miR-448-3p alleviates diabetic vascular dysfunction by inhibiting endothelial-mesenchymal transition through DPP-4 dysregulation.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) often causes vascular endothelial damage and alters vascular microRNA (miR) expression. miR-448-3p has been reported to be involved in the development of DM, but whether miR-448-3p regulates diabetic vascular endothelial dysfunction remains unclear. To investigate the molecular mechanism of diabetic vascular endothelial dysfunction and the role of miR-448-3p therein, Sprague-Dawley rats were injected with streptozotocin (STZ) to establish diabetic animal model and the rat aortic endothelial cells were treated with high glucose to establish diabetic cell model. For the treatment group, after the induction of diabetes, the miR-448-3p levels in vivo and in vitro were upregulated by adeno-associated virus serotype 2 (AAV2)-miR-448-3p injection and miR-448-3p mimic transfection, respectively. Our results showed that AAV2-miR-448-3p injection alleviated the body weight loss and blood glucose level elevation induced by STZ injection. The miR-448-3p level was significantly decreased and the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) messenger RNA level was increased in diabetic animal and cell models, which was reversed by miR-448-3p treatment. Moreover, the diabetic rats exhibited endothelial damage and endothelial-mesenchymal transition (EndMT), while AAV2-miR-448-3p injection relieved those situations. In vitro experiments demonstrated that miR-448-3p overexpression in endothelial cells alleviated endothelial damage by inhibiting EndMT through blocking the transforming growth factor-ß/Smad pathway. We further proved that miR-448-3p negatively regulated DPP-4 by binding to its 3'-untranslated region, and DPP-4 overexpression reversed the effect of miR-448-3p overexpression on EndMT. Overall, we conclude that miR-448-3p overexpression inhibits EndMT via targeting DPP-4 and further ameliorates diabetic vascular endothelial dysfunction, indicating that miR-448-3p may serve as a promising therapeutic target for diabetic endothelial dysfunction.

Chemiluminescence immunoassay for chloramphenicol.

In recent years, various chemiluminescent clinical immunoassay kits have been widely applied to the detection of hormones. However, a kit for chloramphenicol (CAP) is often absent from most commercial product lists, even though it is important to control the levels of CAP residues in foodstuffs too. Therefore, we describe a simple, solid-phase chemiluminescence immunoassay (CLIA) for the measurement of CAP in foodstuffs. A rabbit anti-CAP IgG is passively adsorbed onto the walls of polypropylene plates. The labeled antigen is horseradish peroxidase (HRP) conjugate of CAP. Luminol solution is used as the substrate of HRP. The light yield is inversely proportional to the concentration of CAP. The method has a similar sensitivity (0.05 ng/ml), specificity, precision, and accuracy to a conventional enzyme immunoassay (EIA). The intra-assay and inter-assay CVs of ten samples were <8% and <20%, respectively, and the analytical recovery of the method was 87-100%. The experimental correlation coefficient of dilution was found to be 0.999 using milk supernatant as buffer. The detection limit for the method was 0.1-10 ng/ml, and it displayed good linearity.