Background and Aim
We aim to evaluate the efficacy and safety of endoscopic radial incision (ERI) versus endoscopic balloon dilation (EBD) treatment of naïve, recurrent, and refractory benign ...esophageal anastomotic strictures.
Methods
One hundred and one ERI, 145 EBD, and 42 ERI combined with EBD sessions were performed in 136 consecutive patients with benign esophageal anastomotic stricture after esophagectomy at Zhongshan Hospital from January 2016 to August 2021. Baseline characteristics, operational procedures, and clinical outcomes data were retrospectively evaluated. Parameters and recurrence‐free survival (RFS) were compared between ERI and EBD in patients with naïve or recurrent or refractory strictures. Risk factors for re‐stricture after ERI were identified using univariate and multivariate analyses.
Results
Twenty‐nine ERI versus 68 EBD sessions were performed for naïve stricture, 26 ERI versus 60 EBD for recurrent strictures, and 46 ERI versus 17 EBD for refractory stricture. With comparable baseline characteristics, RFS was greater in the ERI than the EBD group for naïve strictures (P = 0.0449). The ERI group had a lower 12‐month re‐stricture rate than the EBD group (37.9% vs 61.8%, P = 0.0309) and a more prolonged patency time (181.5 ± 263.1 vs 74.5 ± 82.0, P = 0.0233). Between the two interventions, recurrent and refractory strictures had similar RFS (P = 0.0598; P = 0.7668). Multivariate analysis revealed initial ERI treatment was an independent predictive factor for lower re‐stricture risk after ERI intervention (odds ratio = 0.047, P = 0.001). Few adverse events were observed after ERI or EBD (3.0% vs 2.1%, P = 0.6918).
Conclusions
ERI is associated with lower re‐stricture rates with better patency and RFS compared with EBD for naive strictures.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Transition-metal sulfide is a good kind of material for supercapacitors because of the large capacity. Nevertheless, the low electroconductivity, slow reaction kinetics, and limited active centers ...lead to poor electrochemical properties such as long-term cycling stability. In the present work, nano nickel metal–organic framework (Ni-MOF) was constructed by using the nitrogen-rich functional group ligand 2,4,6-tris(3,5-dicarboxylphenylamino)-1,3,5-triazin and compounded with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to prepare Ni-MOF/CNTs composite, which was used as a precursor to prepare the MOFs-derived NC/Ni–Ni3S4/CNTs composite with the Ni3S4 uniformly distributed in the three-dimensional (3D) conductive network. The rich nitrogen doping and 3D conductive network constructed by CNTs improved the conductivity, prompted the rapid entry of electrolyte, and improved the reaction kinetics of NC/Ni–Ni3S4/CNTs, thus obtained excellent specific capacitance, coulomb efficiency, and cyclic stability. The specific capacitance of NC/Ni–Ni3S4/CNTs is 1489.9 F/g at 1 A/g, which remains 800 F/g at 10 A/g, showing good rate performance.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Background
Achalasia is an esophageal motility disorder with unknown etiology. Previous findings indicate that immune‐mediated inflammatory process causes inhibitory neuronal degeneration. This study ...was designed to evaluate levels of serological cytokines and chemokines in patients with achalasia.
Methods
We collected information from forty‐seven patients with achalasia who underwent peroral endoscopic myotomy. Control samples were collected from forty‐seven age‐ and sex‐matched healthy people. The concentrations of serological cytokines and chemokines were analyzed by Luminex xMAP immunoassay. Serological and clinical data were compared between groups.
Key Results
Compared with healthy controls, achalasia patients had significantly increased concentrations of eleven cytokines and chemokines, namely, TGF‐ß1 (P < .001), TGF‐ß2 (P < .001), TGF‐ß3 (P < .001), IL‐1ra (P < .001), IL‐17 (P = .005), IL‐18 (P < .001), IFN‐γ (P < .001), MIG (P < .001), PDGF‐BB (P < .001), IP‐10 (P = .003), and SCGF‐B (P < .001). Gene ontology (GO) and network functional enrichment analysis revealed regulation of signaling receptor activity and receptor‐ligand activity were the most related pathways of these cytokines and chemokines. Levels of twelve cytokines and chemokines were significantly increased in type III compared with I/II achalasia, namely, TGF‐ß2, IL‐1ra, IL‐2Ra, IL‐18, MIG, IFN‐γ, SDF‐1a, Eotaxin, PDGF‐BB, IP‐10, MCP‐1, and TRAIL.
Conclusions and Inferences
Patients with achalasia exhibited increased levels of serological cytokines and chemokines. Levels of cytokines and chemokines were significantly increased in type III than in type I/II achalasia. Cytokines and chemokines might contribute to the inflammatory development of achalasia.
The possible mechanism of the 11 cytokines and chemokines in the pathogenesis of achalasia. Both pro‐and anti‐inflammatory pathways are activated in achalasia, while proinflammatory pathways dominate in the immune imbalance. Besides, the fibroplasia accelerates the progress of the immune reaction.
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DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) causes aggressive and lethal malignancies with extremely poor prognoses, and accounts for about 90% of cases of esophageal cancer. Neuropilin and ...tolloid-like 2 (NETO2) protein coding genes have been associated with various human cancers. Nevertheless, little information is reported about the phenotypic expression and its clinical significance in ESCC progression. Here, our study found that NETO2 expression in ESCC patients was associated with tumor clinical stage and lymph node metastasis status. Gain-of-function and loss-of-function analyses showed that NETO2 stimulated ESCC cell proliferation while suppressing apoptosis
and enhanced tumor growth
. Moreover, knockdown of NETO2 significantly inhibited migration and invasion in combination with regulation of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) related markers. Mechanistically, overexpression of NETO2 increased the phosphorylation of ERK, PI3k/AKT, and Nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor 2(Nrf2), whereas silencing NETO2 decreased the phosphorylation of these targets. Our data suggest that Nrf2 was a critical downstream event responsible for triggering the PI3K/AKT and ERK signaling pathways and plays a crucial role in NETO2-mediated tumorigenesis. Taken together, NETO2 acts as an oncogene and might serve as a novel therapeutic target or prognostic biomarker in ESCC patients.
Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs (typically consisting of 18–25 nucleotides) that negatively control expression of target genes at the post-transcriptional level. Owing to the ...biological significance of miRNAs, miRTarBase was developed to provide comprehensive information on experimentally validated miRNA–target interactions (MTIs). To date, the database has accumulated >13,404 validated MTIs from 11,021 articles from manual curations. In this update, a text-mining system was incorporated to enhance the recognition of MTI-related articles by adopting a scoring system. In addition, a variety of biological databases were integrated to provide information on the regulatory network of miRNAs and its expression in blood. Not only targets of miRNAs but also regulators of miRNAs are provided to users for investigating the up- and downstream regulations of miRNAs. Moreover, the number of MTIs with high-throughput experimental evidence increased remarkably (validated by CLIP-seq technology). In conclusion, these improvements promote the miRTarBase as one of the most comprehensively annotated and experimentally validated miRNA–target interaction databases. The updated version of miRTarBase is now available at http://miRTarBase.cuhk.edu.cn/.
A lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery is regarded as the most promising candidate for next generation energy storage systems, because of its high theoretical specific capacity (1675 mA h g
) and specific ...energy (2500 W h kg
), as well as the abundance, low cost and environmental benignity of sulfur. However, the soluble polysulfides Li
S
(4 ≤ x ≤ 8) produced during the discharge process can cause the so-called "shuttle effect" and lead to low coulombic efficiency and rapid capacity fading of the batteries, which seriously restrict their practical application. Using porous materials as hosts to immobilize the polysulfides is proved to be an effective strategy. In this article, a dual functional cage-like metal-organic framework (Cu-MOF), Cu-TDPAT, combining the Lewis basic sites from the nitrogen atoms of the ligand H
TDPAT with the Lewis acidic sites from Cu(ii) open metal sites (OMSs), was employed as the sulfur host in a Li-S battery for lithium ions and polysulfide anions (S
). In addition, the size of nano-Cu-TDPAT was also optimized by microwave synthesis to reduce the internal resistance of the batteries. The electrochemical test results showed that the optimized Cu-TDPAT material can efficiently confine the polysulfides within the MOF, and the resultant porous S@Cu-TDPAT composite cathode material with the size of 100 nm shows good cycling performance with a reversible capacity of about 745 mA h g
at 1C (1C = 1675 mA g
) after 500 cycles, to the best of our knowledge, which is higher than those of all reported S@MOF cathode materials. The DFT calculation and XPS data indicate that the good cycling performance mainly results from the dual functional binding sites (that is, Lewis acid and base sites) in nanoporous Cu-TDPAT, providing the comprehensive and robust interaction with the polysulfides to overcome their dissolution and diffusion into the electrolyte. Clearly, our work provides a good example of designing MOFs with suitable interaction sites for the polysulfides to achieve S@MOF cathode materials with excellent cycling performance by multiple synergistic effects between nanoporous host MOFs and the polysulfides.
Hong Qu glutinous rice wine (HQGRW), as one of the most typical representatives of Chinese rice wine, is generally brewed from glutinous rice by adding two traditional wine fermentation starters—Hong ...Qu (HQ) and Bai Qu (BQ). The objective of this study was to determine the microbial communities and volatile metabolites of different traditional fermentation starters for HQGRW, and elucidate the potential correlation between microbiota and volatile metabolites. Both heatmap and principal component analysis (PCA) revealed the significant variances in volatile profiles among different wine starters. Microbiological analysis based on high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technology demonstrated that both of bacterial and fungal communities varied significantly in different starters. HQ was dominated mainly by bacteria of Bacillus ginsengihumi (20.17%), Pantoea sp. (10.39%), Elizabethkingia sp. (5.52%), Streptococcus sp. (5.03%) Brevundimonas sp. (3.03%), Rickettsia prowazekii (2.94%), Thermus thermophilus (2.54%), Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (1.48%), Bacillus aryabhattai (1.42%); fungi of Monascus purpureus (39.7%), Aspergillus niger (27.35%), Xeromyces bisporus (8.39%), Aspergillus penicillioides (6.89%), Aspergillus flavus (2.33%) and Pichia farinose (0.79%). By contrast, BQ contained much higher proportions of bacteria of Lactococcus lactis (10.45%), Lactobacillus brevis (9.99%), Pediococcus pentosaceus (8.29%), Weissella paramesenteroides (6.69%), Lactobacillus fermentum (4.83%), Gluconobacter thailandicus (3.93%), Lactobacillus alimentarius (3.59%), fungi of Rhizopus arrhizus (31.47%), Saccharomycopsis fibuligera (27.86%), Aspergillus niger (20.81%), Issatchenkia orientalis (3.79%), Saccharomycopsis malanga (3.15%), Clavispora lusitaniae (2.29%), Candida tropicalis (1.47%), Saccharomyces cerevisiae (1.11%) and Rhizopus microsporus (0.57%). Furthermore, core functional microbiota that might contribute to volatile flavour development was explored through Spearman's correlation-based network analysis. Lactobacillus brevis, Lactobacillus alimentarius, Lactobacillus plantarum and Aspergillus niger were found to be strongly associated with acid compounds (FDR adjusted P < 0.01), while Pichia sp., Candida sp., Monascus purpureus, Lactobacillus brevis and Lactobacillus alimentarius were positively correlated with concentrations of aromatic esters associated with fruity and floral notes (FDR adjusted P < 0.01), implying that these microorganisms might make significant contributions to the flavour of rice wine. These findings demonstrated that the aromatic quality of HQGRW may be critically influenced by the microbiota in traditional fermentation starters. To conclude, this study would contribute to the development of novel defined starter cultures for improving the aromatic quality of HQGRW.
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•HQGRW is brewed with two traditional fermentation starters—Hong Qu (HQ) and Bai Qu (BQ).•BQ was mainly dominated by L. lactis, L. brevis, R. arrhizus, and S. fibuligera.•HQ was mainly dominated by B. ginsengihumi, Pantoea sp., M. purpureus, and A. niger.•Microbial communities varied significantly in different traditional fermentation starters.•L. brevis, L. alimentarius, R. microspores, and M. purpureus were related to volatile alcohols and esters.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived hybrids are promising electrode materials in electrochemical energy storage, owing to their high surface area that offers enormous redox sites and excellent ...conductivity. In this work, MOF-derived cerium oxide/carbon integrated with molybdenum disulfide (CeO2/C/MoS2) hybrid is developed as an electrode material for supercapacitor. Remarkably, integration of CeO2/C with small amount of MoS2 has considerably enhanced the electrochemical performance. Moreover, CeO2/C/MoS2 hybrid exhibited both surface and diffusion-controlled mechanism towards charge storage. The CeO2/C/MoS2 hybrid showed an outstanding specific capacitance (specific capacity) of 1325.67 F g−1 (397.70 C g−1) and excellent cyclic stability with capacitance retention of 92.8% after 1000 charging-discharging cycles, which is significantly higher than that of CeO2/C (727.49 F g−1) or else that of MoS2 (300.33 F g−1) at 1 A g−1. In addition, asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) fabricated with CeO2/C/MoS2 hybrid and activated carbon (AC) showed remarkable electrochemical performance with high specific capacitance (110.55 F g−1), excellent cyclic stability (even after 1000 cycles) and high energy density of 34.55 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 666.7 W kg−1. Thus, MOF derived CeO2/C integrated MoS2 hybrid is a potential electrode material for the ASCs.
MOF-derived CeO2/C integrated MoS2 (CeO2/C/MoS2) hybrid is developed as an electrode material with high-performance for asymmetric supercapacitor. Display omitted
•MOF-derived CeO2/C integrated MoS2 hybrid is prepared.•The charge storage mechanism for a hybrid electrode is investigated.•CeO2/C/MoS2 electrode exhibits specific capacitance of 1325.67 F g−1 at 1 A g −1.•The ASC exhibits an excellent energy density of 34.55 W h kg−1 at 666.7 W kg−1.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
In this work, we demonstrate cerium (Ce) based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) combined with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to form Ce-MOF/CNT composites as separator coating material in the Li–S battery ...system, which showed excellent electrochemical performance even under high sulfur loading and much better capacity retention. At the sulfur loading of 2.5 mg/cm2, initial specific capacity of 1021.8 mAh/g at 1C was achieved in the Li–S cell with the Ce-MOF-2/CNT coated separator, which was slowly reduced to 838.8 mAh/g after 800 cycles with a decay rate of only 0.022% and the Coulombic efficiency of nearly 100%. Even at a higher sulfur loading of 6 mg/cm2, the cell based on Ce-MOF-2/CNT separator coating still exhibited excellent performance with initial specific capacity of 993.5 mAh/g at 0.1 C. After 200 cycles, the specific capacity of 886.4 mAh/g was still retained. The excellent performance is ascribed to the efficient adsorption of the Ce-MOF-2 to Li2S6 species and its catalytic effect toward conversion of polysulfides, resulting in suppressed shuttle effect of polysulfides in the Li–S batteries.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Effective personal protection is crucial for controlling infectious disease spread. However, commonly used personal protective materials such as disposable masks lack antibacterial/antiviral function ...and may lead to cross infection. Herein, a polyethylene glycol‐assisted solvent‐free strategy is proposed to rapidly synthesize a series of the donor–acceptor metal‐covalent organic frameworks (MCOFs) (i.e., GZHMU‐2, JNM‐1, and JNM‐2) under air atmosphere and henceforth extend it via in situ hot‐pressing process to prepare MCOFs based films with photocatalytic disinfect ability. Best of them, the newly designed GZHMU‐2 has a wide absorption spectrum (200 to 1500 nm) and can efficiently produce reactive oxygen species under sunlight irradiation, achieving excellent photocatalytic disinfection performance. After in situ hot‐pressing as a film material, the obtained GZHMU‐2/NMF can effectively kill E. coli (99.99%), S. aureus (99%), and H1N1 (92.5%), meanwhile possessing good reusability. Noteworthy, the long‐term use of a GZHMU‐2/NWF‐based mask has verified no damage to the living body by measuring the expression of mouse blood routine, lung tissue, and inflammatory factors at the in‐vivo level.
A polyethylene glycol‐assisted solvent‐free strategy is developed to rapidly synthesize a series of donor–acceptor metal‐covalent organic frameworks under air atmosphere and henceforth extends via in situ hot‐pressing process to prepare related composite films with excellent photocatalytic disinfect performance.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
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