Identification of frequent acute exacerbations phenotype in COPD patients based on imaging and clinical characteristics.

BACKGROUND: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common disease with high morbidity, with acute exacerbations manifesting as a worsening of respiratory symptoms. This study aimed to identify the frequent acute exacerbation phenotype in patients with COPD based on imaging and clinical characteristics. METHODS: Patients with COPD (n = 201) were monitored for acute exacerbations one year after their initial hospital admission and further divided into frequent and non-frequent exacerbation groups according to the frequency and severity of acute exacerbations. All patients underwent high resolution CT scans and low attenuation area less than -950Hu (LAA-950) in the whole lung was measured. Differences in visual subtypes, LAA-950, and clinical basic characteristics were compared between groups. The clinical factors influencing frequent exacerbation were determined using binary logistic regression. Finally, based on imaging and clinical factors, the receiver operating characteristic curve was used to identify the phenotype of COPD with frequent acute exacerbations. RESULTS: Patients with frequent exacerbations had a larger LAA-950 than those non-frequent exacerbations patients (p＜0.001). Frequent acute exacerbations were associated with worsening visual subtypes. Multivariate binary logistic regression illustrated that age, smoking status, BMI, FEV1 pred, and LAA-950 were associated with frequent exacerbations of COPD. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for predicting frequent exacerbations based on age, smoking status, BMI, FEV1 pred, and LAA-950 was 0.907 (p＜0.001). CONCLUSION: The combination of imaging and clinical characteristics reached high diagnostic efficacy in the identification of frequent acute exacerbations in patients with COPD.

New phenol and chromone derivatives from the endolichenic fungus Daldinia species and their antiviral activities.

Three new phenolic metabolites, daldispols A-C (1-3), two new chromone derivatives, (5R,7R)-5,7-dihydroxy-2-methyl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-4H-chromen-4-one (9) and (5R,7R)-5,7-dihydroxy-2-propyl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-4H-chromen-4-one (10), together with five known phenolic compounds (4-8) and two known chromone compounds (11 and 12) were isolated from the endolichenic fungus Daldinia sp. CPCC 400770. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic methods, electronic circular dichroism (ECD), and comparison with reported data. Compounds 1, 3, 4, 9, and 11 exhibited significant anti-influenza A virus (IAV) activities with IC50 values of 12.7, 6.4, 12.5, 16.1, and 9.0 µM, respectively, and compound 8 displayed significant anti-ZIKV activity with inhibitory ratio of 42.7% at 10 µM. The results demonstrated that the fungus Daldinia sp. CPCC 400770 might be a rich source for discovering anti-IAV secondary metabolites as potential novel leading compounds.

FT-IR microspectrometry reveals the variation of membrane polarizability due to epigenomic effect on epithelial ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer, as well as other cancers, is primarily caused by methylation at cytosines in CpG islands, but the current marker for ovarian cancer is low in sensitivity and failed in early-stage detection. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy is powerful in analysis of functional groups within molecules, and infrared microscopy illustrates the location of specific groups within single cells. In this study, we applied HPLC and FT-IR microspectrometry to study normal epithelial ovarian cell line immortalized ovarian surface epithelium (IOSE), two epithelial ovarian cell lines (A2780 and CP70) with distinct properties, and the effect of a cancer drug 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-aza) without labeling. Our results reveal that inhibition of methylation on cytosine with 5-aza initiates the protein expression. Furthermore, paraffin-adsorption kinetic study allows us to distinguish hypermethylated and hypomethyated cells, and this assay can be a potential diagnosis method for cancer screening.

The Isolation and Structure Characterization of the Active Oligosaccharide DP-6 from Cultured Panax ginseng Cells.

The oligosaccharins isolated from acid-hydrolyzed cultured cells of Panax ginseng are a mixture of DP-3 to 12. The samples were passed through an active carbon column, a Dowex (H(+)) column, and a Bio-Gel P-2 column to obtain oligosaccharides DP-6, 7 and 8. They were finally separated by HPLC and the DP-6 oligosaccharide was obtained. Experiments showed that it could increase the growth rate of many cultured plant cells. Its structure was characterized by GC, GC-MS, FAB(-)-MS and (13)C-NMR measurements.