Analysis of the Cadmium Removal Mechanism of Human Gut Bacteria Enterococcus faecalis Strain ATCC19433 from a Genomic Perspective.

Cadmium (Cd) is one of the most well-known toxic metals capable of entering the human body via the food chain, leading to serious health problems. Human gut microbes play a pivotal role in controlling Cd bioavailability and toxicity within the human gastrointestinal tract, primarily due to their capacity for Cd adsorption and metabolism. In this work, a Cd-resistant bacterial strain, Enterococcus faecalis strain ATCC19433 was isolated from human gut microbiota. Cd binding assays and comprehensive characterization analyses were performed, revealing the ability of strain ATCC19433 to remove Cd from the solution. Cd adsorption primarily occurred on the bacterial cell walls, which was ascribed to the exciting of functional groups on the bacterial surfaces, containing alkyl, amide II, and phosphate groups; meanwhile, Cd could enter cells, probably through transport channels or via diffusion. These results indicated that Cd removal by the strain was predominantly dependent on biosorption and bioaccumulation. Whole-genome sequencing analyses further suggested the probable mechanisms of biosorption and bioaccumulation, including Cd transport by transporter proteins, active efflux of Cd by cadmium efflux pumps, and mitigating oxidative stress-induced cell damage by DNA repair proteases. This study evaluated the Cd removal capability and mechanism of Enterococcus faecalis strain ATCC19433 while annotating the genetic functions related to Cd removal, which may facilitate the development of potential human gut strains for the removal of Cd.

Comparison of endovascular interventional embolization and microsurgical clipping for ruptured cerebral aneurysms: impact on patient outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the therapeutic efficacy of endovascular interventional embolization and microsurgical clipping in patients with ruptured cerebral aneurysms and investigate their subsequent influence on inflammatory indices, neurological function, prognosis, and recovery. METHODS: The two groups were compared in terms of surgery duration, hospital stay, Hunt-Hess classification, and inflammatory indices before and after the surgery, as well as National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), Baethel Index (BI), and one-year prognosis of patients affected. RESULTS: The surgery duration and hospital stay of the intervention group were (116.27 ± 12.32) min and (19.82 ± 2.26) d, respectively, and those of the clipping group was (173.87 ± 10.39) min and (24.11 ± 2.33) d, respectively (both p < 0.05). Neither the intervention nor the microscopic approach had a significant impact on the severity of the patients' conditions in terms of Hunt-Hess classification (p > 0.05). In the intervention group, CRP was changed to (5.31 ± 1.22) mg/L and PCT decreased to (1.17 ± 0.39) µg/L after the surgery, while the corresponding values in clipping group were (9.78 ± 2.35) mg/L and (2.75 ± 0.81) µg/L (p > 0.05). After surgery, both groups' NIHSS scores declined dramatically, with the intervention group scoring lower than the microscopy group (6.81 ± 1.22 vs 8.72 ± 1.27) (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The findings of this study support the potential advantages of endovascular interventional embolization (coiling) over microsurgical clipping for the management of ruptured cerebral aneurysms. These advantages include shorter surgical duration, reduced hospital stay, lower inflammatory response, improved neurological and functional outcomes, and better long-term prognosis.

Generative Text Convolutional Neural Network for Hierarchical Document Representation Learning.

For document analysis, existing methods often resort to the document representation that either discards the word order information or projects each word into a low-dimensional dense embedding vector. However, confined by the data's sparsity and high-dimensionality, limited effort has been made to explore the semantic structures underlying the document representation that formulates each document as a sequence of one-hot vectors, especially in the probabilistic modeling literature. To construct a probabilistic generative model for this type of document representation, we first develop convolutional Poisson factor analysis (CPFA) that not only utilizes the sparse property of data but also enables model parallelism. Through interleaving probabilistic Dirichlet-gamma pooling layers with learnable parameters, we extend the shallow CPFA into a generative text convolutional neural network (GTCNN), which captures richer semantic information with multiple probabilistic convolutional layers and can be coupled with existing deep topic models to alleviate their loss of word order. For efficient and scalable model inference, we not only develop both a parallel upward-downward Gibbs sampler and SG-MCMC based algorithm for training GTCNN, but also construct a hierarchical Weibull convolutional inference network for fast out-of-sample prediction. Experimental results on document representation learning tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

LncRNA NEAT1 accelerates renal fibrosis progression via targeting miR-31 and modulating RhoA/ROCK signal pathway.

Renal fibrosis is the final pathway for chronic kidney disease to end-stage renal failure. Noncoding RNAs have been reported to play a crucial role in renal fibrosis. Here, the effects of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) nuclear-enriched abundant transcript 1 (NEAT1) and miR-31 on renal fibrosis and their regulatory mechanism were evaluated. RT-qPCR was used to assess NEAT1, miR-31, and RhoA levels. Western blot was performed to analyze the expression of fibrosis markers, RhoA, rho-related kinase (ROCK1), and connective tissue growth factor (CTGF). RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP), fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and luciferase reporter assays verified the interaction between miR-31 and NEAT1 or RhoA. Renal fibrosis and injury were observed by Masson and hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining. The expression level of inflammatory cytokines was detected by ELISA. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was performed to examine the expression levels of α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and RhoA in renal tissues. We showed that NEAT1 was highly expressed, whereas miR-31 was decreased in renal fibrosis. NEAT1 was found to directly bind miR-31 to positively regulate RhoA expression. Furthermore, NEAT1 silencing inhibited renal fibrosis and inflammation and suppressed the RhoA/ROCK1 signaling pathway. However, knockdown of miR-31 could reverse these effects. NEAT1 silencing or overexpression of miR-31 alleviated renal fibrosis in vivo. In conclusion, NEAT1 accelerates renal fibrosis progression via negative regulation of miR-31 and the activation of RhoA/ROCK1 pathway, thereby upregulating the expression level of CTGF, providing a theoretical basis for treatment and prognostic evaluation of renal fibrosis.

Learning Hierarchical Document Graphs From Multilevel Sentence Relations.

Organizing the implicit topology of a document as a graph, and further performing feature extraction via the graph convolutional network (GCN), has proven effective in document analysis. However, existing document graphs are often restricted to expressing single-level relations, which are predefined and independent of downstream learning. A set of learnable hierarchical graphs are built to explore multilevel sentence relations, assisted by a hierarchical probabilistic topic model. Based on these graphs, multiple parallel GCNs are used to extract multilevel semantic features, which are aggregated by an attention mechanism for different document-comprehension tasks. Equipped with variational inference, the graph construction and GCN are learned jointly, allowing the graphs to evolve dynamically to better match the downstream task. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed multilevel sentence relation graph convolutional network (MuserGCN) is demonstrated via experiments on document classification, abstractive summarization, and matching.

A Retrospective Trail Investigating Temozolomide Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Combined with Radiotherapy in Low-Grade Pituitary Tumors.

Objective: To study and analyze the clinical application of temozolomide (TMZ) combined with radiotherapy in the treatment of low-grade pituitary tumors. Methods: A retrospective trail was conducted among 67 patients with low-grade pituitary tumors who were treated in our hospital from March 2018 to June 2020. According to different treatment methods, they were assigned into a combined group (37 cases, temozolomide capsules and radiotherapy) and a control group (30 cases, radiotherapy). The changes of serum prolactin (PRL), insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), GH levels, thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), serum free thyroxine (FT4), and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) were compared. Results: The chi-square test reports a significantly higher total effective rate in the combined group vs. control group (91.89% vs. 70.00%). Significant reductions in serum levels of PRL, IGF-1, and GH were observed in both groups after treatment, whereas the combined group treated with radiotherapy and TMZ resulted in significantly lower levels compared with the control group (p < 0.05). After treatment, TSH decreased, and FT4 and ACTH increased in both groups, and the treatment with radiotherapy and TMZ in the combined group led to a significantly greater amplitude of variation (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The combination of temozolomide and radiotherapy might be a promising technique for the treatment of pituitary tumors, thereby meriting promotion.

Evaluation of Cadmium Transfer from Soil to the Human Body Through Maize Consumption in a Cadmium Anomaly Area of Southwestern China.

Evaluating the bioavailability, bioaccessibility, and transferability of cadmium (Cd) in soil-grain-human systems is essential in areas with a Cd anomaly in the karst region of southwestern China. In the present study, the main controlling factors and prediction models for Cd transfer in a soil-grain-human system were investigated in a typical area where natural processes and anthropogenic activities interact in the karst region of southwestern China. The environmental availability of Cd (diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid- and CaCl2 -extractable Cd [ CdCaCl2 ]) in the soil varies significantly because of the diversity of soil properties. However, Cd concentrations in the maize grain were significantly related only to the CdCaCl2 concentrations in the soil (r = 0.595, p < 0.01), indicating that soil CdCaCl2 is a good indicator for evaluating Cd uptake by maize grain. Of all the measured soil properties, the soil cation exchange capacity (CEC) and the soil calcium (Casoil ) were the most important factors influencing Cd accumulation in the soil-maize grain system. A transfer model combining CdCaCl2 , soil CEC, and Casoil was sufficiently reliable for predicting Cd accumulation in the maize grain (R2 = 0.505). Although there is room for improvement regarding the prediction performance of the chain model combining soil CdCaCl2 with Casoil to predict the bioaccessible Cd concentration in maize grain (R2 = 0.344 for the gastric phase and R2 = 0.356 for the gastrointestinal phase), our findings provide a useful reference to further explore a model that can be used for a relatively rapid and reliable estimation of dietary Cd exposure for specific regions prior to crop harvest. Environ Toxicol Chem 2021;40:2923-2934. © 2021 SETAC.

Heavy metals accumulation and risk assessment in a soil-maize (Zea mays L.) system around a zinc-smelting area in southwest China.

Smelting of nonferrous metals causes significant concerns because of its emissions of heavy metals (HMs) into surface soil, and its potential threat to human health through the food chain. To investigate the HMs concentrations in a soil-maize system, a total of 41 paired soil-maize samples were collected from a typical indigenous zinc-smelting area of northwestern Guizhou Province, China. Results showed that the concentrations of the targeted HMs in the soil were significantly higher than their corresponding background values of Guizhou Province. Results obtained of the geo-accumulation index (Igeo) and the potential ecological risk factor of an individual metal (E r i ) revealed that Cd and Pb were identified as the top-priority control HMs in the study area. The mean concentrations in maize grain decreased in the order of Zn > Pb > Cu > Cd. Bio-accumulation factor (BAF) indicated a strong ability for Cd to be accumulated in the maize root. Translocation factor (TF) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy revealed that the maize root played an important role in reducing the mobilization of HMs to stem, except for Zn. Kriging interpolation results illustrated that the spatial distribution patterns of HMs in the maize grain were generally similar to those in sampled soil, and the higher concentrations for the investigated HMs were partially overlapping between soil and maize grain. The average hazard quotient (HQ) of the investigated HMs for both children and adults were all lower than the threshold value (HQ = 1). The total hazard index (HI) was 5.51E-01 and 4.24E-01 for the two population groups, respectively, implying no potential non-carcinogenic risk for local maize-consumers. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the oral ingestion rate (IngR) of grain was the predominated contribution to the output of the risk assessment.

Releasing Characteristics and Biological Toxicity of the Heavy Metals from Waste of Mercury-Thalliummine in Southwest Guizhou of China.

In this paper, the releasing characteristics and biological toxicity of Tl, Hg, As and Sb in waste of Lanmuchang mercury-thallium mine were studied. The results indicated that strong acidity can significantly promote the release of Tl from waste. With the increase of pH, the release of Sb grew steadily, while Hg and As showed a trend of first increasing and then decreasing. Fe2(SO4)3 contributed less to the release of As and Sb than to that of Hg and Tl. FeCl3 significantly inhibited the release of As, Sb and Tl. In the leaching experiments of litter and root exudates, the lixiviums appeared neutral, and the litter and root exudates solution significantly reduced the release of Tl, and showed less toxicity to luminescent bacteria. However, they promoted the release of Hg, As and Sb at different levels.

Risk Assessment for Oral Bioaccessibility of Lead and Cadmium in the Potato Growing in Smelter-Impacted Soil.

Smelting activities are an important source of heavy metals in soil. More seriously, oral ingestion of crops growing in contaminated soil potentially cause harmful effects on human health. The main purpose of this study is to apply the in vitro model (PBET) and Monte Carlo Simulation (MSC) to the health risk assessment process in order to more accurately and realistically evaluate health risks of residents eating contaminated potato. Results indicated in the raw and cooked potato, the bioaccessibility of Pb was 65.9% and 74.5%, and that of Cd was 79.6% and 61.7%, respectively. Additionally, the bioaccessible hazard quotient (BHQ) was less than the permitted level except for the BHQ of Pb for children. This indicated there wasn't potential non-carcinogenic risk for most potato-consumers but the dietary exposure risk for local children cannot be neglected. Sensitivity analysis showed that the bioaccessibility and ingestion rate appeared decisive with respect to potentially deleterious health effects.

Migration characteristics of heavy metals in the weathering process of exposed argillaceous sandstone in a mercury-thallium mining area.

Lanmuchang mercury-thallium mine, a typical polymetallic mine is located in southwestern Guizhou, China, is the most serious and typical area resulted from multi-metal contamination (Tl, Hg, As, and Sb). After the mercury-thallium mining, a large area of surrounding rocks such as argillaceous sandstone with high contents of Tl, Hg, As, and Sb is exposed to air. Weathering caused the argillaceous sandstone to form different weathering layers, including the grey-black external layer, the brown-yellow middle layer and the gray-white inner layer, and the external layer was enriched with higher heavy metals. However, the reason of heavy metal migration and transformation in argillaceous sandstone caused by weathering is unclear. The objective of this paper was to investigate the migration, transformation and release characteristics of Tl, Hg, As, and Sb in argillaceous sandstone during the weathering. The results indicated that weathering not only promoted an acidic oxidation environment in argillaceous sandstone, but also increased its specific surface area, pore volume and hydrophilicity, which are beneficial to the permeability of oxygen and etching liquids during the process of weathering and leaching. Meanwhile, weathering led to the transformation or decomposition of hydrophilic groups, such as -OH and -CË­O in the grey-black external layer of argillaceous sandstone, resulting in the further release of heavy metals bound to these groups. The concentration of Tl, Hg, As, and Sb in the leaching solution of argillaceous sandstone represented a positive correlation with that of Fe, Ca, Mg at different levels, indicating that Tl, Hg, As, and Sb were released with the dissolution of Fe, Ca and Mg during weathering and leaching. In summary, these results indicated that weathering caused the dissolution and migration of heavy metals in the argillaceous sandstone. Tl, Hg, As, and Sb migrated from the grey-white inner layer to the grey-black external layer and partially adsorbed by free alumina (Ald), jarosite and Ca-bearing minerals, showing enrichment phenomena, partially released into the environment, causing environmental pollution.

High level of RNF187 contributes to the progression and drug resistance of osteosarcoma.

Objectives: Ring finger protein 187 (RNF187) was recently demonstrated to be up-regulation and function as a promoter in multiple cancers. However, the roles of RNF187 in osteosarcoma (OS) are unclear. Here, we tried to reveal the clinicopathological and biological roles of RNF187 in OS. Materials and Methods: We employed the quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) to determine the expression of RNF187 in OS tissues and cells. Migration and invasion capacities were analyzed by wound healing and transwell assays, and colony formation and CCK8 assays were performed to investigate proliferative ability. The functional effects of RNF187 on OS drugs resistance were further determined by CCK8 and western blot assays. Then, the relationship between RNF187 expression and clinical implications was analyzed by tissue microarrays (TMAs) including 51 OS cases. Moreover, the prognostic value was also determined by Kaplan-Meier analysis. Results: We reported that RNF187 mRNA was significantly increased in OS tissues compared to matched nontumorous tissues (3.83 ±0.79 vs. 1.70 ± 0.63), which was in line with the IHC assay in TMAs. By RNA interference and cDNA transfection, we showed high level of RNF187 increased the migration, invasion and proliferation of OS cells. Moreover, we demonstrated that elevated RNF187 expression induced OS cell drugs resistance, activated the ERK1/2 molecular and markedly enhanced the BCL-2 expression. Clinically, OS patients with high level of RNF187 was associated with Histologic differentiation (p=0.001), an advanced Enneking stage (p=0.001), response to chemotherapy (p=0.004), and metastasis (p= 0.001). Clinically, our data displayed that the RNF187 overexpression in OS samples associated with shorten overall survival (p=0.001) and high tumor recurrence (p=0.001) in postoperative OS patients. Conclusions: Our results indicate that Elevated RNF187 expression is a new adverse outcomes marker for OS patients and may be used as a new therapeutic target of OS.

Endovascular Treatment of Large or Giant Non-saccular Vertebrobasilar Aneurysms: Pipeline Embolization Devices Versus Conventional Stents.

BACKGROUND: Endovascular treatment of large or giant non-saccular vertebrobasilar aneurysms (VBAs) by conventional stents is difficult and has unsatisfactory outcomes. OBJECT: This study was performed to retrospectively analyze the safety and efficacy of a flow diverter in treating large and giant non-saccular VBAs. METHODS: We identified 78 patients with 83 large or giant non-saccular VBAs who accepted endovascular treatment with a pipeline embolization device (PED) or conventional stent from January 2014 to June 2018. The technical details of the procedure, procedure-associated complications, angiographic outcomes, and clinical outcomes were evaluated. RESULTS: Forty-two patients (53.8%, 42/78) with 44 aneurysms (53.0%, 44/83) underwent endovascular treatment with PEDs. Thirty-six patients (46.2%, 36/78) with 39 aneurysms (47.0%, 39/83) underwent endovascular treatment with conventional stents. The complication rate of PED group and conventional stent group was 7.1% (3/42) and 5.6% (2/36), respectively (odds ratio, 0.765; 95% confidence interval, 0.121-4.851; P = 0.776). During a median follow-up time of 28.8 months, the complete occlusion rate in the PED group and conventional stent group was 90.2% (37/41) and 70.3% (26/37), respectively (odds ratio, 3.913; 95% confidence interval, 1.122-13.652; P = 0.032). CONCLUSION: Endovascular treatment with a PED is a promising and safe modality for large and giant non-saccular VBAs, and the complication rate is acceptable, compared with conventional endovascular treatment.

[Study on the periodontal health status of 2 628 adults in Ningxia Hui autonomous region].

OBJECTIVE: To study the periodontal health status of Hui and Han adults in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, thus to provide scientific basis for the establishment of oral health care policies in this region. METHODS: 2 628 adults in Ningxia Hui autonomous region were investigated in this study according to the criterion issued by World Health Organization on the basic methods of oral health investigation and China oral health third epidemiological survey protocol. The inspection item included gingival bleeding (bleeding on probing, BOP), dental calculus, probing depth (PD) and attachment loss (AL). SPSS 15.0 statistical software was applied to analyze the results. RESULTS: 1) The positive rate of BOP sites, detection rate of calculus and PD were peaked in 36-45 and 46-59 years old, but in the > or = 60 age group rather lower. The prevalence of periodontitis and the percentage of AL > or = 4 mm sites were increased with the adults' age. 2) In addition to the percentage of AL > or = 4 mm sites, the differences of the other indicators between the genders were not statistically significant. 3) The positive rate of BOP sites, detection rate of calculus, PD, the prevalence of periodontitis and the percentage of AL > or = 4 mm sites were higher for the mountain areas than the plain areas. 4) Hui population's positive rate of BOP sites, detection rate of calculus, PD, the prevalence of periodontitis and the percentage of AL > or = 4 mm sites were significantly lower than the Han population in Ningxia. CONCLUSION: The periodontal health status of adults in Ningxia Hui autonomous region is associated with age, gender, nationality and region.