Network pharmacology analysis of the renal protective effects of bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) using experimental data obtained in an avian (quail) hyperuricemia model.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the nephroprotective potential of orally administered bracken Pteridium aquilinum extract against renal damage in quails, induced by a high-purine diet, to form a foundation for subsequent clinical studies and applications. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A mass spectrometry analysis was conducted on the pteridophyte subjected to steam explosion. Network pharmacological methods were then utilized to pinpoint shared targets and pathways, which suggested that Pteridium aquilinum has a capability to counteract renal injury. A total of 48 specific-pathogen-free (SPF) "Difaku" quails were selected and segregated into six distinct groups. The control group received a standard diet, whereas the other groups were fed a high-purine diet. Beginning on day 14, each group was subjected to designated therapeutic measures. The study continued for 40 days, after which relevant biological markers were assessed. RESULTS: Active compound peaks from the steam-exploded Pteridium aquilinum were isolated. Subsequently, 101 targets and several pathways associated with renoprotective effects were discerned, indicating that the Pteridium aquilinum achieves its nephroprotective function through comprehensive regulatory mechanisms. The high-purine diet successfully induced hyperuricemia in the quails, resulting in renal impairment. Following intervention with varied Pteridium aquilinum dosages, renal protective outcomes were evident, though xanthine oxidase activity remained unaffected. Histological analyses demonstrated a notable decrease in renal lesion dimensions post-intervention. CONCLUSION: The steam-exploded bracken Pteridium aquilinum may provide nephroprotective benefits against hyperuricemia-induced renal damage in quails through comprehensive regulatory processes. This highlights the Pteridium aquilinum's potential as an innovative nephroprotective therapeutic and dietary solution, presenting a promising avenue for hyperuricemia and renal damage treatment and prevention.

Predictors for non-attainment of meropenem target concentrations when treating infections in critically ill patients
.

BACKGROUND: Failure to achieve target concentrations of ß-lactam antibiotics is not uncommon despite administration of high doses. The objective of this study was to identify risk factors predicting non-attainment of ß-lactams target concentration in critically ill patients receiving meropenem as an intravenous infusion. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The retrospective study included adult patients receiving meropenem by intravenous infusion and undergoing therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) in the intensive care units (ICU) at Nanjing First Hospital. Blood samples were analyzed using UPLC-MS. Potential risk factors were evaluated by correlating them with meropenem trough concentrations (Cmin) lower than the targeted concentration (the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC)). RESULTS: Non-attainment of target concentrations was observed in 41 patients (19.5%) of the 210 patients examined. Predictors for non-attainment using multivariate logistic regression analysis were: age (p = 0.013), dosage (p = 0.042), augmented renal clearance (ARC), (p = 0.041). CONCLUSION: In addition to the expected risk factors (age and dosage), ARC was a predictor for non-attainment of the target concentration. The risk of non-attainment of target concentrations increased with an increase in creatinine clearance. Attention should be given to ARC and creatinine clearance when administering meropenem by intravenous infusion.

Experimental study on the effect and mechanism of adipose stem cell-derived exosomes combined with botulinum toxin A on skin trauma in rats.

BACKGROUND: Adipose stem cell-derived exosomes (ADSC-EXO) and botulinum toxin type A (BTX-A) individually showed a therapeutic effect on skin wound repair. AIMS: This study investigated their synergistic effect on promoting skin wound healing in vitro and in vivo and the underlying molecular events. METHODS: ADSCs were isolated from Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats to obtain ADSC-EXO by ultrafiltration and ultracentrifugation and were confirmed using nanoparticle tracking analysis and transmission electron microscopy. Human skin fibroblasts (HSF) were cultured and treated with or without ADSC-EXO, BTX-A, or their combination. Changes in cell phenotypes and protein expression were analyzed using different in vitro assays, and a rat skin wound model was used to assess their in vivo effects. RESULTS: The isolated ADSC-EXO from primarily cultured ADSCs had a circular vesicle shape with a 30-180 nm diameter. Treatment of HSF with ADSC-EXO and/or BTX-A significantly accelerated HSF migration in vitro and skin wound healing in a rat model. Moreover, ADSC-EXO plus BTX-A treatment dramatically induced VEGFA expression but reduced COL III and COL I levels in vivo. ADSC-EXO and/or BTX-A treatment significantly upregulated TGF-ß3 expression on Day 16 after surgery but downregulated TGF-ß1 expression, suggesting that ADSC-EXO plus BTX-A promoted skin wound healing and reduced inflammatory cell infiltration. CONCLUSIONS: The ADSC-EXO plus BTX-A treatment demonstrated a synergistic effect on skin wound healing through upregulation of VEGF expression and the TGF-ß3/TGF-ß1 and COL III/COL I ratio.

Detection of the Adulteration of Dendrobium Huoshanense with Dendrobium Henanense by UV-Vis-Shortwave Near-Infrared Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy Combined with Chemometrics.

BACKGROUND: Dendrobium huoshanense (DHS) is a classic traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with distinctive medicinal benefits and great economic worth; nevertheless, because of similar tastes and looks, it is simple to adulterate with less expensive substitutes (such as Dendrobium henanense [DHN]). OBJECTIVE: This work aimed to develop a reliable tool to detect and quantify the adulteration of DHS with DHN by using UV-Vis-shortwave near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-Vis-SWNIR DRS) combined with chemometrics. METHODS: Adulterated samples prepared in varying concentrations (0-100%, w/w) were analyzed with UV-Vis-SWNIR DRS methods. Partial least-square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and partial least-squares (PLS) regression techniques were used for the differentiation of adulterated DHN from pure DHS and the prediction of adulteration levels. RESULTS: The PLS-DA classification models successfully differentiated adulterated and nonadulterated DHS with an over 100% correct classification rate. UV-Vis-SWNIR DRS data were also successfully used to predict adulteration levels with a high coefficient of determination for calibration (0.9924) and prediction (0.9906) models and low error values for calibration (3.863%) and prediction (5.067%). CONCLUSION: UV-Vis-SWNIR DRS, as a fast and environmentally friendly tool, has great potential for both the identification and quantification of adulteration practices involving herbal medicines and foods. HIGHLIGHTS: UV-Vis-SWNIR DRS combined with chemometrics can be applied to identify and quantify the adulteration of herbal medicines and foods.

Development of a joint derivatization protocol for the unequivocal identification of the monosaccharide composition in four dendrobium polysaccharides and free monosaccharide by GC-MS.

The determination of monosaccharides is crucial for studying the structure of polysaccharides and the composition of free monosaccharides in living organisms. Based on previous derivatization gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) methods, we aimed to develop a novel analytical protocol for better quantifying monosaccharides. In this study, sugar alcohol acetylation, saccharonitrile acetylation, silylation and a combination of sugar alcohols acetylation and saccharonitrile acetylation were compared. The optimal method was verified with the monosaccharide determination of four polysaccharides and four free monosaccharides from Dendrobium. The results showed that the novel combined derivatization method was superior to the other three methods in terms of content analysis of monosaccharides. Furthermore, it possessed good linearity (all calibration curves showed relative coefficients ≥ 0.999), sensitivity, precision (relative standard deviation < 2%), and accuracy (recovery, 95.7-105%). Finally, the novel method established in this study was successfully employed in determining the monosaccharide composition of four polysaccharides and four free monosaccharide samples from Dendrobium.

Simultaneous determination of phenols in the four main original plants of the famous traditional Chinese medicine Shihu by pressurized capillary electrochromatography.

A rapid pressurized capillary electrochromatography (pCEC) method has been established for the simultaneous analysis of 11 phenols in the four main original plants of the famous traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Shihu. The effects of wavelength, mobile phase, flow rate, pH value, concentration of buffer, and applied voltage were systematically studied. The investigated 11 phenols could be isolated in 35 min on a reversed-phase EP-100-20/45-3-C18 capillary column using the established method. To apply the established pCEC method, all phenols except tristin (11) were detected in the four Dendrobium plants. A total of 10 components were detected in D. huoshanense, 6 components in D. nobile, 3 components in D. chrysotoxum, and 4 components in D. fimbriatum. The consistent evaluation revealed that the similarities among the four original plants of Shihu were 38.2-86.0% based on the 11 polyphenols and 92.5-97.7% based on the pCEC fingerprints. These further suggested that the components of the four original plants of TCM Shihu might be significantly different. Further investigation should be conducted to confirm and evaluate if the four species could be used as the same medicine with the same amount according to Chinese Pharmacopoeia (ChP).

Rapid Detection of Adulteration in Dendrobium Huoshanense with Dendrobium Henanense by ATR-FTIR Combined with Multivariate Methods.

Dendrobium huoshanense (DHS) has long been used to make tea drink, soup, and porridge to protect eye and liver in many Southeast Asian countries for centuries. As a rare and endangered functional food, adulteration in DHS with visually similar but cheaper and more accessible plants such as Dendrobium henanense (DHN) because of their similarities in morphology has become prevalent in the market. In this study, the Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) combined with chemometric methods was established to detect fraudulent addition in DHS with DHN. The partial least squares (PLS) models based on the ATR-FTIR files of DHS mixed with different proportions of DHN were built under cross validation and tested with different independent data sets. To reduce the variables' lack of information and increase the accuracy of the model, different wavelength selection methods including Moving Window Partial Least Squares (MW-PLS), Monte Carlo-uninformative variable elimination (MC-UVE), and interval random frog (iRF) were compared.The results showed that iRF performed the most perfectly with the number of latent variables (nLVs = 7), the lowest Root Mean Square Error of Cross-Validation (RMSECV = 7.37), and the maximum determination coefficients (R2 = 0.9721). The excellent performance of the model was proved by the low RMSEP value of 6.44% and the high R2 value of 0.9556. The developed method could rapidly quantify the adulteration DHN in DHS, and our study might provide an efficient and great potential technique tool for the rapid, green, low-cost, and nondestructive identification and quantification for DHS adulterated with DHN.

Simultaneous Quantification of 11 Phenolic Compounds and Consistency Evaluation in Four Dendrobium Species Used as Ingredients of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Shihu.

The interchangeable use of different herbs to prepare the same formulation is a common practice in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). However, this practice would require the component herbs to share similar compositions, at least in terms of the bioactive agents, to ensure they can replace each other in drug preparation. In this study, we developed an effective and comprehensive high-performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector (HPLC-DAD) method for simultaneous analysis of 11 phenolic compounds in the methanol extracts of Dendrobium huoshanense, Dendrobium nobile (D. nobile), Dendrobium chrysotoxum (D. chrysotoxum), and Dendrobium fimbriatum (D. fimbriatum), which have been identified as interchangeable ingredients for the same TCM preparation "Shihu" in the Chinese pharmacopeia (ChP). The consistency of the four Dendrobium species was evaluated on the basis of the presence of the 11 investigated compounds and the HPLC fingerprints of the methanol extracts of the plants. When gradient elution was performed with a solvent system of acetonitrile and water on a Zorbax Eclipse XDB-C18 (150 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) with monitoring at 220 nm, all 11 investigated compounds were isolated at the baseline. The established HPLC method showed excellent linearity (all analytical curves showed relative coefficients [R2] > 0.999), sensitivity, precision (relative standard deviation [RSD] < 2%), and accuracy (recovery, 90.65-99.17%). These findings confirmed that the method we constructed was reliable. Quantification analysis showed significant differences in the contents of the investigated polyphenols in the four Dendrobium species. Evaluations of consistency revealed that the similarities among the four species were 0.299-0.906 in assessments based on the 11 polyphenols and 0.685-0.968 in assessments based on HPLC fingerprints. Thus, the components of the four Dendrobium species may be significantly different, and more experiments are required to determine whether they can be used interchangeably in the same amounts for preparing the formulation according to ChP.

Simultaneous analysis of 20 free amino acids by a single marker combined with an HPLC fingerprint evaluation of Dendrobium huoshanense.

A phenylhexyl isothiocyanate (PITC) precolumn derivatization quantitative analysis of multicomponents by a single marker (QAMS) strategy for the simultaneous analysis of 20 free amino acids (FAA) in Dendrobium huoshanense is proposed. The method was validated by the linearity, limit of detection (LDO), and limit of quantitation (LOQ), recovery, precision, and stability. The results showed that when applying the established method, the LOQ of the FFAs was lower than 1 ng/ml except threonine (1.32 ng) and cysteine (1.16 ng). The QAMS investigation revealed that, using any one of the 20 FAAs as the reference internal standard, no significant differences were observed between the external standard method and the QAMS method for the quantification of FAAs in D. huoshanense by PITC precolumn derivatization [The relative standard deviation (RSD, %) by QAMS and ESM were all below 5%]. HPLC fingerprint investigation combined with similar analysis (the similarity values for S1-S25 were >0.875) and quality fluctuation analysis showed that the cultivation environment might have a great effect on the accumulation of FAAs in D. huoshanense. Overall, our study showed that we might increase the accuracy and scope of the simultaneous quantification of multicomponents using the QAMS technique by being derivatized with a strong UV absorbing group, and QAMS combined with chromatographic fingerprinting can be considered good quality criteria for the quality control of D. huoshanense and may provide analytical technical support for research on Maillard Reaction during the further processing of D. huoshanense.

Simultaneous determination of 16 important biologically active phytohormones in Dendrobium huoshanese by pressurized capillary electrochromatography.

A rapid pressurized capillary electrochromatography (pCEC) method has been successfully developed for the simultaneous determination of 16 phytohormones in Dendrobium huoshanense. Effects of wavelength, mobile phase, the flow rate, pH value, concentration of buffer and applied voltage were investigated, respectively. The results showed that the 16 phytohormones could be baseline-separated rapidly in less than 21 min on a reversed-phase EP-100-20/45-3-C18 capillary column (total length of 45 cm, effective length of 20 cm, diameter of 100 µm, ODS packing inside for 3 µm) with ACN/5.0 mM ammonium acetate (containing 0.05% formic acid, pH = 3) as the mobile phase using gradient elution mode as follows: 0.1-10.0 min 40%ACN,10-15.0 min 70%ACN, 15.0-20 min 80% ACN, 20-21.0 min 80% ACN at a flow rate of 0.12 mL/min, applied voltage of -5 kV and a UV detection wavelength of 210 nm. The method validation howed that the established method is precise and stability, and the RSDs of intra- and inter-day precision based retention time and peak area were all below 5%. Employed the established method, in our experimental conditions, total 6 endogenous hormones including IAA, IBA, NAA, GA, ABA, t-Z were detected in D. huoshense. However, a relative larger amount of exogenous hormone 2,4-D (25.3 ~ 4.2 µg/kg) and 6-BA (79.5 ~ 35.4 µg/kg) were detected in 1 ~ 4 year old cultivated D. huoshense, suggesting there were still a certain amount of exogenous hormone residue in tissue-cultured D. huoshanese though they had been transplanted to field cultivation from the test-tube plantlets for several years.

Acute associations between air pollution on premature rupture of membranes in Hefei, China.

Numerous studies had focused on the association between air pollution and health outcomes in recent years. However, little evidence is available on associations between air pollutants and premature rupture of membranes (PROM). Therefore, we performed time-series analysis to evaluate the association between PROM and air pollution. The daily average concentrations of PM2.5, SO2 and NO2 were 54.58 µg/m3, 13.06 µg/m3 and 46.09 µg/m3, respectively, and daily maximum 8-h average O3 concentration was 95.67 µg/m3. The strongest effects of SO2, NO2 and O3 were found in lag4, lag06 and lag09, and an increase of 10 µg/m3 in SO2, NO2 and O3 was corresponding to increase in incidence of PROM of 8.74% (95% CI 2.12-15.79%), 3.09% (95% CI 0.64-5.59%) and 1.68% (95% CI 0.28-3.09%), respectively. There were no significant effects of PM2.5 on PROM. Season-specific analyses found that the effects of PM2.5, SO2 and O3 on PROM were more obvious in cold season, but the statistically significant effect of NO2 was observed in warm season. We also found the modifying effects by maternal age on PROM, and we found that the effects of SO2 and NO2 on PROM were higher among younger mothers (< 35 years) than advanced age mothers (≥ 35 years); however, ≥ 35 years group were more vulnerable to O3 than < 35 years group. This study indicates that air pollution exposure is an important risk factor for PROM and we wish this study could provide evidence to local government to take rigid approaches to control emissions of air pollutants.

Rapid Detection of Adulteration in Dendrobium huoshanense Using NIR Spectroscopy Coupled with Chemometric Methods.

BACKGROUND: Dendrobium huoshanense (DHS) is a typical traditional Chinese medicine with unique medical and high economic values; however, it may easily be adulterated with cheaper alternatives (e.g. Dendrobium henanese, DHN), because of their similar appearances and tastes. OBJECTIVE: In this study, adulteration of DHN in DHS was detected by near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with chemometric methods. METHODS: By performing partial least squares (PLS) analysis, PLS multivariate methods including partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and partial least-squares regressions (PLSR) were applied to the obtained spectral data to build models. The PLS-DA model was employed to differentiate between pure DHS samples and those adulterated with DHN. RESULTS: The R2 value obtained for the PLS-DA model was 0.4898 with an RMSEP error of 0.1554, resulting in a 100% accuracy of validation sample sets. Similarly, a PLSR model was also developed to quantify the amount of DHN adulterant in DHS samples. Experimental results indicated that the good performance of the multiplicative scattering correction (MSC) model is the better model showing a prediction performance of RMSEP of 2.38 and R2 of 0.9946. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the combination of NIR spectroscopy and chemometric method provides a fast, simple and reliable method for detecting adulteration of DHS. HIGHLIGHTS: The method of classification allowed identification of both authentic and adulterated DHS samples. Comparison of six different techniques for spectra preprocessing to improve quantitative model performance was obtained with MSC derivative spectra. The method can detect most of the current DHS adulterations in the Chinese market.

[Corrigendum] Involvement of endothelial nitric oxide synthase pathway in IGF­1 protects endothelial progenitor cells against injury from oxidized LDLs.

Subsequently to the publication of this article, the authors have realized that the name of the first author was spelt incorrectly: The name was spelt as 'Hao­jing Wen', whereas the name should have been presented as 'Jing­wen Hao. The name as it should have appeared in the author list is featured above. The authors regret that this this error was not corrected prior to the publication of the above article, and apologize to the author in question and to the readership for any inconvenience caused.[the original article was published in Molecular Medicine Reports 19: 660­666, 2019; DOI:10.3892/mmr.2018.9633].

Assessment of ATR-NIR and ATR-MIR spectroscopy as an analytical tool for the quantification of the total polyphenols in Dendrobium huoshanense.

In this study, the potentiality of applying attenuated total reflectance near-infrared (ATR-NIR) and attenuated total reflectance mid-infrared (ATR-MIR) techniques combined with a partial least squares (PLS) regression technology to quantify the total polyphenols (TPs) in Dendrobium huoshanense (DHS) was investigated and compared. The real TP contents in the DHS samples were analysed using methods of reference. The capability of the two IR spectroscopic techniques to quantify the TPs in DHS was assessed by the root-mean-square error of calibration (RMSEC) and determination coefficients (R2 ). The results showed that both NIR and MIR might be used as a fast and simple tool to replace traditional chemical assays for the determination of the TP contents in DHS, and the best NIR model showed slightly better prediction performance [root-mean-square error of prediction (RMSEP): 0.307, R2 : 0.9122, ratio performance deviation (RPD): 4.43] than the best MIR model (RMSEP: 0.440, R2 : 0.9069, RPD: 3.09). Results from this study indicated that both the NIR and MIR models could be used to quantify the TP in DHS, and ATR-NIR appeared to be the more predominant and more robust technique for the quantification of the TP in DHS.

Rapid quantification of polysaccharide and the main onosaccharides in Dendrobium huoshanense by near-infrared attenuated total reflectance spectroscopy.

A rapid, green, low cost and nondestructive attenuated total reflection near infrared (ATR NIR) method was developed to quantify the total polysaccharide and the main monosaccharides mannose and glucose in Dendrobium huoshanense. Total 100 D. huoshanense samples from different places were analyzed using ATR NIR method. Potential outlying samples were initially removed from the collected NIR data using the PCA-Mahalanobis distance method. Spectral data preprocessing was studied in the construction of a partial least squares (PLS) model and six different signal pretreatment methods, including multiplicative scattering correction (MSC), standard normal transformation (SNV), first and second derivatives, the combination of MSC with the first derivative, and the combination of SNV with the first derivative, were compared. The results showed that the best signal pretreatment method was the spectral data pretreated by SNV combined with the first derivative due to it showed the lowest root-mean-square error of cross-validation (RMSECV), highest R2 for both the polysaccharide and its main monosaccharides. In order to improve the performance of the model, the pretreated full spectrum was calculated by different wavelength selection method. The results showed that the optional wavelength selection model was the one simultaneously selecting the NIR wavelength ranges 7500-5750 cm-1, 5250-4700 cm-1, 4450-4300 cm-1 and 4200-4100 cm-1 because of the lowest RMSECV and the highest R2 among the ten wavelength selection models. The external validation and the complete external validation confirmed the robustness and reliability of the developed NIR model. The contents of the total polysaccharide and the main monosaccharides are the essential quality assessment criterion for plant medicines while their traditional quantification methods involved sample destruction, tedious sample processing and non-environmentally friendly pretreatment, therefore, our study might provide an efficient technique tool for the rapid, green and nondestructive quantification of the total polysaccharide and the main monosaccharides for D. huoshanense and other rich-in-polysaccharide plant medicines.

A comparative study of three tissue-cultured Dendrobium species and their wild correspondences by headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry combined with chemometric methods.

Plant tissue culture technique is widely used in the conservation and utilization of rare and endangered medicinal plants and it is crucial for tissue culture stocks to obtain the ability to produce similar bioactive components as their wild correspondences. In this paper, a headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method combined with chemometric methods was applied to analyze and evaluate the volatile compounds in tissue-cultured and wild Dendrobium huoshanense Cheng and Tang, Dendrobium officinale Kimura et Migo and Dendrobium moniliforme (Linn.) Sw. In total, 63 volatile compounds were separated, with 53 being identified from the three Dendrobium spp. SAMPLES: Different provenances of Dendrobiums had characteristic chemicals and showed remarkable quantity discrepancy of common compositions. The similarity evaluation disclosed that the accumulation of volatile compounds in Dendrobium samples might be affected by their provenance. Principal component analysis showed that the first three components explained 85.9% of data variance, demonstrating a good discrimination between samples. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry techniques, combined with chemometrics, might be an effective strategy for identifying the species and their provenance, especially in the assessment of tissue-cultured Dendrobium quality for use in raw herbal medicines.

A 3' splice site mutation of IDS gene in a Chinese family with mucopolysaccharidosis type II.

The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying genetic cause in a four generation Chinese family diagnosed with mucopolysaccharidosis type II. Peripheral blood samples were collected from family members and the iduronate-2-sulfatase (IDS) gene was analyzed by DNA sequencing. The impact of IDS mutations on mRNA transcription was determined by quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) in both patients as well as in healthy control samples. In addition, RT-PCR was performed to confirm the characteristics of a found mutation located in non-canonical splicing site. A 3' splice site mutation c.880-8A>G (IVS 6-8A>G) was identified in two members of the analyzed MPS II family and sequencing of RT-PCR products showed that this mutation activates an upstream cryptic splice-site in intron 6, leads to the 7 nucleotide insertion in exon 7, which in turn results in an exon 7 frameshift introducing a premature stop codon and shorter peptide chain. In addition, qRT-PCR products from the two patients showed a reduced IDS mRNA expression (43.9% and 71.2%, respectively), when compared with the average IDS mRNA expression in healthy control samples, possibly as a result of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. In conclusion, in this study, we have identified an IDS gene splice mutation which is associated with clinically attenuated MPS II phenotype. In addition, our study accentuates the importance of cDNA analysis in the detection of intronic mutations, since in the studies examining only gDNA, the link between genotype and phenotype may have been misinterpreted.