Quantifying local field potential dynamics with amplitude and frequency stability between ON and OFF medication and stimulation in Parkinson's disease.

Neural oscillations are critical to understanding the synchronisation of neural activities and their relevance to neurological disorders. For instance, the amplitude of beta oscillations in the subthalamic nucleus has gained extensive attention, as it has been found to correlate with medication status and the therapeutic effects of continuous deep brain stimulation in people with Parkinson's disease. However, the frequency stability of subthalamic nucleus beta oscillations, which has been suggested to be associated with dopaminergic information in brain states, has not been well explored. Moreover, the administration of medicine can have inverse effects on changes in frequency and amplitude. In this study, we proposed a method based on the stationary wavelet transform to quantify the amplitude and frequency stability of subthalamic nucleus beta oscillations and evaluated the method using simulation and real data for Parkinson's disease patients. The results suggest that the amplitude and frequency stability quantification has enhanced sensitivity in distinguishing pathological conditions in Parkinson's disease patients. Our quantification shows the benefit of combining frequency stability information with amplitude and provides a new potential feedback signal for adaptive deep brain stimulation.

Engineering a PtCu Alloy to Improve N2 Selectivity of NH3-SCO over the Pt/SSZ-13 Catalyst.

Improving the N2 selectivity is always a great challenge for the selective catalytic oxidation of ammonia (NH3-SCO) over noble-metal-based (especially Pt) catalysts. In this work, Cu as an efficient promoter was introduced into the Pt/SSZ-13 catalyst to significantly improve the N2 selectivity of the NH3-SCO reaction. A PtCu alloy was formed in the PtCu/SSZ-13 catalyst, as confirmed by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectrometry mapping, and X-ray absorption spectroscopy results. As indicated by the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis, the Pt species in the alloyed PtCu nanoparticle was mainly present in the electron-rich state on PtCu/SSZ-13, while the electron-deficient Cu and isolated Cu2+ species were both present on the surface of PtCu/SSZ-13. Due to such a unique alloyed structure with an altered oxidation state, the N2 selectivity of NH3-SCO on the PtCu/SSZ-13 catalyst was remarkably improved, while the NH3-SCO activity was kept comparable to that on Pt/SSZ-13. The reaction path was changed from the NH mechanism on Pt/SSZ-13 to both NH and internal selective catalytic reduction mechanisms on the PtCu/SSZ-13 catalyst, which was considered the main reason for the enhanced N2 selectivity. This work provides a new route to synthesize efficient alloy catalysts for optimizing the N2 selectivity of NH3-SCO for NH3 slip control in diesel exhaust purification.

FPGA-based Lightweight QDS-CNN System for sEMG Gesture and Force Level Recognition.

Deep learning (DL) has been used for electromyographic (EMG) signal recognition and achieved high accuracy for multiple classification tasks. However, implementation in resource-constrained prostheses and human-computer interaction devices remains challenging. To overcome these problems, this paper implemented a low-power system for EMG gesture and force level recognition using Zynq architecture. Firstly, a lightweight network model structure was proposed by Ultra-lightweight depth separable convolution (UL-DSC) and channel attention-global average pooling (CA-GAP) to reduce the computational complexity while maintaining accuracy. A wearable EMG acquisition device for real-time data acquisition was subsequently developed with size of 36mm×28mm×4mm. Finally, a highly parallelized dedicated hardware accelerator architecture was designed for inference computation. 18 gestures were tested, including force levels from 22 healthy subjects. The results indicate that the average accuracy rate was 94.92% for a model with 5.0k parameters and a size of 0.026MB. Specifically, the average recognition accuracy for static and force-level gestures was 98.47% and 89.92%, respectively. The proposed hardware accelerator architecture was deployed with 8-bit precision, a single-frame signal inference time of 41.9µs, a power consumption of 0.317W, and a data throughput of 78.6 GOP/s.

Effects of Training and Calibration Data on Surface Electromyogram-Based Recognition for Upper Limb Amputees.

Surface electromyogram (sEMG)-based gesture recognition has emerged as a promising avenue for developing intelligent prostheses for upper limb amputees. However, the temporal variations in sEMG have rendered recognition models less efficient than anticipated. By using cross-session calibration and increasing the amount of training data, it is possible to reduce these variations. The impact of varying the amount of calibration and training data on gesture recognition performance for amputees is still unknown. To assess these effects, we present four datasets for the evaluation of calibration data and examine the impact of the amount of training data on benchmark performance. Two amputees who had undergone amputations years prior were recruited, and seven sessions of data were collected for analysis from each of them. Ninapro DB6, a publicly available database containing data from ten healthy subjects across ten sessions, was also included in this study. The experimental results show that the calibration data improved the average accuracy by 3.03%, 6.16%, and 9.73% for the two subjects and Ninapro DB6, respectively, compared to the baseline results. Moreover, it was discovered that increasing the number of training sessions was more effective in improving accuracy than increasing the number of trials. Three potential strategies are proposed in light of these findings to enhance cross-session models further. We consider these findings to be of the utmost importance for the commercialization of intelligent prostheses, as they demonstrate the criticality of gathering calibration and cross-session training data, while also offering effective strategies to maximize the utilization of the entire dataset.

Multichannel Flexible Pulse Perception Array for Intelligent Disease Diagnosis System.

Pressure sensors with high sensitivity, a wide linear range, and a quick response time are critical for building an intelligent disease diagnosis system that directly detects and recognizes pulse signals for medical and health applications. However, conventional pressure sensors have limited sensitivity and nonideal response ranges. We proposed a multichannel flexible pulse perception array based on polyimide/multiwalled carbon nanotube-polydimethylsiloxane nanocomposite/polyimide (PI/MPN/PI) sandwich-structure pressure sensor that can be applied for remote disease diagnosis. Furthermore, we established a mechanical model at the molecular level and guided the preparation of MPN. At the structural level, we achieved high sensitivity (35.02 kPa-1) and a broad response range (0-18 kPa) based on a pyramid-like bilayer microstructure with different upper and lower surfaces. A 27-channel (3 × 9) high-density sensor array was integrated at the device level, which can extract the spatial and temporal distribution information on a pulse. Furthermore, two intelligent algorithms were developed for extracting six-dimensional pulse information and automatic pulse recognition (the recognition rate reaches 97.8%). The results indicate that intelligent disease diagnosis systems have great potential applications in wearable healthcare devices.

Orange-derived extracellular vesicles nanodrugs for efficient treatment of ovarian cancer assisted by transcytosis effect

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have recently received much attention about the application of drug carriers due to their desirable properties such as nano-size, biocompatibility, and high stability. Herein, we demonstrate orange-derived extracellular vesicles (OEV) nanodrugs (DN@OEV) by modifying cRGD-targeted doxorubicin (DOX) nanoparticles (DN) onto the surface of OEV, enabling significantly enhancing tumor accumulation and penetration, thereby efficiently inhibiting the growth of ovarian cancer. The obtained DN@OEV enabled to inducement of greater transcytosis capability in ovarian cancer cells, which presented the average above 10-fold transcytosis effect compared with individual DN. It was found that DN@OEV could trigger receptor-mediated endocytosis to promote early endosome/recycling endosomes pathway for exocytosis and simultaneously reduce degradation in the early endosomes-late endosomes-lysosome pathway, thereby inducing the enhanced transcytosis. In particular, the zombie mouse model bearing orthotopic ovarian cancer further validated DN@OEV presented high accumulation and penetration in tumor tissue by the transcytosis process. Our study indicated the strategy in enhancing transcytosis has significant implications for improving the therapeutic efficacy of the drug delivery system.

An iEEG Recording and Adjustable Shunt-Current Conduction Platform for Epilepsy Treatment.

This paper proposes a compact bioelectronics sensing platform, including a multi-channel electrode, intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) recorder, adjustable galvanometer, and shunt-current conduction circuit pathway. The developed implantable electrode made of polyurethane-insulated stainless-steel materials is capable of recording iEEG signals and shunt-current conduction. The electrochemical impedance of the conduction, ground/reference, and working electrode were characterized in phosphate buffer saline solution, revealing in vitro results of 517.2 Ω@1 kHz (length of 0.1 mm, diameter of 0.8 mm), 1.374 kΩ@1 kHz (length of 0.3 mm, diameter of 0.1 mm), and 3.188 kΩ@1 kHz (length of 0.1 mm, diameter of 0.1 mm), respectively. On-bench measurement of the system revealed that the input noise of the system is less than 2 µVrms, the signal frequency bandwidth range is 1 Hz~10 kHz, and the shunt-current detection range is 0.1~3000 µA with an accuracy of above 99.985%. The electrode was implanted in the CA1 region of the right hippocampus of rats for the in vivo experiments. Kainic acid (KA)-induced seizures were detected through iEEG monitoring, and the induced shunt-current was successfully measured and conducted out of the brain through the designed circuit-body path, which verifies the potential of current conduction for the treatment of epilepsy.

Multi-Dimensional Feature Combination Method for Continuous Blood Pressure Measurement Based on Wrist PPG Sensor.

The cuff-less blood pressure (BP) monitoring method based on photoplethysmo- gram (PPG) makes it possible for long-term BP monitoring to prevent and treat cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. In this paper, a portable BP prediction system based on feature combination and artificial neural network (ANN) is implemented. The robustness of the model is improved from three aspects. Firstly, an adaptive peak extraction algorithm was used to improve the accuracy of peaks and troughs detection. Secondly, multi-dimensional features were extracted and fused, including three groups of PPG-based features and one group of demographics-based features. Finally, a two-layer feedforward artificial neural networks algorithm was used for regression. Thirty-three subjects distributed in the three BP groups were recruited. The proposed method passed the European Society of Hypertension International Protocol revision 2010 (ESP-IP2). Experimental results show that the proposed method exhibits good accuracy for a diverse population with an estimation error of -0.07 ± 4.47 mmHg for SBP and 0.00 ± 3.61 mmHg for DBP. Moreover, the model tracked the BP of two subjects for half a month, laying the foundation work for daily BP monitoring. This work will contribute to the long-term wellness management and rehabilitation process, enabling timely detection and improvement of the user's physical health.

Role of oxidative stress in trichloroethylene-induced toxicity / 环境与职业医学

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a common industrial organic solvent and environmental contaminant. People are exposed to TCE through occupational contact or environmental pollution, which leads to serious human health hazards. A large number of studies have shown that oxidative stress plays an important role in the TCE-induced multi-target organ toxicity. However, the research of related signaling pathways remains to be deepened. In this review, we summarized the epidemiological, animal, and cellular studies correlated to liver toxicity, kidney toxicity, cardiac developmental toxicity, placental developmental toxicity, neurodevelopmental toxicity, and autoimmune response induced by TCE. In addition, the possible molecular mechanisms of oxidative stress in TCE-induced toxicity were concluded, including DNA damage, mitochondrial dysfunction, cell apoptosis, and abnormal activation of the immune system. Through literature review, we proposed that nuclear factor E2 related factor 2 may play an important role in mediating TCE-induced target organ toxicity, providing a theoretical basis for the prevention and treatment of adverse health effects caused by TCE.

Effects of Bushen Yiqi Huoxue Decoction in Treatment of Patients with Diminished Ovarian Reserve: A Randomized Controlled Trial / 中国结合医学杂志

OBJECTIVE@#To explore the therapeutic effect of Bushen Yiqi Huoxue Decoction BYHD) in patients with diminished ovarian reserve (DOR).@*METHODS@#A total of 180 patients with DOR diagnosed from December 2013 to December 2014 were equally assigned into progynova and duphaston (E+D) group, Zuogui Pill group and BYHD group with 60 cases in each by computerized randomization. Patients received E+D, Zuogui Pill or BYHD for 12 months, respectively. Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), estradiol (E2), anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), antral follicle count (AFC), ovarian volume, endometrial thickness, and the resistance indices (RIs) of ovarian arteries and uterine arteries were observed before and after treatment.@*RESULTS@#Nine women (4 from the E+D group, 3 from the Zuogui Pill group, and 2 from the BYHD group) withdrew from the study. After 6 months, Zuogui Pill and BYHD significantly decreased FSH and LH and increased endometrial thickness and AMH (all P<0.01). BYHD also resulted in E2 elevation (P<0.05), ovary enlargement (P<0.05), AFC increase (P<0.01), and RI of ovarian arteries decrease (P<0.05). After 12 months, further improvements were observed in the Zuogui Pill and BYHD groups (all P<0.01), but BYHD showed better outcomes, with lower FSH, larger ovaries and a thicker endometrium compared with the Zuogui Pill group (all P<0.01). However, E+D only significantly increased endometrial thickness (P<0.01) and no significant improvements were observed in the RI of uterine arteries in the three groups.@*CONCLUSIONS@#BYHD had a favorable therapeutic effect in patients with DOR by rebalancing hormone levels, promoting ovulation, and repairing the thin endometrium. The combination of tonifying Shen (Kidney), benefiting qi and activating blood circulation may be a promising therapeutic strategy for DOR.

Network Meta-analysis of oral blood-activating and stasis-removing Chinese patent medicines in treatment of hypertensive left ventricular hypertrophy / 中国中药杂志

This study was designed to assess the clinical efficacy of oral blood-activating and stasis-removing Chinese patent medicines in treating hypertensive left ventricular hypertrophy(LVH) based on network Meta-analysis. The clinical randomized controlled trials(RCTs) concerning the treatment of hypertensive LVH with oral blood-activating and stasis-removing Chinese patent medicines were retrieved from CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, SinoMed, PubMed, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library from their inception to September 2021. Two researchers independently completed the literature screening, data extraction, and quality evaluation. The data were then analyzed by RevMan 5.3, Stata 15.1, and ADDIS 1.16.8. Finally, a total of 31 RCTs were included, involving 3 001 patients and four oral blood-activating and stasis-removing Chinese patent medicines. In terms of the alleviation of heart damage, the Chinese patent medicines combined with conventional western medicine groups were superior to the conventional western medicine groups in lo-wering the left ventricular mass index(LVMI). There was no significant difference in LVMI, left ventricular ejection fraction(LVEF), or the ratio of early diastolic peak flow velocity to late diastolic peak flow velocity(E/A) between different Chinese patent medicines combined with conventional western medicine groups. Xinnao Shutong Capsules/Tablets combined with conventional western medicine had the best efficacy in reducing LVMI and elevating LVEF, while Xinkeshu Capsules/Tablets combined with conventional western medicine had the best effect in improving E/A. In the control of blood pressure, when all Chinese patent medicines except for Xinnao Shutong Capsules/Tablets were combined with conventional western medicine, the resulting systolic blood pressure(SBP) and diastolic blood pressure(DBP) were significantly lower than those in the conventional western medicine group. Xinkeshu Capsules/Tablets combined with conventional western medicine produced the best effect in reducing SBP and DBP, followed by Xinnao Shutong Capsules/Tablets. In terms of safety, no serious adverse reactions occurred in all trials. The four oral blood-activating and stasis-removing Chinese patent medicines included in this study exhibited obvious advantages in the treatment of hypertensive LVH when they were combined with conventional western medicine, with the best effects observed in the Xinnao Shutong Capsules/Tablets combined with conventional western medicine group. However, due to the limitation of the quantity and quality of the included articles, the conclusion of this study still needs to be verified by more high-quality, multi-center, and large-sample RCTs.

High-Precision Fabrication of Micro Monolithic Tungsten Ball Tips via Arc Discharge and the Taguchi Method.

A micro ball tip is a core component of high precision coordinate measuring machines. The present micro ball tips cannot satisfy the high-precision measuring requirements of high aspect ratio microstructures due to their large diameter and low accuracy. In the previous study, we fabricated a micro monolithic tungsten ball tip by using arc discharge and surface tension principles. However, the fabrication success rate of forming a micro ball tip is less than 10%. In the present study, the Taguchi method has been applied to increase the fabrication success rate, and it has increased to 57.5%. The output response is evaluated in terms of the diameter, roundness, and center offset of the tungsten probe ball tips. The smaller-the-better signal-to-noise ratio is applied to analyze the influence of various parameters. The proposed parameters can be used to increase the fabrication success rate and accuracy of the monolithic probe ball tip.

SiN x /Cu Spectral Beam Splitting Films for Hybrid Photovoltaic and Concentrating Solar Thermal Systems.

Spectral beam splitting (SBS) films are crucial for the development of hybrid systems based on photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar thermal (CST) technologies. In this study, a novel double-layer SiN x /Cu SBS film was prepared via magnetron sputtering. This film was developed based on the linear Fresnel solar thermal technology used in PV/CST hybrid systems. The as-deposited film exhibited superior SBS properties, with a high transmittance of 72.9% and a reflectance of 89.7%. To optimize the optical properties, the thicknesses of the metal and SiN x layers were precisely controlled. The optimal thicknesses of the Cu and SiN x layers were determined to be 17 and 67 nm, respectively. Furthermore, the thermal stability of the SBS film was evaluated. When annealed at 50 °C, the surface of the SBS film became more uniform and smooth, and with increasing annealing time, the film became denser. No strong diffraction peaks of Cu were observed in the X-ray diffraction patterns because of the low content and poor crystallization of Cu. Atomic force microscopy investigations revealed the formation of a textured surface and a decrease in the root-mean-square roughness with an increase in the annealing time from 0 to 360 h. As a key component with considerable application potential in PV/CST hybrid systems, SBS films are currently an important research topic.

Dentate granule cells encode auditory decisions after reinforcement learning in rats.

Auditory-cued goal-oriented behaviors requires the participation of cortical and subcortical brain areas, but how neural circuits associate sensory-based decisions with goal locations through learning remains poorly understood. The hippocampus is critical for spatial coding, suggesting its possible involvement in transforming sensory inputs to the goal-oriented decisions. Here, we developed an auditory discrimination task in which rats learned to navigate to goal locations based on the frequencies of auditory stimuli. Using in vivo calcium imaging in freely behaving rats over the course of learning, we found that dentate granule cells became more active, spatially tuned, and responsive to task-related variables as learning progressed. Furthermore, only after task learning, the activity of dentate granule cell ensembles represented the navigation path and predicts auditory decisions as early as when rats began to approach the goals. Finally, chemogenetic silencing of dentate gyrus suppressed task learning. Our results demonstrate that dentate granule cells gain task-relevant firing pattern through reinforcement learning and could be a potential link of sensory decisions to spatial navigation.

Efficacy-specific herbal group detection from traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions via hierarchical attentive neural network model.

BACKGROUND: Mining massive prescriptions in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) accumulated in the lengthy period of several thousand years to discover essential herbal groups for distinct efficacies is of significance for TCM modernization, thus starting to draw attentions recently. However, most existing methods for the task treat herbs with different surface forms orthogonally and determine efficacy-specific herbal groups based on the raw frequencies an herbal group occur in a collection of prescriptions. Such methods entirely overlook the fact that prescriptions in TCM are formed empirically by different people at different historical stages, and thus full of herbs with different surface forms expressing the same material, or even noisy and redundant herbs. METHODS: We propose a two-stage approach for efficacy-specific herbal group detection from prescriptions in TCM. For the first stage we devise a hierarchical attentive neural network model to capture essential herbs in a prescription for its efficacy, where herbs are encoded with dense real-valued vectors learned automatically to identify their differences on the semantical level. For the second stage, frequent patterns are mined to discover essential herbal groups for an efficacy from distilled prescriptions obtained in the first stage. RESULTS: We verify the effectiveness of our proposed approach from two aspects, the first one is the ability of the hierarchical attentive neural network model to distill a prescription, and the second one is the accuracy in discovering efficacy-specific herbal groups. CONCLUSION: The experimental results demonstrate that the hierarchical attentive neural network model is capable to capture herbs in a prescription essential to its efficacy, and the distilled prescriptions significantly could improve the performance of efficacy-specific herbal group detection.

High glucose causes apoptosis of rabbit corneal epithelial cells involving activation of PERK-eIF2α-CHOP-caspase-12 signaling pathway.

AIM: To investigate the effect of high concentration of glucose (HCG) on double stranded RNA-activated protein kinase-like ER kinase (PERK)-eukaryotic initiation factor-2α (eIF2α)-transcription factor C/EBP homologous protein (CHOP)-cysteine aspartate specific proteinase (caspase-12) signaling pathway activation and apoptosis in rabbit corneal epithelial cells (RCECs). METHODS: RCECs were treated by different concentrations of glucose for 0-48h. The expressions of PERK, p-PERK, eIF2α, p-eIF2α, 78 kDa glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78), CHOP, B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2), B-cell lymphoma-2-associated X protein (Bax) and caspase-12 were determined by Western blot. Apoptosis was detected by TUNEL assay. Meanwhile, the function of PERK-eIF2α-CHOP-caspase-12 signaling pathway activation in high glucose-induced apoptosis was evaluated using PERK inhibitor, GSK2606414. RESULTS: HCG significantly promoted the expression of p-PERK, p-eIF2α, GRP78, CHOP, Bax and cleaved caspase-12 in RCECs (P<0.05), while remarkably decreased the expression of Bcl-2 and caspase-12 (P<0.05), and the alterations caused by glucose were in concentration- and time-dependent manners. Meanwhile, PERK and eIF2α expressions were not affected in all groups (P>0.05). TUNEL assay showed that the apoptosis rate of RCECs in the HCG group increased significantly in contrast with that in the normal concentration of glucose or osmotic pressure control group (P<0.05), and the apoptosis rate increased with the increase of glucose concentration within limits (P<0.05). GSK2606414 down-regulated the expression of p-PERK and p-eIF2α in the HCG group (P<0.05), while still did not affect the expression of PERK and eIF2α among groups (P>0.05). Correspondingly, GSK2606414 also significantly reduced the apoptosis rate induced by high glucose (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: HCG activates PERK-eIF2α-CHOP-caspase-12 signaling pathway and promotes apoptosis of RCECs.

Cortical ensemble activity discriminates auditory attentional states.

Selective attention modulates sensory cortical activity. It remains unclear how auditory cortical activity represents stimuli that differ behaviorally. We designed a cross-modality task in which mice made decisions to obtain rewards based on attended visual or auditory stimuli. We recorded auditory cortical activity in behaving mice attending to, ignoring, or passively hearing auditory stimuli. Engaging in the task bidirectionally modulates neuronal responses to the auditory stimuli in both the attended and ignored conditions compared to passive hearing. Neuronal ensemble activity in response to stimuli under attended, ignored and passive conditions are readily distinguishable. Furthermore, ensemble activity under attended and ignored conditions are in closer states compared to passive condition, and they share a component of attentional modulation which drives them to the same direction in the population activity space. Our findings suggest that the ignored condition is very different from the passive condition, and the auditory cortical sensory processing under ignored, attended and passive conditions are modulated differently.

Upper Gastrointestinal Tract pH Monitoring in Rats with Chronic Sleep Deprivation and High Fat Diet / 听力学及言语疾病杂志

Objective To investigate the relationship of chronic sleep deprivation and high fat diet with laryn-gopharyngeal reflux (LPRD) .Methods A total of 16 rats were randomly divided into the experimental group and control group .Modified multiplatform water surface method and high fat diet (containing 35％ fat) were used in the experimental group rats .The rats in the control group had free sleep and normal feed .The upper gastrointestinal tract pH monitoring with double detectors was used to record the changes of pH in the both rats for 10 hours .The reflux index ,the times of re-flux with pH<4 and the longest duration of reflux were selected and converted into data of 24 hours .The three indexes of the experiment group were compared to those of the control group .Results There was no animal death during the model construction .The rats in the experimental group were irritable .There was no difference of rats weight in both groups before and after the experiment(P>0 .05) .The median of reflux index ,times of reflux with pH<4 and the longest duration of reflux of pharyngeal pH 2 detector in the rats of the experimental group were 21 .07 ,27 .25 and 61 .11 ,respectively .Those of the control group were 1 .25 ,0 .95 and 8 .44 ,respectively .Above three index of the experimental group increased obviously and the difference was statistically significant when compared to those of the control (P<0 .05) .It was suggested that LPRD might appear in the experimental group rats .The median of reflux index and the times of reflux with pH < 4 of esophageal pH1 detector in the rats of the experimental group were 15 .87 and 96 .67 ,displaying an increase when compared to those of the control group (26 .25 and 5 .6) .The differ-ences were statistically significant(P<0 .05);but the median of the longest duration of reflux in pH1 detector of the experimental group rats was 26 .25 ,failing to show statistical difference compared to that of the control group (5 .6) (P>0 .05) .Conclusion Chronic sleep deprivation and high fat diet may play an important role in the pathogenesis of LPRD .This animal model may be a new vector to study LPRD .

Survival outcomes of patients with lobular carcinoma in situ who underwent bilateral mastectomy or partial mastectomy.

AIM: To compare the survival outcomes between patients treated with bilateral mastectomy and partial mastectomy alone as the initial surgical management for primary lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS). PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients with histologically confirmed LCIS underwent partial mastectomy alone or bilateral mastectomy were identified by the SEER*Stat database (version 8.3.2) released in 2016. The primary outcome measure was all-cause mortality and the secondary outcome measure was breast cancer-specific mortality. RESULTS: Of the 5964 cases included in the analysis, 208 cases underwent bilateral mastectomy and 5756 cases underwent partial mastectomy alone. The 1-, 5- and 10-year estimated overall survival rates were 99.7%, 96.7% and 91.7%, respectively. Univariate and multivariate proportional hazards regression (Cox) analyses showed no significant difference between the risk of all-cause mortality in the bilateral mastectomy group compared with the partial mastectomy group (HR = 1.106, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.350-3.500, P = 0.86). In propensity score-matched model, bilateral mastectomy still did not show benefit to overall mortality (HR = 2.248, 95% CI 0.451-11.200). Patients older than 60 years of age showed a higher risk of all-cause mortality (HR = 7.593, 95% CI 5.357-10.764, P < 0.0001). No risk factors, including surgery type, were identified for breast cancer-specific survival. CONCLUSIONS: Survival outcomes of patients with LCIS who underwent partial mastectomy without radiotherapy were not inferior to patients who underwent bilateral prophylactic mastectomy. Breast cancer-specific mortality in patients with LCIS was extremely low; aggressive prophylactic surgery like bilateral prophylactic mastectomy should not be advocated for most patients with LCIS.

Overexpression of a Tartary Buckwheat Gene, FtbHLH3, Enhances Drought/Oxidative Stress Tolerance in Transgenic Arabidopsis.

bHLH (basic helix-loop-helix) transcription factors play important roles in the abiotic stress response in plants, but their characteristics and functions in tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum), a flavonoid-rich cereal crop with a strong stress tolerance, have not been fully investigated. Here, a novel bHLH gene, designated FtbHLH3, was isolated and characterized. Expression analysis in tartary buckwheat revealed that FtbHLH3 was mainly induced by polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG6000) and abscisic acid (ABA) treatments. Subcellular localization and a yeast one-hybrid assay indicated that FtbHLH3 has transcriptional activation activities. Overexpression of FtbHLH3 in Arabidopsis resulted in increased drought/oxidative tolerance, which was attributed to not only lower malondialdehyde (MDA), ion leakage (IL), and reactive oxygen species (ROS) but also higher proline (Pro) content, activities of antioxidant enzymes, and photosynthetic efficiency in transgenic lines compared to wild type (WT). Moreover, qRT-PCR analysis indicated that the expression of multiple stress-responsive genes in the transgenic lines was significantly higher than in WT under drought stress. In particular, the expression of AtNCED, a rate-limiting enzyme gene in ABA biosynthesis, was increased significantly under both normal and stress conditions. Additionally, an ABA-response-element (ABRE) was also found in the promoter regions. Furthermore, the transgenic Arabidopsis lines of the FtbHLH3 promoter had higher GUS activity after drought stress. In summary, our results indicated that FtbHLH3 may function as a positive regulator of drought/oxidative stress tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis through an ABA-dependent pathway.