Exosome-derived miR-5p-72106_14 in vascular endothelial cells regulates fate determination of BMSCs.

Vascular endothelial cells have recently been shown to be associated with osteogenic activity. However, the mechanism of vascular endothelial cells promoting osteogenesis is unclear. Here, we found that exosomes secreted from human microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC-1) promoted osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) and inhibited adipogenic differentiation. Aged and ovariectomy mice treated with exosomes showed increased bone formation and decreased lipid accumulation in the bone marrow cavity. Additionally, we screened out novel exosomal miR-5p-72106_14 by miRNA-seq and confirmed that miR-5p-72106_14 promoted osteogenic differentiation and inhibited adipogenic differentiation of BMSCs by inhibiting STAT1. Our results suggest that vascular endothelial cell-derived exosomes are involved in BMSC differentiation and exosomal miR-5p-72106_14 is a major factor in regulating fate determination of BMSCs.

A network analysis of subjective well-being in Chinese high school students.

BACKGROUND: The psychological situation of high school students during adolescence is not promising, and the most obvious manifestation is the lack of subjective well-being (SWB). This network analysis presents a model of the interaction and correlation between different items of SWB, identifying the most central items for high school students. METHODS: Through offline and online surveys, 4,378 questionnaires were sent out and finally 4,282 Chinese high school students were available. The response rate was 97.807%. The study used the eLASSO method to estimate the network structure and centrality measures. This algorithm used the EBIC to select the best neighbor factor for each node. RESULTS: The average age for high school students was 16.320 years old and the average SWB score was 76.680. The distribution of SWB between male and female students was significant different (P < 0.001). S8 (Have you been anxious, worried, or upset) was the node with the highest strength and expected influence. The network structure and centrality remained stable after discarding 75% of the sample at random. Except for S15 (How concerned or worried about your health have you been), all nodes were positively correlated with each other (P < 0.01). The network structure of SWB was similar for female and male students (network strength: 8.482 for male participants; 8.323 for female participants; P = 0.159), as well as for rural and urban students (network strength: 8.500 for rural students; 8.315 for urban students; P = 0.140). CONCLUSION: Targeting S8 (Have you been anxious, worried, or upset) as a potential intervention target may increase high school students' SWB effectively.

The promoting effect of exercise motivation on physical fitness in college students: a mediation effect model.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, the physical fitness situation of college students is worrying in China. Exercise motivation is of great importance for the physical activity and physical fitness. However, existing studies have paid limited attention to the specific effect between exercise motivation, physical activity and physical fitness, and even less to the different genders and exercise motivation dimensions. This study aimed to investigate the promoting effect of sport motivation on physical fitness with different gender and dimension in college students. METHODS: Physical fitness levels of 2544 college students in Wuhan and Jingzhou city were measured. Exercise motivation and physical activity was assessed using the Chinese version of the motives for physical activities measure-revised scale and the physical activity survey scale, respectively. Correlation analysis and structural equation model were used to explore the relationship between exercise motivation, physical activity and physical fitness. Bootstrap method was used to test the mediating effect. Multilevel regression analysis was used to examine the effects of different dimensions of exercise motivation on PF. RESULTS: The exercise motivation of college students was directly related to physical fitness (effect value: 0.307) or indirectly related through the mediating effect of physical activity (effect value: 0.092). The mediation effect percentage of physical activity on exercise motivation and physical fitness in male (51.20%) was greater than female (27.18%), and the standardized regression coefficient of the health dimension to PF was ß = 0.151, P < 0.001, and the competence dimension to PF was ß = 0.189, P < 0.001. CONCLUSIONS: The exercise motivation of college students can directly influence PF or indirectly influence PF through the mediating effect of PA. The promoting effect of exercise motivation and PA on PF in college students is related to gender and dimensions of exercise motivation. Therefore, we can improve physical fitness levels of college students by promoting their exercise motivation (especially for health motivation and competence motivation) and increasing their participation in physical activity. This study provides new strategies for improving physical fitness in college students.

Leaf-Counting in Monocot Plants Using Deep Regression Models.

Leaf numbers are vital in estimating the yield of crops. Traditional manual leaf-counting is tedious, costly, and an enormous job. Recent convolutional neural network-based approaches achieve promising results for rosette plants. However, there is a lack of effective solutions to tackle leaf counting for monocot plants, such as sorghum and maize. The existing approaches often require substantial training datasets and annotations, thus incurring significant overheads for labeling. Moreover, these approaches can easily fail when leaf structures are occluded in images. To address these issues, we present a new deep neural network-based method that does not require any effort to label leaf structures explicitly and achieves superior performance even with severe leaf occlusions in images. Our method extracts leaf skeletons to gain more topological information and applies augmentation to enhance structural variety in the original images. Then, we feed the combination of original images, derived skeletons, and augmentations into a regression model, transferred from Inception-Resnet-V2, for leaf-counting. We find that leaf tips are important in our regression model through an input modification method and a Grad-CAM method. The superiority of the proposed method is validated via comparison with the existing approaches conducted on a similar dataset. The results show that our method does not only improve the accuracy of leaf-counting, with overlaps and occlusions, but also lower the training cost, with fewer annotations compared to the previous state-of-the-art approaches.The robustness of the proposed method against the noise effect is also verified by removing the environmental noises during the image preprocessing and reducing the effect of the noises introduced by skeletonization, with satisfactory outcomes.

Prevalence and risk factors for subjective cognitive decline and the correlation with objective cognition among community-dwelling older adults in China: Results from the Hubei memory and aging cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence and risk factors for subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and its correlation with objective cognition decline (OCD) among community-dwelling older adults is inconsistent. METHODS: Older adults underwent neuropsychological and clinical evaluations to reach a consensus on diagnoses. RESULTS: This study included 7486 adults without mild cognitive impairment and dementia (mean age: 71.35 years [standard deviation = 5.40]). The sex-, age-, and residence-adjusted SCD prevalence was 58.33% overall (95% confidence interval: 58.29% to 58.37%), with higher rates of 61.25% and 59.87% in rural and female subgroups, respectively. SCD global and OCD language, SCD memory and OCD global, SCD and OCD memory, and SCD and OCD language were negatively correlated in fully adjusted models. Seven health and lifestyle factors were associated with an increased risk for SCD. DISCUSSION: SCD affected 58.33% of older adults and may indicate concurrent OCD, which should prompt the initiation of preventative intervention for dementia. HIGHLIGHTS: SCD affects 58.33% of older adults in China. SCD may indicate concurrent objective cognitive decline. Difficulty finding words and memory impairments may indicate a risk for AD. The presence of SCD may prompt preventative treatment initiation of MCI or dementia. Social network factors may be initial targets for the early prevention of SCD.

Knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards COVID-19 among primary school students in Hubei Province, China.

This study was aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) towards coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among school-aged children in the Hubei province when children were being confined to their homes. The questionnaire included questions of KAP about COVID-19, depressive and anxiety symptoms scales. Multivariable generalized linear regressions models were applied to estimate the unstandardized regression coefficients (ß) of KAP. The awareness rates about COVID-19 were 70.1%-99.5% for all 1650 valid questionnaires. 37.2% of the participants quite worried about being infected with COVID-19. Approximately 96% of them washed hands in certain situations, while 85.6% of them washed hands after coughing or sneezing. Compared to the students without depressive symptoms, those who had depressive symptoms scored lower of total KAP, knowledge, attitudes, and practice. The findings suggest that primary students had a relatively good awareness of COVID-19 during the epidemic, as well as optimistic attitudes and appropriate practices. However, some items of appropriate practices still needed to be enhanced.

Molecular characterization of carp edema virus disease: An emerging threat to koi Cyprinus carpio in China.

Carp edema virus disease (CEVD) has resulted in great economic losses in koi (Cyprinus carpio koi) and common carp (Cyprinus carpio carpio) populations in the world. In this study, the diseased koi were diagnosed as CEV infection based on 5' untranslated region (5'UTR) and 4a protein genes by the conventional PCR, nested PCR and quantitative PCR (qPCR) analyses. Phylogenetic tree analysis showed that the TJ201708 strain was classified into the genogroup IIa. Furthermore, qPCR of 5'UTR gene revealed that the lowest detection limit was 4.0 fg/µL. The pathogenicity of CEV for koi was demonstrated in the infection experiments. Histopathological examination revealed the petechial hemorrhages of liver and spleen, vacuolization of lamina propria of intestine and swelling and necrosis of respiratory epithelial cells of gills. To our knowledge, this is the first report the qPCR of 5'UTR gene in the detection of carp edema virus.

The associations of zinc and GRIN2B genetic polymorphisms with the risk of dyslexia.

BACKGROUND: Zinc is an essential trace element and a number of studies have identified the importance of zinc in neurodevelopment in children. However, epidemiologic data on the associations of zinc and genetic susceptibility with the risk of dyslexia are limited. We aimed to investigate whether genetic polymorphisms in GRIN2B genes modify the association between zinc levels and dyslexia risk. METHODS: A case-control study of 240 dyslexic children and 230 healthy controls was conducted in Wuhan, Hangzhou and Jining city in China from April 2017 to April 2018. Zinc concentrations in urine samples were measured with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICPMS). Multiple imputation was used to impute missing values of covariates. We applied multivariable logistic regression models to evaluate the effect in the study. RESULTS: After adjustment for potential confounders, we observed the associations of urinary zinc with dyslexia risk were modified by rs1805502 (Pinteraction = 0.048) in gene GRIN2B. About 2-fold increase in creatinine-corrected zinc levels was significantly related to a reduced risk of dyslexia [odds ratio (OR) = 0.53, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.29, 0.95 in rs1805502 mutation carriers]. CONCLUSIONS: The associations between zinc levels and dyslexia risk were modified by polymorphism of rs1805502 in gene GRIN2B.

Association of health-risk behaviors and depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms: a school-based sample of Chinese adolescents.

Background Depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms of adolescents not only affect youth but also have wide-ranging impacts on the health of adults. The study was carried out to determine the epidemiological characteristics of depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms and the associations between the two and health-risk behaviors in Chinese adolescents. Methods Participants were recruited from the junior and senior high schools in China. Data were collected by self-designed questionnaires. The questionnaires included questions about demographic characteristics, depressive symptom scales, anxiety symptom scales and nine categories of health-risk behaviors. Descriptive analysis and binary logistic regression were performed by SPSS 21.0 software. Results There were 4.4% of the participants with depressive symptoms. Approximately 32.0% of the participants had anxiety symptoms. Girls and general senior school students were risk factors for depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms. Multiple health-risk behaviors were associated with depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms in Chinese adolescents. Conclusion Depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms were prevalent in Chinese adolescents. Their distribution was affected by certain health-risk behaviors. Multiple health-risk behaviors were associated with depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms in Chinese adolescents.

Dyslexia associated functional variants in Europeans are not associated with dyslexia in Chinese.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of developmental dyslexia (DD) often used European samples and identified only a handful associations with moderate or weak effects. This study aims to identify DD functional variants by integrating the GWAS associations with tissue-specific functional data and test the variants in a Chinese DD study cohort named READ. We colocalized associations from nine DD related GWAS with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) derived from brain tissues and identified two eSNPs rs349045 and rs201605. Both eSNPs had supportive evidence of chromatin interactions observed in human hippocampus tissues and their respective target genes ZNF45 and DNAH9 both had lower expression in brain tissues in schizophrenia patients than controls. In contrast, an eSNP rs4234898 previously identified based on eQTL from the lymphoblastic cell lines of dyslexic children had no chromatin interaction with its target gene SLC2A3 in hippocampus tissues and SLC2A3 expressed higher in the schizophrenia patients than controls. We genotyped the three eSNPs in the READ cohort of 372 cases and 354 controls and discovered only weak associations in rs201605 and rs4234898 with three DD symptoms (p < .05). The lack of associations could be due to low power in READ but could also implicate different etiology of DD in Chinese.

Comparison of praziquantel pharmacokinetics and tissue distribution in fresh and brackish water cultured grass carp (ctenopharyngodon idellus) after oral administration of single bolus.

BACKGROUND: Praziquantel (PZQ) is an effective pesticide against monogeneans. Its pharmacokinetics in fish may be affected by water environment and temperature. The present study was designed to compare the pharmacokinetics, tissue distribution, and elimination of PZQ in freshwater-acclimated grass carp and brackish water cultured grass carp. Plasma and tissue PZQ concentrations were determined after a single 10 mg/kg oral PZQ dose. RESULTS: The datas of plasma and tissues drug concentration was calculated by the software SPSS 13.0. According to the One-Way ANOVA, the results showed that the salinity had a significant effect on the drug concentration of plasma (p < 0.01), muscle (p < 0.01), liver (p < 0.01) and kidney (p < 0.01) in the all sampling time points between the brackish water grass carps and the freshwater grass carps, wherein, PZQ plasma and tissue concentrations in the brackish water group were constantly lower than that in the freshwater group. The peak PZQ levels of plasma, muscle, liver, and kidneys in the brackish water group were 0.76 µg/ml, 0.51 µg/g, 2.7 µg/g, and 2.99 µg/g, respectively; and that in the freshwater group were 0.91 µg/ml, 0.62 µg/g, 3.87 µg/g, and 3.39 µg/g, respectively. The elimination half-lives (t1/2ß) in plasma and all tissues of the freshwater group were significantly longer than that in the brackish water group. The elimination half-lives (t1/2ß) of plasma, muscle, liver and kidneys in brackish water grass carps were 56.46, 36.17, 15.31, and 132.64 h, respectively; and that in the freshwater grass carps were 71.15, 44.88, 23.86, and 150.23 h, respectively. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that water environment affects the tissue distribution and elimination of PZQ in grass carps, the elimination in brackish water grass carps is more rapid than that in fresh water grass carps and tissue concentrations of brackish water grass carps are lower than that in freshwater grass carps after orally administrating the same dosage at the same water temperature. We speculate that the main excretion pathway of the drug is through renal elimination, and the decreased kidney function in brackish water grass carps is likely responsible for the considerable difference in pharmacokinetics between the two groups of grass carps.

RmdnCache: Dual-Space Prefetching Neural Network for Large-Scale Volume Visualization.

Volume visualization plays a significant role in revealing important intrinsic patterns of 3D scientific datasets. However, these datasets are often large, making it challenging for interactive visualization systems to deliver a seamless user experience because of high input latency that arises from I/O bottlenecks and limited fast memory resources with high miss rates. To address this issue, we have proposed a deep learning-based prefetching method called RmdnCache, which optimizes the data flow across the memory hierarchy to reduce the input latency of large-scale volume visualization. Our approach accurately prefetches the content of the next view to fast memory using learning-based prediction while rendering the current view. The proposed deep learning architecture consists of two networks, RNN and MDN in respective spaces, which work together to predict both the location and likelihood distribution of the next view for defining an optimal prefetching range. Our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art prefetching algorithms in reducing overall input latency for visualizing real-world large-scale volumetric datasets.

The association between closed-eye unipedal standing and the risk of cognitive impairment in the elderly: a 7-year community-based cohort study in Wuhan, China.

Objectives: The prevention of cognitive impairment in the elderly is one of the public health priority areas. However, the relationship between closed-eye unipedal standing and cognitive impairment remains unclear. Methods: This study was conducted on a group of elderly individuals from a community, using a prospective cohort study design. Participants were monitored for 7 years and were diagnosed with new-onset cognitive impairment. Logistic regression models and restricted cubic spline (RCS) were used to investigate the relationship between closed-eye unipedal standing and cognitive impairment. Stratified analysis by baseline characteristics were also performed. Results: At baseline, 1,652 people aged 65 years or older were enrolled. Ultimately, 880 participants completed the follow-up and 155 (17.61%) of them satisfied the diagnostic criteria for cognitive impairment at follow-up. Compared to the closed-eye unipedal standing low group as the reference, the middle (OR = 0.601, 95% CI: 0.396-0.911) and high (OR = 0.508, 95% CI: 0.329-0.785) groups had significantly lower cognitive impairment risks. RCS analysis indicated a linear relationship (Pnon - linear = 0.177), with a reduced risk of developing cognitive impairment when the duration of closed-eye unipedal standing was exceeded ~2.920 s. Stratified analysis showed that for female, aged 70 years or younger, with 3 or more years of education, without lack of exercise and without falls within 1 year subgroup, the elderly in the high group of closed-eye unipedal standing had significantly reduced cognitive impairment risks. Conclusion: Among the elderly population, closed-eye unipedal standing duration was linearly and negatively associated with the cognitive impairment risk. The closed-eye unipedal standing duration might be a predictive index for cognitive impairment in the elderly.

Vascular endothelial cells-derived exosomes synergize with curcumin to prevent osteoporosis development.

Osteoporosis has gradually become a major public health problem. Further elucidation of the pathophysiological mechanisms that induce osteoporosis and identification of more effective therapeutic targets will have important clinical significance. Experiments in vitro on bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) subjected to osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation and in vivo on surgical bilateral ovariectomy (OVX) mouse models revealed that exosomes of vascular endothelial cells (EC-EXOs) can promote osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs and inhibit BMSC adipogenic differentiation through miR-3p-975_4191. Both miR-3p-975_4191 and curcumin can target tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and act synergistically to regulate BMSCs fate differentiation and delay the progression of osteoporosis. Our findings suggest that EC-EXOs may exert a synergistic effect with curcumin in reversing the progression of osteoporosis by targeting TNF via miR-3p-975_4191. Our study may provide therapeutic options and potential therapeutic targets for osteoporosis and thus has important clinical implications.

Atrophy patterns in hippocampal subregions and their relationship with cognitive function in fibromyalgia patients with mild cognitive impairment.

Objectives: Fibromyalgia (FM) has been associated with decreased hippocampal volume; however, the atrophy patterns of hippocampal subregions have not yet been identified. We therefore aimed to evaluate the volumes of hippocampal subregions in FM patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and to explore the relationship between different subregional alterations and cognitive function. Methods: The study included 35 FM patients (21 with MCI and 14 without MCI) and 35 healthy subjects. All subjects performed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) to assess cognitive function. FreeSurfer V.7.3.2 was used to calculate hippocampal subregion volumes. We then compared hippocampal subregion volumes between the groups, and analyzed the relationship between hippocampal subregion volume and cognitive function using a partial correlation analysis method. Results: Compared with the healthy subjects, FM patients with MCI had smaller hippocampal volumes in the left and right CA1 head, Molecular layer head, GC-DG head, and CA4 head, and in the left Presubiculum head. Poorer executive function, naming ability, and attention were associated with left CA1 head and left Molecular layer head atrophy. By contrast, hippocampal subregion volumes in the FM patients without MCI were slightly larger than or similar to those in the healthy subjects, and were not significantly correlated with cognitive function. Conclusion: Smaller volumes of left CA1 head and left Molecular layer head were associated with poorer executive function, naming ability, and attention in FM patients with MCI. However, these results were not observed in the FM patients without MCI. These findings suggest that the hippocampal subregions of FM patients might present compensatory mechanisms before cognitive decline occurs.

The Association Between Functional Variants in Long Non-coding RNAs and the Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder Was Not Mediated by Gut Microbiota.

The effect of functional variants in long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) gene regions on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remains unclear. The present study aimed to investigate the association of functional variants located in lncRNA genes with the risk of ASD and explore whether gut microbiota would mediate the relationship. A total of 87 cases and 71 healthy controls were enrolled in the study. MassARRAY platform and 16S rRNA sequencing were respectively applied to assess the genotype of candidate SNPs and gut microbiota of children. The logistic regression models showed that the association between rs2295412 and the risk of ASD was statistically significant after Bonferroni adjustments. The risk of ASD decreased by 19% for each additional C allele carried by children in multiplicative models (OR = 0.81, 95% CI, 0.69-0.94, P = 0.007). Although we identified significant correlations between rs8113922 polymorphisms, Bifidobacteriales, and ASD, the mediating effect of gut microbiota on the relationship of the polymorphisms with the risk of ASD was not significant. The findings demonstrated that functional variants in lncRNA genes play an important role in ASD and gut microbiota could not mediate the association. Future studies are warranted to verify the results and search for more possible mechanisms of variants located in lncRNA genes implicated in ASD.

Association Between Long-Term Exposure to Ambient Air Pollution and the Risk of Mild Cognitive Impairment in a Chinese Urban Area: A Case-Control Study.

Background: As a prodromal stage of dementia, significant emphasis has been placed on the identification of modifiable risks of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Research has indicated a correlation between exposure to air pollution and cognitive function in older adults. However, few studies have examined such an association among the MCI population inChina. Objective: We aimed to explore the association between air pollution exposure and MCI risk from the Hubei Memory and Aging Cohort Study. Methods: We measured four pollutants from 2015 to 2018, 3 years before the cognitive assessment of the participants. Logistic regression models were employed to calculate odds ratios (ORs) to assess the relationship between air pollutants and MCI risk. Results: Among 4,205 older participants, the adjusted ORs of MCI risk for the highest quartile of PM2.5, PM10, O3, and SO2 were 1.90 (1.39, 2.62), 1.77 (1.28, 2.47), 0.56 (0.42, 0.75), and 1.18 (0.87, 1.61) respectively, compared with the lowest quartile. Stratified analyses indicated that such associations were found in both males and females, but were more significant in older participants. Conclusions: Our findings are consistent with the growing evidence suggesting that air pollution increases the risk of mild cognitive decline, which has considerable guiding significance for early intervention of dementia in the older population. Further studies in other populations and broader geographical areas are warranted to validate these findings.

Weakly supervised object localization with soft guidance and channel erasing for auto labelling in autonomous driving systems.

Automated driving systems (ADSs) conceive an efficient and safe way of driving. The safety of ADSs depends on a precise object detector that needs to be upgraded continuously facing various environments. Massive annotations are required to utilize collected images of surroundings through vehicles and accommodate new environments. Auto labelling is one approach to alleviate such dilemma. To this end, we propose a novel Weakly Supervised Object Localization (WSOL) method which can localize objects precisely without detection annotations. This paper proposed Soft Guidance Module (SGM), Channel Erasing Module (CEM) and incorporate them into a multi-flow framework allowing the two mutually beneficial. Finally, experiments and visualizations are performed to evaluate our method on Stanford Cars, ILSVRC 2016 and CUB-200-2011 datasets.

Association of perchlorate, thiocyanate, and nitrate with dyslexic risk.

Perchlorate, thiocyanate, and nitrate are sodium iodide symporter (NIS) inhibitors that disturb iodide uptake into the thyroid and have been implicated in child development. However, no data are available on the association between exposure to/related with them and dyslexia. Here, we examined the association of exposure to/related with the three NIS inhibitors with the risk of dyslexia in a case-control study. The three chemicals were detected in urine samples of 355 children with dyslexia and 390 children without dyslexia from three cities in China. The adjusted odds ratios for dyslexia were examined using logistic regression models. The detection frequencies of all the targeted compounds were 100%. After adjusting for multiple covariates, urinary thiocyanate was significantly associated with the risk of dyslexia (P-trend = 0.02). Compared with the lowest quartile, children within the highest quartile had a 2.66-fold risk of dyslexia (95% confidence interval: 1.32, 5.36]. Stratified analyses showed that the association between urinary thiocyanate level and the risk of dyslexia was more pronounced among boys, children with fixed reading time, and those without maternal depression or anxiety during pregnancy. Urinary perchlorate and nitrate levels were not associated with the risk of dyslexia. This study suggests the possible neurotoxicity of thiocyanate or its parent compounds in dyslexia. Further investigation is warranted to confirm our findings and clarify the potential mechanisms.

Association between urinary 2-hydroxyethyl mercapturic acid and dyslexia among school-aged children.

Ethylene oxide is commonly used in industrial synthesis and medical disinfection. It is a known human carcinogen and has neurotoxicity. However, the association between ethylene oxide exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the association between urinary concentrations of 2-hydroxyethyl mercapturic acid (HEMA; metabolite of ethylene oxide) and dyslexia among school-aged children. A total of 355 dyslexic children and 390 controls from three cities in China were enrolled in this case-control study from November 2017 to December 2020. Urinary HEMA was detected in 100% of the urine samples, suggesting widespread exposure to ethylene oxide in the children. Notably, the children with dyslexia had higher concentrations of urinary HEMA compared to the controls (geometric mean: 2.92 vs. 2.47 ng/mL) (P = 0.004). In the multivariable-adjusted model, urinary concentrations of HEMA were significantly associated with dyslexia risk. The individuals within the highest HEMA concentration demonstrated a 1.97-fold increased odds of dyslexia compared to those within the lowest quartile (95% confidence interval: 1.20-3.23). Thus, these findings suggested the possible link between HEMA levels and the risk of dyslexia. Further studies are warranted to validate this finding and illustrate the underlying mechanism.