Disability weight measurement for the severity of different diseases in Wuhan, China.

BACKGROUND: Measurement of the Chinese burden of disease with disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) requires disability weight (DW) that quantify health losses for all non-fatal consequences of disease and injury. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2013 DW study indicates that it is limited by lack of geographic variation in DW data and by the current measurement methodology. We aim to estimate DW for a set of health states from major diseases in the Wuhan population. METHODS: We conducted the DW measurement study for 206 health states through a household survey with computer-assisted face-to-face interviews and a web-based survey. Based on GBD 2013 DW study, paired comparison (PC) and Population health equivalence (PHE) method was used and different PC/PHE questions were randomly assigned to each respondent. In statistical analysis, the PC data was analyzed by probit regression. The probit regression results will be anchored by results from the PHE data analyzed by interval regression on the DW scale units between 0 (no loss of health) and 1 (loss equivalent to death). RESULTS: A total of 2610 and 3140 individuals were included in the household and web-based survey, respectively. The results from the total pooled data showed health state "mild anemia" (DW = 0.005, 95% UI 0.000-0.027) or "allergic rhinitis (hay fever)" (0.005, 95% UI 0.000-0.029) had the lowest DW and "heroin and other opioid dependence, severe" had the highest DW (0.699, 95% UI 0.579-0.827). A high correlation coefficient (Pearson's r = 0.876; P < 0.001) for DWs of same health states was observed between Wuhan's survey and GBD 2013 DW survey. Health states referred to mental symptom, fatigue, and the residual category of other physical symptoms were statistically significantly associated with a lower Wuhan's DWs than the GBD's DWs. Health states with disfigurement and substance use symptom had a higher DW in Wuhan population than the GBD 2013 study. CONCLUSIONS: This set of DWs could be used to calculate local diseases burden for health policy-decision in Wuhan population. The DW differences between the GBD's survey and Wuhan's survey suggest that there might be some contextual or culture factors influencing assessment on the severity of diseases.

Serum uric acid is associated with chronic kidney disease in elderly Chinese patients with diabetes.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between hyperuricemia and chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been investigated extensively. However, studies on elderly individuals are still limited. Moreover, there is no consensus on whether hyperuricemia or elevated serum uric acid (SUA) within the normal range is correlated with the new onset of CKD and whether there are differences between males and females. METHODS: We included 39039 elderly diabetic patients without CKD at baseline from a community-based cohort in Wuhan, China. The outcome event was the new onset of CKD (defined as an estimated glomerular filtration rate < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2). Multivariate Cox models were used to assess the adjusted hazard ratio (HR). RESULTS: During the 2-year follow-up period, 3162 (8.10%) patients with diabetes developed new-onset CKD. The optimal cutoff value of SUA for incident CKD was 347.4 µmol/L. The adjusted HRs of hyperuricemia for new-onset CKD were 1.925 (1.724-2.150) and 1.676 (1.520-1.848) for males and females, respectively. The risk of developing CKD increased across the Q4 group up to 2.242 times for their counterparts in the lowest SUA quartile, independent of age, sex, diabetes duration, obesity, hypertension, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, smoking, drinking, dyslipidemia, triglyceride, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and fasting plasma glucose. CONCLUSIONS: Hyperuricemia is an independent predictor of incident CKD. Elevated SUA was linearly correlated with CKD in elderly patients with diabetes, showing a relatively higher intensity among males compared with that among females. The optimal cutoff value of SUA for the risk of new-onset CKD in elderly patients with diabetes was 347.4 µmol/L.

Generation of a high-affinity DNA aptamer for on-site screening of toxic aristolochic acid I in herbal medicines and botanical products.

Aristolochic Acid I (AAI) is an environmental and foodborne toxin found in the Aristolochia and Asarum species of plants that are widespread all over the world. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a sensitive and specific biosensor for identifying AAI. Aptamers as a powerful biorecognition element provide the most viable options for solving this problem. In this study, we used library-immobilized SELEX to isolate an AAI-specific aptamer with a KD value of 86 ± 13 nM. To verify the practicability of the selected aptamer, a label-free colorimetric aptasensor was designed. This aptasensor exhibited a low detection limit of 225 nM. Besides, it had been further applied for the determination of AAI in real samples and the recoveries ranged from 97.9% to 102.4%. In the future, AAI aptamer will provide a promising tool for safety evaluation in various fields of agriculture, food, and medication.