Characteristics of bone metabolism in postmenopausal female patients with different types of idiopathic benign paroxysmal positional vertigo: A single-centre retrospective study.

OBJECTIVE: The association between benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) and impaired calcium metabolism has attracted widespread interest. Several studies have suggested that decreased bone mineral density (BMD) and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) level are related to the occurrence and/or recurrence of BPPV; however, the characteristics of bone metabolism in patients with BPPV subtypes have not been fully investigated, and conclusions have been controversial. This study aimed to evaluate BMD and serum levels of 25(OH)D and bone turnover markers to clarify the characteristics of bone metabolism in patients with different types of BPPV. METHOD: We retrospectively analysed the data of new-onset idiopathic postmenopausal female patients with BPPV at our institution from January 2016 to January 2020. The patients' demographic data including age, medication history, concomitant diseases, onset time, clinical form, laboratory indicators, such as serum levels of 25(OH)D, bone formation markers, namely, amino-terminal propeptide of type I procollagen (PINP) and osteocalcin (OC), bone resorption marker, namely, ß-isomerized carboxy-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ß-CTX), and BMD were collected and analysed. RESULTS: This study included 201 consecutive postmenopausal female patients with BPPV. Among them, 138 were diagnosed with posterior semicircular canal BPPV, 42 were diagnosed with lateral semicircular canal canalolithiasis, and 21 were diagnosed with lateral semicircular canal cupulolithiasis. There were no significant differences in age distribution, body mass index, clinical history, levels of albumin, globulin, uric acid, creatinine, or blood urea nitrogen, lipid profiles (except high-density lipoprotein cholesterol) and routine blood parameters among these groups (P > 0.05). There were no significant differences in the mean T-score and BMD values of different sites or in the serum levels of 25(OH)D and bone turnover markers (PINP, OC and ß-CTX) among the subgroups (P > 0.05). The proportion of reduction in BMD (T-score < -1 SD) and decreased serum vitamin D level (< 20 ng/ml) were not significantly different between the subgroups (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: There were no significant differences in bone metabolism in postmenopausal female patients with different types of idiopathic BPPV.

Direct stamp of technology or origin on the genotypic and phenotypic variation of indigenous Saccharomyces cerevisiae population in a natural model of boiled grape juice fermentation into traditional Msalais wine in China.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains worldwide show genetic and phenotypic diversity and their population substructures are greatly affected by their technological application or geographical origins. Msalais is a traditional wine obtained via a unique method of spontaneous fermentation of local boiled grape juice in Southern Xinjiang. We analyzed 436 indigenous S. cerevisiae strains associated with Msalais fermentation. These strains were highly diverse with respect to the interdelta region and 24 phenotypic traits, with apparent differentiation according to strain origins and technologies used to produce Msalais. The genetic and phenotypic diversity of strains from traditional workshops was higher than in strains from modern plants. These local strains had different origin- or technology-specific fermentative characteristics. Strains growing in large-scale fermentation tanks tolerated high temperature, whereas strains from traditional workshops tolerated high alcohol content (16%) and low temperature (13°C). Almost all the strains were characterized by the highest fermenting vigor, with weak H2S production and no histamine, cadaverine, phenethylamine and tryptamine production. Majority of strains had pronounced autolytic activity with high ß-glucosidase and polygalacturonase activity and alcohol production. Our study reveals a direct stamp of technology or origin on genotypic and phenotypic variation of an indigenous S. cerevisiae population.

[Chemical constituents of Ligularia songarica].

OBJECTIVE: To study the chemical constituents of Ligularia songarica. METHODS: Isolation and purification were carried out on repeated silica gel column chromatography. The compounds structures were identified by physico-chemical properties and spectral analyses. RESULTS: Ten compounds were isolated and identified as benzofuranoeremophil-2-ene (1), 6-angeloyloxy-1,10-epoxy-euryopsin (2), 2-hydroxyplatyphyllide (3), 1ß-hydroxy-6,9-dien-8-oxoeremophy-11-nor-11-ketone (4), 2-isopropenyl-6-acetyl-8-methoxy-13-benzodioxin-4-one (5), 1ß-hydroxy-6,9-dien-8-oxo-11-nor-11-hydroxyeremophilane (6), isopetasin (7), 6ß,10α-dihydroxy-1-oxoeremophila-7 (11), 8(9)-diene-8,12-olide (8), 10α-hydroxy-1-oxo-eremophila-7 (11), 8(9)-diene-8,12-olide (9) and 6ß-angeloyloxy-1ß,10ß-epoxy-9-oxo-furaneremophilane (10). CONCLUSION: Compounds 2-9 are obtained from this plant for the first time.

A fluorescent sensor based on the cascade signal amplification strategy for ultra-sensitive detection of Cu2.

Copper is an essential element in the human body, participating in various physiological activities in the bodies of organisms. However, an excessive load of Cu2+ is associated with several neurodegenerative diseases and prion diseases, also identified as a symptom of Wilson's disease (WD). A straightforward, rapid, sensitive, and specific copper sensor is highly required but remains a challenge. In this study, guided by the simulation, we developed a chemical sensor using a cascade signal amplification strategy based on the Cu-catalyzed click reaction, combined with a fluorescence-enhanced substrate with gold nanorods coupled with silver nanoislands. The sensor can selectively detect Cu2+ as low as 3.87 nM within 10 min. We have demonstrated that this method can be directly employed for WD diagnosis in urine samples. In addition, using antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) as an example, we verify whether this assay can be adapted to other targets where Cu is designed as an indirect indicator.

[Fluorescence microscopy and HPLC assay for rapid detection of distribution and content of resveratrol in Polygonum cuspidatum].

OBJECTIVE: To establish fluorescence microscopy combined with HPLC method for rapid detection the distribution and content of resveratrol tissues in different growth stages of Polygonum cuspidatum. METHODS: Used sequential experiment to design conditions of frozen and observe of the section by fluorescence microscopy; Resveratrol was extracted by ultrasonic-assisted extraction and its content was detected by HPLC. RESULTS: The results showed that frozen condition for concentration of gum Arabic was from 20% (dipping time was 5 - 6 h) to 40% (2 - 5 min), the freezer temperature was -5 degrees C, and the thickness was 15 microm. Resveratrol in polygonum cuspidatum was mainly accumulated in the organs, tissues and cells of fiber and cellulose, its content in rhizomes declined as the following sequence: spinal cord > xylem > phloem > periderm; Its content declined in organ as the following sequence: buds > rhizomes > ground stem > leaves; The content of resveratrol in root increased with age. CONCLUSION: The results of fluorescence microscopic observation is in accordance with the HPLC results, indicating that the method is simple, fast and reliable, and provides a fast and reliable detection method for the determination of optimum harvesting period of Polygonum cuspidatum and acquisition of quality.

[Inventory and Distribution Characteristics of Anthropogenic Ammonia Emissions in Zhejiang Province from 2008 to 2018].

As ammonia is the main component of PM2.5, long time series of ammonia emission characteristics are an important basis for studying the historical causes of PM2.5 pollution. In this study, the activity data of various anthropogenic ammonia emissions from 11 cities were collected in Zhejiang. The anthropogenic ammonia emissions inventory in Zhejiang was established using emission factors, and then a 1 km×1 km spatial grid distribution was carried out using ArcGIS software. The results showed that from 2008 to 2018, the ammonia emissions from anthropogenic sources in Zhejiang exhibited a downward trend, with an average annual decline rate of approximately 3.97%. The ammonia emissions were 108.52 kt in 2018, and the emission intensity was 1.03 t·km-2, in which there was 90.02 kt from agricultural sources and 18.50 kt from non-agricultural sources. The ammonia emissions of Hangzhou, Jiaxing, and Wenzhou were higher than those of the other cities, accounting for 14.72%, 11.86%, and 11.80% of the total ammonia emissions, respectively. The spatial distribution characteristics showed that ammonia emissions were mainly distributed in the northern part of Zhejiang, showing an emission trend of "high in the north and low in the south." Uncertainty analysis showed that the simulated average value of ammonia emissions was 108.37 kt, and the uncertainty range in the 95% confidence interval was -5.40%-5.60%.

Network analysis suggests a potentially 'evil' alliance of opportunistic pathogens inhibited by a cooperative network in human milk bacterial communities.

The critical importance of human milk to infants and even human civilization has been well established. Yet our understanding of the milk microbiome has been limited to cataloguing OTUs and computation of community diversity. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no report on the bacterial interactions within the milk microbiome. To bridge this gap, we reconstructed a milk bacterial community network based on Hunt et al. Our analysis revealed that the milk microbiome network consists of two disconnected sub-networks. One sub-network is a fully connected complete graph consisting of seven genera as nodes and all of its pair-wise interactions among the bacteria are facilitative or cooperative. In contrast, the interactions in the other sub-network of eight nodes are mixed but dominantly cooperative. Somewhat surprisingly, the only 'non-cooperative' nodes in the second sub-network are mutually cooperative Staphylococcus and Corynebacterium that include some opportunistic pathogens. This potentially 'evil' alliance between Staphylococcus and Corynebacterium could be inhibited by the remaining nodes that cooperate with one another in the second sub-network. We postulate that the 'confrontation' between the 'evil' alliance and 'benign' alliance and the shifting balance between them may be responsible for dysbiosis of the milk microbiome that permits mastitis.

[A bird's eye view of the algorithms and software packages for reconstructing phylogenetic trees].

The prototype phylogenetic tree, i.e., evolutionary "tree" or "tree of life", was first conceived by Charles Darwin in his seminal book "The Origin of Species", and its reconstructions have been approached by generations of biologists ever since. In this article, we briefly reviewed the major algorithms and software packages for reconstructing phylogenetic trees. Specifically we discuss four categories of phylogeny algorithms including distance-matrix, maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian framework, as well as software packages (PHYLIP, MEGA, MrBayes) based on them.

[A review on the bioinformatics pipelines for metagenomic research].

Metagenome, a term first dubbed by Handelsman in 1998 as "the genomes of the total microbiota found in nature", refers to sequence data directly sampled from the environment (which may be any habitat in which microbes live, such as the guts of humans and animals, milk, soil, lakes, glaciers, and oceans). Metagenomic technologies originated from environmental microbiology studies and their wide application has been greatly facilitated by next-generation high throughput sequencing technologies. Like genomics studies, the bottle neck of metagenomic research is how to effectively and efficiently analyze the gigantic amount of metagenomic sequence data using the bioinformatics pipelines to obtain meaningful biological insights. In this article, we briefly review the state-of-the-art bioinformatics software tools in metagenomic research. Due to the differences between the metagenomic data obtained from whole genome sequencing (i.e., shotgun metagenomics) and amplicon sequencing (i.e., 16S-rRNA and gene-targeted metagenomics) methods, there are significant differences between the corresponding bioinformatics tools for these data; accordingly, we review the computational pipelines separately for these two types of data.

MicroRNA-155 silencing enhances inflammatory response and lipid uptake in oxidized low-density lipoprotein-stimulated human THP-1 macrophages.

It has been proposed that the inflammatory response of monocytes/macrophages induced by oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) is a key event in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. MicroRNA-155 (miR-155) is an important regulator of the immune system and has been shown to be involved in acute inflammatory response. However, the function of miR-155 in oxLDL-stimulated inflammation and atherosclerosis remains unclear. Here, we show that the exposure of human THP-1 macrophages to oxLDL led to a marked up-regulation of miR-155 in a dose-dependent manner. Silencing of endogenous miR-155 in THP-1 cells using locked nucleic acid-modified antisense oligonucleotides significantly enhanced oxLDL-induced lipid uptake, up-regulated the expression of scavenger receptors (lectinlike oxidized LDL receptor-1, cluster of differentiation 36 [CD36], and CD68), and promoted the release of several cytokines including interleukin (IL)-6, -8, and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α). Luciferase reporter assay showed that targeting miR-155 promoted nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) nuclear translocation and potentiated the NF-κB-driven transcription activity. Moreover, miR-155 knockdown resulted in a marked increase in the protein amount of myeloid differentiation primary response gene 88 (MyD88), an important adapter protein used by Toll-like receptors to activate the NF-κB pathway. Our data demonstrate that miR-155 serves as a negative feedback regulator in oxLDL-stimulated THP-1 inflammatory responses and lipid uptake and thus might have potential therapeutic implications in atherosclerosis.

[The study of pollutant's effects on macrophages and its significance in biological monitoring].

This study aimed to investigate the effects of environmental pollutant sulfite and inorganic mercury on the peritoneal macrophages (PM phi) of mice and further explore the significance of macrophage as a biomarker in biological monitoring. PM phi were taken from the peritoneal cavity of mice and cultivated with Na2SO3 and HgCl2 respectively in vitro, and then morphologic changes were detected under light microscope and electron microscope. Also the function of PM phi was detected in yielding nitric oxide (NO), reducing MTT and phagocytizing. After affected by the pollutants, marked morphologic changes of PM phi were observed, and NO reducing, cell vigor and phagocytizing of PM phi were obviously inhibited (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01). And some PM phi were necrotic caused by HgCl2 at high concentration(10(-4) mol/L). The results suggested that PM phi of mice was damaged distinctly by using Na2SO3 and HgCl2 which showed sulfite and inorganic mercury directly impacted on non-special defensive function of macrophages. Meanwhile the experiment indicated that macrophage could be used as an effective biomarker in biological monitoring of environmental contamination.