Risk factors for poor outcomes in patients with acute lower leg compartment syndrome: a retrospective study of 103 cases.

PURPOSE: The primary aim of this study was to investigate the risk factors associated with poor outcomes following acute compartment syndrome (ACS) of lower leg. The secondary objective was to determine if delayed fasciotomy is linked to poor outcomes. METHODS: In this retrospective case control study approved by the institutional review board, we identified 103 patients with ACS of the lower leg. Poor outcome was defined as a composite variable that included limb amputation, neurological deficit and contracture. Among these, 44 patients exhibited poor outcome while 59 patients demonstrated a good outcome. Patient-related factors, laboratory values, and treatment-related factors were analyzed using electronic medical records. Univariate statistical and logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine significance. RESULTS: Bivariate analyses showed that the mechanism of injury (P = 0.021), open injury (P = 0.001), arterial injury (P<0.001), hemoglobin levels (HB) (P < 0.001), white blood cell count (WBC) (P = 0.008), albumin levels (ALB) (P<0.001), creatine kinase levels (CK) at presentation (P = 0.015), CK at peak (P<0.001), creatine kinase levels (Ca) (P = 0.004), dehydrating agent (P = 0.036), and debridement (P = 0.005) were found to be associated with the risk of poor outcomes. Logistic regression analyses revealed that arterial injury [ P< 0.001, OR = 66.172, 95% CI (10.536, 415.611)] was an independent risk factor for poor outcomes. However, HB [P = 0.005, OR = 0.934, 95% CI (0.891, 0.979)] was a protective factor against poor outcomes. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed that the cut-off values of HB to prevent poor outcome following ACS was 102.45 g/L. CONCLUSIONS: ACS of the lower leg is a serious complication often associated with a poor prognosis. Patients with arterial injury or lower HB have a significantly increased risk of having poor outcomes. Poor outcomes were not found to be associated with the timing of fasciotomy in this study.

Chelerythrine induces apoptosis and ferroptosis through Nrf2 in ovarian cancer cells.

Ovarian cancer is a prevalent malignancy in the female reproductive system, representing a significantly fatal and incurable tumor. Chelerythrine (CHE), a natural benzopyridine alkaloid, has demonstrated a broad spectrum of anticancer activities. Nevertheless, the ovarian cancer inhibitory impact of CHE remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the cytotoxic mechanism and potential targets of CHE on in vitro cultures of A2780 and SKOV3 cells derived from ovarian cancer. Additionally, in vivo experiments were conducted to confirm the suppressive impact of CHE on tumor growth in nude mice. The findings revealed that CHE impeded the growth of A2780 and SKOV3 cells in a concentration-time-dependent manner and significantly suppressed the development of tumors in nude mice. CHE elevated the level of oxidative stress in tumor cells, prompted cell cycle halt in the S phase, and increased their mitochondrial membrane potential. Western blotting results demonstrated that CHE could modulate the expression of proteins associated with apoptotic and ferroptosis processes in A2780 and SKOV3 cells. Nrf2 was verified to be an upstream key target mediating the inhibitory impact of CHE on ovarian cancer cells. In summary, CHE exerts its anti-cancer effects on ovarian cancer by modulating Nrf2, inhibiting cellular proliferation, and promoting apoptosis and ferroptosis.

Structure-Guided Image Completion with Image-level and Object-level Semantic Discriminators.

Structure-guided image completion aims to inpaint a local region of an image according to an input guidance map from users. While such a task enables many practical applications for interactive editing, existing methods often struggle to hallucinate realistic object instances in complex natural scenes. Such a limitation is partially due to the lack of semantic-level constraints inside the hole region as well as the lack of a mechanism to enforce realistic object generation. In this work, we propose a learning paradigm that consists of semantic discriminators and object-level discriminators for improving the generation of complex semantics and objects. Specifically, the semantic discriminators leverage pretrained visual features to improve the realism of the generated visual concepts. Moreover, the object-level discriminators take aligned instances as inputs to enforce the realism of individual objects. Our proposed scheme significantly improves the generation quality and achieves state-of-the-art results on various tasks, including segmentation-guided completion, edge-guided manipulation and panoptically-guided manipulation on Places2 datasets. Furthermore, our trained model is flexible and can support multiple editing use cases, such as object insertion, replacement, removal and standard inpainting. In particular, our trained model combined with a novel automatic image completion pipeline achieves state-of-the-art results on the standard inpainting task.

Hazel Leaf Polyphenol Extract Alleviated Cisplatin-Induced Acute Kidney Injury by Reducing Ferroptosis through Inhibiting Hippo Signaling.

Derived from hazelnuts, hazel leaf has been utilized in traditional folk medicine for centuries in countries such as Portugal, Sweden, and Iran. In our previous investigations, we conducted a preliminary assessment of the hazel leaf polyphenol extract (referred to as ZP) and identified nine compounds, such as kaempferol and chlorogenic acid, in its composition. ZP has shown promising properties as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent. Our research has revealed that ZP has protective effects against cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI). We conducted a comprehensive examination of both the pathological and ultrastructural aspects and found that ZP effectively ameliorated renal tissue lesions and mitigated mitochondrial damage. Moreover, ZP significantly suppressed malondialdehyde levels while increasing glutathione and catalase concentrations in the kidneys of AKI-induced mice. ZP decreased the number of apoptotic cells and decreased pro-apoptotic protein expression in the kidneys of mice and human renal tubular epithelial cells (HK-2). Furthermore, treatment with ZP increased the levels of proteins marking anti-ferroptosis, such as GPX4, FTH1, and FSP1, in experiments both in vivo and in vitro. We elucidated the underlying mechanisms of ZP's actions, revealing its inhibitory effect on Yap phosphorylation and its regulation of Lats expression, which exert a protective influence on the kidneys. Furthermore, we found that inhibiting the Hippo pathway compromised ZP's nephroprotective effects in both in vitro and in vivo studies. In summary, this research shows that ZP exhibits renoprotective properties, effectively reducing oxidative damage, apoptosis, and ferroptosis in the kidneys by targeting the Hippo pathway.

Attention affects the perception of self-motion direction from optic flow.

Many studies have demonstrated that attention affects the perception of many visual features. However, previous studies show conflicting results regarding the effect of attention on the perception of self-motion direction (i.e., heading) from optic flow. To address this question, we conducted three behavioral experiments and found that estimation accuracies of large headings (>14°) decreased with attention load, discrimination thresholds of these headings increased with attention load, and heading estimates were systematically compressed toward the focus of attention. Therefore, the current study demonstrated that attention affected heading perception from optic flow, showing that the perception is both information-driven and cognitive.

Genomic characters of Anaplasma bovis and genetic diversity in China.

The emergence of Anaplasma bovis or A. bovis-like infection in humans from China and the United States of America has raised concern about the public health importance of this pathogen. Although A. bovis has been detected in a wide range of ticks and mammals in the world, no genome of the pathogen is available up to now, which has prohibited us from better understanding the genetic basis for its pathogenicity. Here we describe an A. bovis genome from metagenomic sequencing of an infected goat in China. Anaplasma bovis had the smallest genome of the genus Anaplasma, and relatively lower GC content. Phylogenetic analysis of single-copy orthologue sequence showed that A. bovis was closely related to A. platys and A. phagocytophilum, but relatively far from intraerythrocytic Anaplasma species. Anaplasma bovis had 116 unique orthogroups and lacked 51 orthogroups in comparison to other Anaplasma species. The virulence factors of A. bovis were significantly less than those of A. phagocytophilum, suggesting less pathogenicity of A. bovis. When tested by specific PCR assays, A. bovis was detected in 23 of 29 goats, with an infection rate up to 79.3% (95% CI: 64.6% ∼94.1%). The phylogenetic analyses based on partial 16S rRNA, gltA and groEL genes indicated that A. bovis had high genetic diversity. The findings of this study lay a foundation for further understanding of the biological characteristics and genetic diversity of A. bovis, and will facilitate the formulation of prevention and control strategies.

Ginsenoside - a promising natural active ingredient with steroidal hormone activity.

Ginsenosides are a class of natural products with hormone-like activity of triterpenoid saponins and have a variety of pharmacological activities such as anti-aging, immune regulation and cognitive improvement. With the great research interest in alternative medicine and natural products, they are gradually becoming research hotspots. Ginsenosides have a four-ring rigid steroid backbone similar to steroid hormones, and a series of experimental studies have shown that they can exhibit hormone-like activity by binding to nuclear receptors or affecting hormone levels, thereby affecting a wide range of inflammatory conditions, cancers, and menopause-related diseases. This review summarizes the mechanisms and potential health effects of ginsenosides exhibiting estrogen-like, glucocorticoid-like and androgen-like activities, providing an important reference for the exploration of safe phytohormone replacement therapy.

Attention influences the effects of the previous form orientation on the current motion direction estimation.

Recent studies have found that the estimates of motion directions are biased toward the previous form orientations, showing serial dependence, and the serial dependence does not involve cognitive abilities. In the current study, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether and how attention-a cognitive ability-affected the serial dependence. The results showed that serial dependence was present in the current study, reproducing the previous findings. Importantly, when the attentional load reduced the reliability (i.e., estimation accuracy and precision) of previous form orientations (Experiment 1), the serial dependence decreased, meaning that the biases of motion direction estimates toward previous form orientations were reduced; in contrast, when the attentional load reduced the reliability of current motion directions (Experiment 2), the serial dependence increased, meaning that the biases of motion direction estimates toward previous form orientations were increased. These trends were well consistent with the prediction of the Bayesian inference theory. Therefore, the current study revealed the involvement of attention in the serial dependence of current motion direction estimation on the previous form orientation, demonstrating that the serial dependence was cognitive and the attentional effect can be a Bayesian inference process, initially revealing its computational mechanism.

An endoplasmic reticulum stress-related signature featuring ASNS for predicting prognosis and immune landscape in prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer (PRAD) is one of the common malignant tumors of the urinary system. In order to predict the treatment results for PRAD patients, this study proposes to develop a risk profile based on endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS). Based on the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) cohort and the Gene Expression Omnibus database (GSE70769), we verified the predictive signature. Using a random survival forest analysis, prognostically significant ERS-related genes were found. An ERS-related risk score (ERscore) was created using multivariable Cox analysis. In addition, the biological functions, genetic mutations and immune landscape related to ERscore are also studied to reveal the underlying mechanisms related to ERS in PRAD. We further explored the ERscore-related mechanisms by profiling a single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) dataset (GSE137829) and explored the oncogenic role of ASNS in PRAD through in vitro experiments. The risk signature composed of eight ERS-related genes constructed in this study is an independent prognostic factor and validated in the MSKCC and GSE70769 data sets. The scRNA-seq data additionally revealed that several carcinogenic pathways were noticeably overactivated in the group with high ERS scores. As one of the prognostic genes, ASNS will significantly inhibit the proliferation, migration and invasion abilities of PRAD cells after its expression is interfered with. In conclusion, this study developed a novel risk-specific ERS-based clinical treatment strategy for patients with PRAD.

Development of a Silicone Rubber Mold with an Innovative Waterfall Cooling Channel.

A conformal cooling channel (CCC) follows the mold core or cavity profile to carry out uniform cooling in the cooling stage. However, the significant pressure drop along the cooling channels is a distinct disadvantage of the CCC. In this study, an innovative waterfall cooling channel (WCC) was proposed and implemented. The WCC cools the injected products via surface contact, replacing the conventional line contact to cool the injected products. The WCC was optimized using numerical simulation software. Silicone rubber molds with two kinds of cooling channels were designed and implemented. The cooling time of the molded part was evaluated using a low-pressure wax injection molding machine. The experimental results of the cooling time of the molded part were compared with the simulation results from numerical simulation software. The results showed that the optimal mesh element count was about 1,550,000 with a mesh size of 1 mm. The simulation software predicted the filling time of the water cup injection-molded product to be approximately 2.008 s. The cooling efficiency for a silicone rubber mold with a WCC is better than that of the silicone rubber mold with a CCC since the core and cavity cooling efficiency is close to 50%. The pressure drop of the WCC is smaller than that of the CCC, which reduces the pressure drop by about 56%. Taking a water cup with a mouth diameter of 70 mm, a height of 60 mm, and a thickness of 2 mm as an example, the experimental results confirmed that the use of the WCC can save the cooling time of the product by about 265 s compared with the CCC. This shows how a WCC can increase cooling efficiency by approximately 17.47%.

Analysis of Polyphenol Extract from Hazel Leaf and Ameliorative Efficacy and Mechanism against Hyperuricemia Zebrafish Model via Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking.

Hazel leaf, a by-product of hazelnuts, is commonly used in traditional folk medicine in Portugal, Sweden, Iran and other regions for properties such as vascular protection, anti-bleeding, anti-edema, anti-infection, and pain relief. Based on our previous studies, the polyphenol extract from hazel leaf was identified and quantified via HPLC fingerprint. The contents of nine compounds including kaempferol, chlorogenic acid, myricetin, caffeic acid, p-coumaric acid, resveratrol, luteolin, gallic acid and ellagic acid in hazel leaf polyphenol extract (ZP) were preliminary calculated, among which kaempferol was the highest with 221.99 mg/g, followed by chlorogenic acid with 8.23 mg/g. The inhibition of ZP on α-glucosidase and xanthine oxidase activities was determined via the chemical method, and the inhibition on xanthine oxidase was better. Then, the effect of ZP on hyperuricemia zebrafish was investigated. It was found that ZP obviously reduced the levels of uric acid, xanthine oxidase, urea nitrogen and creatinine, and up-regulated the expression ofOAT1 and HPRT genes in hyperuricemia zebrafish. Finally, the targeted network pharmacological analysis and molecular docking of nine polyphenol compounds were performed to search for relevant mechanisms for alleviating hyperuricemia. These results will provide a valuable basis for the development and application of hazel leaf polyphenols as functional ingredients.

Effect mechanism of metal cations on the interface interaction of cell-collector-bubble for microalgal foam flotation.

Foam flotation is generally recognized as a low-cost and efficient technology for the harvesting of microalgae for food, feed and fuel production, as well as environmental remediation. However, the harvesting efficiency of microalgae using foam flotation is restricted by the residual metal cations in the medium, and the corresponding inhibition mechanism has not yet been revealed. This study investigated the effects of metal cations in the medium on the harvesting efficiency and concentration factor during the foam flotation of Scenedesmus acuminatus. The interface interaction of cell-collector-bubble effected by metal cations was revealed by quantifying the amount of collector (cetyl trimethylammonium bromide, CTAB) between cells and bubbles, as well as the response of bubble interface characteristics. Results showed that the harvesting efficiency dropped linearly as the increase of cationic concentrations. Under the CTAB dose of 20 mg L-1, the harvesting efficiency decreased from 98.65% to 56.77% with a decrease of concentration factor from 25.41 to 9.05 in the presence of metal cations. The Na+ and Mg2+ in the medium were the major inhibitors. The inhibitory mechanisms revealed that metal cations obviously impeded the adsorption of CTAB onto the cells by competing adsorption site, resulting in a low harvesting efficiency. The presence of metal cations also inhibited the bubble coalescence and slowed down drainage velocity in the plateau channel of foam layer, forming foam with higher water content, thus reducing the concentration factor. A schematic illustration is proposed to better understand the effect mechanism of metal cations on microalgal foam flotation. This study might facilitate the process development in an effort to overcome the inhibition of cations during microalgal foam flotation.

Well-known polypeptides of deer antler velvet with key actives: modern pharmacological advances.

Deer antler velvet, with kidney tonifying, promoting the production of essence and blood, strengthening tendons and bones, not only has a thousand-year medicinal history but also its modern pharmacology mainly focuses on its active polypeptides on motor, nerve, and immune systems. The purpose of this report is to fill the gap in the comprehensive, systematic, and detailed review of polypeptides during the recent 30 years (1992-2023). The research method was to review 53 pharmacological articles from the Public Medicine, Web of science, ACS, and Science Direct database sources by searching the keywords "pilose antler," "deer velvet," "Pilose Antler Peptide (PAP) and Velvet Antler Polypeptide (VAP)." The results showed that deer antler polypeptides (DAPs), by regulating EGF, EGFR, MAPK, P38, ERK, NF-κB, Wnt, PI3K, Akt, MMP, AMPK, Stir1, NLRP3, HO-1, Nrf, Rho, TLR, TGF-ß, Smad, Ang II, etc., revealed their effects on seven system-related diseases and their mechanisms, including osteoarthritis, intervertebral disc degeneration, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, triple-negative breast cancer, liver injury, liver fibrosis, cardiovascular disease, acute lung injury, and late-onset hypogonadism. In conclusion, DAPs have good effects on motor and other system-related diseases, but the secondary and tertiary structures of DAPs (0.5-1800 KDa) need to be further elucidated, and the structure-activity relationship study is still unavailable and needs to be covered. It is expected that this review may provide the necessary literature support for further research. The activities and mechanisms of polypeptides from the past 30 years (1992-2023) are summarized covering seven systems, related diseases, and its regulatory genes and proteins.

Effects of hazelnut soluble dietary fiber on lipid-lowering and gut microbiota in high-fat-diet-fed rats.

Hazelnut is one of the most popular nuts in the world, rich in nutrients and various active substances. In this study, soluble dietary fiber (SDF) was extracted from hazelnut kernels, and its physicochemical properties and absorbability were explored. Hazelnut-SDF exhibited ideal water-holding, oil-holding and swelling capacity, and glucose, cholesterol and cholate absorbing ability. Scanning electron microscopy and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy showed that hazelnut-SDF had typical polysaccharide structure of functional groups. The main monosaccharides were identified as arabinose, rhamnose, xylose, ribose, glucuronic acid, mannose and glucose by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. In high-fat diet rats, hazelnut-SDF could improve serum lipid parameters, inhibit lipid accumulation in liver and adipocytes, and regulate the expression level of liver lipid synthesis-related genes. It also could adjust intestinal short chain fatty acids, promote the composition and structure of intestinal microbiota, and significantly balance the abundance of Alloprevotella, Fusicatenibacter, Lactobacillus, Roseburia, Ruminococcaceae_UCG-005, Ruminococcaceae_UCG-014 and Clostridiales. The results concluded that oral administration of hazelnut-SDF could alleviate hyperlipidemia and obesity, and might serve as a potential functional food ingredient.

Chemical substances and their activities in sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus: A review.

Apostichopus japonicus, also known as Stichopus japonicus, with medicinal and food homologous figures, is a globally recognized precious ingredient with extremely high nutritional value. There is no relevant review available through literature search, so this article selects the research articles through the keywords "sea cucumber" and "Apostichopus japonicus (Stichopus japonicus)" in six professional databases, such as Wiley, PubMed, ScienceDirect, ACS, Springer, and Web of Science, from 2000 to the present, summarizing the extraction, isolation, and purification methods for the four major categories (polysaccharides, proteins and peptides, saponins, and other components) of the A. japonicus chemical substances and 10 effective biological activities of A. japonicus. Included are anticoagulation, anticancer/antitumor activities, hematopoiesis, regulation of gut microbiota, and immune regulatory activities that correspond to traditional efficacy. Literature support is provided for the development of medicines and functional foods and related aspects that play a leading role in future directions.

Populational pan-ethnic screening panel enabled by deep whole genome sequencing.

Birth defect is a global threat to the public health systems. Mitigating neonatal anomalies is hampered by elusive molecular mechanisms of pathogenic mutations and poor subsequent translation into preventative measures. Applying appropriate strategies in China to promote reproductive health is particularly challenging, as the Chinese population compromises complex genomic diversity due to the inclusion of many ethnic groups with distinct genetic backgrounds. To investigate and evaluate the feasibility of implementing a pan-ethnic screening strategy, and guide future reproductive counselling, high-quality variants associated with autosome recessive (AR) diseases derived from the largest publicly available cohort of the Chinese population were re-analysed using a bottom-up approach. The analyses of gene carrier rates (GCRs) across distinct ethnic groups revealed that substantial heterogeneity existed potentially due to diverse evolutionary selection. The sampling population, sequencing coverage and underlying population structure contributed to the differential variants observed between ChinaMAP and the East Asian group in gnomAD. Beyond characteristics of GCR, potential druggable targets were additionally explored according to genomic features and functional roles of investigated genes, demonstrating that phase separation could be a therapeutic target for autosomal recessive diseases. A further examination of estimated GCR across ethnic groups indicated that most genes shared by at least two populations could be utilised to direct the design of a pan-ethnic screening application once sequencing and interpreting costs become negligible. To this end, a list of autosomal recessive disease genes is proposed based on the prioritised rank of GCR to formulate a tiered screening strategy.

Serial dependence bias can predict the overall estimation error in visual perception.

Although visual feature estimations are accurate and precise, overall estimation errors (i.e., the difference between estimates and actual values) tend to show systematic patterns. For example, estimates of orientations are systematically biased away from horizontal and vertical orientations, showing an oblique illusion. Additionally, many recent studies have demonstrated that estimations of current visual features are systematically biased toward previously seen features, showing a serial dependence. However, no study examined whether the overall estimation errors were correlated with the serial dependence bias. To address this question, we enrolled three groups of participants to estimate orientation, motion speed, and point-light-walker direction. The results showed that the serial dependence bias explained over 20% of overall estimation errors in the three tasks, indicating that we could use the serial dependence bias to predict the overall estimation errors. The current study first demonstrated that the serial dependence bias was not independent from the overall estimation errors. This finding could inspire researchers to investigate the neural bases underlying the visual feature estimation and serial dependence.

Aligned grains and scattered light found in gaps of planet-forming disk.

Polarized (sub)millimetre emission from dust grains in circumstellar disks was initially thought to be because of grains aligned with the magnetic field1,2. However, higher-resolution multi-wavelength observations3-5 and improved models6-10 found that this polarization is dominated by self-scattering at shorter wavelengths (for example, 870 µm) and by grains aligned with something other than magnetic fields at longer wavelengths (for example, 3 mm). Nevertheless, the polarization signal is expected to depend on the underlying substructure11-13, and observations until now have been unable to resolve polarization in multiple rings and gaps. HL Tau, a protoplanetary disk located 147.3 ± 0.5 pc away14, is the brightest class I or class II disk at millimetre-submillimetre wavelengths. Here we show deep, high-resolution polarization observations of HL Tau at 870 µm, resolving polarization in both the rings and the gaps. We find that the gaps have polarization angles with a notable azimuthal component and a higher polarization fraction than the rings. Our models show that the disk polarization is due to both scattering and emission from the aligned effectively prolate grains. The intrinsic polarization of aligned dust grains is probably more than 10%, which is much higher than that expected in low-resolution observations (about 1%). Asymmetries and dust features that are not seen in non-polarimetric observations are seen in the polarization observations.

Epidemiological and phylogenetic characteristics of emerging Anaplasma capra: A systematic review with modeling analysis.

Anaplasma capra, an emerging tick-borne pathogen, has caused a lot of concern since initially recognized in goats and patients in China in 2015, and has been reported in a wide range of domestic and wild animals as well as ticks worldwide, posing a threat to public health. In this systematic review, we established a comprehensive database to acquire the distribution and prevalence status of this pathogen, and collected all sequences of A. capra to summarize the details of genetic diversity by phylogenetic analysis. We also predicted the possible global distribution of A. capra by using ecological niche model. A. capra has been known to distribute in 18 countries across Asia, Europe and Africa. A total of 19 species of mammals from seven families have been reported as hosts, and domestic ruminants including goats, sheep and cattle were the major hosts. At least 8 tick species of 4 genera have been reported to carry A. capra, and Haemaphysalis longicornis was most commonly infected. Sheep and Rhipicephalus microplus had the highest positive rates among animals and ticks. Phylogenetic analysis based on gltA and groEL genes revealed that A. capra could primarily be divided into two clusters related to geographic location and animal hosts. The predictive model showed that the most suitable habitats for presence of A. capra were mainly located in Asia and eastern Europe. These cumulative data regarding A. capra of our study lay a foundation for the subsequent exploration of this emerging tick-borne pathogen.