Erdheim­Chester disease of multisystem involvement with delayed diagnosis: A case report and literature review.

Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD) is a rare tumor of histiocytic origin, characterized by foamy or lipid-laden histiocytes mixed or surrounded by fibrosis that infiltrate multiple organs. Misdiagnosis is common due to the diversity of clinical presentations. The present study reported a case of ECD with the involvements of bone, cardiac, aorta and retroperitoneum. The patient had no obvious clinical symptoms and no noteworthy foamy histiocytes or Touton giant cells were found on pathological examination, delaying the diagnosis. The patient was a young male found to have pericardial effusion on physical examination, and computed tomography (CT) revealed soft tissue infiltrates in the retroperitoneum and around the aorta. A mediastinal biopsy revealed fibrous connective tissue with small-vessel hyperplasia and acute-chronic inflammatory cell infiltration. The initial diagnosis was retroperitoneal fibrosis (RPF), and hormonal and tamoxifen treatments were administered. The patient presented with oliguria, eyelid edema and fever four years later. A repeat CT revealed an increase in the extent of tissue infiltration and pericardial effusion compared with the previous CT. Subsequent cardiac magnetic resonance imaging revealed massive thickening in the form of fibrotic tissue infiltrating the heart and surrounding thoracic and abdominal aorta. Single photon emission CT revealed multiple areas of increased bone metabolism, particularly symmetrical involvement of the long bones of both lower extremities. A biopsy of the perirenal tissue revealed fibrous tissue and a small number of lymphocytes and macrophages [typical foamy histiocytes observed via x200 magnification and hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining, no presence of xanthogranuloma or Touton giant cells]. After a comprehensive evaluation and ruling out other diseases, the diagnosis of ECD was determined. The prognosis of this disease is poor; early diagnosis is critical and requires accurate judgment by clinicians. Biopsies of all involved sites and refinement of genetic tests to guide treatment, if possible, are both necessary.

The role of multi-layer spiral CT based perfusion imaging in lung cancer radiotherapy assessment in athletic patients

Background and purpose: Lung cancer is one of the chief causes for escalating mortality among female athletes. Oxidative stress in a cell is evident due to surplus production of oxidants because of the hysterical functioning of the system that regulates them. One such secondary product produced due to oxidative stress is malondialdehyde (MDA), a product of lipid peroxidation. To quench the effect of oxidants, an antioxidant system in the cell has a significant role. The imbalance between these two creates oxidative stress.Methods: The present study focused on assessing the oxidative stress ratio and evaluating the levels of malondialdehyde and total antioxidant status (TAS) in breast cancer patients and healthy controls. Blood samples from breast cancer patients and age-matched controls (n= 30 each. MDA and TAS were estimated by pursuing Thiobarbituric Acid Reactive Substance (TBARS) Assay and Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP) Assay respectively.Results: The level of MDA in athletic patients was significantly higher (172.7 ± 81.4 nM/mL) than that of controls (77.9 ± 49.5 nM/mL) (p=0.009), whereas the level of TAS in the athletic patients (2551 ± 1298µM/L) was significantly lower to that of the controls (3631 ± 1123µM/L) (P=0.001). In addition, MDA and TAS levels correlated with respect to chemotherapy cycles in patients. Athletic Patients undertaking the final stage of chemotherapy treatment had shown reduced oxidative stress than the athletic patients in initial stage of chemotherapy, presenting a promising recovery pattern.Conclusion: The oxidative stress was evident in athletic patients but the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs. Foods rich in antioxidants could elevate the health and morale of the athletic patients. (AU)

Observational studies: Ambient air pollution and hospitalization for RA-ILD in a heavily polluted city in China.

ABSTRACT: Little is known within the medical community about the impact of air pollution on hospital admissions due to rheumatoid arthritis associated with interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD). Our research aimed to explore whether there is a correlation and to estimate how the association was distributed across various lags in Jinan, China.The relationships between ambient air pollutant concentrations, including PM2.5, PM10, sulfur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and monthly hospitalizations for RA-ILD were studied by employing a general linear model with a Poisson distribution. This time-series study was performed from January 1st, 2015 to December 31st, 2019.In the 5-year study, there were 221 hospitalizations for RA-ILD in Jinan city. The levels of PM2.5, PM10, SO2, and NO2 were significantly related to the number of admissions for RA-ILD. PM2.5, PM10, and SO2 showed the most significant effect on the month (lag 0), and NO2 was most related to RA-ILD at a lag of two months (lag 2). The monthly admissions of RA-ILD increased by 0.875% (95% CI: 0.375-1.377%), 0.548% (95% CI: 0.148-0.949%), 1.968% (95% CI: 0.869-3.080%), and 1.534% (95% CI: 0.305-2.778%) for each 10 µg/m3 increase in PM2.5, PM10, SO2 and NO2, respectively.This study might add more detailed evidence that higher levels of PM2.5, PM10, SO2 and NO2 increase the risk of hospitalizations for RA-ILD. Further study of the role of air pollution in the pathogenesis of RA-ILD is warranted.

Immunotherapy Mechanism of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma with the Effect of STK11/AMPK Signaling Pathway.

This study was aimed at exploring the mechanism of serine threonine protein kinase 11 (STK11)/Adenosine 5'-monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) signaling pathway after immunotherapy for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), providing basic information for the clinical treatment of ESCC. In this study, tissue specimens from 100 patients with ESCC who underwent surgical treatment in Taizhou People's Hospital (group A) and 20 patients with recurrent or metastatic ESCC who received second-line immunotherapy (group B) were collected. The real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (RT-qPCR) technology was used to detect the expression levels of STK11, interferon-γ (IFN-γ), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the tissues. The immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the positive expression levels (PELs) of STK11 and AMPKα in the tissues, and immunofluorescence staining was used to detect the PELs Teff cells (CD3 and CD8), Treg cells (CD4 and FOXP3), and neutrophils (CD68 and CD163). RT-qPCR results showed that the expression levels of STK11 and IFN-γ in group A were obviously lower, and those of IL-6 and VEGF were much higher in contrast to group B (P < 0.05). The results of immunohistochemical staining showed that the number of STK11- and AMPKα-positive staining cells in group A was dramatically less than that in group B (P <0.05). The results of immunofluorescence staining revealed that the number of positive staining cells for Teff cells, Treg cells, and neutrophils in group A was also less dramatically than that in group B (P <0.05). In summary, immunotherapy can play a therapeutic effect on ESCC by regulating STK11/AMPK pathway and immune cell infiltration.

Ameliorative Effects of Malonyl Ginsenoside from Panax ginseng on Glucose-Lipid Metabolism and Insulin Resistance via IRS1/PI3K/Akt and AMPK Signaling Pathways in Type 2 Diabetic Mice.

Our previous study has revealed that malonyl-ginsenosides from Panax ginseng (PG-MGR) play a crucial role in the treatment of T2DM. However, its potential mechanism was still unclear. In this study, we investigated the anti-diabetic mechanisms of action of PG-MGR in high fat diet-fed (HFD) and streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice and determined the main constituents of PG-MGR responsible for its anti-diabetic effects. Our results showed that 16 malonyl ginsenosides were identified in PG-MGR by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS. PG-MGR treatment significantly reduced fasting blood glucose (FBG), triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels and improved insulin resistance and glucose tolerance. Simultaneously, PG-MGR treatment improved liver injury by decreasing aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) expression. Furthermore, Western blot analysis demonstrated that the protein expression levels of p-PI3K/PI3K, p-AKT/AKT, p-AMPK/AMPK, p-ACC/ACC and GLUT4 in liver and skeletal muscle were significantly up-regulated after PG-MGR treatment, and the protein expression levels of p-IRS-1/IRS-1, Fas and SREBP-1c were significantly reduced. These findings revealed that PG-MGR has the potential to improve glucose and lipid metabolism and insulin resistance by activating the IRS-1/PI3K/AKT and AMPK signal pathways.

Hypoglycemic and Hypolipidemic Effects of Malonyl Ginsenosides from American Ginseng (Panax quinquefolius L.) on Type 2 Diabetic Mice.

American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius L.) is popularly consumed as traditional herbal medicine and health food for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Malonyl ginsenosides (MGR) are the main natural ginsenosides in American ginseng. However, whether the malonyl ginsenosides in P. quinquefolius (PQ-MGR) possess antidiabetic effects has not been explored yet. In this study, the antidiabetic effects and the underlying mechanism of PQ-MGR in high-fat diet/streptozotocin (HFD/STZ)-induced T2DM mice were investigated. The chemical composition was analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS/MS). Our results showed that 14 malonyl ginsenosides were identified in the PQ-MGR. Among them, the content of m-Rb1 represented about 77.4% of the total malonyl ginsenosides. After a 5-week experiment, the PQ-MGR significantly reduced the fasting blood glucose (FBG), triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), nonesterified fatty acid (NEFA), alanine transaminase (ALT), and aspartate transaminase (AST) levels and improved glucose tolerance and insulin resistance. Furthermore, Western blot analysis demonstrated that the protein expressions of p-PI3K, p-AKT, p-AMPK, p-ACC, PPARγ, and GLUT4 in the liver and skeletal muscle were significantly upregulated after PQ-MGR treatment. In contrast, the protein expressions of p-IRS1 and p-JNK were significantly downregulated. Our results revealed that PQ-MGR could ameliorate glucose and lipid metabolism and insulin resistance in T2DM via regulation of the insulin receptor substrate-1/phosphoinositide3-kinase/protein-kinase B (IRS1/PI3K/Akt) and AMP-activated protein kinase/acetyl-CoA carboxylase (AMPK/ACC) pathways. These findings suggest that PQ-MGR may be used as an antidiabetic candidate drug for T2DM treatment.

Investigation of miR-93-5p and its effect on the radiosensitivity of breast cancer.

Accumulating evidence suggests that intrinsic resistance to radiotherapy reduces the survival of patients with cancer. The present study investigated whether miR-93-5p affects proliferation, migration, apoptosis, and radiosensitivity of breast cancer (BC) cells. MDA-MB-468, MCF-7, and MDA-MB-231 BC cells were incubated with hsa-miR-93-5p mimics, hsa-miR-93-5p inhibitor, and negative control RNA with or without exposure to ionizing radiation to determine cell proliferation, migration, and apoptosis using the Cell Counting Kit-8 assay, wound healing assay and apoptotic assay, respectively. Overexpression of miR-93-5p inhibited the migratory abilities (P = 0.001) and decreased the cell proliferation (P = 0.049) of MCF-7 cells. In MCF-7 cells, a significant increase in apoptosis was detected after treatment with miR-93-5p compared with the negative control (P = 0.001) and miR-93-5p inhibitor (P = 0.004). In MDA-MB-468 cells, the proportion of apoptotic cells increased following exposure to ionizing radiation (P = 0.001). The percentage of apoptotic MDA-MB-231 cells in the miR-93-5p group was significantly increase compared with that determined in the negative control (P = 0.044) and hsa-miR-93-5p inhibitor (P = 0.046) groups. In conclusion, our findings showed that miR-93-5p reduces BC cell proliferation and migratory capacity, and increases the ratio of apoptotic cells. Overexpression of miR-93-5p could increase radiosensitivity in BC cells by increasing apoptosis. This evidence provides new insight into the treatment of BC and identifies miR-93-5p as a potential therapeutic target.

Combination of deep speaker embeddings for diarisation.

Significant progress has recently been made in speaker diarisation after the introduction of d-vectors as speaker embeddings extracted from neural network (NN) speaker classifiers for clustering speech segments. To extract better-performing and more robust speaker embeddings, this paper proposes a c-vector method by combining multiple sets of complementary d-vectors derived from systems with different NN components. Three structures are used to implement the c-vectors, namely 2D self-attentive, gated additive, and bilinear pooling structures, relying on attention mechanisms, a gating mechanism, and a low-rank bilinear pooling mechanism respectively. Furthermore, a neural-based single-pass speaker diarisation pipeline is also proposed in this paper, which uses NNs to achieve voice activity detection, speaker change point detection, and speaker embedding extraction. Experiments and detailed analyses are conducted on the challenging AMI and NIST RT05 datasets which consist of real meetings with 4-10 speakers and a wide range of acoustic conditions. For systems trained on the AMI training set, relative speaker error rate (SER) reductions of 13% and 29% are obtained by using c-vectors instead of d-vectors on the AMI dev and eval sets respectively, and a relative SER reduction of 15% in SER is observed on RT05, which shows the robustness of the proposed methods. By incorporating VoxCeleb data into the training set, the best c-vector system achieved 7%, 17% and 16% relative SER reduction compared to the d-vector on the AMI dev, eval and RT05 sets respectively.

High photosensitivity light-controlled planar ZnO artificial synapse for neuromorphic computing.

A light-controlled artificial synapse, which mimics the human brain has been considered to be one of the ideal candidates for the fundamental physical architecture of a neuromorphic computing system owing to the possible abilities of high bandwidth and low power calculation. However, the low photosensitivity of synapse devices can affect the accuracy of recognition and classification in neuromorphic computing tasks. In this work, a planar light-controlled artificial synapse having high photosensitivity (Ion/Ioff > 1000) with a high photocurrent and a low dark current is realized based on a ZnO thin film grown by radiofrequency sputtering. The synaptic functions of the human brain such as sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory, duration-time-dependent-plasticity, light-intensity-dependent-plasticity, learning-experience behavior, neural facilitation, and spike-timing-dependent plasticity are successfully emulated using persistent photoconductivity characteristic of a ZnO thin film. Furthermore, the high classification accuracy of 90%, 92%, and 86% after 40 epochs for file type datasets, small digits, and large digit is realized with a three-layer neural network based on backpropagation where the numerical weights in the network layer are mapped directly to the conductance states of the experimental synapse devices. Finally, characterization and analysis reveal that oxygen vacancy defects and chemisorbed oxygen on the surface of the ZnO film are the main factors that determine the performance of the device.

Success of 125I-Seed Treatment in Vulvar Squamous-Cell Carcinoma with Aplastic Anemia: A Case Report.

Vulvar squamous-cell carcinoma (SCC) is a rare disease that occurs mainly in postmenopausal women. Chemo/radiotherapy with or without surgery is the most important modality for treatment of advanced vulvar cancer. A case of vulvar SCC with aplastic anemia was treated using 125I seeds in our department, because surgery and chemotherapy were not possible due to low platelets, leaving radiotherapy as the lone therapeutic option. 125I seeds present an alternative option for treatment of patients with vulvar SCC and local relapse with lymph-node metastasis following previous radiotherapy.

Annexin A1-mediated inhibition of inflammatory cytokines may facilitate the resolution of inflammation in acute radiation-induced lung injury.

The present study evaluated the role of annexin A1 (ANXA1) in the treatment of acute radiation-induced lung injury (RILI) and investigated the mechanism of its action. The expression of ANXA1, interleukin-6 (IL-6) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) in the plasma of patients with RILI prior to and following hormonotherapy was assessed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The association of plasma ANXA1 concentration with clinical effect, and the correlation between the expression of ANXA1 and that of IL-6 and MPO were evaluated. ANXA1 was overexpressed or knocked down in a macrophage cell line, and its impact on IL-6 and MPO expression was measured. Following glucocorticoid hormonotherapy, patients with RILI exhibited a higher plasma concentration of ANXA1 compared with that prior to treatment, while IL-6 and MPO levels were lower. The concentration of ANXA1 in plasma was negatively correlated with IL-6 and MPO levels, with a correlation coefficient of -0.492 and -0.437, respectively (P<0.001). The increasing concentration of ANXA1 in plasma following treatment was associated with the clinical effect in patients with RILI (P=0.007). The expression levels of of IL-6 and MPO were inhibited both in the cytoplasm and in the culture solution, when ANXA1 expression was upregulated in a macrophage cell line. In conclusion, ANXA1 inhibited the synthesis and secretion of IL-6 and MPO inflammatory cytokines, indicating that ANXA1 may have therapeutic potential as a treatment target for RILI.

The use of biochar and crushed mortar in treatment wetlands to enhance the removal of nutrients from sewage.

An experimental study was carried out using in pilot-scale constructed wetland systems, operated in parallel to treat raw sewage. Each system consisted of a vertical flow (VF) unit that was filled with biochar as the main media, followed by a horizontal flow (HF) unit filled with crushed cement mortar. Hydraulic loading (HL) ranged 340-680 mm/day was applied on the VF wetland units, where high total nitrogen (TN) mass removal rate (20-23 g N/m2 d) was obtained, demonstrating that biochar media had a beneficial effect on the degradation of nitrogenous pollutants. Total phosphorus (TP) removal percentage (concentration based) was ≥ 86% in HF wetlands packed with mortar materials. In one system, the flow direction of the sewage was directed by the deployment of downflow pipes and vertical baffles, aiming to facilitate the formation of aerobic and anaerobic zones in the wetland matrices. The effects of such arrangement were analyzed by comparing pollutant removal efficiencies in the two systems. On average, 99, 96, 93, and 86 percentage removals were obtained for ammonia (NH4-N), TN, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and TP, respectively, during the experiments. Biochar and crushed mortar proved to be a highly effective combination as media in subsurface flow constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment.

Adoptive Induced Antigen-Specific Treg Cells Reverse Inflammation in Collagen-Induced Arthritis Mouse Model.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease that may cause bone damage and worsening disability. Manipulating antigen-specific Treg cells is a promising approach to treat autoimmune disease since the immune suppressive function of Treg cells has the feature of antigen specificity which could avoid overall immune suppression. It has been known that the function of Treg cells is impaired in RA, and adoptive transfer of Treg cells is effective in suppressing RA. Here, we designed a new approach to generate antigen-specific Treg cells by culturing CD4+ T cells from mice with RA onset, and we also proved that the adoptive transfer of these antigen-specific Treg cells reversed the collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) progression by suppressing the key inflammatory cytokine TNF-α. Further analysis showed that the transferred Treg cells were stable in vivo. These findings suggest this novel approach may have clinical applications for treatment of autoimmunity, including RA and other autoimmune disorders.

Remarkable Impact of Acidic Ginsenosides and Organic Acids on Ginsenoside Transformation from Fresh Ginseng to Red Ginseng.

Panax ginseng contains many chemical components, including acidic ginsenosides and organic acids. However, whether these acidic substances play a role in ginsenoside transformation during steaming treatment has not yet been explored. In this paper, the content of neutral ginsenosides, acidic ginsenosides, and their degradation products in unsteamed and steamed P. ginseng were simultaneously quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography. We observed that neutral ginsenosides were converted to rare ginsenosides during the root steaming but not during the individual ginsenoside steaming. In contrast, acidic malonyl ginsenosides released malonic acid and acetic acid through demalonylation, decarboxylation, deacetylation reactions during the steaming at 120 °C. These malonyl ginsenosides not only were converted to rare ginsenosides but also promoted the degradation of neutral ginsenosides. Further studies indicated that a low concentration of organic acid was the determining factor for the ginsenoside conversion. The related mechanisms were deduced to be mainly acidic hydrolysis and dehydration. In summary, acidic ginsenosides and organic acids remarkably affected ginsenoside transformation during the steaming process. Our results provide useful information for precisely understanding the ginsenoside conversion pathways and mechanisms underlying the steaming process.

Identifying the regional-scale groundwater-surface water interaction on the Sanjiang Plain, Northeast China.

Assessment on the interaction between groundwater and surface water (GW-SW) can generate information that is critical to regional water resource management, especially for regions that are highly dependent on groundwater resources for irrigation. This study investigated such interaction on China's Sanjiang Plain (10.9 × 10(4) km(2)) and produced results to assist sustainable regional water management for intensive agricultural activities. Methods of hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), principal component analysis (PCA), and statistical analysis were used in this study. One hundred two water samplings (60 from shallow groundwater, 7 from deep groundwater, and 35 from surface water) were collected and grouped into three clusters and seven sub-clusters during the analyses. The PCA analysis identified four principal components of the interaction, which explained 85.9% variance of total database, attributed to the dissolution and evolution of gypsum, feldspar, and other natural minerals in the region that was affected by anthropic and geological (sedimentary rock mineral) activities. The analyses showed that surface water in the upper region of the Sanjiang Plain gained water from local shallow groundwater, indicating that the surface water in the upper region was relatively more resilient to withdrawal for usage, whereas in the middle region, there was only a weak interaction between shallow groundwater and surface water. In the lower region of the Sanjiang Plain, surface water lost water to shallow groundwater, indicating that the groundwater was vulnerable to pollution by pesticides and fertilizers from terrestrial sources.

Water quantity and quality assessment on a tertiary treatment wetland in a tropical climate.

This study aimed to assess the quantity and quality of water in a surface flow constructed wetland in Australia's far north Queensland. Owing to tropical climate in the region, the wetland provided dual functions: retention of a treated wastewater for zero discharge during the dry season and tertiary treatment prior to discharge during the wet season. Rainfall data, permeability of wetland soil, evaporation, inflow and outflow were analysed in a water balance analysis; the results showed that based on a 72-year-average rainfall pattern, daily wastewater inflow of 85 m(3)/d is the maximum this wetland can cope with without breaching its discharge certificate. In water quality analysis, the K-C* model was used to predict changes of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD, suspended solids (SS), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and faecal coliforms (FC) in the wetland. Model predictions were compared with field sampling results. It was found that the wetland was effective in removing FC (>99.9%), TN (70.7%) and TP (68.2%), for which the predictions by the K-C* model were consistent with field testing results. However, significant disparities between the predictions and testing results were found for BOD and SS. A revised K-C* equation was proposed to account for the internal generation of organics in constructed wetlands with a long retention time.

Pollutant removal from municipal wastewater employing baffled subsurface flow and integrated surface flow-floating treatment wetlands.

This article reports pollutant removal performances of baffled subsurface flow, and integrated surface flow-floating treatment wetland units, when arranged in series for the treatment of municipal wastewater in Bangladesh. The wetland units (of the hybrid system) included organic, inorganic media, and were planted with nineteen types of macrophytes. The wetland train was operated under hydraulic loading fluctuation and seasonal variation. The performance analyses (across the wetland units) illustrated simultaneous denitrification and organics removal rates in the first stage vertical flow wetland, due to organic carbon leaching from the employed organic media. Higher mean organics removal rates (656.0 g COD/(m(2)·day)) did not completely inhibit nitrification in the first stage vertical flow system; such pattern could be linked to effective utilization of the trapped oxygen, as the flow was directed throughout the media by the baffle walls. Second stage horizontal flow wetland showed enhanced biodegradable organics removal, which depleted organic carbon availability for denitrification. The final stage integrated wetland system allowed further nitrogen removal from wastewater, via nutrient uptake by plant roots (along with nitrification), and generation of organic carbon (by the dead macrophytes) to support denitrification. The system achieved higher E. coli mortality through protozoa predation, E. coli oxidation, and destruction by UV radiation. In general, enhanced pollutant removal efficiencies as demonstrated by the structurally modified hybrid wetland system signify the necessity of such modification, when operated under adverse conditions such as: substantial input organics loading, hydraulic loading fluctuation, and seasonal variation.

Novel antimicrobial metabolites produced by Sika deer-associated Actinomyces sp. JN411010.

Three novel metabolites (1, 5 and 10) were isolated from a 25-L fermentation broth of Actinomyces sp. JN411010 together with 11 related compounds. Their structures were determined on the basis of 1D and 2D NMR, as well as HR-ESI-MS spectroscopic data analyses. Compounds 1-2, 5-8 and 10 displayed moderate antimicrobial activities against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Biosynthetic pathway of 5 and 10 was proposed to be catalysed by polyketide and non-ribosomal peptide gene clusters, respectively.

Antidiabetic effects of malonyl ginsenosides from Panax ginseng on type 2 diabetic rats induced by high-fat diet and streptozotocin.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGY RELEVANCE: Ginseng (Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer) has been recorded to treat 'Xiao-ke' (emaciation and thirst) symptom in many ancient Chinese medical literatures (such as 'Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing') for thousands of years. 'Xiao-ke' symptom, in general, indicates diabetes mellitus. AIM OF THE STUDY: Malonyl ginsenosides (MGR) are natural ginsenosides which exist in both fresh and air-dried ginseng. The objective of this study is to determine the antidiabetic function of MGR on type 2 diabetes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: High fat diet-fed and streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats were treated with 50 and 100mg/kg/d of MGR or vehicle for 3 weeks. The effects of MGR on fasting blood glucose (FBG), intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test (IPGTT), serum insulin (SI), insulin tolerance test (ITT), body weight, total cholesterol (TC), and triglyceride (TG) levels in type 2 diabetic rats were measured. RESULTS: After 3 weeks of treatment, MGR administration showed significantly lower FBG levels compared to the diabetic control group. In glucose tolerance test, IPGTT data showed that both MGR 50 and 100mg/kg groups significantly increased the glucose disposal after glucose load. The ITT also showed improvement of insulin sensitivity during 120 min of insulin treatment. In addition, MGR reduced TG and TC contents while showed no effect on body weight in diabetic rats. CONCLUSION: The findings from this study suggest that MGR can alleviate hyperglycemia, hyperlipemia and insulin resistance of type 2 diabetes.

A lab-scale study of constructed wetlands with sugarcane bagasse and sand media for the treatment of textile wastewater.

This paper reports the pollutant removal efficiencies of two lab-scale hybrid wetland systems treating a textile wastewater. The two systems had identical configurations, each consisting of a vertical flow (VF) and a horizontal flow (HF) wetland that were filled with organic sugarcane bagasse and sylhet sand as the main media. The systems were operated under high hydraulic loading (HL) (566-5660 mm/d), and inorganic nitrogen (254-508 gN/m(2) d) and organics loadings (9840-19680 g COD/m(2) d and 2154-4307 g BOD(5)/m(2) d). Simultaneous removals of BOD(5) (74-79%) and ammonia (59-66%) were obtained in the first stage VF wetlands, demonstrating the efficiency of the media for oxygen transfer to cope with the high pollutant loads. The organic carbon (C) content of sugarcane bagasse facilitated denitrification in the VF wetlands. Second stage HF wetlands provided efficient color removal under predominantly anaerobic condition. Overall, the wetland systems showed stable removal performances under high, and unsteady, pollutant loadings.