Association between serum vitamin E and bacterial vaginitis in women: a cross-sectional study.

INTRODUCTION: Bacterial vaginitis (BV) is a common vaginal disease. Vitamin E has been shown to reduce BV by enhancing immune function, but no studies have analyzed the relationship between vitamin E and BV at different BMIs and ages. METHOD: This study used 2242 participants from four cycles of NHANES 1999-2006 in American. Participants' vitamin E levels were divided into four groups, and analyses such as study population description, stratified analysis, multiple logistic regression analysis, and curve fitting were performed. To perform data processing, the researchers used the statistical package R (The R Foundation; http://www.r-project.org ; version 3.6.3) and Empower Stats software ( www.empowerstats.net , X&Y solutions, Inc. Boston, Massachusetts). RESULT: The concentrations of serum vitamin E were negatively correlated with the risk of BV, especially when vitamin E were at 1198-5459ug/dL with (OR = -0.443, 95%CI = 0.447-0.923, P = 0.032) or without (OR = -0.521, 95%CI = 0.421-0.837, P = 0.006) adjustment for variables. At the same time, at lower levels, there was no significant association. Vitamin E supplementation may significantly reduce the risk of BV (p < 0.001). In addition, the risk of having BV decreased and then increased with increasing vitamin E concentrations at high BMI levels (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Vitamin E at moderate to high concentrations may significantly reduce BV risk, says the study, providing clinical evidence for the prevention and the treatment of BV.

Unraveling the molecular mechanisms driving enhanced invasion capability of extravillous trophoblast cells: a comprehensive review.

Precise extravillous trophoblast (EVT) invasion is crucial for successful placentation and pregnancy. This review focuses on elucidating the mechanisms that promote heightened EVT invasion. We comprehensively summarize the pivotal roles of hormones, angiogenesis, hypoxia, stress, the extracellular matrix microenvironment, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), immunity, inflammation, programmed cell death, epigenetic modifications, and microbiota in facilitating EVT invasion. The molecular mechanisms underlying enhanced EVT invasion may provide valuable insights into potential pathogenic mechanisms associated with diseases characterized by excessive invasion, such as the placenta accreta spectrum (PAS), thereby offering novel perspectives for managing pregnancy complications related to deficient EVT invasion.

Association between serum albumin-to-creatinine ratio and clinical outcomes among patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction after percutaneous coronary intervention: a secondary analysis based on Dryad databases.

Background: The prognostic value of the serum albumin-to-creatinine ratio (sACR) in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the impact of the sACR on incident major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) among revascularized patients with STEMI at long-term follow-up. Methods: A total of 461 patients with STEMI who underwent successful primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were enrolled to explore the association between the sACR and MACE during a 30-month follow-up. The Cox regression proportional hazard model was used to evaluate the prognostic value of the sACR. Heterogeneity among specific groups was investigated by subgroup analysis. Results: A total of 118 patients developed MACE during the follow-up. A negative association between the sACR and MACE was found after adjusting for other MACE-related risk factors. In subgroup analyses, the sACR was inversely associated with MACE in patients aged ≥ 60 years [hazard ratio (HR), 0.478; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.292-0.784], male (HR, 0.528; 95% CI, 0.327-0.851), with hypertension history (HR, 0.470; 95% CI, 0.271-0.816), and with anterior wall myocardial infarction (HR, 0.418; 95% CI, 0.239-0.730). Meanwhile, the negative association between the sACR and MACE remained significant in a sensitivity analysis that excluded patients with low serum albumin levels (HR, 0.553; 95% CI, 0.356-0.860). Conclusions: Patients with STEMI who underwent successful PCI with a low sACR had a higher risk of developing MACE, indicating that the sACR could be used to identify patients with STEMI who are at high risk of developing MACE.

Rapid One-Pot Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Based on a Lateral Flow Assay in Clinical Samples.

Rapid tests for pathogen identification and spread assessment are critical for infectious disease control and prevention. The control of viral outbreaks requires a nucleic acid diagnostic test that is sensitive and simple and delivers fast and reliable results. Here, we report a one-pot direct reverse transcript loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assay of SARS-CoV-2 based on a lateral flow assay in clinical samples. The entire contiguous sample-to-answer workflow takes less than 40 min from a clinical swab sample to a diagnostic result without professional instruments and technicians. The assay achieved an accuracy of 100% in 12 synthetic and 12 clinical samples compared to the data from PCR-based assays. We anticipate that our method will provide a universal platform for rapid and point-of-care detection of emerging infectious diseases.

A Case-Control Study of ABCB1, ABCB6, and ABCG1 Polymorphisms and Schizophrenia in a Han Chinese Population.

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a complex, heritable, and devastating psychiatric disorder. Mutations in the members of ABC transporters have been associated with psychiatric illnesses. AIMS: In this study, we investigated whether 9 SNPs in ABCB1 (rs6946119, rs28401781, rs4148739, and rs3747802), ABCB6 (rs1109866, rs1109867, rs3731885, and rs3755047), and ABCG1 (rs182694) contribute to the risk of SCZ in a Han Chinese population. METHODS: We conducted a case-control study in a Han Chinese population, involving 1,034 SCZ patients and 1,034 unrelated healthy controls to genotype 9 SNPs. RESULTS: The analysis demonstrated that rs182694 of ABCG1 was significantly different between SCZ patients and controls as to allele (rs182694: p = 0.0070, χ2 = 7.27) and genotype frequencies (rs182694: p = 0.0013, χ2 = 13.35). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support an association between ABCG1 polymorphism and SCZ in a Han Chinese population.

EEG Based Emotion Recognition by Combining Functional Connectivity Network and Local Activations.

OBJECTIVE: Spectral power analysis plays a predominant role in electroencephalogram-based emotional recognition. It can reflect activity differences among multiple brain regions. In addition to activation difference, different emotions also involve different large-scale network during related information processing. In this paper, both information propagation patterns and activation difference in the brain were fused to improve the performance of emotional recognition. METHODS: We constructed emotion-related brain networks with phase locking value and adopted a multiple feature fusion approach to combine the compensative activation and connection information for emotion recognition. RESULTS: Recognition results on three public emotional databases demonstrated that the combined features are superior to either single feature based on power distribution or network character. Furthermore, the conducted feature fusion analysis revealed the common characters between activation and connection patterns involved in the positive, neutral, and negative emotions for information processing. SIGNIFICANCE: The proposed feasible combination of both information propagation patterns and activation difference in the brain is meaningful for developing the effective human-computer interaction systems by adapting to human emotions in the real world applications.

Improved Graph Embedding for Robust Recognition with outliers.

Artifacts in biomedical signal recordings, such as gene expression, sonar image and electroencephalogram, have a great influence on the related research because the artifacts with large value usually break the neighbor structure in the datasets. However, the conventional graph embedding (GE) used for dimension reduction such as linear discriminant analysis, principle component analysis and locality preserving projections is essentially defined in the L2 norm space and is prone to the presence of artifacts, resulting in biased sub-structural features. In this work, we defined graph embedding in the L1 norm space and used the maximization strategy to solve this model with the aim of restricting the influence of outliers on the dimension reduction of signals. The quantitative evaluation with different outlier conditions demonstrates that an L1 norm-based GE structure can estimate hyperplanes, which are more stable than those of conventional GE-based methods. The applications to a variety of datasets also show that the proposed L1 GE is more robust to outlier influence with higher classification accuracy estimated. The proposed L1 GE may be helpful for capturing reliable mapping information from the datasets that have been contaminated with outliers.

Lp (p ≤ 1) Norm Partial Directed Coherence for Directed Network Analysis of Scalp EEGs.

Partial directed coherence (PDC), which is capable of estimating directed brain networks in the frequency domain, has been widely used in various physiological recordings such as electroencephalograms (EEGs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging. However, clinical data from EEGs are inevitably contaminated with unexpected outlier artifacts. This will result in biased networks, which are different from the original physiological mechanism because of the L2 norm structure utilized in PDC to estimate the directed links. In this work, we define a new PDC model in the Lp norm (p ≤ 1) space to restrict outlier influence and use a feasible iteration procedure to solve this model for directed network construction. The quantitative evaluation using a predefined simulation network demonstrates that Lp-PDC is more consistent with the predefined networks than LS-PDC and Lasso-PDC under various simulated outlier conditions. Applying the Lp-PDC model to resting-state EEGs with ocular artifacts also show that the proposed PDC can effectively restrict the ocular artifacts to recover the networks, which is also more consistent with the physiological basis. Both simulation and real-life EEG applications demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed PDC in suppressing the influence of outliers in EEG signals, and the proposed Lp-PDC may be helpful to capture reliable causal relationships for related studies contaminated with outlier artifacts.

Common variants in GRIK4 and major depressive disorder: An association study in the Chinese Han population.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and complex mental disorder. Recent studies found that genetic variants located in GRIK4, which encoded glutamate ionotropic receptor kainate type subunit 4, was associated with the MDD. In this study, we intended to investigate whether GRIK4 gene was associated with MDD. So five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected and genotyped (rs79526501, rs11218016, rs4582985, rs6589847, rs56275759) in 568 MDD patients and 846 healthy controls from Chinese Han population. The results showed that rs56275759 demonstrated statistically significant differences between MDD patients and control subjects both in allelic frequencies (p value=0.011) and genotypic frequencies (p value=0.029). Rs4582985 was excluded from the further analysis for its deviation from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) was found among rs11218016, rs6589847 and rs56275759, and this block was significantly associated with MDD. In summary, our results firstly indicated that rs56275759 of GRIK4 gene might be associated with MDD in Chinese Han population.

Robust Granger Analysis in Lp Norm Space for Directed EEG Network Analysis.

Granger analysis (GA) is widely used to construct directed brain networks based on various physiological recordings, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, and electroencephalogram (EEG). However, in real applications, EEGs are inevitably contaminated by unexpected artifacts that may distort the networks because of the L2 norm structure utilized in GAs when estimating directed links. Compared with the L2 norm, the Lp ( ) norm can compress outlier effects. In this paper, an extended GA is constructed by applying the Lp ( ) norm strategy to estimate robust causalities under outlier conditions, and a feasible iteration procedure is utilized to solve the new GA model. A quantitative evaluation using a predefined simulation network demonstrates smaller bias errors and higher linkage consistence for the Lp ( , 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2) -GAs compared with both the Lasso- and L2-GAs under various simulated outlier conditions. Applications in resting-state EEGs that contain ocular artifacts also show that the proposed GA can effectively compress the ocular outlier influence and recover the reliable networks. The proposed Lp-GA may be helpful in capturing the reliable network structure when EEGs are contaminated with artifacts in related studies.

No association between SLC6A2, SLC6A3, DRD2 polymorphisms and schizophrenia in the Han Chinese population.

This study was intended to ascertain whether SNPs in dopaminergic and serotoninergic pathway genes SLC6A2, SLC6A3 and DRD2 are associated with schizophrenia in Han Chinese people. We conducted a case-control study by genotyping 7 SNPs of the three genes in 1034 schizophrenia patients and 1034 controls. No significant difference in the allelic or genotypic frequency was detected between cases and controls despite one positive haplotype (rs1362621-rs2242446-rs5564). Stratified analysis of gender and gene-gene interaction analysis showed no positive results. In summary, our study denies the major role of these SNPs within the three genes for schizophrenia in Han Chinese.

Association study of 5-HT1A, 5-HT2A polymorphisms with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder in the Han Chinese population.

Schizophrenia (SZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are two common severe mental disorders that have arisen to public awareness in recent years. Serotonin (5-HT) receptors have been implicated in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders especially in MDD and SZ. The aim of this study is to explore whether the variants in the 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A gene are susceptible to SZ or MDD in the Chinese Han population. Five SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) (rs1364043, rs10042486, rs6313, rs6311, rs17289304) in these genes were genotyped from 752 SZ patients, 568 MDD patients, and 846 normal controls of Chinese Han origin. The results showed that the 5-HT1A rs10042486 was significantly associated with SZ (Pallele=0.0369, Pgenotype=0.0098). Moreover, the haplotype (C-T) composed of rs10042486 and rs1364043 showed significant difference between SZ cases and healthy controls (P=0.0302) while another haplotype (T-G) was significant for MDD (P=0.0247). Our study is the first to suggest a positive association of the 5-HT1A gene with SZ in the Han Chinese population.