Association of blood pressure with development of metabolic syndrome components: a five-year retrospective cohort study in Beijing

Background: Raised blood pressure (BP) is associated with the incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS). It is unknown if subjects with different BP levels may develop certain components of MetS over time. We investigated the incidence of MetS relative to different levels of BP over a 5-year period in a Chinese population in Tongren Hospital, Beijing. Methods: During the period of 2006–2011, we recruited 2,781 participants with no MetS, or self-reported type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, or cardiovascular disease at baseline. Association rule was used to identify the transitions of MetS components over time. Results: The incidence of MetS at follow-up was 9.74% for men and 3.21% for women in the group with optimal BP; 10.29% and 7.22%, respectively, in the group with normal BP; 10.49% and 10.84%, respectively, in the group with high-normal BP; and 14.48% and 23.21%, respectively in the group with high BP. The most common transition was from healthy to healthy in the groups with optimal or normal BP (17.9–49.3%), whereas in the high-normal BP group, 16.9-22.1% of subjects with raised BP returned to healthy status or stayed unchanged, while 13.8-21.4% of people with high BP tended to develop raised fasting glucose levels. Conclusions: The incidence of MetS increased in parallel with the increase in BP. People with optimal and normal BP levels were less susceptible to developing MetS over time, whereas abnormal BP seemed to be a pre-existing phase of MetS. High-normal BP was a crucial status for MetS prevention

Association between γ-glutamyl transferase and metabolic syndrome: A cross-sectional study of an adult population in Beijing

The relationship between liver enzymes and clustered components of metabolic syndrome (MetS) is explored and the predictive power of γ-glutamyl transferase (GGT) for the diagnosis of MetS in an adult population in Beijing is investigated. A total of 10,553 adults aged 20-65 years who underwent health examinations at Beijing Tongren Hospital in 2012 were enrolled in the study. Multivariate logistic regression analysis is conducted to determine the associations between the levels of various liver enzymes and clustered components of MetS. A receiver operating characteristic analysis is used to determine the optimal cut-off value of GGT for the diagnosis of MetS. A high level of GGT is found to be positively associated with clustered components of MetS in both men and women after adjusting for age, body mass index (BMI), history of alcoholic fatty liver, and the presence of taking anti-hypertensive, anti-dyslipidemic, and anti-diabetic drugs. Among all components of MetS, GGT is more predictive of triglyceride, and BMI. The area-under-the-curve values of GGT for discriminating MetS from normal metabolic status in men and women are 0.73 and 0.80, respectively. The optimal cut-off value of GGT for men is 31.50 U/L, demonstrating a sensitivity of 74.00% and specificity of 62.00%. For women, it is 19.50 U/L (sensitivity 76.00% and specificity 70.00%). GGT is therefore recommended as a useful diagnostic marker for MetS, because the test is inexpensive, highly sensitive, and frequently encountered in clinical practice

Berberine Inhibits HIV Protease Inhibitor-Induced Inflammatory Response by Modulating ER Stress Signaling Pathways in Murine Macrophages

Background HIV protease inhibitor (PI)-induced inflammatory response plays an important role in HIV PI-associated dyslipidemia and cardiovascular complications. This study examined the effect of berberine, a traditional herb medicine, on HIV PI-induced inflammatory response and further investigated the underlying cellular/molecular mechanisms in macrophages. Methodology and Principal Findings Cultured mouse J774A.1 macrophages and primary mouse macrophages were used in this study. The expression of TNF-α and IL-6 were detected by real-time RT-PCR and ELISA. Activations of ER stress and ERK signaling pathways were determined by Western blot analysis. Immunofluorescent staining was used to determine the intracellular localization of RNA binding protein HuR. RNA-pull down assay was used to determine the association of HuR with endogenous TNF-α and IL-6. Berberine significantly inhibited HIV PI-induced TNF-α and IL-6 expression by modulating ER stress signaling pathways and subsequent ERK activation, in turn preventing the accumulation of the RNA binding protein HuR in cytosol and inhibiting the binding of HuR to the 3′-UTRs of TNF-α and IL-6 in macrophages. Conclusions and Significance Inhibition of ER stress represents a key mechanism by which berberine prevents HIV PI-induced inflammatory response. Our findings provide a new insight into the molecular mechanisms of berberine and show the potential application of berberine as a complimentary therapeutic agent for HIV infection

Investigating the influence of an adjustable zoned air mattress on sleep: a multinight polysomnography study

IntroductionA comfortable mattress should improve sleep quality. In this study, we sought to investigate the specific sleep parameters that could be affected by a mattress and explore any potential differences between the effects felt by each sex.MethodsA total of 20 healthy young adults (10 females and 20 males; 22.10 ± 1.25 years) participated in the experiments. A smart adjustable zoned air mattress was designed to maintain comfortable support, and an ordinary mattress was used for comparison. The participants individually spent four nights on these two mattresses in four orders for polysomnography (PSG) scoring. Sleep architecture, electroencephalogram (EEG) spectrum, and heart rate variability (HRV), which reflect the central and autonomic nervous activities, were used to compare the difference between the two mattresses.ResultsAn individual difference exited in sleep performance. The modes of influence of the mattresses were different between the sexes. The adjustable air mattress and the increase in experimental nights improved female participants' sleep efficiency, while male participants exhibited a smaller response to different mattresses. With an increasing number of experiment nights, both sexes showed increased REM and decreased N2 proportions; the N3 sleep proportion decreased in the male participants, and the heart rate decreased in both sexes. The performance of the EEG spectrum supports the above results. In addition, the adjustable air mattress weakened automatic nerve activity during N3 sleep in most participants. The female participants appeared to be more sensitive to mattresses. Experiment night was associated with psychological factors. There were differences in the results for this influence between the sexes.ConclusionThis study may shed some light on the differences between the ideal sleep environment of each sex

A lectin gene is involved in the defense of Pleurotus ostreatus against the mite predator Tyrophagus putrescentiae

The storage mite, Tyrophagus putrescentiae, found worldwide in many habitats, is an important pest of edible mushrooms. Excessive chemical spraying for pest control has been linked to environmental pollution, health risks, insecticide resistance development, and food safety. Host resistance can be sustainable and cost-effective and provide effective and economical pest control. Previous studies have reported that the oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus has evolved effective defense mechanisms against T. putrescentiae attack, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here we report that a lectin gene from P. ostreatus mycelia, Polec2, induced fungal resistance to mite grazing. Polec2 belongs to a galectin-like lectin classification, encoding a protein with β-sandwith-fold domain. Overexpression of Polec2 in P. ostreatus led to activation of the reactive oxygen species (ROS)/mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) signaling pathway, salicylic acid (SA), and jasmonate (JA) biosynthesis. The activation resulted in bursts of antioxidant activities of catalases (CAT), peroxidases (POD), superoxide dismutases (SOD), and increased production of SA, JA, jasmonic acid-isoleucine (JA-Ile) and jasmonic acid methyl ester (MeJA), accompanied by reduced T. putrescentiae feeding and suppressed its population. We also provide an overview of the phylogenetic distribution of lectins across 22 fungal genomes. Our findings shed light on the molecular mechanisms of P. ostreatus’ defense against the mite predator and will be useful in investigating the molecular basis of fungi-fungivory interactions and gene mining for pest-resistance genes

Risk factors for cerebrovascular disease mortality among the elderly in Beijing: A competing risk analysis

Objective: To examine the associations of combined lifestyle factors and physical conditions with cerebrovascular diseases (CBVD) mortality, after accounting for competing risk events, including death from cardiovascular diseases, cancers and other diseases. Methods: Data on 2010 subjects aged over 55 years were finally analyzed using competing risk models. All the subjects were interviewed by the Beijing Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), in China, between 1 January 1992 and 30 August 2009. Results: Elderly females were at a lower risk of death from CBVD than elderly males (HR = 0.639, 95% CI = 0.457-0.895). Increasing age (HR = 1.543, 95% CI = 1.013-2.349), poor self-rated health (HR = 1.652, 95% CI = 1.198-2.277), hypertension (HR = 2.201, 95% CI = 1.524-3.178) and overweight (HR = 1.473, 95% CI = 1.013-2.142) or obesity (HR = 1.711, 95% CI = 1.1754-2.490) was associated with higher CBVD mortality risk. Normal cognition function (HR = 0.650, 95% CI = 0.434-0.973) and living in urban (HR = 0.456, 95% CI = 0.286-0.727) was associated with lower CBVD mortality risk. Gray\u27s test also confirmed the cumulative incidence (CIF) of CBVD was lower in the \u27married\u27 group than those without spouse, and the mortality was lowest in the \u27nutrition sufficient\u27 group among the \u27frequent consumption of meat group\u27 and the \u27medial type group\u27 (P valu

Contourlet textual features: Improving the diagnosis of solitary pulmonary nodules in two dimensional ct images

Materials and Methods: A total of 6,299 CT images were acquired from 336 patients, with 1,454 benign pulmonary nodule images from 84 patients (50 male, 34 female) and 4,845 malignant from 252 patients (150 male, 102 female). Further to this, nineteen patient information categories, which included seven demographic parameters and twelve morphological features, were also collected. A contourlet was used to extract fourteen types of textural features. These were then used to establish three support vector machine models. One comprised a database constructed of nineteen collected patient information categories, another included contourlet textural features and the third one contained both sets of information. Ten-fold cross-validation was used to evaluate the diagnosis results for the three databases, with sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, the area under the curve (AUC), precision, Youden index, and F-measure were used as the assessment criteria. In addition, the synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) was used to preprocess the unbalanced data.Results: Using a database containing textural features and patient information, sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, AUC, precision, Youden index, and F-measure were: 0.95, 0.71, 0.89, 0.89, 0.92, 0.66, and 0.93 respectively. These results were higher than results derived using the database without textural features (0.82, 0.47, 0.74, 0.67, 0.84, 0.29, and 0.83 respectively) as well as the database comprising only textural features (0.81, 0.64, 0.67, 0.72, 0.88, 0.44, and 0.85 respectively). Using the SMOTE as a pre-processing procedure, new balanced database generated, including observations of 5,816 benign ROIs and 5,815 malignant ROIs, and accuracy was 0.93.Objective: To determine the value of contourlet textural features obtained from solitary pulmonary nodules in two dimensional CT images used in diagnoses of lung cancer. Copyright:Conclusion: Our results indicate that the combined contourlet textural features of solitary pulmonary nodules in CT images with patient profile information could potentially improve the diagnosis of lung cancer

Artemisinin Ameliorates Osteoarthritis by Inhibiting the Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling Pathway

Background/Aims: Current drug therapies for osteoarthritis (OA) are not practical because of the cytotoxicity and severe side-effects associated with most of them. Artemisinin (ART), an antimalarial agent, is well known for its safety and selectivity to kill injured cells. Based on its anti-inflammatory activity and role in the inhibition of OA-associated Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, which is crucial in the pathogenesis of OA, we hypothesized that ART might have an effect on OA. Methods: The chondro-protective and antiarthritic effects of ART on interleukin-1-beta (IL-1β)-induced and OA patient-derived chondrocytes were investigated in vitro using cell viability assay, glycosaminoglycan secretion, immunofluorescence, quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, and western blotting. We also used OA model rats constructed by anterior cruciate ligament transection and medial meniscus resection (ACLT+MMx) in the joints to investigate the effects of ART on OA by gross observation, morphological staining, immunohistochemistry, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: ART exhibited potent anti-inflammatory effects by inhibiting the expression of proinflammatory chemokines and cytokines, including interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and matrix metallopeptidase-13. It also showed favorable chondro-protective effect as evidenced by enhanced cell proliferation and viability, increased glycosaminoglycan deposition, prevention of chondrocyte apoptosis, and degeneration of cartilage. Further, ART inhibited OA progression and cartilage degradation via the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, suggesting that it might serve as a Wnt/β-catenin antagonist to reduce inflammation and prevent cartilage degradation. Conclusion: In conclusion, ART alleviates IL-1β-mediated inflammatory response and OA progression by regulating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Thereby, it might be developed as a potential therapeutic agent for OA

3D Protein structure prediction with genetic tabu search algorithm

Abstract Background Protein structure prediction (PSP) has important applications in different fields, such as drug design, disease prediction, and so on. In protein structure prediction, there are two important issues. The first one is the design of the structure model and the second one is the design of the optimization technology. Because of the complexity of the realistic protein structure, the structure model adopted in this paper is a simplified model, which is called off-lattice AB model. After the structure model is assumed, optimization technology is needed for searching the best conformation of a protein sequence based on the assumed structure model. However, PSP is an NP-hard problem even if the simplest model is assumed. Thus, many algorithms have been developed to solve the global optimization problem. In this paper, a hybrid algorithm, which combines genetic algorithm (GA) and tabu search (TS) algorithm, is developed to complete this task. Results In order to develop an efficient optimization algorithm, several improved strategies are developed for the proposed genetic tabu search algorithm. The combined use of these strategies can improve the efficiency of the algorithm. In these strategies, tabu search introduced into the crossover and mutation operators can improve the local search capability, the adoption of variable population size strategy can maintain the diversity of the population, and the ranking selection strategy can improve the possibility of an individual with low energy value entering into next generation. Experiments are performed with Fibonacci sequences and real protein sequences. Experimental results show that the lowest energy obtained by the proposed GATS algorithm is lower than that obtained by previous methods. Conclusions The hybrid algorithm has the advantages from both genetic algorithm and tabu search algorithm. It makes use of the advantage of multiple search points in genetic algorithm, and can overcome poor hill-climbing capability in the conventional genetic algorithm by using the flexible memory functions of TS. Compared with some previous algorithms, GATS algorithm has better performance in global optimization and can predict 3D protein structure more effectively