Dendrobium mixture ameliorates hepatic injury induced by insulin resistance in vitro and in vivo through the downregulation of AGE/RAGE/Akt signaling pathway.

Dendrobium mixture (DM) is a patented Chinese herbal medicine which has been shown to ameliorate type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in vivo and in vitro. We aimed to investigate the underlying mechanism of DM as a therapeutic agent in attenuating liver steatosis in relation to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). DM (16.2 g/kg/d) was administered to db/db mice for 4 weeks. The db/m mice and db/db mice in the control and model groups were given normal saline. Additionally, DM (11.25 g/kg/d) was administered to Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats, and the serum was collected and used in an experiment involving palmitic acid (PA)-induced human liver HepG2 cells with abnormal lipid and glucose metabolism. In db/db mice, the administration of DM significantly alleviated liver steatosis, including histological damage and cell apoptosis. DM was found to prevent the upregulation of the RAGE and AKT1 proteins in liver tissues. The underlying mechanism of DM was further studied in PA-induced HepG2 cells. Post-DM administration serum from SD rats reduced lipid accumulation and regulated glucose metabolism in HepG2 cells. Consequently, it inhibited RAGE/AKT signaling and restored autophagy activity. The upregulated autophagy was associated with the mTOR-AMPK signaling pathway. Furthermore, post-DM administration serum reduced apoptosis of hepatocytes in PA-induced HepG2 cells. Our study supports the potential use of DM as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of NAFLD in T2DM. The mechanism underlying this therapeutic potential is associated with the downregulation of the AGE/RAGE/Akt signaling pathway.

An experimental study on the use of a sequencing-batch membrane bioreactor (SBMBR) for the treatment of mixed municipal wastewater.

Several water treatment techniques have been combined using the sequencing batch reactor with the membrane bioreactor for addressing water pollution. However, cleaning of the membrane is dependent on the approach involved as well as the operating conditions. In the present study, the sequencing-batch membrane bioreactor was used to treat real mixed municipal wastewater. The pollutant removal and membrane filtration performances were examined. The results show that the average removal rates of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen, NH3-N, total phosphorus, and turbidity were 90.75, 63.52, 92.85, 87.58, and 99.48%, respectively, when the system was in continuous operation for 95 days. The membrane had a significant effect on COD and turbidity removal and provided stable performances for nitrogen and phosphorus removal. By observing the appearance of the membrane modules before and after the cleaning operation, it was concluded that the deposited sludge and granular sediment on the membrane surface can be effectively removed by hydraulic cleaning. In addition, recovery of membrane filtration performance to 60% of that of a new membrane can be achieved. Furthermore, we found that different sequences and duration of cleaning have different effects on the recovery of membrane filtration performance.