[Correlation between macrophage chemotaxis and disease severity in patients with knee osteoarthritis].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the enhancement of macrophage chemotaxis in patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) and its correlation with the disease severity. METHODS: Eighty patients with KOA admitted from July 2019 to June 2022 were enrolled as the observation group and divided into 29 cases of moderate group, 30 cases of severe group and 21 cases of extremely severe group. At the same time, 30 healthy subjects were included as the control group. The gene expressions of NF-κB, CXC chemokine receptor 7 (CXCR7) and CXC chemokine ligand 12 (CXCL12) in macrophages of each group were analyzed. Visual analogue scale(VAS) was used to evaluate the degree of joint pain. Joint function was evaluated by knee Joint Society Scoring system(KSS). Finally, data analysis was carried out. RESULTS: The expression levels of NF-κB, CXCR7 and CXCL12 in moderate group, severe group and extreme recombination group were higher than those in control group. The VAS, the expression of NF-κB, CXCR7 and CXCL12 in the severe group and the extreme recombination group were higher than those in the moderate group, whereas KSS was lower than that in the moderate group. The VAS, expression levels of NF-κB, CXCR7 and CXCL12 in the extremely severe group were higher than those in the severe group, and KSS was lower than that in the severe group (all P<0.01). The expression levels of NF-κB, CXCR7 and CXCL12 in macrophages were positively correlated with VAS score, but negatively correlated with KSS(all P<0.01). The expression levels of NF-κB, CXCR7 and CXCL12 in macrophages were positively correlated with the severity of disease. After excluding the influence of traditional factors (gender, age and disease duration), multiple linear regression analysis further showed that the expression levels of NF-κB, CXCR7 and CXCL12 were still positively correlated with the severity of disease(all P<0.01). CONCLUSION: The chemotaxis of macrophages in patients with KOA increased with the aggravation of the disease, and was related to the degree of pain and function impairment.

Measurement of Spin Chern Numbers in Quantum Simulated Topological Insulators.

The topology of quantum systems has become a topic of great interest since the discovery of topological insulators. However, as a hallmark of the topological insulators, the spin Chern number has not yet been experimentally detected. The challenge to directly measure this topological invariant lies in the fact that this spin Chern number is defined based on artificially constructed wave functions. Here we experimentally mimic the celebrated Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model with cold atoms, and then measure the spin Chern number with the linear response theory. We observe that, although the Chern number for each spin component is ill defined, the spin Chern number measured by their difference is still well defined when both energy and spin gaps are nonvanished.

Virasoro Hair and Entropy for Axisymmetric Killing Horizons.

We show that the gravitational phase space for the near-horizon region of a bifurcate, axisymmetric Killing horizon in any dimension admits a 2D conformal symmetry algebra with central charges proportional to the area. This extends the construction of Haco et. al. [J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2018) 098JHEPFG1029-847910.1007/JHEP12(2018)098] to generic Killing horizons appearing in solutions of Einstein's equations and motivates a holographic description in terms of a 2D conformal field theory. The Cardy entropy in such a field theory agrees with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the horizon, suggesting a microscopic interpretation. A set of appendixes is included in the Supplemental Material that provides examples and further details of the calculations presented in the main text.

Study of magnetic silk fibroin nanoparticles for massage-like transdermal drug delivery.

A synergistic approach by the combination of magnetic nanoparticles with an alternating magnetic field for transdermal drug delivery was investigated. Methotrexate-loaded silk fibroin magnetic nanoparticles were prepared using suspension-enhanced dispersion by supercritical CO2. The physiochemical properties of the magnetic nanoparticles were characterized. In vitro studies on drug permeation across skin were performed under different magnetic fields in comparison with passive diffusion. The permeation flux enhancement factor was found to increase under a stationary magnetic field, while an alternating magnetic field enhanced drug permeation more effectively; the combination of stationary and alternating magnetic fields, which has a massage-like effect on the skin, achieved the best result. The mechanistic studies using attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy demonstrate that an alternating magnetic field can change the ordered structure of the stratum corneum lipid bilayers from the gel to the lipid-crystalline state, which can increase the fluidity of the stratum corneum lipids, thus enhancing skin penetration. Compared with the other groups, the fluorescence signal with a bigger area detected in deeper regions of the skin also reveals that the simulated massage could enhance the drug permeation across the skin by increasing the follicular transport. The combination of magnetic nanoparticles with stationary/alternating magnetic fields has potential for effective massage-like transdermal drug delivery.