Reduction of pesticide residues in Chrysanthemum morifolium by nonthermal plasma-activated water and impact on its quality.

This study investigated the efficiency of plasma-activated water (PAW) on the reduction of pesticides, namely, metribuzin and metobromuron, and the effect of PAW treatment on the quality of fresh chrysanthemums. The reduction efficiencies reached 74.3% for metribuzin and 38.2% for metobromuron after 240 s of PAW treatment. Compared with reverse osmosis (RO) water, PAW achieved significantly higher pesticide reductions because of its higher acidity, enhanced oxidizing ability, and increased formation of reactive species. Moreover, when compared with metobromuron, metribuzin was reduced more efficiently irrespective of the RO water or PAW treatments because of its higher water solubility, lower log octanol-water partition coefficient, and more oxidizable chemical structure. Additionally, the PAW treatment did not cause adverse changes to the chrysanthemums' color, total flavonoid content, radical scavenging, or metal chelating activities, but it did cause a slight decrease in the chrysanthemums' aroma compounds and total reducing power. This study successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of PAW for reducing pesticides in herbal flowers like chrysanthemums and reveals PAW's promising potential to treat foods with non-smooth surfaces.

A siRNA targets and inhibits a broad range of SARS-CoV-2 infections including Delta variant.

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants has altered the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and raised some uncertainty on the long-term efficiency of vaccine strategy. The development of new therapeutics against a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants is imperative. We, here, have designed an inhalable siRNA, C6G25S, which covers 99.8% of current SARS-CoV-2 variants and is capable of inhibiting dominant strains, including Alpha, Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon, at picomolar ranges of IC50 in vitro. Moreover, C6G25S could completely inhibit the production of infectious virions in lungs by prophylactic treatment, and decrease 96.2% of virions by cotreatment in K18-hACE2-transgenic mice, accompanied by a significant prevention of virus-associated extensive pulmonary alveolar damage, vascular thrombi, and immune cell infiltrations. Our data suggest that C6G25S provides an alternative and effective approach to combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

Food Traceability Systems, Consumers' Risk Perception, and Purchase Intention: Evidence from the "4-label-1-Q" Approach in Taiwan.

ABSTRACT: Many food safety issues have arisen in Taiwan during the past decade. Therefore, in 2016, the Taiwan government proposed the "five rings of food safety" policy to comprehensively protect consumer food supply. Among these policies, the "4-labels-1-Q" approach was adopted to ensure the selection of foods with traceable labels for retrospective study. Hence, this study investigated the association between the degree of familiarity with the 4-labels-1-Q food traceability system and risk perceptions and also investigated whether a consumer's purchase intention toward fresh foods with food labels changed after viewing an educational film on food labels. This study defined subjects as the main food purchasers for their families; 290 valid questionnaire interviews were administered and educational films shown in Tainan markets and stores. Results showed that knowledge about labels significantly affected risk perception for labeling. Age, educational level, and degree of risk perception influenced purchase intention. Results also showed that after viewing the video, subjects' label knowledge and purchase intention increased significantly. However, after adjustment for age, educational level, income, and purchase places, the effect of film education on risk perception was insignificant, especially for those who had lower educational levels, including those older than 65 years. Public trust can be boosted through label education among age groups using different channels and methods, and encouraging the sale of labeled foods in traditional markets would be a useful strategy. Age, educational level, income, and risk perception of participants significantly affected purchase intention. This study can be a reference for designing risk communication strategies and promoting traceable agricultural products.

Development and psychometric evaluation of the Caregiver Caregiving Self-Efficacy Scale for family members with oral cancer.

AIM: The aim of this study was to develop and initially assess the psychometric properties of the Caregiver Caregiving Self-Efficacy Scale-Oral Cancer (CSES-OC). METHODS: In total, 28 items in the Caregiver Caregiving Self-Efficacy Scale-Oral Cancer were originally employed for a reliability and validity test based on expert suggestions and qualitative findings. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient and test-retest reliability were evaluated with the pilot sample, which included 30 caregivers. The main test, which included 107 caregivers during May 2016 to 2018, was used to execute the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and concurrent validity. RESULTS: The results of the main test showed a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .95 for the revised 18-item total scale after EFA. Four factors (acquiring resources, managing sudden and uncertain patient conditions, managing patient-related nutritional issues and exploring and making decisions on patient care) were classified from EFA of the Caregiver Caregiving Self-Efficacy Scale-Oral Cancer. The r coefficient was .59 (P < .01), which supported the concurrent validity between CSES-OC and General Self-Efficacy Scale. CONCLUSION: The study results show appropriate psychometric properties for the Caregiver Caregiving Self-Efficacy Scale-Oral Cancer that was constructed for evaluating caregiver caregiving self-efficacy in caring for family members with oral cancer.

Methotrexate inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 entry, infection and inflammation revealed by bioinformatics approach and a hamster model.

Background: Drug repurposing is a fast and effective way to develop drugs for an emerging disease such as COVID-19. The main challenges of effective drug repurposing are the discoveries of the right therapeutic targets and the right drugs for combating the disease. Methods: Here, we present a systematic repurposing approach, combining Homopharma and hierarchal systems biology networks (HiSBiN), to predict 327 therapeutic targets and 21,233 drug-target interactions of 1,592 FDA drugs for COVID-19. Among these multi-target drugs, eight candidates (along with pimozide and valsartan) were tested and methotrexate was identified to affect 14 therapeutic targets suppressing SARS-CoV-2 entry, viral replication, and COVID-19 pathologies. Through the use of in vitro (EC50 = 0.4 µM) and in vivo models, we show that methotrexate is able to inhibit COVID-19 via multiple mechanisms. Results: Our in vitro studies illustrate that methotrexate can suppress SARS-CoV-2 entry and replication by targeting furin and DHFR of the host, respectively. Additionally, methotrexate inhibits all four SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. In a Syrian hamster model for COVID-19, methotrexate reduced virus replication, inflammation in the infected lungs. By analysis of transcriptomic analysis of collected samples from hamster lung, we uncovered that neutrophil infiltration and the pathways of innate immune response, adaptive immune response and thrombosis are modulated in the treated animals. Conclusions: We demonstrate that this systematic repurposing approach is potentially useful to identify pharmaceutical targets, multi-target drugs and regulated pathways for a complex disease. Our findings indicate that methotrexate is established as a promising drug against SARS-CoV-2 variants and can be used to treat lung damage and inflammation in COVID-19, warranting future evaluation in clinical trials.

Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Exacerbates Viral Entry in SARS-CoV2-Infected iPSC-Derived Cardiomyocytes.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic with high infectivity and mortality has caused severe social and economic impacts worldwide. Growing reports of COVID-19 patients with multi-organ damage indicated that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) may also disturb the cardiovascular system. Herein, we used human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes (iCMs) as the in vitro platform to examine the consequence of SARS-CoV2 infection on iCMs. Differentiated iCMs expressed the primary SARS-CoV2 receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme-II (ACE2) and the transmembrane protease serine type 2 (TMPRSS2) receptor suggesting the susceptibility of iCMs to SARS-CoV2. Following the infection of iCMs with SARS-CoV2, the viral nucleocapsid (N) protein was detected in the host cells, demonstrating the successful infection. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that the SARS-CoV2 infection upregulates several inflammation-related genes, including the proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). The pretreatment of iCMs with TNF-α for 24 h, significantly increased the expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2, SASR-CoV2 entry receptors. The TNF-α pretreatment enhanced the entry of GFP-expressing SARS-CoV2 pseudovirus into iCMs, and the neutralization of TNF-α ameliorated the TNF-α-enhanced viral entry. Collectively, SARS-CoV2 elevated TNF-α expression, which in turn enhanced the SARS-CoV2 viral entry. Our findings suggest that, TNF-α may participate in the cytokine storm and aggravate the myocardial damage in COVID-19 patients.

Characterisation of antimicrobial resistance patterns and class 1 integrons among Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Choleraesuis strains isolated from humans and swine in Taiwan.

Escherichia coli isolates from humans (n=110) and swine (n=61) and Salmonella enterica serovar Choleraesuis isolates (n=95) from swine in southern Taiwan were characterised for antimicrobial resistance patterns and class 1 integrons. All E. coli isolates and S. Choleraesuis isolates were multidrug resistant and demonstrated high resistance to beta-lactams, aminoglycosides, tetracycline, sulfonamides, spectinomycin, chloramphenicol and nalidixic acid. By polymerase chain reaction and DNA sequencing, 104 (61%) E. coli isolates and 31 (33%) S. Choleraesuis isolates were found to carry class 1 integrons. The gene cassette array dfrA12-orfF-aadA2 was the most prevalent (24%) among the human and swine E. coli isolates, whilst the gene cassette array dfrA12-orfF-aadA2-sul1 was the most prevalent (24%) among S. Choleraesuis strains. For E. coil isolates, all class 1 integrons were located on conjugated plasmids. Meanwhile, human and swine E. coli isolates carrying identical gene cassettes were genetically unrelated. Our results revealed that multidrug resistance and class 1 integrons were widely present in E. coli and S. Choleraesuis isolates obtained in Taiwan and that class 1 integrons might play an important role in contributing to the horizontal transfer of antimicrobial resistance.

An improved PCR primer pair based on 16S rDNA for the specific detection of Salmonella serovars in food samples.

Salmonella serovars are some of the major bacterial pathogens that can cause sporadic cases and outbreaks of foodborne illness. Based on the sequence data in the V3 region of the 16S rRNA gene, two PCR primer pairs have been designed for the detection of all serovars of Salmonella. However, none of these primers were specific for Salmonella because complete sequence homology with certain non-Salmonella strains has been found within each of them. Thus, the specificities of these two primer pairs could not rely on only one of the two primers. In this study, we modified our previous 16SFI primer by extending one base at the 5' end and three bases at the 3' end. The modified primer, 16S-Sal, was designed with one or more mismatched bases near the 3' end of the primer annealing to the corresponding sequences of non-Salmonella strains. Such modification eliminates interference from Citrobacter freundii and Enterobacter cloacae as occurs with the 16SFI primer. When 16S-Sal and a degenerate primer, 16S-CCR, were used as a primer pair, detection specificity of Salmonella serovars was achieved. Because this primer pair was used for PCR detection of the salmonellae in food samples, such as whole milk and chicken meat, as low as 1 to 9 CFU/g (ml) of the food sample could be detected when a 8-h preculture step was performed prior to the PCR. For chicken meat, the endogenous microflora did not interfere with the PCR results.