Risk factors of cognitive frailty in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients and its implication for death: a cohort study.

BACKGROUNDS: Cognitive frailty, a clinical syndrome with physical frailty and cognitive impairment, leads to mortality and other adverse health outcomes in older adults. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of cognitive frailty, and its influencing factors, and follow its impact on short-term mortality in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients, to provide a theoretical scientific reference basis for clinical intervention and management of cognitive frailty. METHODS: A sample of 243 elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients in the respiratory department of a tertiary care hospital was conveniently sampled from November 2021 to February 2023, and the prevalence of cognitive frailty was investigated using the General Information Survey Scale, the Fried Phenotype Scale, the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Anxiety Self-Rating Scale, the Brief Geriatric Depression Scale, and the Mortality Record. The mortality was recorded by telephone follow-up after 6 months. A database was created and statistical analysis such as one-way analysis of variance, logistic regression analysis, Kaplan-Meier, and Cox survival analysis were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: A total of 47 patients (19.3%) had cognitive frailty; there were statistical differences in the prevalence of cognitive frailty by medical payment type, physical exercise, and sleeping time (P < 0.05). During a 6-month follow-up, 38 patients (15.6%) died. Cox survival analysis showed that the risk of death in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients in the cognitive frailty group was 3.212 times higher than that in the normal cognitive function and non-frailty group (95% CI 1.646-6.270, P = 0.001), and 5.266 times higher than that in the normal cognitive function and frailty group (95% CI 3.159-8.778, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of cognitive frailty in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients is high, and clinical staff should pay attention to patients' medical burden and financial ability, and reduce the incidence of cognitive frailty by instructing patients to perform physical exercise and arrange sleep time. Cognitive frailty is an important risk factor for mortality within 6 months in elderly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients, and early intervention should be emphasised to reduce or delay cognitive frailty and mortality.

Dual emission fluorescent silver nanoclusters for sensitive detection of the biological coenzyme NAD+/NADH.

Fluorescent silver nanoclusters (Ag NCs) displaying dual-excitation and dual-emission properties have been developed for the specific detection of NAD(+) (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, oxidized form). With the increase of NAD(+) concentrations, the longer wavelength emission (with the peak at 550 nm) was gradually quenched due to the strong interactions between the NAD(+) and Ag NCs, whereas the shorter wavelength emission (peaking at 395 nm) was linearly enhanced. More important, the dual-emission intensity ratio (I395/I550), fitting by a single-exponential decay function, can efficiently detect various NAD(+) levels from 100 to 4000 µM, as well as label NAD(+)/NADH (reduced form of NAD) ratios in the range of 1-50.

[Precise and Rapid Detection of Glutathione by Using Novel Fluorescent Ag Nanoclusters].

Glutathione (GSH) is an important three-peptide molecule, which has the functions of antioxidation and detoxification, and plays a crucial role in the fields of biology, medicine and food science. It is involved in many important biochemical reactions in cells and body fluid, and the changes of GSH content reflect the specific health problems of human body. Current methods of GSH detection are always complicated, time-consuming and expensive instrument depended, such as surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), electrochemical analysis, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and so on. The probe's photochemical properties can be modified by the reaction between GSH and nanoclusters, which will result in the changes of fluorescence intensity and wavelength. In this paper, a new method to realize precise and rapid GSH detection is developed by using silver na-noclusters as a fluorescent probe, and simultaneously measures the probe's fluorescence intensity and wavelength. The synthesis of the fluorescence probe reported in this paper possesses the advantages of steps-simple and pollution free, and the GSH detection method has faster response, more accurate measurement and smaller relative error over the traditional methods. The good specificity of GSH detection among other molecules with the similar structure is further proved in control group experiments by comparing the differences of their fluorescence intensities and wavelength. The measurement accuracy is fully assured due to the insensitivity of the probe to a variety of salt ions and amino acids. This technique can be further employed in the intracellular detection and imaging of GSH.

Synthesis and comparison of two poly (methyl methacrylate-b-3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate)/SiO2 hybrids by "grafting-to" approach.

Two copolymer/SiO2 hybrids are prepared by growing SiO2 on the template of well -structured diblock copolymer PMMA-b-PMPS using a "grafting-to" approach. PMMA-b-PMPS is obtained by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of methyl methacrylate (PMMA) and 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate (PMPS) using a brominated initiator end group termed 1H,1H,2H,2H-heptadecafluoro (F-Br) and a conventional initiator of ethyl 2-bromoisobutyrate (EBiB), respectively. The "grafting-to" approach is controlled at HCl for 24h by hydrolysis and condensation of Si(OCH3)3 groups in PMPS with tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) to gain both hybrids of F-PMMA-b-PMPS/SiO2 (by F-Br initiator) and E-PMMA-b-PMPS/SiO2 (by EBIB initiator). Comparatively, a little amount of fluorine content provided by F-Br is able to tighten the size of self-assembled micelles, to improve wettability and the viscoelasticity of F-PMMA-b-PMPS film due to F-Br migrating onto the film surface. Therefore, the surface of F-PMMA-b-PMPS film is sufficiently hydrophobic (99° and Δf=2941Hz) than E-PMMA-b-PMPS film (94°and Δf=4820Hz), and the viscoelasticity of the adsorbed layer for F-PMMA-b-PMPS (ΔD/Δf=-0.112) film is much harder than E-PMMA-b-PMPS/SiO2 (ΔD/Δf=-0.071). On the other hand, the cross-linked silica in PMMA-b-PMPS/SiO2 could also increase water contact angels of films (100-107°) and decrease the water absorption (Δf=704-798Hz). The influence on the viscoelasticity of the adsorbed layer by the fluorine group is much more obvious than the cross-linked silica, therefore F-PMMA-b-PMPS/SiO2 (ΔD/Δf=-0.347) and F-PMMA-b-PMPS (ΔD/Δf=-0.112) films have harder adsorbed layer than E-PMMA-b-PMPS/SiO2 (-0.071) and F-PMMA-b-PMPS films (-0.042). However, compared with a slightly improvement in thermo stability by F-Br, the cross-linked silica in PMMA-b-PMPS/SiO2 performs significantly improving thermal decomposition temperature at 300°C and 350°C.

R26R-GR: a Cre-activable dual fluorescent protein reporter mouse.

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) and its derivatives are the most widely used molecular reporters for live cell imagining. The development of organelle-specific fusion fluorescent proteins improves the labeling resolution to a higher level. Here we generate a R26 dual fluorescent protein reporter mouse, activated by Cre-mediated DNA recombination, labeling target cells with a chromatin-specific enhanced green fluorescence protein (EGFP) and a plasma membrane-anchored monomeric cherry fluorescent protein (mCherry). This dual labeling allows the visualization of mitotic events, cell shapes and intracellular vesicle behaviors. We expect this reporter mouse to have a wide application in developmental biology studies, transplantation experiments as well as cancer/stem cell lineage tracing.