascular effectiveness and safety of SGLT2 inhibitors in this patient population.MethodWe searched the PubMed® (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD, USA) and Web of Science™ (Clarivate™, Philadelphia, PA, USA) databases for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of SGLT2 inhibitors in CKD patients and built the database starting in January 2023. In accordance with our inclusion and exclusion criteria, the literature was screened, the quality of the literature was evaluated, and the data were extracted. RevMan 5.3 (The Nordic Cochrane Centre, The Cochrane Collaboration, Copenhagen, Denmark) and Stata® 17.0 (StataCorp LP, College Station, TX, USA) were used for the statistical analyses. Hazard ratios (HRs), odds ratios (ORs), and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used for the analysis of the outcome indicators.ResultsThirteen RCTs were included. In CKD patients, SGLT2 inhibitors reduced the risk of cardiovascular death (CVD) or hospitalization for heart failure (HHF) by 28%, CVD by 16%. and HHF by 35%. They also reduced the risk of all-cause death by 14% without increasing the risk of serious adverse effects (SAEs) and urinary tract infections (UTIs). However, they increased the risk of reproductive tract infections (RTIs).ConclusionSGLT2 inhibitors have a cardiovascular protective effect on patients with CKD, which in turn can significantly reduce the risk of CVD, HHF, and all-cause death without increasing the risk of SAEs and UTIs but increasing the risk of RTIs

An overview of the efficacy and signaling pathways activated by stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles in diabetic kidney disease

Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is one of complications of diabetes mellitus with severe microvascular lesion and the most common cause of end-stage chronic kidney disease (ESRD). Controlling serum glucose remains the primary approach to preventing and slowing the progression of DKD. Despite considerable efforts to control diabetes, people with diabetes develop not only DKD but also ESRD. The pathogenesis of DKD is very complex, and current studies indicate that mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) regulate complex disease processes by promoting pro-regenerative mechanisms and inhibiting multiple pathogenic pathways. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are products of MSCs. Current data indicate that MSC-EVs-based interventions not only protect renal cells, including renal tubular epithelial cells, podocytes and mesangial cells, but also improve renal function and reduce damage in diabetic animals. As an increasing number of clinical studies have confirmed, MSC-EVs may be an effective way to treat DKD. This review explores the potential efficacy and signaling pathways of MSC-EVs in the treatment of DKD

Genome-Wide Characterization and Analysis of bHLH Transcription Factors Related to Anthocyanin Biosynthesis in Cinnamomum camphora ('Gantong 1')

Cinnamomum camphora is one of the most commonly used tree species in landscaping. Improving its ornamental traits, particularly bark and leaf colors, is one of the key breeding goals. The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors (TFs) are crucial in controlling anthocyanin biosynthesis in many plants. However, their role in C. camphora remains largely unknown. In this study, we identified 150 bHLH TFs (CcbHLHs) using natural mutant C. camphora 'Gantong 1', which has unusual bark and leaf colors. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that 150 CcbHLHs were divided into 26 subfamilies which shared similar gene structures and conserved motifs. According to the protein homology analysis, we identified four candidate CcbHLHs that were highly conserved compared to the TT8 protein in A. thaliana. These TFs are potentially involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis in C. camphora. RNA-seq analysis revealed specific expression patterns of CcbHLHs in different tissue types. Furthermore, we verified expression patterns of seven CcbHLHs (CcbHLH001, CcbHLH015, CcbHLH017, CcbHLH022, CcbHLH101, CcbHLH118, and CcbHLH134) in various tissue types at different growth stages using qRT-PCR. This study opens a new avenue for subsequent research on anthocyanin biosynthesis regulated by CcbHLH TFs in C. camphora

A New Residual Neural Network Architecture Using Skeleton Data for Human Activity Recognition

International audienceDeep learning method has been efficiently applied to Human Activity Recognition in recent years. There are several types of neural network architectures such as convolutional, recurrent with long short term memory, etc. that have been further studied. The recent researches have shown their capability of learning features automatically from videos. However, many challenges still remain open. The key to let machine learn spatio-temporal information remains to be discovered. This paper proposes an original architecture of residual neural network using skeleton data. A new complex linear layer aimed at retrieving the internal relationships of neural cell will be discussed. Our method has been applied on some well-known public data-sets, mainly UTKinect-Action3D and Florence 3D actions. Combining with temporal pre-processing of human activity video, it achieves 99.25% and 99.3% accuracy respectively on UTKinect-Action3D and Florence 3D actions data-set, over-performing by 2% the best state-of-the-art results

Signaling Pathways of Podocyte Injury in Diabetic Kidney Disease and the Effect of Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter 2 Inhibitors

Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is one of the most important comorbidities for patients with diabetes, and its incidence has exceeded one tenth, with an increasing trend. Studies have shown that diabetes is associated with a decrease in the number of podocytes. Diabetes can induce apoptosis of podocytes through several apoptotic pathways or induce autophagy of podocytes through related pathways. At the same time, hyperglycemia can also directly lead to apoptosis of podocytes, and the related inflammatory reactions are all harmful to podocytes. Podocyte damage is often accompanied by the production of proteinuria and the progression of DKD. As a new therapeutic agent for diabetes, sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) have been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of diabetes and the improvement of terminal outcomes in many rodent experiments and clinical studies. At the same time, SGLT2i can also play a protective role in diabetes-induced podocyte injury by improving the expression of nephrotic protein defects and inhibiting podocyte cytoskeletal remodeling. Some studies have also shown that SGLT2i can play a role in inhibiting the apoptosis and autophagy of cells. However, there is no relevant study that clearly indicates whether SGLT2i can also play a role in the above pathways in podocytes. This review mainly summarizes the damage to podocyte structure and function in DKD patients and related signaling pathways, as well as the possible protective mechanism of SGLT2i on podocyte function

Epidemiology of Haemophilus parasuis isolates from pigs in China using serotyping, antimicrobial susceptibility, biofilm formation and ERIC-PCR genotyping

Background Haemophilus parasuis is a commensal organism of the upper respiratory tract of healthy pigs and causes high morbidity and mortality in piglets. The aim of this study was to investigate the epidemiology of H. parasuis in China from 2014 to 2017. Methods We characterized 143 H. parasuis isolates by serotyping, antimicrobial susceptibility, biofilm formation and with enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus-polymerase chain reaction (ERIC-PCR) assays. Results Serotyping revealed serovar 5 as the most prevalent (26.6%) followed by serovars 4 (22.4%), 7 (9.1 %), 13 (6.3%), 12 (5.6 %), and non-typeable (8.4%). In a panel of 23 antimicrobials, the minimum inhibitory concentration 50% (MIC50) were in the range of 0.25–16 μg/mL and MIC90 were 2–>512 μg/mL. A total of 99 isolates of H. parasuis (69.2%) were able to form biofilms and 59.6% (59/99) performed weak biofilm-forming ability. ERIC-PCR revealed a very heterogeneous pattern with 87 clusters. Discussion These H. parasuis isolates showed a high serovar and genotypic lineage diversity, different abilities to form biofilms and a high degree of genetic diversity. Biofilm formation was related to antimicrobial susceptibility but there were no statistically significant associations between the antimicrobial susceptibility and either the serovars or the ERIC-PCR clusters. This study showed a high prevalence of high-MIC H. parasuis strains and suggests the need for a continuous surveillance of clinical isolates of H. parasuis

Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of Crystallographic Orientation Dependence of Nanoscratching of Single Crystalline Copper.

In the present work, we perform experiments and molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the underlying deformation mechanisms of single crystalline copper under the load-controlled multi-passes nanoscratching using a triangular pyramidal probe. The correlation of microscopic deformation behavior of the material with macroscopically-observed machining results is revealed. Moreover, the influence of crystallographic orientation on the nanoscratching of single crystalline copper is examined. Our simulation results indicate that the plastic deformation of single crystalline Cu under the nanoscratching is exclusively governed by dislocation mechanisms. However, there is no glissile dislocation structure formed due to the probe oscillation under the load-controlled mode. Both experiments and MD simulations demonstrate that the machined surface morphologies in terms of groove depth and surface pile-up exhibit strong crystallographic orientation dependence, because of different geometries of activated slip planes cutting with free surfaces and strain hardening abilities associated with different crystallographic orientations

Three dimensionals α-Fe2O3/polypyrrole (Ppy) nanoarray as anode for micro lithium ion batteries

Three dimensional, self-supported α-Fe2O3/Ppy composite electrode with enhanced specific areal capacity and rate performance was successfully fabricated by a simple, low-cost, two-steps process consisting of direct heating of iron foil in air and subsequent coating of conducting polymer Ppy on the α-Fe2O3 nanoflakes. By using α-Fe2O3/Ppy as the anode materials with iron foil as the current collector, the unique structure affords a highly conductive pathway for electron, a short diffusion length for ions, a fast mass transport channel for electrolyte, and sufficient void space for accommodating large volume variations during Li intercalation/diintercalation for Li-ion battery. A relatively high specific capacity of 0.42 mA h/cm2 can be achieved at 0.1 mA/cm2 even after 100 charge/discharge cycles, with a plateau potential of 1 V and nearly 100% Coulombic efficiency, suggesting the feasibility to use this unique 3D nanostructured hybrid composite for microbattery in both small and large scale applications