New Bisabolane-Type Sesquiterpenoids from Curcuma longa and Their Anti-Atherosclerotic Activity.

To explore the sesquiterpenoids in Curcuma longa L. and their activity related to anti-atherosclerosis. The chemical compounds of the rhizomes of C. longa were separated and purified by multiple chromatography techniques. Their structures were established by a variety of spectroscopic experiments. The absolute configurations were determined by comparing experimental and calculated NMR chemical shifts and electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra. Their anti-inflammatory effects and inhibitory activity against macrophage-derived foam cell formation were evaluated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL)-injured RAW264.7 macrophages, respectively. This study resulted in the isolation of 10 bisabolane-type sesquiterpenoids (1-10) from C. longa, including two pairs of new epimers (curbisabolanones A-D, 1-4). Compound 4 significantly inhibited LPS-induced nitric oxide (NO), interleukin-1ß (IL-1ß), interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) production in RAW264.7 cells. Furthermore, compound 4 showed inhibitory activity against macrophage-derived foam cell formation, which was represented by markedly reducing ox-LDL-induced intracellular lipid accumulation as well as total cholesterol (TC), free cholesterol (FC), and cholesterol ester (CE) contents in RAW264.7 cells. These findings suggest that bisabolane-type sesquiterpenoids, one of the main types of components in C. longa, have the potential to alleviate the atherosclerosis process by preventing inflammation and inhibiting macrophage foaming.

Sleep initiation patterns and their influence on sleep quality in infants and young children. / å©´å¹¼å„¿å ¥ç¡æ–¹å¼åŠå ¶å¯¹ç¡çœ è´¨é‡çš„å½±å“.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the current status of sleep initiation patterns, influencing factors for sleep initiation patterns, and the influence of sleep initiation patterns on sleep quality in infants and young children. METHODS: A total of 521 infants and young children, aged 0-35 months, who underwent physical examination at the outpatient service of the Department of Growth and Development in Shenzhen Bao'an Women's and Children's Hospital Affiliated to Jinan University were enrolled as subjects. A self-designed questionnaire and Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire were used to collect the information on family background, parenting behaviors, and sleep quality in the past one week. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the influencing factors for sleep initiation patterns. A multiple linear regression analysis was used to evaluate the influence of sleep initiation patterns on the number of nighttime awakenings. RESULTS: Among the 521 infants and young children, 258 (49.5%) were breastfed/bottle fed to initiate sleep, 62 (11.9%) were rocked/held to initiate sleep, 39 (7.5%) slept independently, and 162 (31.1%) initiated sleep accompanied by parents. The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the children with breastfeeding and a younger age were more likely to be breastfed/bottle fed to initiate sleep (P<0.05) and that the children with a younger age were also more likely to be rocked/held to initiate sleep (P<0.05). The multiple linear regression analysis showed that sleep initiation with breastfeeding/bottle feeding significantly increased the number of nighttime awakenings (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Most infants and young children initiate sleep by being breastfed/bottle fed, rocked/held, or accompanied. The sleep initiation pattern is associated with the age of children and whether they are still breastfeeding. Sleep initiation with breastfeeding/bottle feeding can increase the number of nighttime awakenings. io.

Assessment of growth pattern of preterm infants up to a corrected age of 24 months. / æ—©äº§å„¿æ ¡æ­£24æœˆé¾„å† ç”Ÿé•¿è½¨è¿¹ç ”ç©¶.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the growth of preterm infants up to a corrected age of 24 months, and to understand the growth trend and pattern of preterm infants. METHODS: A preterm infant follow-up database was established based on the Internet Plus follow-up system. A total of 3 188 preterm infants who were born from April 2018 to April 2021 were enrolled. Their length, weight, and head circumference were recorded at birth and at the corrected ages of 1, 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. The preterm infants were grouped by perinatal factors. The growth curves of these infants were plotted and compared with the International Fetal and Newborn Growth Consortium for the 21st Century (INTERGROWTH-21st) standard and World Health Organization (WHO) standard. RESULTS: The weight, length, and head circumference curves of each group of preterm infants grouped by various perinatal factors all rose rapidly within the corrected age of 6 months, but the growth rate slowed down after the corrected age of 6 months. Based on the actual age for the groups of preterm infants with different gestational ages (<28 weeks, 28-31+6 weeks, 32-33+6 weeks, and 34-36+6 weeks), the length curve gradually coincided with the WHO curve after the actual age of 9 months (P=0.082), while for the preterm infants with a gestational age of <32 weeks, the weight and head circumference curves were significantly lower than the WHO curves (P<0.001). Based on the corrected age, the physical growth curve of preterm infants with different gestational ages (<28 weeks, 28-31+6 weeks, 32-33+6 weeks, and 34-36+6 weeks) basically coincided with each other (P>0.05). For the infants with extremely low birth weight and the small-for-gestational-age infants, the length, weight, and head circumference curves were significantly lower than those of the INTERGROWTH-21st standard and the WHO standard (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The physical growth rate of preterm infants is faster within the corrected age of 6 months, and the growth rate slows down after the corrected age of 6 months. Preterm infants with a smaller gestational age need longer time to catch up in weight and head circumference. More attention should be paid to the physical growth of extremely preterm infants, extremely low birth weight infants, and small-for-gestational-age infants.

Research on the integrated system of case-based reasoning and Bayesian network.

With the arrival of big data era, the integration of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and Bayesian Network (BN) has become increasingly a promising technology in implementing the intelligence of engineering application. To further improve the efficiency of the integrated system and make it adapt to the large number of parameter under big data, Within-Cross (WC) algorithm is proposed in this paper to assigned big data to each slave node of Hadoop platform for parallel data processing. The WC algorithm can greatly reduce the time costing of parallel data processing and thus improve the efficiency of the integrated system by fully using the computation resource of Hadoop platform. To further enhance the accuracy of the integrated system, this paper proposes a new method called Weighted Super Parameters of Dirichlet Distribution (WSPDD) algorithm to perform probability learning. The WSPDD algorithm gives a weight to each super parameter of Dirichlet Distribution of all problem parameters to adjust the result of probability statistics and then improve probability learning. Therefore, the accuracy of the integrated system is greatly improved. Finally, an application domain is taken as a case study to validate the proposed method.