Evaluation of Atopic Dermatitis and Cutaneous Infectious Disorders Using Sequential Pattern Mining: A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study.

According to previous studies, the increased risk of cutaneous infectious disorders in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) is related to impaired epidermal function, abnormal systemic immune function, and lower antimicrobial peptides. In this study, we analyzed the association between AD and cutaneous infectious disorders in the real world using sequential pattern mining (SPM). We analyzed National Health Insurance data from 2010-2013 using SPM to identify comorbid cutaneous infectious diseases and the onset durations of comorbidities. Patients with AD were at greater risk for molluscum contagiosum (adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 5.273), impetigo (aOR, 2.852), chickenpox (aOR, 2.251), otitis media (aOR, 1.748), eczema herpeticum (aOR, 1.292), and viral warts (aOR, 1.105). In SPM analysis, comorbidity of 1.06% shown in molluscum contagiosum was the highest value, and the duration of 77.42 days documented for molluscum contagiosum was the shortest onset duration among all the association rules. This study suggests that AD is associated with an increased risk of cutaneous infectious disorders. In particular, care should be taken regarding its high relevance with impetigo, molluscum contagiosum, and otitis media, which may help in preventing AD from worsening through appropriately preventing and managing the condition.

Clinical and Echocardiographic Factors Affecting Tricuspid Regurgitation Severity in the Patients with Lone Atrial Fibrillation.

BACKGROUND: Atrial fibrillation (AF) can be a risk factor for development of significant tricuspid regurgitation (TR). We investigated which clinical and echocardiographic parameters were related to severity of functional TR in patients with lone AF. METHODS: A total of 89 patients with lone AF were enrolled (75 ± 11 years; 48% male): 13 patients with severe TR, 36 patients with moderate TR, and 40 consecutive patients with less than mild TR. Clinical parameters and echocardiographic measurements including right ventricular (RV) remodeling and function were evaluated. RESULTS: Patients with more severe TR were older and had more frequently persistent AF (each p < 0.001). TR severity was related to right atrial area and tricuspid annular systolic diameter (all p < 0.001). The patients with moderate or severe TR had larger left atrial (LA) volume and increased systolic pulmonary artery pressure (SPAP) than the patients with mild TR (p = 0.04 for LA volume; p < 0.001 for SPAP). RV remodeling represented by enlarged RV area and increased tenting height was more prominent in severe TR than mild or moderate TR (all p < 0.001). Multivariate analysis showed type of AF, LA volume, tricuspid annular diameter and tenting height remained as a significant determinants of severe TR. In addition, tenting height was independently associated with the presence of severe TR (p = 0.04). CONCLUSION: In patients with lone AF, TR was related to type of AF, LA volume, tricuspid annular diameter and RV remodeling. Especially, tricuspid valvular tethering seemed to be independently associated with development of severe functional TR.

Generation of nanovesicles with sliced cellular membrane fragments for exogenous material delivery.

We propose a microfluidic system that generates nanovesicles (NVs) by slicing living cell membrane with microfabricated 500 nm-thick silicon nitride (SixNy) blades. Living cells were sliced by the blades while flowing through microchannels lined with the blades. Plasma membrane fragments sliced from the cells self-assembled into spherical NVs of ~100-300 nm in diameter. During self-assembly, the plasma membrane fragments enveloped exogenous materials (here, polystyrene latex beads) from the buffer solution. About 30% of beads were encapsulated in NVs, and the generated NVs delivered the encapsulated beads across the plasma membrane of recipient cells, but bare beads could not penetrate the plasma membrane of recipient cells. This result implicates that the NVs generated using the method in this study can encapsulate and deliver exogenous materials to recipient cells, whereas exosomes secreted by cells can deliver only endogenous cellular materials.

Nanovesicles engineered from ES cells for enhanced cell proliferation.

Extracellular vesicles (Exosomes and microvesicles) have drawn wide attentions in both diagnostic and therapeutic applications, since they are considered to shuttle biological signals intercellularly. However, further research on exosomes is limited by their rarity and heterogeneity even after lengthy isolation processes. In particular, these limitations are challenging in therapeutic applications. To meet these demands, cell-derived nanovesicles that mimic exosomes were generated by extruding living embryonic stem cells through micro-filters. These nanovesicles have an enclosed lipid bilayer and contain cellular contents. The present study investigated the ability of these nanovesicles to improve proliferation by treating primary murine skin fibroblasts with the nanovesicles. The treated skin fibroblasts showed higher expression levels of mRNA, VEGF-α, protein levels of TGF-ß collagen I, PCNA, and Ki-67, as well as enhanced cell proliferation rate and number, compared to non-treated cells. The results indicate that treatment with the nanovesicles could potentially contribute to recovery or wound healing process of tissues.

Critical coupling in dissipative surface-plasmon resonators with multiple ports.

We theoretically investigate resonant absorption in a multiple-port surface-plasmon polaritons (SPP) resonator near the condition of critical coupling at which internal loss is comparable to radiation coupling. We show that total absorption is obtainable in a multiple-port system by properly configuring multiple coherent lightwaves at the condition of critical coupling. We further derive analytic expressions for the partial absorbance at each port, the total absorbance, and their sum rule, which provide a non-perturbing method to probe coupling characteristics of highly localized optical modes. Rigorous simulation results modeling a surface-plasmon resonance grating in the multiple-order diffraction regime show excellent agreements with the analytic expressions.

Extraction efficiency of highly confined surface plasmon-polaritons to far-field radiation: an upper limit.

We propose a unique method determining an upper limit of extraction efficiency of the surface plasmon-polaritons (SPPs), E(SP), which are highly confined on a corrugated metal surface. The method is based on measurement of the spectral bandwidth of a grating-induced absorption spectrum as a function of metal dielectric constant. After finding the fact that E(SP) exhibits an extremely linear relationship with the collision frequency Gamma of metal over a SPP band below the surface plasmon frequency, an upper limit of E(SP) can be determined by an asymptotic estimation as Gamma-->0 for total decay rates of the confined SPPs. Our method based on the bandwidth measurement is inherently free from the ambiguity and underestimation difficulties pertaining to the previous prism-coupling approaches for E(SP) estimation. It will also be quite applicable for evaluating SPP-mediated light-emitting diodes (LEDs) of which total external efficiency is dominantly restricted by the upper limit of E(SP). Especially for the case when SPP excitation probability approaches unity, the proposed method would excellently figure out the maximum realizable external efficiency of SPP-mediated LEDs.

Flat-top surface plasmon-polariton modes guided by double-electrode structures.

We characterize the frequency dependence of symmetrically-coupled long-range surface plasmon-polaritons (sc-LRSPPs) excited on double-electrode slab waveguides composed of five layers of insulator(I) and metal(M) stacked in order of IMIMI. When the core insulator has a refractive-index larger than the cladding ones, there is no cut-off core-thickness(D) for sc-LRSPP modes in all frequency range likely for modes in a conventional dielectric slab waveguide. At a specific frequency of ωc which depends on the index difference of insulator layers and the thickness of metal, the sc-LRSPP modes are non-dispersive at all for change in D. Furthermore, regardless of D alteration, the modes at ω = ω(c) consistently maintain a perfect flat-top profile in the core region and identical decay tails in the cladding. The sc-LRSPP modes with these prominent characteristics may excite an active medium sandwiched in between the metal layers very uniformly, therefore it will be interesting to implement such a non-dispersive flat-top mode for nonlinear applications of SPP waveguides.

Backpropagating modes of surface polaritons on a cross-negative interface.

We show that backpropagating modes of surface polaritons can exist at the interface between two semi-infinite cross-negative media, one with negative permittivity (epsilon less than 0) and the other with negative permeability (micro less than 0). These single-interface modes that propagate along the surface of a cross-negative interface are physically of interest, since the single-negative requirements imposed on the material parameters can easily be achieved at terahertz and potentially optical frequencies by scaling the dimension of artificially structured planar materials. Conditions for material parameters that support a backpropagating mode of the surface polaritons are obtained by considering dispersion relation and energy flow density transported by surface polaritons and confirmed numerically by simulation of surface polariton propagation resonantly excited at a cross-negative interface by attenuated total reflection.