Aim To determine whether liver lobe-based DCE-MRI can be used to detect the presence and Child–Pugh class of hepatitis B-related cirrhosis. Materials and methods Fifty-six cirrhotic patients with ...hepatitis B and 20 healthy participants underwent liver DCE-MRI, and the positive enhancement integral (PEI), time to peak (TTP), maximum slope of increase (MSI) and maximum slope of decrease (MSD) of the left lateral liver lobe (LLL), left medial liver lobe (LML), right liver lobe (RL), and caudate lobe (CL) were measured and analysed statistically to evaluate cirrhosis. Results TTP values of the LLL, LML, RL and CL were positively correlated with the Child–Pugh class of cirrhosis ( r =0.452 to 0.55, all p <0.05). PEI values of the LLL, LML, RL and CL, as well as the MSI of the CL and the MSD of the RL, were inversely correlated with the Child–Pugh class ( r =−0.349 to −0.72, all p <0.05). PEI values of the LLL and CL, or TTP values of the RL had the most area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.99 for identifying the presence of liver cirrhosis. The PEI of the RL had the largest AUC of 0.975 and 0.78 for distinguishing the Child–Pugh class A of cirrhosis from class B–C and class A–B of cirrhosis from class C, respectively. Conclusion Liver lobe-based DCE-MRI parameters are associated with the presence and Child–Pugh class of hepatitis B-related cirrhosis.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Increasing evidence has demonstrated that the life history traits of fishes have changed in many exploited populations, caused principally by intense fishing mortality and size‐selectivity of the ...fishing gear. Broad and intensive trawl fishing over an extended period has the enormous potential to change the biological characters of exploited fish populations. An individual‐based model was developed to explore the interactions between trawl fishing and evolutionary changes in length‐at‐age and age structure of an exploited fish population. A perennial fish population was simulated with a multiple age structure in the model to examine the effects of long‐term trawl fishing on hairtail, Trichiurus lepturus, in the East China Sea. The results revealed that distribution of the body length‐at‐age and the age structure of the fish population were irreversibly changed under long‐term trawl fishing. The simulated results confirm that the length‐at‐age is increasing shorter, the younger individuals dominate, the influence of trawl selectivity on the biological traits of the fish population is highly significant, and that these changes have potentially evolutionary consequences on the fish body length‐at‐age.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
ABSTRACT
We present the first release of the data and compact-source catalogue for the JCMT Large Program SCUBA-2 Continuum Observations of Pre-protostellar Evolution (SCOPE). SCOPE consists of 850 ...$\mu$m continuum observations of 1235 Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (PGCCs) made with the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. These data are at an angular resolution of 14.4 arcsec, significantly improving upon the 353 GHz resolution of Planck at 5 arcmin, and allowing for a catalogue of 3528 compact sources in 558 PGCCs. We find that the detected PGCCs have significant sub-structure, with 61 per cent of detected PGCCs having three or more compact sources, with filamentary structure also prevalent within the sample. A detection rate of 45 per cent is found across the survey, which is 95 per cent complete to Planck column densities of $N_{\rm {H_{2}}}$ > 5 × 1021 cm−2. By positionally associating the SCOPE compact sources with young stellar objects, the star formation efficiency, as measured by the ratio of luminosity to mass, in nearby clouds is found to be similar to that in the more distant Galactic Plane, with the column density distributions also indistinguishable from each other.
Engineering of novel functional nanocomposite as like as the metallic nanocrystals supported non-stoichiometric perovskite nanomaterial in controlled parameters (size, shape and ratio of chemical ...characteristics) is a challengeable task. In this context, we present a facile route to fabricate and study its physicochemical property at real time mode in this report. Nanoscale pure Pb crystals surfaced on non-stoichiometric A-site deficient Pb
TiO
nanoparticle were fabricated when a precursor lead titanate (PbTiO
) nanoparticle was exposed to an electron beam irradiation (EBI) in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) at ambient temperature. In the state of the art, the chemical states and electronic structure of non-irradiated and irradiated PbTiO
were studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Electron bombardment resulted in a new visible feature at low binding energy in the Pb 4f core level, while Ti 2p and O 1s line shape showed slight changes. The Fermi level of the corresponding materials was determined to be 1.65 ± 0.1 eV and 2.05 ± 0.1 eV above the valence band maximum, respectively. The normal, weakly p-type PTO exhibits peculiar n-type feature after EBI process (The Fermi level moves near to the conduction band). A feasible mechanism is proposed involving the electron-stimulated local bond-breaking phenomenon in PbTiO
.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
In December 2019, a new type of coronavirus-infected pneumonia broke out in Wuhan and spread rapidly to other parts of the country. The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical features ...of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
A retrospective analysis was performed on the confirmed cases of COVID-19, who were admitted to the North Hospital of Changsha first Hospital (Changsha Public Health treatment Center) from January 17 to February 7, 2020.
The median age of COVID-19 patients was 45 years (range 33.5-57). The male patients accounted for 49.7%, 64.6% of the patients had a history of exposure in Wuhan, and 31.7% had family aggregation. The median days of onset were six, and the incidence of severe illness was 18.6%. Compared with the non-severe group, the severe group showed statistical significance in older age, hypertension, bilateral lung plaque shadow, decrease in lymphocyte count, increase in C-reactive protein (CRP), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), lactate dehydrogenase, and creatine kinase.
Age, combined hypertension, oxygenation index, double lung patch, decreased lymphocyte count, and elevated levels of C-reactive protein, aspartate aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase, and creatine kinase can be used as predictors of the disease severity.
The molecular characterization of cytogenetic abnormalities has not only provided insights into the mechanisms of leukemogenesis but also led to the establishment of new treatment strategies ...targeting these abnormalities and thereby further improve the prognosis of patients. We analyzed the prognosis of 1091 Chinese patients with newly diagnosed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and explored the prognostic impacts of a large number of cytogenetic/molecular abnormalities. It was demonstrated that, in both B- and T-ALL settings, the prognosis was negatively correlated to the age as reported to date. For childhood T-ALL patients, it was also documented that the HOX11 expression represented a favorable prognostic factor as it was in adult ones. We identified CRLF2 overexpression as an intermediate-risk marker and Ik6 variant of IKZF1 gene as a high-risk one when stratifying pediatric B-ALL cases according to cytogenetic/molecular risks. We also found that Ik6 variant and CRLF2 overexpression had an important role in dictating the prognosis of Ph-negative patients, which may be useful markers in guiding the treatment of ALL in the future, with tyrosine kinase inhibitors on the other hand reversing the fate of Ph-positive ALL patients.
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DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Shikonin and its derivatives are important medicinal secondary metabolites accumulating in roots of Lithospermum erythrorhizon. Although some membrane proteins have been identified as transporters of ...secondary metabolites, the mechanisms underlying shikonin transport and accumulation in L. erythrorhizon cells still remain largely unknown. In this study, we isolated a cDNA encoding LeMRP, an ATP-binding cassette transporter from L. erythrorhizon, and further investigated its functions in the transport and biosynthesis of shikonin using the yeast transformation and transgenic hairy root methods, respectively. Real-time PCR was applied for expression analyses of LeMRP and shikonin biosynthetic enzyme genes. Functional analysis of LeMRP using the heterologous yeast cell expression system showed that LeMRP could be involved in shikonin transport. Transgenic hairy roots of L. erythrorhizon demonstrated that LeMRP overexpressing hairy roots produced more shikonin than the empty vector (EV) control. Real-time PCR results revealed that the enhanced shikonin biosynthesis in the overexpression lines was mainly caused by highly up-regulated expression of genes coding key enzymes (LePAL, HMGR, Le4CL and LePGT) involved in shikonin biosynthesis. Conversely, LeMRP RNAi decreased the accumulation of shikonin and effectively down-regulated expression level of the above genes. Typical inhibitors of ABC proteins, such as azide and buthionine sulphoximine, dramatically inhibited accumulation of shikonin in hairy roots. Our findings provide evidence for the important direct or indirect role of LeMRP in transmembrane transport and biosynthesis of shikonin.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The impact of faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) on microbiota engraftment in patients with metabolic syndrome is uncertain. We aimed to study whether combining FMT with lifestyle modification ...could enhance the engraftment of favourable microbiota in obese patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).
In this double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial, 61 obese subjects with T2DM were randomly assigned to three parallel groups: FMT plus lifestyle intervention (LSI), FMT alone, or sham transplantation plus LSI every 4 weeks for up to week 12. FMT solution was prepared from six healthy lean donors. Faecal metagenomic sequencing was performed at baseline, weeks 4, 16 and 24. The primary outcome was the proportion of subjects acquiring ≥20% of microbiota from lean donors at week 24.
Proportions of subjects acquiring ≥20% of lean-associated microbiota at week 24 were 100%, 88.2% and 22% in the FMT plus LSI, FMT alone, and sham plus LSI groups, respectively (p<0.0001). Repeated FMTs significantly increased the engraftment of lean-associated microbiota (p<0.05). FMT with or without LSI increased butyrate-producing bacteria. Combining LSI and FMT led to increase in
and
compared with FMT alone (p<0.05). FMT plus LSI group had reduced total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and liver stiffness at week 24 compared with baseline (p<0.05).
Repeated FMTs enhance the level and duration of microbiota engraftment in obese patients with T2DM. Combining lifestyle intervention with FMT led to more favourable changes in recipients' microbiota and improvement in lipid profile and liver stiffness.
NCT03127696.
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