The expression and clinical significance of miR-1226 in patients with periodontitis.

BACKGROUND: miR-1226 has been reported to be dysregulated in periodontitis, implying its potential functional role, which needs to be validated. The purpose of this study was to assess the clinical significance of miR-1226 in periodontitis. METHODS: Gingival crevicular fluid samples were collected from 50 healthy volunteers and 72 periodontitis patients. The expression of miR-1226 in collected samples was detected by RT-qPCR. The concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines were analyzed by ELISA. The relationship of miR-1226 expression level with patients' characteristics was evaluated by the χ2 test and the Pearson correlation test. RESULTS: It was found that miR-1226 was downregulated in the gingival crevicular fluid of periodontitis patients compared with healthy volunteers. The downregulation of miR-1226 was negatively correlated with the pocket depth, attachment loss, plaque index, bleeding index, and MMP-8 concentration of patients. miR-1226 showed high sensitivity and specificity to discriminate periodontitis patients from healthy volunteers. Additionally, periodontitis patients had a relatively high concentration of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which is correlated with miR-1226 expression negatively. CONCLUSIONS: miR-1226 could be an indicator for the diagnosis of periodontitis and has the potential to predict the development and severity of periodontitis.

Genotype distribution characteristics of multiple human papillomavirus in women from the Taihu River Basin, on the coast of eastern China.

BACKGROUND: There is limited data on the genotype distribution of human papillomavirus (HPV) in the Taihu River Basin, home to 1.29 million people on the coast of eastern China. This study evaluated the prevalence and genotypes among different female age groups in this region. METHODS: Twenty-six HPV strains (low-risk HPV 6, 11, 40, 42, 44, 61, 73 and high-risk HPV 16, 18, 26, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 66, 68, 82, and 83) were detected using Tellgenplex™ HPV technology in samples obtained from three clinical hospitals located in different regions of the Taihu Lake Basin. RESULTS: The results showed that 1855 samples (20.97% of all samples) were found to be HPV-positive. Of these, 1375 samples (15.55% of all samples) were found to have a single HPV infection. Age-specific prevalence showed two peaks, one that corresponded to the group of 21-30 year-old women and the other peak that corresponded to the group of women over 51 years old. The three most prevalent genotypes were HPV52 (19.95%, 370/1855), HPV16 (13.48%, 150/1855), and HPV58 (11.32%, 210/1855). Mixed strains HPV58 + HPV33 and HPV58 + HPV52 were most commonly found in females infected with multiple HPV types. CONCLUSIONS: This investigation reveals that HPV infection in the Taihu River Basin varied significantly among different age groups. The most prevalent genotypes are included in the nonavalent vaccine, V503, however this vaccine is not licensed for use in mainland China. The most frequently occurring genotypes should be considered in the development of next-generation HPV vaccines for optimal protection of public health.

Small dense low-density lipoprotein cholesterol was associated with future cardiovascular events in chronic kidney disease patients.

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is often comorbid with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Small low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (sdLDL-C) has also been found to increase risk for CVD. The goal of the present study was to determine the nature of the relationship between sdLDL-C concentration and CVD in patients with CKD. METHODS: One-hundred and forty-five subjects (113 men and 32 women) with CKD (Stage 3 and Stage 4) participated this retrospective study. The concentration of sdLDL-C was measured in samples from 145 CKD patients between 2010 and 2012 during a four-year follow-up period. RESULTS: A total of eight fatal cardiovascular events (CVs) and 46 nonfatal CVs were registered in the four-year follow-up period. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that sdLDL-C [1.278, 95 % (1.019-1.598)] and sdLDL-C/LDL-C [2.456, 95 % (1.421-15.784)], at final observation, were independent risks of CVs. A Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that patients with sdLDL-C >38 mg/dl (logrank: 4.375, P = 0.037), and sdLDL-C/LDL-C ratio >0.3 levels (logrank: 11.94, P = 0.018) were at increased risk for CVs. CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicated that for patients suffering CKD, a significant relationship exists between an elevated sdLDL-C concentration and the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Correlation between small dense low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and carotid artery intima-media thickness in a healthy Chinese population.

BACKGROUND: Small dense low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (sdLDL-C) concentration was useful in the assessment of the presence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and its severity. We examined whether SdLDL-C is more closely associated with carotid artery intima-media thickness (CA-IMT), a surrogate measure of atherosclerosis, than LDL-C and traditional CVD risk factors in Chinese healthy subjects. METHODS: We measured CA-IMT, blood pressure (BP), sdLDL-C, glucose metabolism and lipid in 183 native Chinese healthy subjects. CA-IMT was assessed by ultrasonography, and sdLDL-C concentrations were measured by a homogenous assay. Pearson's correlation coefficient analyses and Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relationships between CA-IMT values and other clinical variables. RESULTS: The sdLDL-C level was significantly higher in males than in females (p <0.05) and there was an age effect on sdLDL-C (p <0.05). When the effects of age, gender and other traditional CVD risk factors were adjusted using multiple regression analysis. CA-IMT remained significantly associated with sdLDL-C(ß = 0.437, p <0.001). CONCLUSIONS: There are gender and age differences in sdLDL-C levels among a healthy Chinese population. Moreover, we found adjusted traditional CVD risk factors such as higher age, male sex, and other traditional CVD risk factors, the association between CA-IMT and SdLDL-C remained significant. sdLDL-C is may be a useful predictor in the assessment of CA-IMT in Chinese population.

Correlation between serum levels of small, dense low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and carotid stenosis in cerebral infarction patients >65 years of age.

BACKGROUND: We studied the relationship between serum levels of small, dense low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (sdLDL-C) and carotid stenosis in elderly patients with ischemic cerebral infarction. METHODS: All patients >65 years of age with newly diagnosed ischemic cerebral infarction were enrolled. None received statins before enrollment. Patients were examined for carotid stenosis by ultrasound color Doppler, and serum sdLDL-C levels were measured using an automated method. RESULTS: The 149 patients were distributed according to their carotid stenosis as without (n = 61) or with mild (n = 30), moderate (n = 34), or severe (n = 24) carotid stenosis. sdLDL-C levels increased significantly with increasing stenosis severity (0.54 ± 0.19, 0.71 ± 0.18, 0.98 ± 0.19, and 1.32 ± 0.17 mmol/L, respectively). Spearman rank correlation analysis revealed that sdLDL-C levels and degree of carotid stenosis were positively correlated (r = 0.411; P < 0.001). Male sex, body mass index, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, drinking, smoking, and sdLDL-C levels were positively correlated with carotid stenosis. Logistic regression analysis revealed that sdLDL-C levels are an independent risk factor of carotid stenosis (P = 0.041). CONCLUSIONS: sdLDL-C levels are positively correlated with the severity of carotid stenosis, and are an independent risk factor in elderly patients with ischemic cerebral infarction.

Anxiety, Boredom, and Burnout Among EFL Teachers: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation.

Teachers' emotions are explicitly and conceptually presented as part of an educational system that affects and is affected by learner upshots, namely, learners' self-emotions, behaviors, and cognition since educators and learners are involved in the outcomes of the school setting. English as a foreign language (EFL) educators recurrently experience emotional damages during involvement in their profession as burnout, stress, boredom, and anxiety. EFL teachers need to regulate their emotions when facing a multivariate class environment that provides each learner with undeniable uniqueness. The subject of the relationship between emotion regulation and the teacher's emotions is receiving increasing attention in research. EFL teachers should be provided with an emotional regulation strategy to have a positive learning-instructing effect in the entire school community as fun learning activities, energetic students, enthusiastic educators, and strong relationships between the board of education. To focus on the role of teachers' emotion on the one hand and the mediator role of emotional regulation, on the other hand, the current study endeavored to review the role of emotional regulation strategies more intensely to decrease negative emotions. Finally, some educational suggestions of the study regarding the educators' behaviors are pinpointed.

Strategies for Improving Text Reading Ability Based on Human-Computer Interaction in Artificial Intelligence.

In order to improve text reading ability, a human-computer interaction method based on artificial intelligence (AI) human-computer interaction is proposed. Firstly, the design of the AI human-computer interaction model is constructed, which includes the Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD) and the designed baseline model. There are three components: the coding layer is based on a cyclic neural network (recurrent neural network [RNN] encoder layer), which aims to encode the problem and text into a hidden state; the interaction layer is used to integrate problems and text representation; the output layer connects two independent soft Max layers after a fully connected layer, one is used to obtain the starting position of the answer in the text and the other is used to obtain the ending position. In the interaction layer of the model, this manuscript uses hierarchical attention and aggregation mechanism to improve text coding. The traditional model interaction layer has a simple structure, which leads to weak relevance between text and problems, and poor understanding ability of the model. Finally, the self-attention model is used to further enhance the feature representation of text. The experimental results show that the improved model in this manuscript is compared with the public AI human-computer interaction reading comprehension model. According to the data in the table, the accuracy of the model in this manuscript is better than that of the baseline model, in which the exact match (EM) value is increased by 1.4% and the F1 value is increased by 2.7%. However, compared with improvement point 2, the EM and F1 values of the model have decreased by 0.7%. It shows that the output layer has a certain impact on the effect of the model, and the improvement and optimization of the output layer can also improve the performance of the model. It is proved that AI human-computer interaction can effectively improve text reading ability.

Influencing factors of psychological stress under the mixed teaching mode based on SPOC+PBL.

In the teaching process, teachers and students are under different psychological pressures. Especially under the influence of the epidemic, many teaching modes have been transformed from traditional classroom teaching to online teaching. Under the new teaching mode, especially the promotion and application of the blended teaching mode, classroom teaching is facing new challenges, and both students and teachers are facing new psychological pressures. If the psychological pressure is not resolved, the classroom effect will be even worse. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the source of the influencing factors of psychological stress under the new teaching mode, which is a rarely involved direction in the teaching field, and is of great significance for the promotion and application of the new teaching mode. Aiming at the blended teaching model, this paper focuses on the SPOC+PBL blended teaching model, designs a new teaching model of "English-Chinese translation and interpretation", and studies the sources of pressure under the new model. Aiming at the influencing factors of psychological pressure, a psychological pressure model is established to explore the influence of six factors on psychological pressure. The experimental results of this paper show that the factor loadings of all variables are greater than 0.5, indicating that "self-esteem strength", "self-efficacy", "help-seeking experience", "psychological counseling cognitive bias", "counseling object positioning bias" and "psychological counseling" "Resources" and "availability" have a greater impact on psychological stress.

Experiments on Waste Heat Thermoelectric Generation for Passenger Vehicles.

In order to utilize waste heat from passenger vehicles by a thermoelectric generator (TEG), a lab-scale TEG with a sufficient low-pressure drop was designed and tested. The waste heat from a 2.0 L petrol engine was simulated by using an air-circulation channel with an adjustable electric heater and a speed control motor. The TEG consisted of an integrated molding designed aluminum-finned heat collector, twenty thermoelectric modules, and a set of water-cooled heat sinks. Experiments were conducted in terms of power load feature, pressure drop, heat collection efficiency, thermoelectric efficiency and overall efficiency. It was found that the hot-end temperature was much lower (46.9%) than the flue gas temperature because the trade-off between fin area and pressure drop had to be considered. The obtained maximum electric power was 36.4 W, and the corresponding pressure drop was 36 Pa. The corresponding heat collection efficiency was 46.5%, and the thermoelectric efficiency was 2.88%, which agreed well with the theoretical prediction of 3.38%. As a result, an overall efficiency of 1.21% was reached. The present work firstly demonstrated a waste-heat-recovering TEG prototype with a balanced overall efficiency of over 1%, and a pressure drop of less than 50 Pa. On the other hand, the maximum electric power was difficult to fully extract. The charging power to a battery with a maximum power point tracking direct current-direct current converter was experimentally verified to work at a much higher conversion efficiency (15.3% higher) than regular converters.

Role of ssDNA as a Noninvasive Indicator for the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: An Exploratory Study.

METHODS: This prospective study enrolled 102 patients with newly diagnosed HCC, 21 with cirrhosis, 20 with chronic hepatitis, 284 with nonliver diseases, and 45 healthy individuals at the Affiliated Wuxi No. 2 People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University (May-October 2018). ssDNA was extracted using magnetic beads and quantified using the Qubit ssDNA assay. ssDNA levels were compared among the disease groups and in HCC vs. non-HCC. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine the diagnostic value of ssDNA. In patients with resectable HCC, ssDNA and α-fetoprotein (AFP) levels were measured during follow-up and compared with HCC recurrence detected by imaging. RESULTS: The median ssDNA levels were higher in HCC than in healthy individuals, cirrhosis, and chronic hepatitis (median, 23.20 vs. 9.36, 9.64, and 9.76 ng/µL, respectively, P < 0.001). ssDNA levels in HCC were higher than those in cirrhosis and chronic hepatitis (both P < 0.001); there were no differences in ssDNA levels between healthy controls and patients with cirrhosis (P = 0.15) or chronic liver disease (P = 0.39). The area under the curve of ssDNA for HCC diagnosis was 0.909 (95% CI: 0.879-0.933). The ssDNA levels decreased by 3.19-fold (P < 0.001) after HCC radical resection. In six patients, the ssDNA levels increased about 3-6 months before a recurrence was detected by AFP and imaging. CONCLUSIONS: ssDNA might be a noninvasive indicator for HCC diagnosis and prognosis. ssDNA could eventually be complementary to AFP levels and imaging, but confirmatory studies are necessary.

Accuracy of half-way mucosa-supported implant guides for edentulous jaws: a retrospective study with a median follow-up of 2 years.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the accuracy of half-way digital mucosa-supported implant guides (HDMIGs) for edentulous jaws. METHODS: Ninety-five consecutive patients (859 implants) with edentulous jaws who underwent implant placement using an HDMIG from July 2012 to June 2018 were retrospectively identified. The primary endpoint was implant-related complications (nerve injury and unexpected perforation), and the secondary endpoints were the faciolingual distance, mesiodistal distance, buccolingual angle, and mesiodistal angle. Follow-ups occurred at 1 month, 2 months, and then every 2 months following implant placement. RESULTS: Twenty-seven (28.4%) patients met the exclusion criteria, leaving 68 eligible patients (636 implants) for the final analysis. The median follow-up was 24 months (range, 18-27 months). No patients developed nerve injury, revision, or unexpected perforation. At the final follow-up, the mean faciolingual distance was 0.65 ± 0.16 mm, the mean mesiodistal distance was 1.16 ± 0.61 mm, the mean buccolingual angle was 4.04° ± 2.26°, and the mean mesiodistal angle was 3.75° ± 2.56°. In the comparison of the first month after surgery and the last follow-up, no significant differences were detected in any of the four measured variables. CONCLUSION: Use of an HDMIG may be a convenient and safe method to ensure correct implantation.

Expression of microRNA-30c via lentivirus vector inhibits the proliferation and enhances the sensitivity of highly aggressive ccRCC Caki-1 cells to anticancer agents.

The clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is one of the most fatal urologic tumors, and the prognosis remains very poor for advanced or metastatic ccRCC. This study reveals the roles of microRNA (miR)-30c in regulating a highly aggressive ccRCC cell line proliferation by targeting MTA-1, which is a key mediator for human cancer metastasis. Results from quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction showed that the expression of MTA-1, the target of miR-30c, was significantly higher in metastatic ccRCC specimens than in nonmetastatic ccRCC or nontumor specimens. Accordingly, endogenous miR-30c is at a much lower level in highly aggressive ccRCC Caki-1 cells than nontumor or ccRCC cell lines. Expression of miR-30c via lentivirus vector inhibits the proliferation, anchorage-independent growth, in vitro invasion or migration, or in vivo growth of Caki-1 cells by repressing MTA-1 protein expression. miR-30c also enhances the sensitivity of Caki-1 cells to anticancer agents, including sorafenib and paclitaxel. These data reveal the potential application of miR-30c and that its targeting gene, MTA-1, would be a potential target in metastatic ccRCC treatment.

Four new cytotoxic xanthones from Garcinia nujiangensis.

Bioassay-guided fractionation of the acetone extract of the twigs of Garcinia nujiangensis resulted in the isolation of four new prenylated xanthones, nujiangexanthones C-F (1-4), and ten known related analogues. The structures of compounds 1-4 were elucidated by interpretation of their spectroscopic data. The compounds isolated were evaluated for their cytotoxic effects against three cancer cell lines, the test substances demonstrated selectivity toward the cancer cells.