Biosynthetic Pathways of Tryptophan Metabolites in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Strain: Insights and Implications.

Tryptophan metabolites, such as 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), serotonin, and melatonin, hold significant promise as supplements for managing various mood-related disorders, including depression and insomnia. However, their chemical production via chemical synthesis and phytochemical extraction presents drawbacks, such as the generation of toxic byproducts and low yields. In this study, we explore an alternative approach utilizing S. cerevisiae STG S101 for biosynthesis. Through a series of eleven experiments employing different combinations of tryptophan supplementation, Tween 20, and HEPES buffer, we investigated the production of these indolamines. The tryptophan metabolites were analyzed using liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Notably, setups replacing peptone in the YPD media with tryptophan (Run 3) and incorporating tryptophan along with 25 mM HEPES buffer (Run 4) demonstrated successful biosynthesis of 5-HTP and serotonin. The highest 5-HTP and serotonin concentrations were 58.9 ± 16.0 mg L-1 and 0.0650 ± 0.00211 mg L-1, respectively. Melatonin concentrations were undetected in all the setups. These findings underscore the potential of using probiotic yeast strains as a safer and conceivably more cost-effective alternative for indolamine synthesis. The utilization of probiotic strains presents a promising avenue, potentially offering scalability, sustainability, reduced environmental impact, and feasibility for large-scale production.

Assessment of perfusion deficit with early phases of [18F]PI-2620 tau-PET versus [18F]flutemetamol-amyloid-PET recordings.

PURPOSE: Characteristic features of amyloid-PET (A), tau-PET (T), and FDG-PET (N) can serve for the A/T/N classification of neurodegenerative diseases. Recent studies showed that the early, perfusion-weighted phases of amyloid- or tau-PET recordings serve to detect cerebrometabolic deficits equally to FDG-PET, therefore providing a surrogate of neuronal injury. As such, two channels of diagnostic information can be obtained in the setting of a single PET scan. However, there has hitherto been no comparison of early-phase amyloid- and tau-PET as surrogates for deficits in perfusion/metabolism. Therefore, we undertook to compare [18F]flutemetamol-amyloid-PET and [18F]PI-2620 tau-PET as "one-stop shop" dual purpose tracers for the detection of neurodegenerative disease. METHODS: We obtained early-phase PET recordings with [18F]PI-2620 (0.5-2.5 min p.i.) and [18F]flutemetamol (0-10 min p.i.) in 64 patients with suspected neurodegenerative disease. We contrasted global mean normalized images (SUVr) in the patients with a normal cohort of 15 volunteers without evidence of increased pathology to ß-amyloid- and tau-PET examinations. Regional group differences of tracer uptake (z-scores) of 246 Brainnetome volumes of interest were calculated for both tracers, and the correlations of the z-scores were evaluated using Pearson's correlation coefficient. Lobar compartments, regions with significant neuronal injury (z-scores < - 3), and patients with different neurodegenerative disease entities (e.g., Alzheimer's disease or 4R-tauopathies) served for subgroup analysis. Additionally, we used partial regression to correlate regional perfusion alterations with clinical scores in cognition tests. RESULTS: The z-scores of perfusion-weighted images of both tracers showed high correlations across the brain, especially in the frontal and parietal lobes, which were the brain regions with pronounced perfusion deficit in the patient group (R = 0.83 ± 0.08; range, 0.61-0.95). Z-scores of individual patients correlated well by region (R = 0.57 ± 0.15; range, 0.16-0.90), notably when significant perfusion deficits were present (R = 0.66 ± 0.15; range, 0.28-0.90). CONCLUSION: The early perfusion phases of [18F]PI-2620 tau- and [18F]flutemetamol-amyloid-PET are roughly equivalent indices of perfusion defect indicative of regional and lobar neuronal injury in patients with various neurodegenerative diseases. As such, either tracer may serve for two diagnostic channels by assessment of amyloid/tau status and neuronal activity.

Skin Lesion Classification on Imbalanced Data Using Deep Learning with Soft Attention.

Today, the rapid development of industrial zones leads to an increased incidence of skin diseases because of polluted air. According to a report by the American Cancer Society, it is estimated that in 2022 there will be about 100,000 people suffering from skin cancer and more than 7600 of these people will not survive. In the context that doctors at provincial hospitals and health facilities are overloaded, doctors at lower levels lack experience, and having a tool to support doctors in the process of diagnosing skin diseases quickly and accurately is essential. Along with the strong development of artificial intelligence technologies, many solutions to support the diagnosis of skin diseases have been researched and developed. In this paper, a combination of one Deep Learning model (DenseNet, InceptionNet, ResNet, etc) with Soft-Attention, which unsupervisedly extract a heat map of main skin lesions. Furthermore, personal information including age and gender are also used. It is worth noting that a new loss function that takes into account the data imbalance is also proposed. Experimental results on data set HAM10000 show that using InceptionResNetV2 with Soft-Attention and the new loss function gives 90 percent accuracy, mean of precision, F1-score, recall, and AUC of 0.81, 0.81, 0.82, and 0.99, respectively. Besides, using MobileNetV3Large combined with Soft-Attention and the new loss function, even though the number of parameters is 11 times less and the number of hidden layers is 4 times less, it achieves an accuracy of 0.86 and 30 times faster diagnosis than InceptionResNetV2.

Design and Micro-Fabrication of Focused High-Frequency Needle Transducers for Medical Imaging.

In this study, we report an advanced fabrication technique to develop a miniature focused needle transducer. Two different types of high-frequency (100 MHz) transducers were fabricated using the lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-0.3PT) and lithium niobate (LiNbO3) single crystals. In order to enhance the transducer's performance, a unique mass-spring matching layer technique was adopted, in which gold and parylene play the roles of the mass layer and spring layer, respectively. The PMN-0.3PT transducer had a 103 MHz center frequency with a -6 dB bandwidth of 52%, and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 42 dB. The center frequency, -6 dB bandwidth, and SNR of the LiNbO3 transducer were 105 MHz, 66%, and 44 dB, respectively. In order to compare and evaluate the transducers' performances, an ultrasonic biomicroscopy (UBM) imaging on the fish eye was performed. The results showed that the LiNbO3 transducer had a better contrast resolution compared to the PMN-0.3PT transducer. The fabricated transducer showed an excellent performance with high-resolution corneal epithelium imaging of the experimental fish eye. These interesting findings are useful for the future biomedical implementation of the fabricated transducers in the field of high-resolution ultrasound imaging and diagnosis purpose.

Metaheuristic Algorithms Based on Compromise Programming for the Multi-Objective Urban Shipment Problem.

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) and its variants are found in many fields, especially logistics. In this study, we introduced an adaptive method to a complex VRP. It combines multi-objective optimization and several forms of VRPs with practical requirements for an urban shipment system. The optimizer needs to consider terrain and traffic conditions. The proposed model also considers customers' expectations and shipper considerations as goals, and a common goal such as transportation cost. We offered compromise programming to approach the multi-objective problem by decomposing the original multi-objective problem into a minimized distance-based problem. We designed a hybrid version of the genetic algorithm with the local search algorithm to solve the proposed problem. We evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with the Tabu Search algorithm and the original genetic algorithm on the tested dataset. The results show that our method is an effective decision-making tool for the multi-objective VRP and an effective solver for the new variation of VRP.

Pleuropulmonary blastoma: Difficulty in diagnosis and treatment of a case in Vietnam.

Pleuropulmonary blastoma (PPB) is a rare malignant tumor in childhood cancer. This type of tumor is difficult to identify and can easily be misdiagnosed. The International PPB protocol is a complicated and aggressive protocol. It is not easily applicable to developing countries where hospitals do not have enough resources. Here we present a challanging case of a patient successfully treated in Vietnam, using limited medical resources. The patient (22 month old, male) was diagnosed with congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation in his 1st hospital admission. After 6 months of onset, the patient was diagnosed with PPB type II in the fourth hospitalization following analysis of a lung CT scan and a pathology report. After the aggressive chemotherapy regimen, the patient had two episodes of severe neutropenia and infection from which he recovered. The patient received chemotherapy and surgery treatment at our hospital, but received radiation under general anesthesia and rehabilitation therapy to improve respiration at another hospital over 600 km away. It has been 1.5 years after entering remission, and he is starting kindergarten. Lung CT scan and pathology should be analyzed to avoid missing diagnosis of PPB in patients with cystic or mixed cystic and solid lung lesions. Biopsies from cases of suspected PPB should be sent for expert pathology review. Two factors important to the successful application of the protocol are good supportive care and the multidisciplinary collaboration between medical facilities to provide proper resources during treatment. We hope to recreate more successful outcomes not only in Vietnam but also in all developing countries.

A Setup for Measuring the Centering Error of a Dual-Element Pyroelectric Infrared Sensor Module.

This paper presents an experimental setup to measure the horizontal centering error of a pre-built pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensor module, in which a dual-element PIR sensor is aligned at the focal point of a single-zone Fresnel Lens. In the setup, the sensor module was placed facing a modulated infrared radiating source and turned over a range of horizontal angles. The position of the optical axis of the sensor module was determined based on the analysis of the output response of the sensor at turned angles. Thus, the horizontal centering error of the module is defined as the difference between the mechanical axis of the housing and the found optical axis. For the prebuilt sensor module, with the specific available equipment, the measurement of the centering error of the module achieved a resolution of 0.02 degrees.

Analysis of the soil to food crops transfer factor and risk assessment of multi-elements at the suburban area of Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA).

The contamination of heavy metals in agricultural ecosystem is one of the most important problems in developing countries as Vietnam. In this study, we investigated the multi-element concentrations in soil, vegetables, soil-to-plant transfer factors and target hazard quotient (THQ) due to the consumption of heavy metals in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In general, the element concentrations in soil and plants were similar to different studies in the world and in the range of allowable values provided by WHO and the Ministry of Health of Vietnam. The transfer factors indicated the influence of element characteristics and plant genotypes on the accumulation and translocation of elements from soil to plants. It is found that I. batatas, B. alba, A, tricolor, O. basilicum, and B. juncea could be potential candidates for phytoremediation in soil contaminated of heavy metals. The results of individual and total THQ were below unity for Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Zn, As, and Sb. The total THQ is in the range from 0.11 for R. sativus to 0.84 for B. alba with the average value of 0.43, in which Mn and As are the major contributions to the total THQ with the average values of 75% and 18%, respectively. The safety assessment based on national regulations and THQ indicated that the consumption of investigated vegetables poses no risk to the consumers.

A unique CDK4/6 inhibitor: Current and future therapeutic strategies of abemaciclib.

Cell cycle dysregulation, characterised by aberrant activation of cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs), is a hallmark of cancer. After years of research on the first and second generations of less selective CDK inhibitors with unfavourable clinical activity and toxicity profiles, CDK4/6 inhibitors become the first and only class of highly specific CDK inhibitors being approved for cancer treatment to date. CDK4/6 inhibitors have transformed the treatment paradigm of estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, dramatically improving the survival outcomes of these patients when incorporated with conventional endocrine therapies in both the first and later-line settings. Currently, the efficacies of CDK4/6 inhibitors in other breast cancer subtypes and cancers are being actively explored. All three CDK4/6 inhibitors have demonstrated very similar clinical efficacies. However, being the least similar structurally, abemaciclib is the only CDK4/6 inhibitor with single agent activity in refractory metastatic ER + breast cancer, the ability to cross the blood brain barrier efficiently, and a distinct toxicity profile of lower myelosuppression such that it can be dosed continuously. Here, we further discuss the distinguishing features of abemaciclib as compared to the other two CDK4/6 inhibitors, palbociclib and ribociclib. Besides being the most potent inhibitor of CDK4/6, abemaciclib exhibits a wider selectivity towards other CDKs and kinases, and functions through additional mechanisms of action besides inducing G1 cell cycle arrest, in a dose dependent manner. Hence, abemaciclib has the potential to act independently of the CDK4/6-cyclin D-RB pathway, resulting in crucial implications on the possibly expanded clinical indications and predictive biomarkers of abemaciclib, in contrast to the other CDK4/6 inhibitors. The current status of preclinical evidence and clinical studies of abemaciclib as a single agent and in combination treatment in breast and other cancers, together with its potential predictive biomarkers, is also summarised in this review.

Prevalence and phylogenetic analysis of hepatitis E virus in pigs in Vietnam.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a zoonotic disease and has been reported around the world. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the sero-prevalence and phylogenetic analysis of HEV in Vietnam. Pig blood and fecal pooled samples were collected to assess the prevalence of HEV. We assessed the true prevalence (TP) of HEV from apparent prevalence (AP) by taking into account the sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic tests using a Bayesian approach. For phylogenetic analysis, the data compared with worldwide HEV reference strains including all eight genotypes (G1-G8) which were identified in previous study. RESULTS: A total of 475 sera and 250 fecal pooled samples were collected at slaughterhouses and pig farms from five provinces, in Viet Nam. Overall, the sero-AP of HEV was 58.53% (95% confidence interval: 53.95-62.70) while the sero-TP was slightly higher (65.43, 95% credible interval: 47.19-84.70). In terms of pooled samples, overall, the RNA-AP was 6.80% (95% confidence interval: 4.01-10.66). One strain in Hanoi, two strains in Dak Lak, seven strains in An Giang, four strains in Son La and two strains in Nghe An were isolated. The phylogenetic tree demonstrated that 19 Vietnamese strains were clustered into HEV 3 and 4. CONCLUSIONS: This study provided evidence that HEV is circulating in domestic pigs in Vietnam. From a public health perspective, it is very important to raise public awareness for high-risk groups (e.g. slaughterhouse workers, pig traders, farmers and market sellers) who have more opportunities to come in contact with pig and contaminated meats.

Proteomic Analysis of the Mammalian Katanin Family of Microtubule-severing Enzymes Defines Katanin p80 subunit B-like 1 (KATNBL1) as a Regulator of Mammalian Katanin Microtubule-severing.

The Katanin family of microtubule-severing enzymes is critical for remodeling microtubule-based structures that influence cell division, motility, morphogenesis and signaling. Katanin is composed of a catalytic p60 subunit (A subunit, KATNA1) and a regulatory p80 subunit (B subunit, KATNB1). The mammalian genome also encodes two additional A-like subunits (KATNAL1 and KATNAL2) and one additional B-like subunit (KATNBL1) that have remained poorly characterized. To better understand the factors and mechanisms controlling mammalian microtubule-severing, we have taken a mass proteomic approach to define the protein interaction module for each mammalian Katanin subunit and to generate the mammalian Katanin family interaction network (Katan-ome). Further, we have analyzed the function of the KATNBL1 subunit and determined that it associates with KATNA1 and KATNAL1, it localizes to the spindle poles only during mitosis and it regulates Katanin A subunit microtubule-severing activity in vitro Interestingly, during interphase, KATNBL1 is sequestered in the nucleus through an N-terminal nuclear localization signal. Finally KATNB1 was able to compete the interaction of KATNBL1 with KATNA1 and KATNAL1. These data indicate that KATNBL1 functions as a regulator of Katanin A subunit microtubule-severing activity during mitosis and that it likely coordinates with KATNB1 to perform this function.

Induced multipotency in adult keratinocytes through down-regulation of ΔNp63 or DGCR8.

The roles of microRNAs (miRNAs) and the miRNA processing machinery in the regulation of stem cell biology are not well understood. Here, we show that the p53 family member and p63 isoform, ΔNp63, is a transcriptional activator of a cofactor critical for miRNA processing (DGCR8). This regulation gives rise to a unique miRNA signature resulting in reprogramming cells to multipotency. Strikingly, ΔNp63(-/-) epidermal cells display profound defects in terminal differentiation and express a subset of markers and miRNAs present in embryonic stem cells and fibroblasts induced to pluripotency using Yamanaka factors. Moreover, ΔNp63(-/-) epidermal cells transduced with an inducible DGCR8 plasmid can differentiate into multiple cell fates in vitro and in vivo. We found that human primary keratinocytes depleted of ΔNp63 or DGCR8 can be reprogrammed in 6 d and express a unique miRNA and gene expression signature that is similar but not identical to human induced pluripotent stem cells. Our data reveal a role for ΔNp63 in the transcriptional regulation of DGCR8 to reprogram adult somatic cells into multipotent stem cells.

Direct and indirect costs of smoking in Vietnam.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the direct and indirect costs of active smoking in Vietnam. METHOD: A prevalence-based disease-specific cost of illness approach was utilised to calculate the costs related to five smoking-related diseases: lung cancer, cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ischaemic heart disease and stroke. Data on healthcare came from an original survey, hospital records and official government statistics. Morbidity and mortality due to smoking combined with the average per capita income were used to calculate the indirect costs of smoking by applying the human capital approach. The smoking-attributable fraction was calculated using the adjusted relative risk values from phase II of the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study (CPS-II). Costs were classified as personal, governmental and health insurance costs. RESULTS: The total economic cost of smoking in 2011 was estimated at 24 679.9 billion Vietnamese dong (VND), equivalent to US$1173.2 million or approximately 0.97% of the 2011 gross domestic product. The direct costs of inpatient and outpatient care reached 9896.2 billion VND (US$470.4 million) and 2567.2 billion VND (US$122.0 million), respectively. The government's contribution to these costs was 4534.3 billion VND (US$215.5 million), which was equivalent to 5.76% of its 2011 healthcare budget. The indirect costs (productivity loss) due to morbidity and mortality were 2652.9 billion VND (US$126.1 million) and 9563.5 billion VND (US$454.6 million), respectively. These indirect costs represent about 49.5% of the total costs of smoking. CONCLUSIONS: Tobacco consumption has large negative consequences on the Vietnamese economy.

Low-Rank Matrix Recovery Approach for Clutter Rejection in Real-Time IR-UWB Radar-Based Moving Target Detection.

The detection of a moving target using an IR-UWB Radar involves the core task of separating the waves reflected by the static background and by the moving target. This paper investigates the capacity of the low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition approach to separate the background and the foreground in the trend of UWB Radar-based moving target detection. Robust PCA models are criticized for being batched-data-oriented, which makes them inconvenient in realistic environments where frames need to be processed as they are recorded in real time. In this paper, a novel method based on overlapping-windows processing is proposed to cope with online processing. The method consists of processing a small batch of frames which will be continually updated without changing its size as new frames are captured. We prove that RPCA (via its Inexact Augmented Lagrange Multiplier (IALM) model) can successfully separate the two subspaces, which enhances the accuracy of target detection. The overlapping-windows processing method converges on the optimal solution with its batch counterpart (i.e., processing batched data with RPCA), and both methods prove the robustness and efficiency of the RPCA over the classic PCA and the commonly used exponential averaging method.

A semi-supervised tensor regression model for siRNA efficacy prediction.

BACKGROUND: Short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) can knockdown target genes and thus have an immense impact on biology and pharmacy research. The key question of which siRNAs have high knockdown ability in siRNA research remains challenging as current known results are still far from expectation. RESULTS: This work aims to develop a generic framework to enhance siRNA knockdown efficacy prediction. The key idea is first to enrich siRNA sequences by incorporating them with rules found for designing effective siRNAs and representing them as enriched matrices, then to employ the bilinear tensor regression to predict knockdown efficacy of those matrices. Experiments show that the proposed method achieves better results than existing models in most cases. CONCLUSIONS: Our model not only provides a suitable siRNA representation but also can predict siRNA efficacy more accurate and stable than most of state-of-the-art models. Source codes are freely available on the web at: http://www.jaist.ac.jp/\~bao/BiLTR/ .

Novel naphthochalcone derivative accelerate dermal wound healing through induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition of keratinocyte.

BACKGROUND: Wound healing is an intricate process whereby the skin repairs itself after injury. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is associated with wound healing and tissue regeneration. Naphthochalcone derivatives have various pharmaceutical properties. We investigated the effect of a novel naphthochalcone derivative, 2-(5-(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-3-yl)naphthalen-1-ol (TDPN), on dermal wound healing in vivo and the migration of keratinocytes in vitro. RESULT: We investigated the effect of TDPN on signaling pathway and epithelial-mesenchymal transition through protein and transcriptional expression. The TDPN treatment accelerated dermal closure about 3 days and remodeling of dermis. We found that treatment with TDPN induced the migration of keratinocytes but not cytotoxicity. TDPN induced the phosphorylation of ERK and AKT. TDPN-treated cells showed loss of adherence protein and showed induction of the transcriptional factor Slug, mesenchymal marker, and fibronectin. Moreover, TDPN treatment induced the expression of matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1), which degrades specific components of the extracellular matrix, thereby providing new substrates that facilitate migration and invasion. MMP expression is considered to be one of the major attributes acquired by cells after EMT. CONCLUSION: We propose that a novel naphthochalcone derivative TDPN is capable of promoting keratinocyte migration via the induction of EMT resulting acceleration of wound closure and matrix remodeling.

A Study on Yield Criteria Influence on Anisotropic Behavior and Fracture Prediction in Deep Drawing SECC Steel Cylindrical Cups.

The deep drawing process, a pivotal technique in sheet metal forming, frequently encounters challenges such as anisotropy-induced defects. This study comprehensively investigates the influence of various yield criteria on the anisotropic behavior and fracture prediction in SECC steel cylindrical cups. It integrates Hill'48R, Hill'48S, and von Mises yield criteria in conjunction with Swift's hardening law to evaluate material behavior under complex stress states. Experimental and numerical simulations assess the anisotropy effects across multiple orientations (0°, 45°, and 90°), revealing intricate relationships between stress criteria and material response. The findings indicate significant discrepancies between isotropic and anisotropic models in predicting fracture heights, emphasizing the importance of selecting appropriate yield criteria. Notably, the von Mises criterion results in lower fracture heights, suggesting higher susceptibility to fractures, while the Hill'48R model aligns closely with experimental data, validated through variations in punch corner radius and blank holder force parameters, with a maximum deviation of 3.23%. Hill'48S displays moderate plastic deformation characteristics.

Robust-optimal control of rotary inverted pendulum control through fuzzy descriptor-based techniques.

Expanding upon the well-established Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model, the T-S fuzzy descriptor model emerges as a robust and flexible framework. This article introduces the development of optimal and robust-optimal controllers grounded in the principles of stability control and fuzzy descriptor systems. By transforming complicated inequalities into linear matrix inequalities (LMI), we establish the essential conditions for controller construction, as delineated in theorems. To substantiate the utility of these controllers, we employ the rotary inverted pendulum as a testbed. Through diverse simulation scenarios, these controllers, rooted in fuzzy descriptor systems, demonstrate their practicality and effectiveness in ensuring the stable control of inverted pendulum systems, even in the presence of uncertainties within the model. This study highlights the adaptability and robustness of fuzzy descriptor-based controllers, paving the way for advanced control strategies in complex and uncertain environments.

Improving Micro-EDM Machining Efficiency for Titanium Alloy Fabrication with Advanced Coated Electrodes.

Enhancing the operational efficacy of electrical discharge machining (EDM) is crucial for achieving optimal results in various engineering materials. This study introduces an innovative solution-the use of coated electrodes-representing a significant advancement over current limitations. The choice of coating material is critical for micro-EDM performance, necessitating a thorough investigation of its impact. This research explores the application of different coating materials (AlCrN, TiN, and Carbon) on WC electrodes in micro-EDM processes specifically designed for Ti-6Al-4V. A comprehensive assessment was conducted, focusing on key quality indicators such as depth of cut (Z), tool wear rate (TWR), overcut (OVC), and post-machining surface quality. Through rigorous experimental methods, the study demonstrates substantial improvements in these quality parameters with coated electrodes. The results show significant enhancements, including increased Z, reduced TWR and OVC, and improved surface quality. This evidence underscores the effectiveness of coated electrodes in enhancing micro-EDM performance, marking a notable advancement in the precision and quality of Ti-6Al-4V machining processes. Among the evaluated coatings, AlCrN-coated electrodes exhibited the greatest increase in Z, the most significant reduction in TWR, and the best OVC performance compared to other coatings and the uncoated counterpart.

Effect of gum-chewing exercise on maintaining and improving oral function in older adults: A pilot randomized controlled trial.

Background/purpose: Gum chewing has been found to improve oral function. Nevertheless, few randomized controlled trials have investigated the effects of gum-chewing exercises on oral function in older adults. This study aimed to examine the effect of gum-chewing exercises on oral function in older adults. Materials and methods: This was a single-blind, randomized controlled trial, conducted from November 2021 to January 2022. A total of 130 participants were divided randomly into the intervention and control groups. The intervention group was told to chew experimental gums for one month, while the control group was instructed to chew experimental tablets for one month. Maximum bite force, occlusal contact areas, oral dryness, tongue pressure, tongue and lip functions (number of times each of the following syllables is pronounced per second:/pa/,/ta/, and/ka/), masticatory function, subjective masticatory function, and gum-chewing time were measured at baseline and one month following intervention to assess outcomes. Results: One month following the intervention, tongue pressure was significantly higher in the intervention group than in the control group (P = 0.027). In the within-group comparisons, maximum bite force (P < 0.001), unstimulated saliva flow (P < 0.001), tongue and lip functions (/pa/: P < 0.001;/ta/: P < 0.001;/ka/: P < 0.001), color scale value (P = 0.019), and ΔE value (P = 0.024) were significantly increased in the intervention group. Conclusion: The results suggest that gum-chewing exercises can improve oral functions in older adults, although additional increases in masticatory load may be necessary to establish a more effective oral function training method using gum-chewing exercises in older adults.