Preparation and performance evaluation of a novel temperature-resistant anionic/nonionic surfactant.

Aiming at oil extraction from a tight reservoir, the Jilin oil field was selected as the research object of this study. Based on the molecular structures of conventional long-chain alkyl anionic surfactants, a new temperature-resistant anionic/nonionic surfactant (C8P10E5C) was prepared by introducing polyoxyethylene and polyoxypropylene units into double-chain alcohols. The resulting structures were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-NMR), and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). Then, based on surface tension, interfacial tension, adsorption resistance, wettability, and emulsification performance tests, the performance of C8P10E5C was evaluated. The FT-IR, ESI-MS, and NMR spectra confirmed that C8P10E5C was successfully prepared. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) of C8P10E5C in water was 2.9510 × 10-4 mol/L (the corresponding mass concentration is 0.26%), and the surface tension of the aqueous C8P10E5C solution at this concentration was 30.5728 mN/m. At 0.3% concentration, the contact angle of the C8P10E5C solution was 31.4°, which is 60.75% lower than the initial contact angle. Under high-temperature conditions, C8P10E5C can still reduce the oil-water interfacial tension to 10-2 mN/m, exhibiting good temperature resistance. At 110 °C, upon adsorption to oil sand, the C8P10E5C solution could reduce the oil-water interfacial tension to 0.0276 mN/m, and the interfacial tension can still reach the order of 10-2 mN/m, indicating that C8P10E5C has strong anti-adsorption capability. Additionally, it has good emulsifying performance; upon forming an emulsion with crude oil, the highest drainage rate was only 50%. The forced imbibition oil recovery of C8P10E5C is 65.8%, which is 38.54, 24.22, and 27.25% higher than those of sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate, alkyl polyoxyethylene ether carboxylate, and alkyl ether carboxylate, respectively.

A microfluidic hemostatic diagnostics platform: Harnessing coagulation-induced adaptive-bubble behavioral perception.

Clinical viscoelastic hemostatic assays, which have been used for decades, rely on measuring biomechanical responses to physical stimuli but face challenges related to high device and test cost, limited portability, and limited scalability.. Here, we report a differential pattern using self-induced adaptive-bubble behavioral perception to refresh it. The adaptive behaviors of bubble deformation during coagulation precisely describe the transformation of viscoelastic hemostatic properties, being free of the precise and complex physical devices. And the integrated bubble array chip allows microassays and enables multi-bubble tests with good reproducibility. Recognition of the developed bubble behaviors empowers automated and user-friendly diagnosis. In a prospective clinical study (clinical model development [n = 273]; clinical assay [n = 44]), we show that the diagnostic accuracies were 99.1% for key viscoelastic hemostatic assay indicators (reaction time [R], kinetics time [K], alpha angle [Angle], maximum amplitude [MA], lysis at 30 min [LY30]; n = 220) and 100% (n = 44) for hypercoagulation, healthy, and hypocoagulation diagnoses. This should provide fresh insight into existing paradigms and help more clinical needs.

Aumolertinib effectively reduces clinical symptoms of an EGFR L858R-mutant non-small cell lung cancer case coupled with osimertinib-induced severe thrombocytopenia: a case report.

Replacement of first-generation or second-generation epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) with third-generation EGFR-TKIs remains the current standard of care for T790M mutations in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Osimertinib is one of the first third-generation EGFR-TKIs to be approved and is also the most widely studied in clinical research. There has been widespread concern about the adverse effects of osimertinib such as cardiotoxicity and interstitial lung disease, but few articles have reported severe thrombocytopenia after osimertinib treatment. This article reports a 64-year-old woman with non-small cell lung cancer initially diagnosed with cT2aN1M1a, EGFR p.L858R, who developed disease progression and T790M after 32 months of first-line treatment with gefitinib (250 mg/day) before switching to second-line treatment with osimertinib (80 mg/day). Severe thrombocytopenia and active bleeding occurred after treatment with osimertinib, which improved with recombinant human thrombopoietin and platelet transfusion. Treatment was replaced with aumolertinib (110 mg/day). After platelet stabilization with aumolertinib treatment in combination with chest radiotherapy, this patient had progression-free survival for 9 months and overall survival for over 45 months. In conclusion, from our experience, aumolertinib has good efficacy and mild adverse effects, and is a good choice for non-small cell lung cancer patients with T790M, especially for patients at high risk of thrombocytopenia.

Touchable cell biophysics property recognition platforms enable multifunctional blood smart health care.

As a crucial biophysical property, red blood cell (RBC) deformability is pathologically altered in numerous disease states, and biochemical and structural changes occur over time in stored samples of otherwise normal RBCs. However, there is still a gap in applying it further to point-of-care blood devices due to the large external equipment (high-resolution microscope and microfluidic pump), associated operational difficulties, and professional analysis. Herein, we revolutionarily propose a smart optofluidic system to provide a differential diagnosis for blood testing via precise cell biophysics property recognition both mechanically and morphologically. Deformation of the RBC population is caused by pressing the hydrogel via an integrated mechanical transfer device. The biophysical properties of the cell population are obtained by the designed smartphone algorithm. Artificial intelligence-based modeling of cell biophysics properties related to blood diseases and quality was developed for online testing. We currently achieve 100% diagnostic accuracy for five typical clinical blood diseases (90 megaloblastic anemia, 78 myelofibrosis, 84 iron deficiency anemia, 48 thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, and 48 thalassemias) via real-world prospective implementation; furthermore, personalized blood quality (for transfusion in cardiac surgery) monitoring is achieved with an accuracy of 96.9%. This work suggests a potential basis for next-generation blood smart health care devices.

A longitudinal sampling study of transcriptomic and epigenetic profiles in patients with thrombocytopenia syndrome.

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is a novel tick-borne infectious disease caused by a new type of SFTS virus (SFTSV). Here, a longitudinal sampling study is conducted to explore the differences in transcript levels after SFTSV infection, and to characterize the transcriptomic and epigenetic profiles of hospitalized patients. The results reveal significant changes in the mRNA expression of certain genes from onset to recovery. Moreover, m6A-seq reveals that certain genes related with immune regulation may be regulated by m6A. Besides the routine tests such as platelet counts, serum ALT and AST levels testing, distinct changes in myocardial enzymes, coagulation function, and inflammation are well correlated with the clinical data and sequencing data, suggesting that clinical practitioners should monitor the above indicators to track disease progression and guide personalized treatment. In this study, the transcript changes and RNA modification may lend a fresh perspective to our understanding of the SFTSV and play a significant role in the discovery of drugs for effective treatment of this disease.

Aberrant cytokine expression in COVID-19 patients: Associations between cytokines and disease severity.

Cytokines play pleiotropic, antagonistic, and collaborative in viral disease. The high morbidity and mortality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) make it a significant threat to global public health. Elucidating its pathogenesis is essential to finding effective therapy. A retrospective study was conducted on 71 patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Data on cytokines, T lymphocytes, and other clinical and laboratory characteristics were collected from patients with variable disease severity. The effects of cytokines on the overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS) of patients were analyzed. The critically severe and severe patients had higher infection indexes and significant multiple organ function abnormalities than the mild patients (P < 0.05). IL-6 and IL-10 were significantly higher in the critically severe patients than in the severe and mild patients (P < 0.05). IL-6 and IL-10 were closely associated with white blood cells, neutrophils, T lymphocyte subsets, D-D dimer, blood urea nitrogen, complement C1q, procalcitonin C-reactive protein. Moreover, the IL-6 and IL-10 levels were closely correlated to dyspnea and dizziness (P < 0.05). The patients with higher IL-10 levels had shorter OS than the group with lower levels (P < 0.05). The older patients with higher levels of single IL-6 or IL-10 tended to have shorter EFS (P < 0.05), while the patients who had more elevated IL-6 and IL-10 had shorter OS (P < 0.05). The Cox proportional hazard model revealed that IL-6 was the independent factor affecting EFS. IL-6 and IL-10 play crucial roles in COVID-19 prognosis.

The values of coagulation function in COVID-19 patients.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the blood coagulation function in COVID-19 patients, and the correlation between coagulopathy and disease severity. METHODS: We retrospectively collected 147 clinically diagnosed COVID-19 patients at Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital of Hubei, China. We analyzed the coagulation function in COVID-19 patients through the data including thrombin-antithrombin complex (TAT), α2-plasmininhibitor-plasmin Complex (PIC), thrombomodulin (TM), t-PA/PAI-1 Complex (t-PAIC), prothrombin time (PT), international normalized ratio (INR), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), fibrinogen (FIB), thrombin time (TT), D-Dimer (DD), and platelet (PLT). RESULT: The levels of TAT, PIC, TM, t-PAIC, PT, INR, FIB, and DD in COVID-19 patients were higher than health controls (p<0.05), and also higher in the patients with thrombotic disease than without thrombotic disease (p<0.05). What's more, the patients with thrombotic disease had a higher case-fatality (p<0.05). TAT, PIC, TM, t-PAIC, PT, INR, APTT, FIB, DD, and PLT were also found correlated with disease severity. Meanwhile, we found that there were significant difference in TAT, TM, t-PAIC, PT, INR, APTT, DD, and PLT in the death and survival group. Further using univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis also found that t-PAIC and DD were independent risk factors for death in patients and are excellent predicting the mortality risk of COVID-19. CONCLUSION: Most COVID-19 patients with inordinate coagulation systems, dynamic monitoring of coagulation parameters might be a key in the control of COVID-19 death.