Periprocedural Changes of Serum Biomarkers in Predicting Complications Following Bariatric Surgery for Obesity: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Bariatric surgery is an effective treatment for severe obesity, but complications and peri-operative monitoring are important considerations. We conducted a comprehensive review of studies assessing pre-operative biomarkers and complications in patients undergoing bariatric surgery. A total of 14 studies were included. Gastric leak, infections, bleeding, obstruction or stenosis, hypoglycemia, and hypoalbuminemia were the most common complications observed. Our analysis showed a significant association between lower pre-operative albumin levels and complications (SMD [95%CI] = - 0.21 [- 0.38; - 0.04]). However, other biomarkers did not have a significant impact on complication occurrence. Changes in C-reactive protein, neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio, and white blood cell levels were observed in certain peri-operative time points and complication subgroups. These findings suggest the potential use of pre-operative biomarkers and peri-operative changes of biomarker's levels for predicting complications.

The importance of assessing the triglyceride-glucose index (TyG) in patients with depression: A systematic review.

Insulin resistance (IR) has been proposed as a potential risk factor for depression, a major common disorder affecting a significant proportion of adults worldwide. Based on this premise, this study systematically investigated all the studies examining the triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index, a surrogate marker of IR, in patients with depression or suicidal ideas/attempts. Four online databases (PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Web of Science) were comprehensively searched. After screening, seven studies were included, comprised of 58,981 participants and 46.4% male. While there were some discrepancies among the reports of studies, most of the included studies reported higher levels of TyG index in patients with depression. Moreover, in most cases, a 1-unit increase in the TyG index was associated with significantly higher odds of depression. At last, higher TyG levels were associated with suicidal ideation and attempts. Therefore, this study emphasizes the critical need to further research in this regard and possibly integrate the TyG index measure with routine depression screening to avoid fatal events in the future.

Apoferritin nanocages for targeted delivery of idarubicin against breast cancer cells.

In recent years, nanotechnology has attracted attention for its capability to diagnose and remedy diverse tumors successfully.  Protein nanocarriers as a platform of targeted drug delivery can be used to reduce toxicity and improve the effect of anticancer drugs. Idarubicin (IDR) is a chemotherapy drug that is classified as an anthracycline antitumor. In this study, IDR was encapsulated within horse spleen apoferritin (HsAFr) nanocarriers. Encapsulation was obtained through disassembling apoferritin into subunits at pH 2 and subsequently reassembling it at pH 7.4 in the presence of IDR. Transmission electron microscopy, UV-vis, and fluorescence spectroscopy techniques showed that drug molecules are loaded within apoferritin. Intrinsic fluorescence information exhibited that the encapsulation does not have any effects on the tertiary structure of the protein. Drug loading and entrapment efficiency were found to be 7.15% and 84.75%, respectively. Comparison of anticancer activities in HsAFr-IDR and free drug IDR was made via the MTT viability technique in a human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7).

Structural Damage Localization and Quantification Based on a CEEMDAN Hilbert Transform Neural Network Approach: A Model Steel Truss Bridge Case Study.

Vibrations of complex structures such as bridges mostly present nonlinear and non-stationary behaviors. Recently, one of the most common techniques to analyze the nonlinear and non-stationary structural response is Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). This paper aims to evaluate the performance of HHT based on complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) technique using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) as a proposed damage detection methodology. The performance of the proposed method is investigated for damage detection of a scaled steel-truss bridge model which was experimentally established as the case study subjected to white noise excitations. To this end, four key features of the intrinsic mode function (IMF), including energy, instantaneous amplitude (IA), unwrapped phase, and instantaneous frequency (IF), are extracted to assess the presence, severity, and location of the damage. By analyzing the experimental results through different damage indices defined based on the extracted features, the capabilities of the CEEMDAN-HT-ANN model in detecting, addressing the location and classifying the severity of damage are efficiently concluded. In addition, the energy-based damage index demonstrates a more effective approach in detecting the damage compared to those based on IA and unwrapped phase parameters.

Efficacy of essential oils combination on performance, ileal bacterial counts, intestinal histology and immunocompetence of laying hens fed alternative lipid sources.

This study was carried out to assess the effects of a blend of herbal essential oils (namely Thymus vulgaris, Mentha piperita, Rosmarinus offisinalis and Anethum graveolens) and different dietary lipid sources on the performance, ileal bacterial enumeration, intestinal histological alterations and immune responses in laying hens. For this purpose, a total of 150 laying hens were randomly allocated to six experimental treatments with five replicates of five birds each. Dietary treatments consisted of three levels of a mixture of essential oils (0, 100 and 200 mg/kg) and two sources of lipid (soybean oil and fish oil containing different ratios of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids) fed to the animals during an 80-days feeding trial. Findings indicated that dietary administration of fish oil not only increased significantly the spleen relative weight (p < 0.01) and the antibody titre against Newcastle virus (p < 0.05) but also led to reductions in liver relative weight (p < 0.05) and feed conversion ratio (p < 0.05). Moreover, the mixture of herbal essential oils brought about declines in hepatic relative weight, heterophile to lymphocyte ratio (p < 0.05) and intestinal pathogen populations (p < 0.01). Mention must also be made of the improvements it made in spleen weight (p < 0.01), antibody titres against SRBC (p < 0.01) and Newcastle virus (p < 0.05), villus height to crypt depth ratio (p < 0.01), goblet cell numbers (p < 0.05), lamina propria lymphatic follicle diameters (p < 0.01) and feed conversion ratio (p = 0.06). It may be claimed that the enhancements observed in the performance of laying hens fed fish oil and 200 mg/kg of the blend of essential oils could have potentially been associated with improved intestinal health indices as well as cellular and humoral immune responses.

Modulating of the pnicogen-bonding by a H⋯π interaction: An ab initio study.

An ab initio study of the cooperativity in XH2P⋯NCH⋯Z and XH2P⋯CNH⋯Z complexes (X=F, Cl, Br, CN, NC; Z=C2H2,C6H6) connected by pnicogen-bonding and H⋯π interactions is carried out by means of MP2 computational method. A detailed analysis of the structures, interaction energies and bonding properties is performed on these systems. For each set of the complexes considered, a favorable cooperativity is observed, especially in X=F and CN complexes. However, for a given X or Z, the amount of cooperativity effects in XH2P⋯CNH⋯Z complexes are more important than XH2P⋯NCH⋯Z counterparts. Besides, the influence of a H⋯π interaction on a P⋯N (C) bond is more pronounced than that of a P⋯N (C) bond on a H⋯π bond. The quantum theory of atoms in molecules shows that ternary complexes have increased electron densities at their bond critical points relative to the corresponding binary systems. The results also indicate that the strength of the P⋯N(C) and H⋯π interactions increases in the presence of the solvent.