Integration of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Wearable Technology for Chronic Disease Management: A New Paradigm in Smart Healthcare.

Chronic diseases are a growing concern worldwide, with nearly 25% of adults suffering from one or more chronic health conditions, thus placing a heavy burden on individuals, families, and healthcare systems. With the advent of the "Smart Healthcare" era, a series of cutting-edge technologies has brought new experiences to the management of chronic diseases. Among them, smart wearable technology not only helps people pursue a healthier lifestyle but also provides a continuous flow of healthcare data for disease diagnosis and treatment by actively recording physiological parameters and tracking the metabolic state. However, how to organize and analyze the data to achieve the ultimate goal of improving chronic disease management, in terms of quality of life, patient outcomes, and privacy protection, is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed. Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide intelligent suggestions by analyzing a patient's physiological data from wearable devices for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In addition, blockchain can improve healthcare services by authorizing decentralized data sharing, protecting the privacy of users, providing data empowerment, and ensuring the reliability of data management. Integrating AI, blockchain, and wearable technology could optimize the existing chronic disease management models, with a shift from a hospital-centered model to a patient-centered one. In this paper, we conceptually demonstrate a patient-centric technical framework based on AI, blockchain, and wearable technology and further explore the application of these integrated technologies in chronic disease management. Finally, the shortcomings of this new paradigm and future research directions are also discussed.

Tea Plant Information Archive: a comprehensive genomics and bioinformatics platform for tea plant.

Tea is the world's widely consumed nonalcohol beverage with essential economic and health benefits. Confronted with the increasing large-scale omics-data set particularly the genome sequence released in tea plant, the construction of a comprehensive knowledgebase is urgently needed to facilitate the utilization of these data sets towards molecular breeding. We hereby present the first integrative and specially designed web-accessible database, Tea Plant Information Archive (TPIA; http://tpia.teaplant.org). The current release of TPIA employs the comprehensively annotated tea plant genome as framework and incorporates with abundant well-organized transcriptomes, gene expressions (across species, tissues and stresses), orthologs and characteristic metabolites determining tea quality. It also hosts massive transcription factors, polymorphic simple sequence repeats, single nucleotide polymorphisms, correlations, manually curated functional genes and globally collected germplasm information. A variety of versatile analytic tools (e.g. JBrowse, blast, enrichment analysis, etc.) are established helping users to perform further comparative, evolutionary and functional analysis. We show a case application of TPIA that provides novel and interesting insights into the phytochemical content variation of section Thea of genus Camellia under a well-resolved phylogenetic framework. The constructed knowledgebase of tea plant will serve as a central gateway for global tea community to better understand the tea plant biology that largely benefits the whole tea industry.

Effect of the Zn Supplementation on Immuno-Modulatory Activities of Bovine Lactoferrin in the Murine Splenocytes and RAW264.7 Macrophages.

Lactoferrin (LF) has important bio-functions including immuno-modulation, while essential trace metals may interact with LF and thereby induce property especially bio-activity changes. Bovine LF was thus supplemented with Zn2+ at 0.16, 0.32, and 0.64 mg/g LF to yield 10%, 20%, and 40% Zn-saturation, respectively. Afterwards, bovine LF and the Zn-supplemented LF products at 10-40-µg/mL doses were compared for their immuno-modulatory activities in two immune cells (murine splenocytes and RAW264.7 macrophages), using the stimulation index of the splenocytes, T lymphocyte subpopulations, macrophage phagocytosis, and cytokine production as evaluation reflectors. The results showed that bovine LF and the Zn-supplemented LF products had suppressive effect on the splenocytes and concanavalin A (ConA)- and lipopolysaccharide-stimulated splenocytes, but lower Zn-saturation and lower dose could alleviate and even counteract this suppressive effect (P < 0.05). More importantly, the Zn-supplemented LF product with lower Zn-saturation at lower dose exerted slightly higher macrophage stimulation, increased CD4+/CD8+ ratio of T lymphocyte subpopulations, and were capable of enhancing the interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4, and interferon-γ production in the splenocytes or the IL-1ß, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α production in the macrophages significantly (P < 0.05). Contrary to its counterpart at lower dose, the Zn-supplemented LF product with higher Zn-saturation at higher dose mostly showed opposite effects in the two cell models. It is concluded that Zn supplementation has an impact on the immuno-modulation of bovine LF, while Zn-saturation is a key factor to modulate these assessed immune activities.

Modulatory Effect of the Supplemented Copper Ion on In Vitro Activity of Bovine Lactoferrin to Murine Splenocytes and RAW264.7 Macrophages.

Bovine lactoferrin (LF) was supplemented with Cu2+ at three contents of 0.16, 0.32, and 0.64 mg/g LF, respectively. After then, LF and Cu-supplemented LF products were assessed for immuno-modulation in murine splenocytes and RAW264.7 macrophages, using dose levels of 10-40 µg/mL and four evaluation reflectors including stimulation index of splenocytes, T lymphocyte subpopulations, macrophage phagocytosis, and cytokine secretion. The results indicated that LF and Cu-supplemented LF products had suppression on splenocytes as well as concanavalin A (ConA)- or lipopolysaccharide-stimulated splenocytes; however, using lower Cu-supplementation content (i.e., 0.16 mg/g LF) and lower dose level (10 µg/mL) alleviated this suppression significantly (P < 0.05). Compared to LF, Cu-supplemented LF product of lower Cu-supplementation content at lower dose level yielded slightly enhanced macrophage stimulation, increased CD4+/CD8+ ratio of T lymphocyte subpopulations in ConA-stimulated splenocytes, and significant secretion enhancement for interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4, interferon-γ (in splenocytes), IL-1ß, and tumor necrosis factor-α (in macrophages) (P < 0.05). Furthermore, Cu-supplemented LF product of higher Cu-supplementation content (i.e., 0.64 mg/g LF) at higher dose level mostly showed opposite effects in the cells, in comparison with its counterpart at lower dose level. It is concluded that Cu-supplementation of LF can alleviate or increase LF's effects on the two immune cells, and moreover, Cu content of supplemented LF is a key factor that modulates these effects.