Global, regional, and national incidence of six major immune-mediated inflammatory diseases: findings from the global burden of disease study 2019

Background The causes for immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) are diverse and the incidence trends of IMIDs from specific causes are rarely studied. The study aims to investigate the pattern and trend of IMIDs from 1990 to 2019. Methods We collected detailed information on six major causes of IMIDs, including asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis, between 1990 and 2019, derived from the Global Burden of Disease study in 2019. The average annual percent change (AAPC) in number of incidents and age standardized incidence rate (ASR) on IMIDs, by sex, age, region, and causes, were calculated to quantify the temporal trends. Findings In 2019, rheumatoid arthritis, atopic dermatitis, asthma, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease accounted 1.59%, 36.17%, 54.71%, 0.09%, 6.84%, 0.60% of overall new IMIDs cases, respectively. The ASR of IMIDs showed substantial regional and global variation with the highest in High SDI region, High-income North America, and United States of America. Throughout human lifespan, the age distribution of incident cases from six IMIDs was quite different. Globally, incident cases of IMIDs increased with an AAPC of 0.68 and the ASR decreased with an AAPC of −0.34 from 1990 to 2019. The incident cases increased across six IMIDs, the ASR of rheumatoid arthritis increased (0.21, 95% CI 0.18, 0.25), while the ASR of asthma (AAPC = −0.41), inflammatory bowel disease (AAPC = −0.72), multiple sclerosis (AAPC = −0.26), psoriasis (AAPC = −0.77), and atopic dermatitis (AAPC = −0.15) decreased. The ASR of overall and six individual IMID increased with SDI at regional and global level. Countries with higher ASR in 1990 experienced a more rapid decrease in ASR. Interpretation The incidence patterns of IMIDs varied considerably across the world. Innovative prevention and integrative management strategy are urgently needed to mitigate the increasing ASR of rheumatoid arthritis and upsurging new cases of other five IMIDs, respectively. Funding The Global Burden of Disease Study is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project funded by Scientific Research Fund of Sichuan Academy of Medical Sciences & Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital (2022QN38)

Asymptotic learning in feedforward networks with binary symmetric channels

Each of a large number of nodes takes a measurement in sequence to decide between two hypotheses about the state of the world. Each node also has available the decisions of some of its immediate predecessors and uses these and its own measurement to make its decision. Each node broadcasts its decision through a binary symmetric channel, which randomly flips the decision. The question treated here is whether there exists a decision strategy consisting of a sequence of likelihood ratio tests such that the decisions approach the true hypothesis as the number of nodes increases. We show that if each node learns from bounded number of predecessors, then the decisions cannot converge to the underlying truth. We show that if each node learns from all predecessors then the decisions converge in probability to the underlying truth when the flipping probabilities are bounded away from 1/2. We also derive, in the case when the flipping probabilities tend to 1/2, a condition on the convergence rate of the flipping probabilities that is required for the decisions to converge to the true hypothesis in probability

IS THERE ANY ASSOCIATION BETWEEN MATERNAL DEPRESSION AND BIOPHYSICAL PROFILE?

"nMother's mental health status during pregnancy has important effects on fetal growth and development. However, there are few studies concerning association of maternal depression and biophysical profile (BPP) of the fetus. We performed this research to know if maternal depression has any association with fetal BPP score. For measuring depression, Farsi version of Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) was completed. A total of 100 pregnant women in their third trimester (>24 weeks) who had not hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, eclampsia and preeclampsia, fever, infection, diabetes or a fetus with intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) and were not using any medication entered the study. Spearman correlation coefficient between the score of PHQ-9 questionnaire and BPP score was -0.08 (P = 0.43). Based on Kruskal Wallis test, there was no difference in BPP score of depressed and nondepressed women (P = 0.65). We found no relationship between maternal depression and BPP score in third trimester of pregnancy. Further studies for elucidating neuro-hormonal mechanisms related to the result of our study are suggeste

String submodular function with curvature constraints

The problem of choosing a string of actions to optimize an objective function that is string submodular has been considered in [1]. There it is shown that the greedy strategy, consisting of a string of actions that only locally maximizes the step-wise gain in the objective function, achieves at least a (1 - e -1 )-approximation to the optimal strategy. This paper improves this approximation by introducing additional constraints on curvature, namely, total backward curvature, total forward curvature, and elemental forward curvature. We show that if the objective function has total backward curvature σ, then the greedy strategy achieves at least a 1 σ (1 - e -σ )-approximation of the optimal strategy. If the objective function has total forward curvature ϵ, then the greedy strategy achieves at least a (1 - ϵ)- approximation of the optimal strategy. Moreover, we consider a generalization of the diminishing-return property by dening the elemental forward curvature. We also introduce the notion of string-matroid and consider the problem of maximizing the objective function subject to a string-matroid constraint. We investigate two applications of string submodular functions with curvature constraints: 1) choosing a string of actions to maximize the expected fraction of accomplished tasks; and 2) designing a string of measurement matrices such that the information gain is maximized

Error probability bounds for balanced binary relay trees

We study the detection error probability associated with a balanced binary relay tree, where the leaves of the tree correspond to N identical and independent sensors. The root of the tree represents a fusion center that makes the overall detection decision. Each of the other nodes in the tree are relay nodes that combine two binary messages to form a single output binary message. Only the leaves of the tree are sensors. In this way, the information from the sensors is aggregated into the fusion center via the intermediate relay nodes. In this context, we describe the evolution of Type I and Type II error probabilities of the binary data as it propagates from the leaves towards the root. Tight upper and lower bounds for the total error probability at the fusion center as functions of N are derived. These characterize how fast the total error probability converges to 0 with respect to N

Alginate-magnetic short nanofibers 3D composite hydrogel enhances the encapsulated human olfactory mucosa stem cells bioactivity for potential nerve regeneration application

The design of 3D hydrogel constructs to elicit highly controlled cell response is a major field of interest in developing tissue engineering. The bioactivity of encapsulated cells inside pure alginate hydrogel is limited by its relatively inertness. Combining short nanofibers within a hydrogel serves as a promising method to develop a cell friendly environment mimicking the extracellular matrix. In this paper, we fabricated alginate hydrogels incorporating different magnetic short nanofibers (M.SNFs) content for olfactory ecto-mesenchymal stem cells (OE-MSCs) encapsulation. Wet-electrospun gelatin and superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) nanocomposite nanofibers were chopped using sonication under optimized conditions and subsequently embedded in alginate hydrogels. The storage modulus of hydrogel without M.SNFs as well as with 1 and 5 mg/mL of M.SNFs were in the range of nerve tissue. For cell encapsulation, OE-MSCs were used as a new hope for neuronal regeneration due to their neural crest origin. Resazurin analyses and LIVE/DEAD staining confirmed that the composite hydrogels containing M.SNFs can preserve the cell viability after 7 days. Moreover, the proliferation rate was enhanced in M.SNF/hydrogels compared to alginate hydrogel. The presence of SPIONs in the short nanofibers can accelerate neural-like differentiation of OE-MSCs rather than the sample without SPIONs. © 2020 Elsevier B.V

Nephroprotective effect of estrogen and progesterone combination on cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity in ovariectomized female rats

Recently, we reported that estrogen (Es) has no beneficial effect on cisplatin (CP)-induced nephrotoxicity, but the role of progesterone (Pr) and the combination of Es and Pr are not yet well-defined. In this study, we investigated the protective role of Pr, and co-administration of Es/Pr on CP-induced nephrotoxicity. Eighty-six ovariectomized female Wistar rats were divided into 13 groups, and the experiments were performed in two phases. In Phase I, Groups 1–4 received 2, 5, 10, and 25 mg/kg, IM Pr dissolved in sesame oil every 5 days for four doses. Groups 5–8 had the same treatment regimen as Groups 1–4, but after the third injection the animals also received continuous dose of CP (2.5 mg/kg/day, i.p.) for 8 days. Group 9, as the positive control group, received sesame oil instead of Pr plus CP. Group 10, as the negative control group, received sesame oil instead of Pr. After the most effective dose of Pr was determined in Phase I, Groups 11–13 in Phase II received 10 mg/kg Pr plus either 0.25, 0.5, or 1 mg/kg, IM estradiol valerate every 5 days for four doses. After the third injection, they also received a continuous dose of CP for 8 days. The levels of blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine (Cr), kidney tissue damage score (KTDS), and kidney weight (KW) increased and body weight (BW) decreased in the positive control group (P < 0.05). Administration of Pr (10 mg/kg) plus CP decreased KTDS and BW loss and KW. Co-administration of ES/Pr at specific doses improved Cr, BUN, and KTDS; and resulted in reduced CP-induced nephrotoxicity. The results obtained suggest that the beneficial effect of Pr on CP-induced nephrotoxicity is dose-dependent. In addition, combination of Es/Pr with a specific dose decreased CP-induced nephrotoxicity