The Chinese (Cantonese) Montreal Cognitive Assessment in Patients with Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Dementia

Background: Subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (SIVD) has been proposed as the most frequent subtype of vascular cognitive impairment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese (Cantonese) Montreal Cognitive Assessment (CC- MoCA) in patients with SIVD in the Guangdong Province of China. Methods: 71 SIVD patients and 60 matched controls were recruited for the CC-MoCA, Mini Mental State Examination and executive clock drawing tasks. Receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses were performed to determine optimal sensitivity and specificity of the CC-MoCA total score in differentiating mild vascular dementia (VaD) patients from moderate VaD patients and controls. Results: The mean CC-MoCA scores of the controls, and mild and moderate VaD patients were 25.2 ± 3.8, 16.4 ± 3.7, and 10.0 ± 5.1, respectively. In our study, the optimal cutoff value for the CC-MoCA to be able to differentiate patients with mild VaD from controls is 21/22, and 13/14 to differentiate mild VaD from moderate VaD. Conclusion: The CC-MoCA is a useful cognitive screening instrument in SIVD patients

Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection in pet dogs in Kunming, Southwest China

BACKGROUND: Toxoplasmosis is a zoonotic parasitic disease caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, which infects almost all warm-blooded animals, including humans, with a worldwide distribution. However, little is known of T. gondii seroprevalence in pet dogs in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, southwest China. The objective of this investigation was to estimate the seroprevalence of T. gondii infection in pet dogs in this area. METHODS: A total of 611 serum samples were collected from 7 pet hospitals in Kunming, and assayed for T. gondii antibodies by the indirect haemagglutination (IHA) using a commercially-marked kit. RESULTS: 132 (21.6%) pet dogs were positive for T. gondii antibodies, and the seroprevalence ranged from 17.3% to 34.7% among different sampling regions, the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The T. gondii seroprevalence in female and male dogs were 20.8% and 22.4%, respectively, the difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). The seroprevalence ranged from 17.5% to 23.6% among different age groups, but the difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05), and there were no interactions in statistics (P > 0.05) between gender and age of pet dogs in the region. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of the present survey indicate high T. gondii seroprevalance in pet dogs in Kunming, southwest China, posing significant public health concern. It is necessary to enhance integrated strategies and measures to prevent and control T. gondii infection in pet dogs in this area

Pharmacokinetic Interaction between Magnolol and Piperine in Rats

Purpose: To investigate the pharmacokinetic mechanism of interaction between magnolol and piperine when co-administered to rats.Methods: The rats were divided into five groups as follows: magnolol group (625 mg/kg); low dose of piperine group (20 mg/kg); high dose of piperine group (40 mg/kg); low dose of piperine + magnolol group; or high dose of piperine + magnolol group. Plasma samples were collected at regular time intervals after administration of a single dose of magnolol (625 mg/kg, p.o.) alone or piperine (20 or 40 mg/kg, p.o.) in the presence or absence of magnolol (625 mg/kg, p.o.). The concentrations of magnolol and piperine in plasma were measured by a validated high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method.Results: Compared with control, the groups given magnolol alone, concomitant administration of piperine and magnolol resulted in significant decrease (p &lt; 0.01) in the AUC and Cmax of magnolol. Interestingly, compared with administration of piperine alone (20 mg/kg), co-administration with magnolol did not significantly (p &gt; 0.05) alter the pharmacokinetic parameters of piperine. However, at high dose (40 mg/kg) of piperine, Cmax of piperine significantly decreased from 4.30 ± 1.47 to 2.50 ± 0.78 μg/mL (p &lt; 0.05).Conclusion: Co-administration of magnolol and piperine decreases plasma concentration of either drug in rats, suggesting that concurrent use of magnolol with piperine or piperine-containing diets would require close monitoring for potential interactions.Keywords: Magnolol, Piperine, Pharmacokinetic interaction, Co administratio

Near-infrared and mid-infrared semiconductor broadband light emitters

Semiconductor broadband light emitters have emerged as ideal and vital light sources for a range of biomedical sensing/imaging applications, especially for optical coherence tomography systems. Although near-infrared broadband light emitters have found increasingly wide utilization in these imaging applications, the requirement to simultaneously achieve both a high spectral bandwidth and output power is still challenging for such devices. Owing to the relatively weak amplified spontaneous emission, as a consequence of the very short non-radiative carrier lifetime of the inter-subband transitions in quantum cascade structures, it is even more challenging to obtain desirable mid-infrared broadband light emitters. There have been great efforts in the past 20 years to pursue high-efficiency broadband optical gain and very low reflectivity in waveguide structures, which are two key factors determining the performance of broadband light emitters. Here we describe the realization of a high continuous wave light power of &gt;20 mW and broadband width of &gt;130 nm with near-infrared broadband light emitters and the first mid-infrared broadband light emitters operating under continuous wave mode at room temperature by employing a modulation p-doped InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot active region with a ‘J’-shape ridge waveguide structure and a quantum cascade active region with a dual-end analogous monolithic integrated tapered waveguide structure, respectively. This work is of great importance to improve the performance of existing near-infrared optical coherence tomography systems and describes a major advance toward reliable and cost-effective mid-infrared imaging and sensing systems, which do not presently exist due to the lack of appropriate low-coherence mid-infrared semiconductor broadband light sources

Spatial structure and distribution simulation of Aphis gossipii Glover population based on GIS

Based on geographic information system (GIS) and geostatistical analysis, this paper studied the spatial structure of Aphis gossipii Glover population in Xiangshan District of Zhongwei City, Ningxia Province, with the spatial distribution of the population simulated by ordinary Kriging interpretation. The spatial structure of A. gossipii population varied with its occurrence stage (initial, blossom, and final stage). The semivariograms of A. gossipii could be described by exponential or Gaussian model, indicating that A. gossipii had an aggregated spatial arrangement. The aggregation degrees at different occurrence stages were all beyond 45%, and the spatial correlation ranged from 10.37 km to 29.11 km. The spatial variance was greatly affected by spatial autocorrelation. The population dynamics of A. gossipii at its different occurrence stages could be easily analyzed and intuitively simulated from the two aspects of time and space by spatial distribution simulation, and thus, the occurrence position and degree of A. gossipii could be easily determined.DST of China: 2007BAD54B0

Deciphering the molecular landscape of rheumatoid arthritis offers new insights into the stratified treatment for the condition

BackgroundFor Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), a long-term chronic illness, it is essential to identify and describe patient subtypes with comparable goal status and molecular biomarkers. This study aims to develop and validate a new subtyping scheme that integrates genome-scale transcriptomic profiles of RA peripheral blood genes, providing a fresh perspective for stratified treatments.MethodsWe utilized independent microarray datasets of RA peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Up-regulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were subjected to functional enrichment analysis. Unsupervised cluster analysis was then employed to identify RA peripheral blood gene expression-driven subtypes. We defined three distinct clustering subtypes based on the identified 404 up-regulated DEGs.ResultsSubtype A, named NE-driving, was enriched in pathways related to neutrophil activation and responses to bacteria. Subtype B, termed interferon-driving (IFN-driving), exhibited abundant B cells and showed increased expression of transcripts involved in IFN signaling and defense responses to viruses. In Subtype C, an enrichment of CD8+ T-cells was found, ultimately defining it as CD8+ T-cells-driving. The RA subtyping scheme was validated using the XGBoost machine learning algorithm. We also evaluated the therapeutic outcomes of biological disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. ConclusionsThe findings provide valuable insights for deep stratification, enabling the design of molecular diagnosis and serving as a reference for stratified therapy in RA patients in the future

A simulation study on the measurement of D0-D0bar mixing parameter y at BES-III

We established a method on measuring the \dzdzb mixing parameter $y$ for BESIII experiment at the BEPCII $e^+e^-$ collider. In this method, the doubly tagged $\psi(3770) \to D^0 \overline{D^0}$ events, with one $D$ decays to CP-eigenstates and the other $D$ decays semileptonically, are used to reconstruct the signals. Since this analysis requires good $e/\pi$ separation, a likelihood approach, which combines the $dE/dx$, time of flight and the electromagnetic shower detectors information, is used for particle identification. We estimate the sensitivity of the measurement of $y$ to be 0.007 based on a $20fb^{-1}$ fully simulated MC sample.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure