Objective
Data on noise‐induced hearing loss (NIHL) in the automotive industry are rare. This pilot study aimed to investigate the prevalence and determinants of NIHL among workers in the automotive ...industry in China.
Methods
A cross‐sectional survey was conducted with 6557 participants from the automotive industry. The questionnaire survey was administered, and individual noise exposure level (LAeq.8h) and hearing loss level were measured.
Results
Of participants, 96.43% were male; the median age was 27.0 years and 28.82% had NIHL defined as adjusted high‐frequency noise‐induced hearing loss (AHFNIHL). Concerning individual noise levels (LAeq.8h), 62.53% exceeded 85 dB(A), which were mainly concentrated in various jobs, including metal cutting, surface treatment, stamping, welding, grinding, assembly, plastic molding, and forging. Each typical noise source generated its own unique temporal waveform shape with the type of non‐Gaussian noise. Of workers, 53.15% regularly used hearing protector devices (HPD), and the proportion of regular HPD use increased with LAeq.8h. The trend test showed that the prevalence of AHFNIHL in male workers significantly increased with an increase in LAeq.8h at <94 dB(A) and cumulative noise exposure (CNE) in each age group (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01). A logistic regression analysis showed that CNE and HPD usage frequency were important factors contributing to AHFNIHL.
Conclusions
CNE and HPD usage frequency were the determinants for NIHL. Much more human surveys are needed to understand the prevalence and determinants of NIHL in the automotive industry in China.
Role of Circular RNAs in Pulmonary Fibrosis Zhou, Jian; Chen, Yali; He, Menglin ...
International journal of molecular sciences,
09/2022, Letnik:
23, Številka:
18
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic progressive form of interstitial lung disease, characterized by the histopathological pattern of usual interstitial pneumonia. Apart from aberrant alterations of ...protein-coding genes, dysregulation of non-coding RNAs, including microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, and circular RNAs (circRNAs), is crucial to the initiation and progression of pulmonary fibrosis. CircRNAs are single-stranded RNAs that form covalently closed loops without 5′ caps and 3′ tails. Different from canonical splicing of mRNA, they are produced from the back-splicing of precursor mRNAs and have unique biological functions, as well as potential biomedical implications. They function as important gene regulators through multiple actions, including sponging microRNAs and proteins, regulating transcription, and splicing, as well as protein-coding and translation in a cap-independent manner. This review comprehensively summarizes the alteration and functional role of circRNAs in pulmonary fibrosis, with a focus on the involvement of the circRNA in the context of cell-specific pathophysiology. In addition, we discuss the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of targeting circRNA and their regulatory pathway mediators, which may facilitate the translation of recent advances from bench to bedside in the future.
BRCA1 is an important mediator of the DNA damage response, which promotes homologous recombination (HR) and antagonizes 53BP1-dependent non-homologous end joining in S/G2 phase. But how this is ...achieved remains unclear. Here, we report that the E3 ubiquitin ligase UHRF1 (Ubiquitin-like, with PHD and RING finger domains 1) directly participates in the interplay between BRCA1 and 53BP1. Mechanistically, UHRF1 is recruited to DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) by BRCA1 in S phase, which requires the BRCT domain of BRCA1 and phosphorylated Ser674 of UHRF1. Subsequently, UHRF1 mediates K63-linked polyubiquitination of RIF1, and results in its dissociation from 53BP1 and DSBs thereby facilitating HR initiation. Thus, UHRF1 is a key regulator of DSB repair choice, which is separate from its role in heterochromatin formation and epigenetic regulator.
The loss of nitrogen in soil damages the environment. Clarifying the mechanism of ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N) transport in soil and increasing the fixation of NH4+-N after N application are effective ...methods for improving N use efficiency. However, the main factors are not easily identified because of the complicated transport and retardation factors in different soils. This study employed machine learning (ML) to identify the main influencing factors that contribute to the retardation factor (Rf) of NH4+-N in soil. First, NH4+-N transport in the soil was investigated using column experiments and a transport model. The Rf (1.29 – 17.42) was calculated and used as a proxy for the efficacy of NH4+-N transport. Second, the physicochemical parameters of the soil were determined and screened using lasso and ridge regressions as inputs for the ML model. Third, six machine learning models were evaluated: Adaptive Boosting, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB), Random Forest, Gradient Boosting Regression, Multilayer Perceptron, and Support Vector Regression. The optimal ML model of the XGB model with a low mean absolute error (0.81), mean squared error (0.50), and high test r2 (0.97) was obtained by random sampling and five-fold cross-validation. Finally, SHapely Additive exPlanations, entropy-based feature importance, and permutation characteristic importance were used for global interpretation. The cation exchange capacity (CEC), total organic carbon (TOC), and Kaolin had the greatest effects on NH4+-N transport in the soil. The accumulated local effect offered a fundamental insight: When CEC > 6 cmol+ kg−1, and TOC > 40 g kg−1, the maximum resistance to NH4+-N transport within the soil was observed. This study provides a novel approach for predicting the impact of the soil environment on NH4+-N transport and guiding the establishment of an early-warning system of nutrient loss.
Display omitted
•A predictive model for NH4+-N transport in soil was established.•The XGB model showed better prediction performance than the ADA, GBR, RF, MLP, and SVR models.•CEC, TOC, and Kao contribute significantly to NH4+-N transport in soil.•When CEC > 6 cmol+ kg−1 and TOC > 40 g kg−1, the retardation of NH4+-N transport reaches its maximum.
Which temporal features that can characterize different brain states (i.e., consciousness or unconsciousness) is a fundamental question in the neuroscience of consciousness. Using resting‐state ...functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs‐fMRI), we investigated the spatial patterns of two temporal features: the long‐range temporal correlations (LRTCs), measured by power‐law exponent (PLE), and temporal variability, measured by standard deviation (SD) during wakefulness and anesthetic‐induced unconsciousness. We found that both PLE and SD showed global reductions across the whole brain during anesthetic state comparing to wakefulness. Importantly, the relationship between PLE and SD was altered in anesthetic state, in terms of a spatial “decoupling.” This decoupling was mainly driven by a spatial pattern alteration of the PLE, rather than the SD, in the anesthetic state. Our results suggest differential physiological grounds of PLE and SD and highlight the functional importance of the topographical organization of LRTCs in maintaining an optimal spatiotemporal configuration of the neural dynamics during normal level of consciousness. The central role of the spatial distribution of LRTCs, reflecting temporo‐spatial nestedness, may support the recently introduced temporo‐spatial theory of consciousness (TTC).
Humans can be exposed to multiple pollutants in the air and surface water. These environments are non-static, trans-boundary and correlated, creating a complex network, and significant challenges for ...research on environmental hazards, especially in real-world cancer research. This article reports on a large study (377 million people in 30 provinces of China) that evaluated the combined impact of air and surface water pollution on cancer. We formulate a spatial evaluation system and a common grading scale for co-pollution measurement, and validate assumptions that air and surface water environments are spatially connected and that cancers of different types tend to cluster in areas where these environments are poorer. We observe “dose–response” relationships in both the number of affected cancer types and the cancer incidence with an increase in degree of co-pollution. We estimate that 62,847 (7.4%) new cases of cancer registered in China in 2016 were attributable to air and surface water pollution, and the majority (69.7%) of these excess cases occurred in areas with the highest level of co-pollution. The findings clearly show that the environment cannot be considered as a set of separate entities. They also support the development of policies for cooperative environmental governance and disease prevention.Dissecting the associations between exposure to environmental pollution and cancer risk remains crucial. Here, the authors evaluate the impact of air and water pollution on cancer incidence in China using a spatial evaluation system and show that most excess cancer cases occurred in areas with the highest level of co-pollution.
Emerging evidences demonstrate that metabolic reprogramming is a hallmark of malignancies, including gastric cancer (GC). Abnormal expression of metabolic rate-limiting enzymes, as the executive ...medium of energy metabolism, drives the occurrence and development of cancer. However, a comprehensive model of metabolic rate-limiting enzymes associated with the development and progression of GC remains unclear. In this research, we identified a rate-limiting enzyme, sterol O-acyltransferase 1 (SOAT1), was highly expressed in cancerous tissues, which was associated with advanced tumor stage and lymph node metastasis, leading to the poor prognosis of GC. It was shown that knockdown of SOAT1 or pharmacological inhibition of SOAT1 by avasimibe could suppress GC cell proliferation, cholesterol ester synthesis, and lymphangiogenesis. However, overexpression of SOAT1 promoted these biological processes. Mechanistically, SOAT1 regulated the expression of cholesterol metabolism genes SREBP1 and SREBP2, which could induce lymphangiogenesis via increasing the expression of VEGF-C. In conclusion, our results indicated that SOAT1 promotes gastric cancer lymph node metastasis through lipid synthesis, which suggested that it may be a promising prognostic biomarker for guiding clinical management and treatment decisions.
Abstract
RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) play important roles in cancer development and treatment. However, the tumor-promoting RBPs and their partners, which may potentially serve as the cancer ...therapeutic targets, need to be further identified. Here, we report that zinc finger CCHC domain-containing protein 4 (ZCCHC4) is of aberrantly high expression in multiple human cancer tissues and is associated with poor prognosis and chemoresistance in patients of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), pancreatic cancer and colon cancer. ZCCHC4 promotes chemoresistance of HCC cells to DNA-damage agent (DDA) both in vitro and in vivo. HCC cell deficiency of ZCCHC4 reduces tumor growth in vivo and intratumoral interference of
ZCCHC4
expression obviously enhances the DDA-induced antitumor effect. Mechanistically, ZCCHC4 inhibits DNA-damage-induced apoptosis in HCC cells by interacting with a new long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) AL133467.2 to hamper its pro-apoptotic function. Also, ZCCHC4 blocks the interaction between AL133467.2 and γH2AX upon DDA treatment to inhibit apoptotic signaling and promote chemoresistance to DDAs. Knockout of ZCCHC4 promotes AL133467.2 and γH2AX interaction for enhancing chemosensitivity in HCC cells. Together, our study identifies ZCCHC4 as a new predictor of cancer poor prognosis and a potential target for improving chemotherapy effects, providing mechanistic insights to the roles of RBPs and their partners in cancer progression and chemoresistance.
Objective
This study aims to preliminarily assess the oncological and reproductive outcomes of fertility preservation treatment using conization combined with pelvic node evaluation in young patients ...with early-stage cervical cancer (ECC) through meta-analysis.
Methods
In this meta-analysis, we analyzed studies published in PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), and Clinical Trials. gov that appeared in our search from inception to 0 7/02/2023.
Results
There were 17 relevant studies with a total of 620 patients included, of which 444 patients received conization combined with pelvic node evaluation. The combined pregnancy rate was 45.4% (95% CI: 0.34–0.57), the combined live birth rate was 33.9% (95% CI: 0.26–0.42), the combined miscarriage rate was 4.8% (95% CI: 0.02–0.092), the combined preterm delivery rate was 5.1% (95% CI: 0.02–0.092), and the combined recurrence rate was 1.9% (95% CI: 0.006–0.035), which did not significantly differ from that of patients who received radical surgery (OR: 0.689, 95% CI: 0.506–0.938).
Conclusion
Cervical conization combined with pelvic lymph node evaluation for fertility preservation in young ECC patients can achieve oncological outcomes similar to radical surgery while improving pregnancy success rates and preserving postoperative fertility. In summary, fertility preservation treatment using cervical conization combined with pelvic lymph node evaluation may be considered as a viable option for young ECC patients with strong fertility preservation desire, resulting in better pregnancy and live birth outcomes.
Systematic review registration
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/#myprospero
, identifier PROSPERO (CRD42023423432).
Both the solar absorptance and water content in solar-driven interface evaporation (SDIE) devices are of equal importance for efficient solar steam yield and freshwater production, but water content ...regulation has garnered relatively less attention, as it is more challenging to balance the water supply rate and the evaporation rate inside SDIE devices. Herein, an SDIE device is designed by coating natural luffa with polypyrrole, which could effectively regulate the water content during the solar steam yield by its unique hydrophilic hierarchical channels to transform excessive water from the bulk state into the film state on the porous skeleton. The hierarchical channels revealed by cryoelectron microscopy experiments not only reduce the loss of heat in unevaporated water but also offer abundant escape channels for solar steam, thus enabling the proposed SDIE device to achieve an evaporation rate of 2.38 kg m–2 h–1 under 1 sun illumination. This work reveals the key role of hierarchical channels for water regulation in the high-efficiency solar steam yield and triggers further application of natural biomaterials with unique structures in the field of solar interfacial evaporation.
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