Neochlorogenic acid (nCGA) is a phenolic compound isolated from mulberry leaf (
), which possesses multiple pharmacological activities containing antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. However, ...the role of nCGA in the treatment of acute pneumonia and the underlying molecular mechanism are still unclear. Hence, the aim of study is to investigate the anti-inflammatory properties of nCGA on LPS-stimulated inflammation in A549 cells. In the present study, results reported that nCGA without cytotoxicity significantly reduced the production of TNF-α, IL-6, and NO, and further suppressed the proteins of iNOS, COX2, TNF-α, IL-6 expression. Furthermore, nCGA also inhibited NF-κB activation and blocked MAPKs signaling pathway phosphorylation. In addition, we found nCGA significantly increased the expression of HO-1 via activating the AMPK/Nrf2 signaling pathway to attenuate the inflammatory response, whereas this protective effect of nCGA was reversed by pre-treatment with compound C (C.C, an AMPK inhibitor). Therefore, all these results indicated that nCGA might act as a natural anti-inflammatory agent for the treatment of acute pneumonia.
Amyloid-β (Aβ) accumulation in the brain is a pivotal event in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and its clearance from the brain is impaired in sporadic AD. Previous studies suggest that ...approximately half of the Aβ produced in the brain is cleared by transport into the periphery. However, the mechanism and pathophysiological significance of peripheral Aβ clearance remain largely unknown. The kidney is thought to be responsible for Aβ clearance, but direct evidence is lacking. In this study, we investigated the impact of unilateral nephrectomy on the dynamic changes in Aβ in the blood and brain in both humans and animals and on behavioural deficits and AD pathologies in animals. Furthermore, the therapeutic effects of the diuretic furosemide on Aβ clearance via the kidney were assessed. We detected Aβ in the kidneys and urine of both humans and animals and found that the Aβ level in the blood of the renal artery was higher than that in the blood of the renal vein. Unilateral nephrectomy increased brain Aβ deposition; aggravated AD pathologies, including Tau hyperphosphorylation, glial activation, neuroinflammation, and neuronal loss; and aggravated cognitive deficits in APP/PS1 mice. In addition, chronic furosemide treatment reduced blood and brain Aβ levels and attenuated AD pathologies and cognitive deficits in APP/PS1 mice. Our findings demonstrate that the kidney physiologically clears Aβ from the blood, suggesting that facilitation of Aβ clearance via the kidney represents a novel potential therapeutic approach for AD.
Actinoid tetroxide molecules AnO4 (An = Ac – Cm) are investigated with the ab initio density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) approach. Natural orbital shapes are used to read out the oxidation ...state (OS) of the f‐elements, and the atomic orbital energies and radii are used to explain the trends. The highest OSs reveal a “volcano”‐type variation: For An = Ac – Np, the OSs are equal to the number of available valence electrons, that is, AcIII, ThIV, PaV, UVI, and NpVII. Starting with plutonium as the turning point, the highest OSs in the most stable AnO4 isomers then decrease as PuV, AmV, and CmIII, indicating that the 5f‐electrons are hard to be fully oxidized off from Pu onward. The variations are related to the actinoid contraction and to the 5f‐covalency characteristics. Combined with previous work on OSs, we review their general trends throughout the periodic table, providing fundamental understanding of OS‐relevant phenomena.
Actinoid tetroxide molecules AnO4 (An = Ac – Cm) are investigated by the multi‐configurational DMRG approach. The Natural Orbital Plots show the number of local An‐5f electrons, and thereby the oxidation states, at one glance. The 5f orbital's increasing energetic stability and spatial immersion in the actinide cores along the series of actinoids causes the increase of the highest stable oxidation state up to Np(VII) and a “skew volcano” type decrease with the “plutonium turn.”
To investigate the potential benefits of acarbose therapy on cardiovascular events (CVD) in Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in an urban community over 10-year follow-up. The study population of Beijing ...Community Diabetes Study (BCDS) were type 2 diabetes (T2DM) living in 21 communities in Beijing. All patients received comprehensive intervention in accordance with the Chinese guidelines for the prevention and treatment of diabetes. Professors in endocrinology from top tier hospitals regularly visited the communities for consultations, which was a feature of this study. A total of 1797 T2DM in BCDS study had complete screening data, including blood glucose, blood pressure, lipid profiles and acarbose continuous therapy. After 10-year follow-up, the risks of CVD outcomes were assessed according to whether patients had received acarbose therapy or not. All patients were followed-up to assess the long-term effects of the multifactorial interventions. At baseline, compared with the acarbose therapy free in T2DM, there was no significant difference in achieving the joint target control in patients with acarbose therapy. From the beginning of 8th year follow-up, the joint target control rate in patients with acarbose therapy was significantly higher than that of acarbose therapy free. During the 10-year follow-up, a total of 446 endpoint events occurred, including all-cause death, cardiovascular events, cerebrovascular events. The incidences of myocardial infarction (from the 4th year of follow-up) and all-cause death (from the 2nd year of follow-up) in patients who received acarbose therapy were significantly lower than that of acarbose therapy free respectively. In Cox multivariate analyses, there were significant differences in incidences of myocardial infarction and all-cause death between afore two groups during the 10-year follow-up, and the adjusted HRs were 0.50 and 0.52, respectively. After multifactorial interventions, T2DM with acarbose therapy revealed significant reductions of myocardial infarction and all-cause death. The long-term effects of with acarbose therapy on improving joint target control might be one of the main reasons of myocardial infarction and all-cause death reduction.Trial Registration: ChiCTR-TRC-13003978, ChiCTR-OOC-15006090.
Abstract
Background/Aims: Cisplatin (CDDP) was the first platinum-containing anti-cancer drug. However, CDDP causes nephrotoxicity as a side effect, which limits its clinic application. The aim of ...this study was to investigate the renoprotective effect of ginsenoside Re (G-Re) in a murine model of CDDP-induced acute kidney injury. Methods: Male ICR mice were divided into 4 groups. G-Re was administered to the mice by oral gavage once a day at a dose of 25 mg/kg for 10 days. On the 7th day, a single injection of CDDP (25 mg/kg) was given at 1 h after G-Re treatment. Results: CDDP administration resulted in renal dysfunction, as evidenced by an increase in the serum levels of creatinine and urea nitrogen. Oxidative stress in the CDDP group was reflected by an increase of malondialdehyde and a depletion of reduced glutathione and catalase in renal tissue. These findings were supported by increased 4-hydroxynonenal expression, which was significantly reduced by G-Re. Simultaneously, the overexpression of cytochrome P450 E1 was inhibited. G-Re inhibited the inflammatory response by the reduction of the protein expression of cyclooxygenase-2 and inducible nitric oxide synthase. Furthermore, CDDP increased the expression of Bax and decreased Bcl-2 expression in renal tissue. Hematoxylin and eosin, Hoechst 33258, and TUNEL staining also confirmed the presence of acute tubular necrosis and apoptosis. G-Re significantly decreased the levels of indicators of renal dysfunction, inflammatory cytokines, apoptosis, and malondialdehyde in the kidney and also significantly attenuated the histopathological changes associated with acute renal failure. Conclusions: Collectively, the results of this study suggest that the nephroprotective potential of G-Re may, in part, be related to its anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic effects.
We present here a set of scalar-relativistic norm-conserving 4f-in-core pseudopotentials, together with complementary valence-shell Gaussian basis sets, for the lanthanide (Ln) series (Ce–Lu). The ...Goedecker, Teter, and Hutter (GTH) formalism is adopted with the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) for the exchange-correlation Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) functional. The 4f-in-core pseudopotentials are built through attributing 4f-subconfiguration 4f n (n = 1–14) for Ln (Ln = Ce–Lu) into the atomic core region, making it possible to circumvent the difficulty of the description of the open 4f n valence shell. A wide variety of computational benchmarks and tests have been carried out on lanthanide systems including Ln3+-containing molecular complexes, aqueous solutions, and bulk solids to validate the accuracy, reliability, and efficiency of the optimized 4f-in-core GTH pseudopotentials and basis sets. The 4f-in-core GTH pseudopotentials successfully replicate the main features of lanthanide structural chemistry and reaction energetics, particularly for nonredox reactions. The chemical bonding features and solvation shells, hydrolysis energetics, acidity constants, and solid-state properties of selected lanthanide systems are also discussed in detail by utilizing these new 4f-in-core GTH pseudopotentials. This work bridges the idea of keeping highly localized 4f electrons in the atomic core and efficient pseudopotential formalism of GTH, thus providing a highly efficient approach for studying lanthanide chemistry in multi-scale modeling of constituent-wise and structurally complicated systems, including electronic structures of the condensed phase and first-principles molecular dynamics simulations.
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•The substitution of transition metals can significantly improve NO adsorption.•The adsorption strength depends on the d-band center of the transition metal.•Cr, Mn, and Co atoms tend ...to have antiferromagnetic interactions with NO molecule.•The work function of Co-ZnO-ML has the greatest change (0.77 eV) after NO adsorption.•Applied electric fields can effectively amplify the sensing response for NO molecule.
Nitric oxide (NO) is a harmful gas produced by fuel combustion in the petrochemical industry. In this paper, the gas sensitivity of NO molecule on ZnO monolayer (ZnO-ML) doped with transition metal (TM = Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, and Zr) is systematically investigated by the first-principles calculation. The results show that the adsorption mode of NO molecule on the doped system (TM-ZnO-ML) changes from physisorption to chemisorption, and adsorption energies range from −1.59 eV to −3.12 eV, which are 8–16 times the origin adsorption energy (−0.19 eV) on the pristine ZnO-ML. Meanwhile, the charge transfer between NO molecule and substrates increases by 4–13 times compared with the pristine ZnO-ML. Furthermore, under the applied electric field of −0.4 V/Å, the charges transferred from V-ZnO-ML to the NO increase to 0.54 e. All of the results reveal the broad application prospect of TM-ZnO-ML in NO gas sensors.
The concept of metalla-aromaticity proposed by Thorn–Hoffmann (Nouv. J. Chim. 1979, 3, 39) has been expanded to organometallic molecules of transition metals that have more than one independent ...electron-delocalized system. Lanthanides, with highly contracted 4f atomic orbitals, are rarely found in multiply aromatic systems. Here we report the discovery of a doubly aromatic triatomic lanthanide-boron molecule PrB2− based on a joint photoelectron spectroscopy and quantum chemical investigation. Global minimum structural searches reveal that PrB2− has a C2v triangular structure with a paramagnetic triplet 3B2 electronic ground state, which can be viewed as featuring a trivalent Pr(III,f2) and B24−. Chemical bonding analyses show that this cyclo-PrB2− species is the smallest 4f-metalla-aromatic system exhibiting σ and π double aromaticity and multiple Pr–B bonding characters. It also sheds light on the formation of the rare B24− tetraanion by the high-lying 5d orbitals of the 4f-elements, completing the isoelectronic B24−, C22−, N2, and O22+ series.
Significance The Songpan-Ganzi terrane lies in the central-east of the Tibetan Plateau, which was considered a stable block in some tectonic models. Its deformation mode is of crucial importance for ...understanding the evolutionary history and seismic hazard of the plateau. The recent Maduo earthquake occurred inside the terrane. We resolve a bilateral rupture process with distinct super- and subshear rupture modes for this event. We also find that pervasive folding structures that are aligned by shear deformation in the current Songpan-Ganzi terrane are responsible for the seismic wave anisotropy and shear strain orientation in its upper crust. Its deformation mode can be classified as distributed simple shear, which receives shear loads from side walls and produces internal earthquakes.
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