Gender-specific association of decreased estimated glomerular filtration rate and left vertical geometry in the general population from rural Northeast China

Abstract Background Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is common and associated with cardiovascular outcomes among patients with known chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the link between decreased estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and left ventricular (LV) geometry remains poorly explored in general population. In this study, we examined the gender-specific association between eGFR and LVH in the general population from rural Northeast China. Methods This survey was conducted from July 2012 to August 2013. A total of 10907 participants (5,013 men and 5,894 women) from the rural Northeast China were randomly selected and examined. LV mass index (LVMI) was used to define LVH (LVMI\u2009>\u200946.7\ua0g/m 2.7 in women; > 49.2\ua0g/m 2.7 in men). LV geometry was defined as normal, or with concentric remodeling, eccentric or concentric hypertrophy, according to relative wall thickness (RWT) and LVMI. Mildly decreased eGFR was defined as eGFR\u2009\u2265\u200960 and\u2009<\u200990\ua0ml/min/1.73\ua0m 2 , and moderate-severely decreased eGFR was defined as eGFR\u2009<\u200960\ua0ml/min/1.73\ua0m 2 . Results As eGFR decreased, LVH showed a gradual increase in the entire study population. Multivariate analysis revealed a gender-specific relationship between eGFR and LV geometry. Only in men, mildly decreased eGFR was associated with concentric remodeling [odds ratio (OR): =1.58; 95% CI: 1.14\u20132.20; P \u2009<\u20090.01] and concentric LVH OR \u2009=\u20091.63; 95% CI: 1.15\u20132.31; P \u2009<\u20090.01). And only in men, moderate-severely decreased eGFR was a risk factor for concentric LVH ( OR \u2009=\u20094.56; 95% CI: 2.14\u20139.73; P \u2009<\u20090.001) after adjusting for confounding factors. Conclusions These findings suggested that decreased eGFR was a risk factor for LV geometry in men, and a gender-specific difference should be taken into account in clinical practice

Measurement and Prediction of Coupling Coordination Level of Economic Development, Social Stability and Ecological Environment in Qinghai—Thoughts on Sustainable Societal Safety

Societal safety is the result of the coordinated development of several subsystems; the coupling–coordination relationship among economic development (ED), social stability (SS), and ecological environment (EE) is the premise of realizing sustainable societal safety (SSS). Taking Qinghai Province as an example, this paper quantitatively evaluates the development index of each subsystem by constructing ED-SS-EE evaluation index system, then analyzes the spatio-temporal evolution of ED, SS, and EE coupling coordination levels based on the coupling coordination model, and finally predicts the coupling coordination level of ED, SS, and EE by using the GM(1.1) model. The findings are as follows: (1) The economy is developing rapidly, but the regional development is extremely uneven; ED is driving SS, and SS lags behind ED and slowly improves; EE is improving continuously, and the spatial pattern is relatively stable. (2) The ED, SS, and EE systems have a high degree of coupling, showing a fluctuating upward trend. Coordination level is low, showing a slow upward trend, and the regional differences are obvious. (3) In the future, the coordination level of ED, SS, and EE systems in different regions will be upgraded from the level of near imbalance and barely coordination to the level of intermediate coordination, good coordination, and even high-quality coordination. The spatio-temporal description of ED, SS, and EE coupling coordination level not only reveals the development trend and problems of SSS in Qinghai, it also proves the feasibility of evaluating societal safety level based on the coupling coordination level of sustainable social structure system.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

The emerging role of deubiquitylating enzymes as therapeutic targets in cancer metabolism.

Cancer cells must rewire cellular metabolism to satisfy the unbridled proliferation, and metabolic reprogramming provides not only the advantage for cancer cell proliferation but also new targets for cancer treatment. However, the plasticity of the metabolic pathways makes them very difficult to target. Deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs) are proteases that cleave ubiquitin from the substrate proteins and process ubiquitin precursors. While the molecular mechanisms are not fully understood, many DUBs have been shown to be involved in tumorigenesis and progression via controlling the dysregulated cancer metabolism, and consequently recognized as potential drug targets for cancer treatment. In this article, we summarized the significant progress in understanding the key roles of DUBs in cancer cell metabolic rewiring and the opportunities for the application of DUBs inhibitors in cancer treatment, intending to provide potential implications for both research purpose and clinical applications

UADB: Unsupervised Anomaly Detection Booster

Unsupervised Anomaly Detection (UAD) is a key data mining problem owing to its wide real-world applications. Due to the complete absence of supervision signals, UAD methods rely on implicit assumptions about anomalous patterns (e.g., scattered/sparsely/densely clustered) to detect anomalies. However, real-world data are complex and vary significantly across different domains. No single assumption can describe such complexity and be valid in all scenarios. This is also confirmed by recent research that shows no UAD method is omnipotent. Based on above observations, instead of searching for a magic universal winner assumption, we seek to design a general UAD Booster (UADB) that empowers any UAD models with adaptability to different data. This is a challenging task given the heterogeneous model structures and assumptions adopted by existing UAD methods. To achieve this, we dive deep into the UAD problem and find that compared to normal data, anomalies (i) lack clear structure/pattern in feature space, thus (ii) harder to learn by model without a suitable assumption, and finally, leads to (iii) high variance between different learners. In light of these findings, we propose to (i) distill the knowledge of the source UAD model to an imitation learner (booster) that holds no data assumption, then (ii) exploit the variance between them to perform automatic correction, and thus (iii) improve the booster over the original UAD model. We use a neural network as the booster for its strong expressive power as a universal approximator and ability to perform flexible post-hoc tuning. Note that UADB is a model-agnostic framework that can enhance heterogeneous UAD models in a unified way. Extensive experiments on over 80 tabular datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of UADB

“Cultural and Creative IP” Empowerment Model for Red Culture under the New Media Environment

Boasting exemplary national qualities and high educational value, Red Culture is a unique spiritual wealth that make the Chinese nation stand out from the rest nations. Under the new media environment, however, the collision between the disparate characteristics of Red Culture and new media has given rise to the predicament plaguing the communication of Red Culture. With the advent of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, both tangible and intangible cultural heritage and resources are being valued, tapped and cultivated across the country. With the cultural and creative industry in the ascendant, the concept of intellectual property (“IP”) has seeped into all aspects of our everyday lives. Against that backdrop, this study attempts to explore novel ways to link up the Red Culture resources scattered across China, to combine education with cultural tourism through the “4+5+2” cultural and creative IP empowerment model, and to pass on and spread Red Culture and add new value to the industry on the strength of influential IPs

The effect of health insurance reform on the number of cataract surgeries in Chongqing, China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in China, and poverty is a major barrier to having cataract surgery. In 2003, the Chinese government began a series of new national health insurance reforms, including the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) and the Urban Resident Basic Health Insurance scheme (URBMI). These two programs, combined with the previously existing Urban Employee Basic Health Insurance (UEBMI) program, aimed to make it easier for individuals to receive medical treatment. This study reports cataract surgery numbers in rural and urban populations and the proportion of these who had health insurance in Chongqing, China from 2003 to 2008.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The medical records of a consecutive case series, including 14,700 eyes of 13,262 patients who underwent age-related cataract surgery in eight hospitals in Chongqing from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2008, were analysed retrospectively via multi-stage cluster sampling.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the past six years, the total number of cataract surgeries had increased each year as had the number of patients with insurance. Both the number of surgeries and the number of insured patients were much higher in the urban group than in the rural group. The rate of increase in the rural group however was much higher than in the urban group, especially in 2007 and 2008. The odds ratios of having health insurance for urban vs. rural individuals were relatively stable from 2003 to 2006, but it decreased in 2007 and was significantly lower in 2008.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Health insurance appears to be an important factor associated with increased cataract surgery in Chongqing, China. With the implementation of health insurance, the number of Chongqing's cataract surgeries was increased year by year.</p