A Chronic Sleep Fragmentation Model using Vibrating Orbital Rotor to Induce Cognitive Deficit and Anxiety-Like Behavior in Young Wild-Type Mice.

Sleep disturbance is generally common in populations as a chronic disease or a complained event. Chronic sleep disturbance is proposed to be closely linked to the pathogenesis of diseases, especially neurodegenerative diseases. We recently found that 2 months of sleep fragmentation initiated Alzheimer's disease (AD)-like behavioral and pathological changes in young wild-type mice. Herein, we present a standardized protocol to achieve chronic sleep fragmentation (CSF). Briefly, CSF was induced by an orbital rotor vibrating at 110 rpm and operating with a repetitive cycle of 10 s-on, 110 s-off, during light-ON phase (8:00 AM-8:00 PM) continuously for up to 2 months. Impairments of spatial learning and memory, anxiety-like but not depression-like behavior in mice as consequences of CSF modeling, were evaluated with Morris water maze (MWM), Novel object recognition (NOR), Open field test (OFT) and Forced swimming test (FST). In comparison with other sleep manipulations, this protocol minimizes the handling labors and maximizes the modeling efficiency. It produces stable phenotypes in young wild-type mice and can be potentially generated for a variety of research purposes.

[Meta-analysis on the prognostic value of pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A in acute coronary syndrome].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the overall prognostic effects of pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) through a meta-analysis. METHODS: Literature was retrieved by formal searching of electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE, OVID, Web of Knowledge, and the Cochrane Library) and by hand searching of reference lists of related articles. Random effects meta-analysis and relative risk were used to estimate the association between PAPP-A levels and adverse cardiovascular outcomes after ACS as well as preplanned subgroup analyses were conducted to identify the risk-subgroup interactions that could explain the between differences. RESULTS: A total of fourteen clinical trials were included in this Meta-analysis which involving 9413 patients. Pooled RR and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for all eligible studies was 1.97 (1.49 - 2.60), which indicated a prognostic value of PAPP-A in patients with ACS. Differences in study design, measurement of association and duration of follow-up were responsible for the differences in results across the studies. CONCLUSION: Our results suggested that a higher early blood PAPP-A could moderately increase the long-term risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes and might serve as a valuable prognostic predictor in patients with ACS.