Metabolite profiles of diabetes mellitus and response to intervention in anti-hyperglycemic drugs.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) has become a major health problem, threatening the quality of life of nearly 500 million patients worldwide. As a typical multifactorial metabolic disease, T2DM involves the changes and interactions of various metabolic pathways such as carbohydrates, amino acid, and lipids. It has been suggested that metabolites are not only the endpoints of upstream biochemical processes, but also play a critical role as regulators of disease progression. For example, excess free fatty acids can lead to reduced glucose utilization in skeletal muscle and induce insulin resistance; metabolism disorder of branched-chain amino acids contributes to the accumulation of toxic metabolic intermediates, and promotes the dysfunction of ß-cell mitochondria, stress signal transduction, and apoptosis. In this paper, we discuss the role of metabolites in the pathogenesis of T2DM and their potential as biomarkers. Finally, we list the effects of anti-hyperglycemic drugs on serum/plasma metabolic profiles.

Multi-Sensor Data Fusion and CNN-LSTM Model for Human Activity Recognition System.

Human activity recognition (HAR) is becoming increasingly important, especially with the growing number of elderly people living at home. However, most sensors, such as cameras, do not perform well in low-light environments. To address this issue, we designed a HAR system that combines a camera and a millimeter wave radar, taking advantage of each sensor and a fusion algorithm to distinguish between confusing human activities and to improve accuracy in low-light settings. To extract the spatial and temporal features contained in the multisensor fusion data, we designed an improved CNN-LSTM model. In addition, three data fusion algorithms were studied and investigated. Compared to camera data in low-light environments, the fusion data significantly improved the HAR accuracy by at least 26.68%, 19.87%, and 21.92% under the data level fusion algorithm, feature level fusion algorithm, and decision level fusion algorithm, respectively. Moreover, the data level fusion algorithm also resulted in a reduction of the best misclassification rate to 2%~6%. These findings suggest that the proposed system has the potential to enhance the accuracy of HAR in low-light environments and to decrease human activity misclassification rates.

Identification and hazard analysis of heavy metal sources in agricultural soils in ancient mining areas: A quantitative method based on the receptor model and risk assessment.

Industry in ancient mining areas caused significant heavy metal pollution (HMP) in agricultural soils. This study measured the hazards of specific sources of heavy metals (HMs) in an ancient mining areas agricultural soil. Firstly, we identified the major pollution sources based on the PMF model. Then, the proposed single-factor pollution load index (SPLIzone) and ecological load index (SELIzone) analyzed the integrated pollution and ecological risks of various elements. Finally, the source-specific soil contamination levels and ecological risks were quantified by combining the source assignment and single-factor assessment processes. SPLIzone and SELIzone showed that Cu and Cd were the most contaminated elements. Five factors were determined as the major sources of HMs, including mining, natural, smelting industry, agricultural and traffic sources. The mining sources contributed the most soil contamination (33.73%). However, the largest contributor to ecological risk was the smelting industrial (42.18%). Lower soil contamination may contain higher ecological risk. Smelting industrial and traffic are the most critical sources that need to be controlled at present. This study proposes a quantitative method for assessing the hazards of HM sources, which provides a beneficial reference for the study and management of HMP.

Magnesium ions improve vasomotor function in exhausted rats.

To observe the effect of magnesium ion on vascular function in rats after long-term exhaustive exercise. Forty male SD rats were divided into two groups, the control group (CON group, n = 20) and the exhaustive exercise group (EEE group, n = 20). Exhausted rats performed 1W adaptive swimming exercise (6 times/W, 15min/time), and then followed by 3W formal exhaustive exercise intervention. Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining was used to detect the morphological changes of rat thoracic aorta. The contents of interleukin-1 ß (IL-1ß) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in serum of rats were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and the contents of malondialdehyde (MDA), reactive oxygen species (ROS), nitric oxide (NO) and endothelin 1 (ET-1) in serum of rats were determined by biochemical kit. Vascular ring test detects vascular function. Compared with the CON group, the smooth muscle layer of the EEE group became thicker, the cell arrangement was disordered, and the integrity of endothelial cells was destroyed; the serum Mg2+ in EEE group was decreased; the serum levels of IL-1ß, TNF-α, MDA and ROS in EEE group were significantly higher than those in the CON group (P are all less than 0.05); the serum NO content in EEE group was significantly decreased, and the ratio of NO/ET-1 was significantly decreased. In the exhaustion group, the vasoconstriction response to KCl was increased, and the relaxation response to Ach was weakened, while 4.8mM Mg2+ could significantly improve this phenomenon (P are all less than 0.01). The damage of vascular morphology and function in rats after exhaustion exercise may be related to the significant increase of serum IL-1ß, TNF-α, ROS, MDA and ET-1/NO ratio in rats after exhaustion exercise, while Mg2+ can significantly improve the vasomotor function of rats after exhaustion exercise.

The Impact of Urban Construction Land Change on Carbon Emissions-A Case Study of Wuhan City.

Urban construction land (UCL) change is a significant cause of changes in urban carbon emissions. However, as the extent of this effect is currently unclear, cities cannot easily formulate reasonable carbon reduction policies in terms of land use. Taking the city of Wuhan, China, as an example, this paper combines data on land use and carbon emissions from 1995 to 2019 and uses spatial analysis, curve estimation, and correlation evaluation to explore the direct and indirect effects of the UCL changes on carbon emissions. The results show that: (1) Between 1995 and 2019, the UCL area in Wuhan increased by 193.44%, and carbon emissions increased by 78.63%; moreover, both changes showed a gradually increasing spatial correlation, and the quantitative relationship could be better fitted with a composite function model; (2) The UCL change had mainly an indirect impact on carbon emissions via factors such as population and energy use intensity per unit of carbon emissions; (3) The maximum value of carbon emissions inside a unit area decreased during the study period, with an average annual decrease of about 2.02%. Therefore, the city of Wuhan can promote the achievement of its carbon emissions reduction targets by improving the existing land use policies, for example, by dividing the city into multiple functional zones.

Micro-expression recognition model based on TV-L1 optical flow method and improved ShuffleNet.

Micro-expression is a kind of facial action that reflects the real emotional state of a person, and has high objectivity in emotion detection. Therefore, micro-expression recognition has become one of the research hotspots in the field of computer vision in recent years. Research with neural networks with convolutional structure is still one of the main methods of recognition. This method has the advantage of high operational efficiency and low computational complexity, but the disadvantage is its localization of feature extraction. In recent years, there are more and more plug-and-play self-attentive modules being used in convolutional neural networks to improve the ability of the model to extract global features of the samples. In this paper, we propose the ShuffleNet model combined with a miniature self-attentive module, which has only 1.53 million training parameters. First, the start frame and vertex frame of each sample will be taken out, and its TV-L1 optical flow features will be extracted. After that, the optical flow features are fed into the model for pre-training. Finally, the weights obtained from the pre-training are used as initialization weights for the model to train the complete micro-expression samples and classify them by the SVM classifier. To evaluate the effectiveness of the method, it was trained and tested on a composite dataset consisting of CASMEII, SMIC, and SAMM, and the model achieved competitive results compared to state-of-the-art methods through cross-validation of leave-one-out subjects.

Adaptive Motion Artifact Reduction in Wearable ECG Measurements Using Impedance Pneumography Signal.

Noise is a common problem in wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring systems because the presence of noise can corrupt the ECG waveform causing inaccurate signal interpretation. By comparison with electromagnetic interference and its minimization, the reduction of motion artifact is more difficult and challenging because its time-frequency characteristics are unpredictable. Based on the characteristics of motion artifacts, this work uses adaptive filtering, a specially designed ECG device, and an Impedance Pneumography (IP) data acquisition system to combat motion artifacts. The newly designed ECG-IP acquisition system maximizes signal correlation by measuring both ECG and IP signals simultaneously using the same pair of electrodes. Signal comparison investigations between ECG and IP signals under five different body motions were carried out, and the Pearson Correlation Coefficient |r| was higher than 0.6 in all cases, indicating a good correlation. To optimize the performance of adaptive motion artifact reduction, the IP signal was filtered to a 5 Hz low-pass filter and then fed into a Recursive Least Squares (RLS) adaptive filter as a reference input signal. The performance of the proposed motion artifact reduction method was evaluated subjectively and objectively, and the results proved that the method could suppress the motion artifacts and achieve minimal distortion to the denoised ECG signal.

Lightweight ViT Model for Micro-Expression Recognition Enhanced by Transfer Learning.

As opposed to macro-expressions, micro-expressions are subtle and not easily detectable emotional expressions, often containing rich information about mental activities. The practical recognition of micro-expressions is essential in interrogation and healthcare. Neural networks are currently one of the most common approaches to micro-expression recognition. Still, neural networks often increase their complexity when improving accuracy, and overly large neural networks require extremely high hardware requirements for running equipment. In recent years, vision transformers based on self-attentive mechanisms have achieved accuracy in image recognition and classification that is no less than that of neural networks. Still, the drawback is that without the image-specific biases inherent to neural networks, the cost of improving accuracy is an exponential increase in the number of parameters. This approach describes training a facial expression feature extractor by transfer learning and then fine-tuning and optimizing the MobileViT model to perform the micro-expression recognition task. First, the CASME II, SAMM, and SMIC datasets are combined into a compound dataset, and macro-expression samples are extracted from the three macro-expression datasets. Each macro-expression sample and micro-expression sample are pre-processed identically to make them similar. Second, the macro-expression samples were used to train the MobileNetV2 block in MobileViT as a facial expression feature extractor and to save the weights when the accuracy was highest. Finally, some of the hyperparameters of the MobileViT model are determined by grid search and then fed into the micro-expression samples for training. The samples are classified using an SVM classifier. In the experiments, the proposed method obtained an accuracy of 84.27%, and the time to process individual samples was only 35.4 ms. Comparative experiments show that the proposed method is comparable to state-of-the-art methods in terms of accuracy while improving recognition efficiency.

The Effect of Aerobic Exercise on the Oxidative Capacity of Skeletal Muscle Mitochondria in Mice with Impaired Glucose Tolerance.

Methods: Male C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided into six different experimental groups (8 animals/group): (1) normal group (NOR), (2) normal control group (NC), (3) normal + exercise group (NE), (4) IGT group (IGT), (5) IGT control group (IC), and (6) IGT+ exercise group (IE).The exercise group received aerobic exercise for 8 weeks. After the intervention, a blood glucose meter was used to detect the level of glucose tolerance in the mouse's abdominal cavity; a biochemical kit was used to detect serum lipid metabolism indicators, malondialdehyde, and superoxide dismutase levels; the ELISA method was used to detect serum insulin and mouse gastrocnemius homogenate LDH, PDH, SDH, and CCO levels. Western blot method was used to detect the protein expression levels of NOX4, PGC-1α, and Mfn2 in the gastrocnemius muscle of mice. Results: (1) Mice with high-fat diet for 30 weeks showed impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and lipid metabolism disorders. The level of LDH, PDH, SDH, and CCO in the gastrocnemius homogenate of mice was reduced. The expressions of NOX4 protein were significantly upregulated, while the expressions of PGC-1α and Mfn2 proteins were significantly downregulated. (2) 8-week aerobic exercise improved the disorders of glucose and lipid metabolism in IGT mice and increased homogenized LDH, PDH, SDH, and CCO levels, and the expressions of NOX4, PGC-1α, and Mfn2 proteins in the gastrocnemius muscle of mice were reversed. It is speculated that aerobic exercise can accelerate energy metabolism. Conclusion: (1) C57BL/6 mice were fed high fat for 30 weeks and successfully constructed a mouse model of reduced diabetes; the mice with reduced diabetes have impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and lipid metabolism disorders; (2) 8 weeks of aerobic exercise improve glucose tolerance, reduce glucose tolerance in mice, reduce insulin resistance, improve lipid metabolism disorders, and reduce oxidative stress; (3) 8-week aerobic exercise reduces skeletal muscle NOX4 expression and increases glucose tolerance; reduces the expression of LDH, PDH, SDH, and CCO in mouse skeletal muscle; increases the expression level of mitochondrial fusion protein 2 and PGC-1α; improves glucose tolerance; reduces energy metabolism of mouse skeletal muscle; reduces oxidative stress; and reduces insulin resistance. It is speculated that aerobic exercise can accelerate energy metabolism. This process may involve two aspects: firstly, increase the expression level of oxidative metabolism enzymes and promote the tricarboxylic acid cycle; secondly, increase the expression of Mfn2 and accelerate mitochondria fission or fusion to regulate energy metabolism, thereby reducing oxidative stress and insulin resistance.

Farmers' Adaptive Behaviors to Heavy Metal-Polluted Cultivated Land in Mining Areas: The Influence of Farmers' Characteristics and the Mediating Role of Perceptions.

Heavy metal pollution in cultivated land poses a serious threat to environmental health and farmers' livelihoods. As the direct user of cultivated land, understanding farmers' adaptive behavior to heavy metal pollution, and its influencing factors, can provide insight and information relevant for decision-making, so as to better manage the hazards and risks of heavy metal pollution. We proposed a conceptual framework of "farmers' characteristics-perceptions-adaptive behaviors". Factor analysis and mediation effect analysis were used to explore the influence of characteristics and perceptions on adaptive behaviors. The data of 278 farmers in a typical mining area in Daye, China, show that local farmers perceive the hazards of heavy metal pollution, but their adaptive behaviors are hindered to a certain extent. The results of the mediation effect analysis show that perceptions of health impact, self-efficacy, and adaptive cost play a partial mediating role in the impact of characteristics on adaptive behaviors. In addition, the influence of the "factor of dependence on farmland" and the "factor of obstacles to action" on adaptive behavior have no significant relationship with perception levels. By comparing the influencing factors, we found that although farmers' perceptions have mediating effects between characteristics and adaptive behaviors, characteristics still play a decisive role in adaptive behaviors.

Treadmill exercise improve recognition memory by TREM2 pathway to inhibit hippocampal microglial activation and neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease model.

Alzheimer's disease-related cognition impairment is correlated with increased neuroinflammation. Studies show that physical exercises improve cognitive function and regulate neuroinflammation. However, no sufficient studies have been performed to directly observe the mechanism of exercise-related effects on microglia and neuroinflammation, in association with memory function under Alzheimer's disease. This study aims to explore the relationship of TREM2, microglia activation and neuroinflammation in the development of Alzheimer's disease, followed by investigating why physical exercises improve cognition in the Alzheimer's disease model by means of the adeno-associated virus (AAV) injection. We found that: 1) Recognition memory impairment in Aß-induced Alzheimer's disease model was associated with the reduction in TREM2 which induced microglial activation and neuroinflammation; 2) Exercise activated the TREM2 pathway, which was necessary for inhibiting microglial activation and neuroinflammation, leading to improved recognition memory in the Alzheimer's disease model. Together, the improvement of AD-associated recognition memory by exercises is associated with up-regulation of the TREM2 pathway which promotes the phenotypic conversion of microglia and decreases the level of neuroinflammation.

The impacts of urban land expansion on ecosystem services in Wuhan, China.

A clear understanding of the impacts of urban land expansion on ecosystem services is crucial for sustainable urban planning. Although various studies have shown that urban land expansion caused a degradation of ecosystem services, the relationship between the spatial variation of urban land expansion and ecosystem services still remains unclear. This study quantified the ecosystem services and urban land expansion indicators of Wuhan for 1990-2015 and analyzed the spatial and temporal variation characteristics of ecosystem service values (ESVs) and urban land expansion indicators. Using spatial autocorrelation analysis and linear regression, the quantitative and qualitative correlations between ecosystem services and urban land expansion indicators were explored. The total ESV of Wuhan decreased by 16.47%, representing a loss of 1636.19 million yuan. Areas with extremely low ESVs continuously expanded outward from the urban center. During 2010-2015, the urban land expansion area, intensity, damage weight, and distance peaked, which caused an enormous decrease of the total ESV. Negative correlations were found between urban land expansion and all ecosystem services; the correlation with food production was most significant, indicating that urban land expansion had the strongest impact on food production. The expansion area is the main factor causing the decline of each ecosystem service among urban land expansion indicators. This study presents the impact characteristics of urban land expansion on ecosystem services, and the results provide a reference for reasonable decision making in urban planning.

Constructing a Flood-Adaptive Ecological Security Pattern from the Perspective of Ecological Resilience: A Case Study of the Main Urban Area in Wuhan.

The frequent occurrence of floods in urban areas caused by climate change challenges urban resilience. This research aims to construct an ecological security pattern (ESP) that is adaptive to floods to enhance urban resilience in the hope that it will help cities cope with floods better. In this research, the main urban area of Wuhan (WUH) represents the study area. The lakes were selected as the ecological sources and the Soil Conservation Service-Curve Number (SCS-CN) model was used to calculate the runoff volume corresponding to each land type and, based on this, assign resistance values to the land types; as such, the land type surface is referred to as the runoff resistance surface, and the runoff resistance surface is then modified by ecosystem service capabilities. The Minimum Cumulative Resistance (MCR) model was used to extract the connecting corridors between the sources. This research plan includes 18 ecological sources, 10 key ecological corridors, and 22 potential ecological corridors, with a total length of about 344.21 km. Finally, it provides a two-axis and three-core urban ecological resilience optimization strategy for decision makers and a new approach for controlling floods in urban areas from the perspective of ecological resilience.

[Design and Clinical Application of Split Memory Alloy Sternum Plate].

OBJECTIVE: The design and development of split memory alloy sternum bone plate are discussed, and the effect of split memory alloy sternum bone plate internal fixation in the treatment of sternal fractures are analysed. METHODS: The structure of the product is designed according to the anatomy and physiological characteristics of human bones, and the cross section shape of the product is designed according to the cross section shape of human bones. Internal fixation is effective in the treatment of sternal fracture. RESULTS: The split memory alloy sternal plate was successfully designed and developed, and all the patients with sternal fractures treated by internal fixation were clinically healed, the hospitalization and fracture healing time were significantly shortened, and no obvious complications occurred. CONCLUSIONS: The application of split memory alloy sternal plate internal fixation in the treatment of sternal fracture has the advantages of small trauma, simple operation, safety, reliable fixation, good histocompatibility and less complications, and is conducive to promoting fracture healing and respiratory function improvement.

Serum long non-coding RNA LINC00887 as a potential biomarker for diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma.

The identification of non-invasive biomarkers for the detection of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in early-stage patients may help improve disease outcome. Certain long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been reported to be possible biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer. Here, we examined the suitability of the lncRNA LINC00887 as a potential biomarker for RCC because its expression has been shown to be elevated in RCC tissue versus normal tissue in the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) database. We found that LINC00887 expression is significantly increased in early-stage RCC tissues and the serum of early-stage RCC patients compared to matched normal tissues and the serum of healthy subjects, respectively. We also demonstrated that elevated serum LINC00887 is generated from the tumor tissues of RCC patients. Moreover, a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was generated to analyze the diagnostic value of serum LINC00887. The area under the ROC cure differentiating early-stage RCC patients from healthy subjects was 0.8001, with a sensitivity of 71.05% and a specificity of 89.87%. Furthermore, we found that LINC00887 promotes RCC cell proliferation in vitro. Taken together, our findings suggest that a serum LINC00887 signature is associated with RCC cell proliferation and may be a potential biomarker for the detection of early-stage RCC.

Metal(loid) bioaccessibility and children's health risk assessment of soil and indoor dust from rural and urban school and residential areas.

This study focused on the oral bioaccessibility and children health risks of metal(loid)s (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) in soil/indoor dust of school and households from Lanzhou, China. The simple bioaccessibility extraction test method was applied to assess bioaccessibility, and children's health risk was assessed via statistical modeling (hazard quotients, hazard index and incremental lifetime carcinogenic risk). Metal(loid) content and bioaccessibility in indoor dust samples were significantly higher than those in corresponding soil samples (p < 0.05). The order for mean values of bioaccessibility of the elements in soil was as follows: Cd (57.1%) > Zn (44.6%) > Pb (39.9%) > Cu (33.2%) > Ni (12.4%) > Cr (5.3%) > As (4.4%), while for indoor dust, the order was: As (73.0%) > Cd (68.4%) > Pb (63.3%) > Zn (60.4%) > Cu (36.5%) > Ni (25.2%) > Cr (13.6%). The Pearson correlation coefficient showed that metal(loid) bioaccessibility was in general significantly negatively correlated to the Al, Fe and Mn contents. Neither noncarcinogenic nor carcinogenic risks exceeded the tolerance interval for 3-5- and 6-9-year-old children for all elements. They both were mostly attributed to As considering metal(loid)s types and to school indoor dust considering sources. Therefore, maintaining interior sanitation would be an effective measure to reduce the potential health effects of indoor dust on children.

Effects of soil particle size on metal bioaccessibility and health risk assessment.

Oral ingestion is the main exposure pathway through which humans ingest trace metals in the soil, particularly for children. Metals in different soil particle size fractions may vary in terms of concentration and properties. Urban school/kindergarten soil samples were collected from three cities: Lanzhou in northwest China, Wuhan in central China, and Shenzhen in southeast China. Soil samples were classified according to particle size (<63 µm, 63-150 µm, 150-250 µm, and 250-2000 µm) to estimate the effects of soil particle size on the total content and bioaccessibility of metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn). Based on the results, we assessed whether the standard size <150 µm (containing < 63 µm and 63-150 µm), recommended by the Technical Review Workgroup (TRW) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and <250 µm (containing < 63 µm, 63-150 µm, and 150-250) recommended by the Bioaccessibility Research Group of Europe (BARGE), are suitable where the largest proportion adhering to hands is the finest soil (<63 µm). The results showed that different metals exhibited different relationships between soil particle size and content and between soil particle size and bioaccessibility. Pb and Zn generally exhibited the greatest bioaccessibility in the coarsest particle sizes (250-2000 µm); whereas the highest Ni bioaccessibility occurred in the finest sizes (<63 µm); the bioaccessibility of other metals did not exhibit any obvious relationships with particle size. When assessing health risks using bioaccessible metal content in the recommended soil particle size ranges (<150 µm and <250 µm) and in finer particles (<63 µm), the results for noncarcinogenic risks to children exhibited no obvious difference, while the actual carcinogenic risks may be underestimated with the use of soil particle size ranges < 150 µm and <250 µm. Therefore, when choosing an optimal particle size fraction to evaluate the health risk of oral soil ingestion, we recommend the use of the bioaccessible metal content in <63 µm soil fraction.

Observation of parity-time symmetry in microwave photonics.

Symmetry plays a crucial role in explorations of the laws of nature. Parity-time (PT) symmetry phenomena can lead to entirely real spectra in non-Hermitian systems, which attracts considerable attention in the fields of optics and electronics because these phenomena provide a new tool for the manipulation of oscillation modes and non-reciprocal signal transmission. A potential new field of application is microwave photonics, an interdisciplinary field in which the interaction between microwaves and optical signals is exploited. In this article, we report the experimental use of PT symmetry in an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO), a key microwave photonics system that can generate single-frequency sinusoidal signals with high spectral purity. PT symmetry is theoretically analyzed and experimentally observed in an OEO with two mutually coupled active oscillation cavities via a precise manipulation of the interplay between gain and loss in the two oscillation cavities. Stable single-frequency microwave oscillation is achieved without using any optical/electrical filters for oscillation mode selection, which is an indispensable requirement in traditional OEOs. This observation opens new avenues for signal generation and processing based on the PT symmetry principle in microwave photonics.

Killing effect of NK92 cells modified with CD33-CAR on CD33+ acute myeloid leukemia cells / 中国肿瘤生物治疗杂志

@#[Abstract] Objective: To construct CD33-CAR modified NK92 cells based on CD33-scFv sequence, and to explore its killing effect on CD33+ AML (acute myeloid leukemia) cells. Methods: DNA fragment encoding CD33-CAR was synthesized by gene synthesis and molecular cloning technology and then cloned into lentiviral vector. Lentivirus were packaged and used to transfect NK92 cells. The transfection efficiency was detected by flow cytometry, and puromycin was used to screen NK92 cells stably expressing CD33-CAR (CD33-CAR-NK92). Killing effect of CD33-CAR-NK92 cells on AML cells in vitro was examined with calcein-AM release assays. IFN-γ secretions of NK92 cells and CD33-CAR-NK92 cells were measured by ELISA. Results: The pCDH-CD33-CAR lentiviral vector was successfully constructed. After lentiviral transfection, about 18.7% of NK92 cells express CD33-CAR (referred as CD33-CARNK92 cells). The percentage of CD33-CAR+ NK92 cells was about 86.3% after puromycin selection. In contrast to unmodified NK92 cells, significantly higher cytotoxic effect against CD33+ MOLM-13 cells was found in CD33-CAR-NK92 cells (P<0.01); however, there was no significant difference in cytotoxicity against CD33- JURKAT cells between NK92 cells and CD33-CAR-NK92 cells (P> 0.05). After co-culture at an effect-target ratio of 2∶1 for 6 hours, the level of IFN-γ secreted by the CD33-CAR modified NK92 cells was significantly higher than that of the unmodified ([190.97±11.52] vs [88.41±2.75]pg/ml, P<0.01). Conclusion: The CD33-CARNK92 cells could specifically recognize CD33 antigen and kill CD33+ AML cells in comparison with the unmodified NK92 cells, which provides experimental basis for clinical transformation of CD33-CAR-NK92 cells in treatingAML.

Estimates of Soil Ingestion in a Population of Chinese Children.

BACKGROUND: China's soil pollution poses serious health risks. However, data regarding the soil ingestion rate (SIR) of the Chinese population, which is critical to assessing associated health risks, are lacking. OBJECTIVES: We estimated soil ingestion of 177 Chinese children from Guangdong, Hubei, and Gansu Provinces. METHODS: We conducted this investigation by employing a tracer mass-balance method. We collected a duplicate of all food consumed and all feces and urine excreted on 1 d (n=153) and over 3 consecutive d (n=24), as well as soil samples from play areas and drinking-water samples. We analyzed concentrations of the tracer elements Al, Ba, Ce, Mn, Sc, Ti, V, and Y in these samples using ICP-AES and ICP-MS and estimated the SIR for each subject. RESULTS: The estimated SIR data based on each tracer element were characterized by a skewed distribution, as well as higher inter-tracer and inter-subject variation, with several outliers. After removing the outliers, daily SIR median (range) values in milligrams per day were Al, 27.8 (−42.0 to 257.3); Ba, 36.5 (−230.3 to 412.7); Ce, 35.3 (−21.2 to 225.8); Mn, 146.6 (−1259.4 to 1827.7); Sc, 54.8 (−4.5 to 292.0); Ti, 36.7 (−233.7 to 687.0); V, 92.1 (10.4 to 308.0); and Y, 59.1 (−18.4 to 283.0). Daily SIR median/95th percentile (range) values based on the best tracer method (BTM) were 51.7/216.6 (−9.5 to 297.6) mg/d. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the BTM, recommended SIR values for the general population of Chinese children (2.5 to 12 years old) are 52 mg/d for the central tendency and 217 mg/d for the upper percentile. We did not differentiate between outside soil and indoor dust. Considering the lower concentration of tracer elements in indoor dust than outside soil, actual soil and dust ingestion rates could be higher. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP930.