Notes

Smart Hydrogel Bilayers Served by Irradiation.
BACKGROUND A cardiac myxoma in a young person may pose a diagnostic challenge as symptoms may be variable and the differential diagnosis is wide. The differential diagnosis can include rheumatic mitral valve disease, pulmonary hypertension, endocarditis, myocarditis and vasculitis. CASE PRESENTATION This case report involves a 49 years old female with a 2.8 cm × 3.4 cm myxoma in the left atrium causing mitral valve obstruction. She presented with fatigue, fever of unknown origin, transient ischemic attack and shortness of breath. Prompt surgery is often recommended due to the risk of embolic complications or complete obstruction. Due to her symptoms, patient underwent successful cardiothoracic surgery to excise the myxoma within 2 weeks of confirmation by cardiac echocardiography. CONCLUSION This case also emphasizes the diagnostic challenge as symptoms may be variable, ranging from fatigue, fever and shortness of breath to transient ischemic attack and at worst, sudden cardiac death. In conclusion, if a cardiac mass is suspected, echocardiography should be performed early. Surgical resection is curative and recurrence rate is very rare in sporadic isolated myxomas, however, recurrence can be higher in genetic diseases associated with increased frequency of myxomas such as Carney complex. This subpopulation of patients may present further research opportunity to learn more about the perioperative management of patients with myxomas such as determining the optimal time to surgical intervention and decision to anticoagulate.BACKGROUND Antiretroviral therapy (ART) demonstrates high efficacy in reducing the risk of HIV transmission to sexual partners. However, it is not clear if the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in HIV-1-serodiscordant couples is necessary during natural conception when the HIV-positive partner exhibits a suppressed viral load. The purpose of this study was to assess the role of PrEP during natural conception in this population. METHODS A retrospective, multicenter study was conducted in a cohort of HIV-1-serodiscordant couples (positive man, negative woman) with childbearing desires. HIV-positive male partners were treated with ART and achieved viral suppression for more than half a year. The HIV-negative female partners were either treated with PrEP or not treated with PrEP, and outcomes were compared between the two treatment groups. RESULTS Of 246 HIV-1-serodiscordant couples in whom the HIV-positive partner achieved viral suppression, 104 seronegative women were treated with PrEP during natural conception and 142 seronegative women were not treated with PrEP. There were 410 condom-less sexual acts in couples treated with PrEP and 615 condom-less sexual acts in couples not treated with PrEP. We observed no instances of HIV transmission in HIV-1-serodiscordant couples with or without the use of PrEP during the process of natural conception. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that PrEP had minimal influence in reducing the risk of HIV transmission during natural conception in HIV-1-serodiscordant couples with a stably suppressed viral load. Thus, it may be an acceptable option for HIV-negative partners to not use PrEP during the process of natural conception if the HIV-positive partner has achieved viral suppression for more than half a year.BACKGROUND Pain is an independent risk factor for falling. One in two older community-dwelling people with musculoskeletal pain fall each year. This study examined physical, psychological and medical factors as potential mediators to explain the relationship between knee pain and falls. METHODS Three hundred and thirty-three community-dwelling people aged 70+ years (52% women) participated in this cohort study with a 1-year follow-up for falls. Participants completed questionnaires (medical history, general health and concern about falls) and underwent physical performance tests. Participants were classified into 'pain' and 'no pain' groups based on self-reported knee pain. Poisson Regression models were computed to determine the Relative Risk (RR) of having multiple falls and potential mediators for increased fall risk. RESULTS One hundred and eighteen (36%) participants were categorised as having knee pain. This group took more medications and had more medical conditions (P  less then  0.01) compared to the no pain group. The pain group had poorer balance, physical function and strength and reported increased concern about falls. Sixty one participants (20%) reported ≥2 falls, with the pain group twice as likely to experience multiple falls over the 12 month follow up (RR = 2.0, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.27-3.13). Concern about falls, knee extension torque and postural sway with eyes closed were identified as significant and independent mediators of fall risk, and when combined explained 23% of the relationship between knee pain and falls. CONCLUSION This study has identified several medical, medication, psychological, sensorimotor, balance and mobility factors to be associated with knee pain, and found the presence of knee pain doubles the risk of multiple falls in older community living people. Alleviating knee pain, as well as addressing associated risk factors may assist in preventing falls in older people with knee pain.BACKGROUND Left ventricular reverse remodeling (LVRR) has been detected in non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (NIDCM) patients following optimal treatment. Epalrestat inhibitor However, its prediction with only conventional modalities is often difficult. This study sought to examine whether RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of myocardium tissue samples could predict LVRR in NIDCM. METHODS A total of 17 advanced NIDCM patients with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) below 30% who underwent cardiac biopsy from Left ventricle (LV) were prospectively recruited. They received optimal treatment and followed with echocardiogram every 6 months. Based on LVRR status after 12 months of treatment, patients were divided into the reverse remodeling (RR) or non-RR group. Tissue samples were analyzed by RNA-seq, and a functional analysis of differentially expressed genes was carried out. RESULTS There were eight and nine patients in the RR and non-RR groups, respectively. No difference was found in age, sex, disease duration, LV end-diastolic diameter, and LVEF between the two groups. There were 155 genes that were differentially expressed between the two groups. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide ubiquinone oxidoreductase subunit (NDUF)S5 and Growth arrest and DNA-damage-inducible protein (GADD)45G, along with several genes related to the mitochondrial respiratory chain and ribosome, were significantly downregulated in the RR as compared to the non-RR group. CONCLUSION GADD45G and NDUFS5 are potential biomarkers for LVRR in patients with advanced NIDCM.BACKGROUND Fenclorim (Fen) can effectively protect rice from pretilachlor (Pre) injury, but its effects on rice have not been formally evaluated; thus, the Fen mode of action for alleviating the phytotoxicity caused by Pre in rice is not clear. This study aimed to examine the biochemical and physiological effects of Fen on rice and to determine the changes induced by Fen at the transcriptome level. RESULT The chlorophyll content of rice plants was significantly affected by Pre but not by Fen. The activity of oxidative stress enzymes showed that Fen did not elicit any changes in oxidative stress; however, it reduced lipid peroxidation and oxidative damage induced by Pre. Fen did not affect the uptake of Pre but did affect its persistence in rice. In a transcriptome experiment, Fen upregulated genes in a detoxification pathway. Overall, 25 genes related to detoxification were identified, including P450, GST, and GT. Moreover, qRT-PCR analysis showed that four P450 genes, CYP71Y83, CYP71K14, CYP734A2 and CYP71D55, and two GST genes, GSTU16 and GSTF5, were upregulated by Fen and/or Pre. CONCLUSION Our work indicates that Fen acts in antioxidative defense in addition to enhancing the metabolism of herbicides in rice.BACKGROUND Loss of vigor caused by seed aging adversely affects agricultural production under natural conditions. However, priming is an economical and effective method for improving the vigor of aged seeds. The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of exogenous ascorbic acid (ASC) and glutathione (GSH) priming in the repairing of aged oat (Avena sativa) seeds, and to test the hypothesis that structural and functional systems in mitochondria were involved in this process. RESULTS Oat seeds were artificially aged for 20 days at 45 °C, and were primed with solutions (1 mmol L- 1) of ASC, GSH, or ASC + GSH at 20 °C for 0.5 h before or after their aging. Seed germination, antioxidant enzymes in the ASC-GSH cycle, cytochrome c oxidase (COX) and mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase (MDH) activities, and the mitochondrial ultrastructures of the embryonic root cells were markedly improved in aged oat seeds through post-priming with ASC, GSH, or ASC + GSH, while their malondialdehyde and H2O2 contents decreased significantly (P  less then  0.05). CONCLUSION Our results suggested that priming with ASC, GSH, or ASC + GSH after aging could effectively alleviate aging damage in oat seeds, and that the role of ASC was more effective than GSH, but positive effects of post-priming with ASC and GSH were not superior to post-priming with ASC in repairing aging damage of aged oat seeds. However, pre-priming with ASC, GSH, or ASC + GSH was not effective in oat seeds, suggesting that pre-priming with ASC, GSH, or ASC + GSH could not inhibit the occurrence of aging damage in oat seeds.BACKGROUND Methylation of cytosine bases in DNA is a critical epigenetic mark in many eukaryotes and has also been implicated in the development and progression of normal and diseased cells. Therefore, profiling DNA methylation across the genome is vital to understanding the effects of epigenetic. In recent years the Illumina HumanMethylation450 (HM450K) and MethylationEPIC (EPIC) BeadChip have been widely used to profile DNA methylation in human samples. The methods to predict the methylation states of DNA regions based on microarray methylation datasets are critical to enable genome-wide analyses. RESULT We report a computational approach based on the two layers two-state hidden Markov model (HMM) to identify methylation states of single CpG site and DNA regions in HM450K and EPIC BeadChip. Using this mothed, all CpGs detected by HM450K and EPIC in H1-hESC and GM12878 cell lines are identified as un-methylated, middle-methylated and full-methylated states. A large number of DNA regions are segmented into three methylation states as well. Comparing the identified regions with the result from the whole genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) datasets segmented by MethySeekR, our method is verified. Genome-wide maps of chromatin states show that methylation state is inversely correlated with active histone marks. Genes regulated by un-methylated regions are expressed and regulated by full-methylated regions are repressed. Our method is illustrated to be useful and robust. CONCLUSION Our method is valuable for DNA methylation genome-wide analyses. It is focusing on identification of DNA methylation states on microarray methylation datasets. For the features of array datasets, using two layers two-state HMM to identify to methylation states on CpG sites and regions creatively, our method which takes into account the distribution of genome-wide methylation levels is more reasonable than segmentation with a fixed threshold.
Website: https://www.selleckchem.com/products/epalrestat.html