Peripheral Sensitization

Peripheral sensitization indicates increased responsiveness and reduced threshold of nociceptive neurons in the periphery to the stimulation, which usually occurs after peripheral tissue injury and inflammation. As an integral part of pain, peripheral sensitization and its mechanisms have received much attention, and numerous types of neurotransmitters and chemicals related to peripheral sensitization were investigated. We developed an animal model of peripheral sensitization, and it provides evidence that some neurotransmitters, such as glutamate and substance P, release from adjacent peripheral nerves contributing to the peripheral sensitization of pathological pain. In this chapter, we reviewed the advances in peripheral sensitization, and it will provide a basis for new targets to attenuate pain of peripheral origin

Evasion of anti-growth signaling: a key step in tumorigenesis and potential target for treatment and prophylaxis by natural compounds

The evasion of anti-growth signaling is an important characteristic of cancer cells. In order to continue to proliferate, cancer cells must somehow uncouple themselves from the many signals that exist to slow down cell growth. Here, we define the anti-growth signaling process, and review several important pathways involved in growth signaling: p53, phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), retinoblastoma protein (Rb), Hippo, growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15), AT-rich interactive domain 1A (ARID1A), Notch, insulin-like growth factor (IGF), and Krüppel-like factor 5 (KLF5) pathways. Aberrations in these processes in cancer cells involve mutations and thus the suppression of genes that prevent growth, as well as mutation and activation of genes involved in driving cell growth. Using these pathways as examples, we prioritize molecular targets that might be leveraged to promote anti-growth signaling in cancer cells. Interestingly, naturally-occurring phytochemicals found in human diets (either singly or as mixtures) may promote anti-growth signaling, and do so without the potentially adverse effects associated with synthetic chemicals. We review examples of naturally-occurring phytochemicals that may be applied to prevent cancer by antagonizing growth signaling, and propose one phytochemical for each pathway. These are: epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) for the Rb pathway, luteolin for p53, curcumin for PTEN, porphyrins for Hippo, genistein for GDF15, resveratrol for ARID1A, withaferin A for Notch and diguelin for the IGF1-receptor pathway. The coordination of anti-growth signaling and natural compound studies will provide insight into the future application of these compounds in the clinical setting

Contribution of the 5G Smart First-Aid Care Platform to Achieving High-Quality Prehospital Care

China is gradually becoming an aging society, and the necessity for prehospital first-aid care is increasing. However, there is a long-term information blind spot in traditional prehospital first-aid care. Fifth-generation (5G) network has the advantages of enhanced broadband, multiple connections, and low latency. Combined with the current prehospital first-aid system, the 5G smart medical prehospital first-aid care model creates a new opportunity for the development of prehospital first-aid care. This paper aimed to describe the 5G smart first-aid care platform and offers practical insights into the construction and application of the 5G smart first-aid care platform in small- and medium-sized cities. We first introduced the working principle of the 5G smart first-aid care platform and then chose patients with prehospital chest pain as an example to describe the whole workflow in detail. The application of the 5G smart emergency-care platform is at the stage of pilot exploration in large- and medium-sized cities. Big data statistical analysis of the completed first-aid care tasks has not been performed yet. The 5G smart first-aid care platform realizes real-time interconnection of information between the ambulance and the hospital, performs remote consultation, shortens the treatment time, and enhances treatment efficiency. Future research should focus on quality control analysis of the 5G smart first-aid care platform

Entropy guided attention network for weakly-supervised action localization

One major challenge of Weakly-supervised Temporal Action Localization (WTAL) is to handle diverse backgrounds in videos. To model background frames, most existing methods treat them as an additional action class. However, because background frames usually do not share common semantics, squeezing all the different background frames into a single class hinders network optimization. Moreover, the network would be confused and tends to fail when tested on videos with unseen background frames. To address this problem, we propose an Entropy Guided Attention Network (EGA-Net) to treat background frames as out-of-domain samples. Specifically, we design a two-branch module, where a domain branch detects whether a frame is an action by learning a class-agnostic attention map, and an action branch recognizes the action category of the frame by learning a class-specific attention map. By aggregating the two attention maps to model the joint domain-class distribution of frames, our EGA-Net can handle varying backgrounds. To train the class-agnostic attention map with only the video-level class labels, we propose an Entropy Guided Loss (EGL), which employs entropy as the supervision signal to distinguish action and background. Moreover, we propose a Global Similarity Loss (GSL) to enhance the action-specific attention map via action class center. Extensive experiments on THUMOS14, ActivityNet1.2 and ActivityNet1.3 datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our EGA-Net.Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)This research is supported by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, under the AME Programmatic Funding Scheme A18A2b0046 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62002188

Do MicroRNAs Modulate Visceral Pain?

Visceral pain, a common characteristic of multiple diseases relative to viscera, impacts millions of people worldwide. Although hundreds of studies have explored mechanisms underlying visceral pain, it is still poorly managed. Over the past decade, strong evidence emerged suggesting that microRNAs (miRNAs) play a significant role in visceral nociception through altering neurotransmitters, receptors and other genes at the posttranscriptional level. Under pathological conditions, one kind of miRNA may have several target mRNAs and several kinds of miRNAs may act on one target, suggesting complex interactions and mechanisms between miRNAs and target genes lead to pathological states. In this review we report on recent progress in examining miRNAs responsible for visceral sensitization and provide miRNA-based therapeutic targets for the management of visceral pain

Function of the microglia in neuroinflammation of Alzheimer's disease:a brief review

Different types of activated imbroglio exist in the brain of the patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). As the neuroinflammation reaction progresses, significant changes take place in the morphology and function of those cells. They could play a pathogenic role by altering the phagocytic function of cells, including intracellular toxic reactions or directly participate in immune response. Several clinical trials have been conducted to promote targeted therapy focusing on the role that microglia played in neuroinflammation reactions of AD. More large scale studies are necessary to elucidate the function and mechanism of microglia in the neuroinflammation reaction of AD

Numerical study on the cavitation flow characteristics of high-pressure fuel in injector orifices based on compressible non-isothermal model

The flow inside the orifices in diesel injector largely determines the injection characteristics, which further affects the performance of the diesel engine. In this paper, numerical simulation is conducted to characterize the fuel flow with characteristics of two-phase cavitation, high speed, high pressure, high turbulence intensity, and high viscosity in two crucial orifice locations. The OZ orifice is selected as a benchmark to select the appropriate turbulence model and cavitation model. The simulation results from different turbulence and cavitation models are analyzed, and the combination of the realizable k–ɛ turbulence model and the Zwart–Gerber–Belamri cavitation model proves to be superior. Then, based on the validated models, the compressibility and non-isothermal characteristics of the fuel and two geometric parameters of the nozzles in an injector are emphatically discussed to depict the cavitation flow. The results suggest that the compressibility and non-isothermal characteristics of fuel affect the mass flow rate, fuel flow velocity, and cavitation extent within the orifices with a maximum deviation of the mass flow rate of 7.1%. However, their influence on the orifice flow coefficient is relatively minor with a maximum deviation of 0.8%. The mass flow rate and flow coefficient are both positively correlated with the rounded edge radius and taper coefficient. A greater rounded edge radius and taper coefficient can lead to a better fuel flow capacity in the nozzle orifice