Introduction: Obesity is a major risk factor for metabolic disorders in children. Therefore, it is particularly important to study the abnormal regulation of circulating miR-24-3p in obese children ...and its predictive value for metabolic syndrome. Methods: Serum samples were obtained from children with obesity (n = 45), obese children with metabolic syndrome (n = 52), and healthy controls (n = 50). The expression levels of miR-24-3p were detected by reverse transcription quantitative PCR. The ROC curve was used to evaluate the diagnostic value of miR-24-3p. Pearson’s correlation analysis was performed to evaluate the relationship between serum miR-24-3p and different clinical parameters. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between miR-24-3p and obesity with metabolic syndrome in children. Results: The expression of miR-24-3p was the highest in obese children with metabolic syndrome. ROC results showed that miR-24-3p had the ability to distinguish healthy individuals from obese children (area under the curve AUC = 0.951) and can predict the occurrence of metabolic syndrome for obese children (AUC = 0.890). The expression level of miR-24-3p was positively correlated with body mass index (r = 0.817, p < 0.001), fasting blood glucose (r = 0.798, p < 0.001), triglycerides (r = 0.773, p < 0.001), systolic blood pressure (r = 0.746, p < 0.001), and diastolic blood pressure (r = 0.623, p < 0.001), respectively. Logistic regression analysis showed that miR-24-3p was an independent influence factor for the occurrence of metabolic syndrome in obese children. Discussion/Conclusion: MiR-24-3p is a potential noninvasive marker for children with obesity and has predictive value for the occurrence of metabolic syndrome.
Ureteral obstruction causes injury of the renal tissues and can irreversibly progress to renal fibrosis, with atrophy and apoptosis of tubular cells. The goal of the current study was to examine the ...effects of rhein on the apoptosis o renal tubular cells as well as renal fibrosis using a rodent model of unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO).
UUO was induced through ureteral ligation, then animals received treatments with rhein or vehicle. The control rats only received sham operation. The renal tissue was harvested 1 week after surgery for assessment of kidney fibrosis.
The expressions of collagen I and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), as well as the severity of renal tubular apoptosis and fibrosis were time-dependently increased following UUO. Treatments with rhein partially inhibited such responses. Renal interstitial fibrosis was associated with STAT3 (signal transducer and activator of transcription 3) phosphorylation as well as altered expressions of Bax and Bcl2, both apoptosis-related proteins. Treatment with rhein also partly blocked these responses.
These findings demonstrated that rhein mitigated apoptosis of renal tubular cell as well as renal fibrosis in a UUO rodent model. This curative effect is likely mediated via suppression of STAT3 phosphorylation.
To evaluate the clinical performance of noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS) for fetal sex chromosome aneuploidies (SCAs), pregnant women were recruited in this retrospective observational study. ...The NIPS test was undertaken using high-throughput gene sequencing. In total,50,301 pregnant women were analysed for demographic characteristics and medical history. Of them, 308 women (0.61%) had high risk for fetal SCAs, including 138 for 45,X, 111 for 47,XXY, 42 for 47,XXX, and 17 for 47,XYY. After the pre-test counselling, 182 participants chose to undergo invasive prenatal diagnosis, confirming 59 positive cases. The combined positive predictive value of NIPS was 32.42% (59/182), 18.39% (16/87), 44.4% (12/27), 39.29% (22/56), and 75% (9/12) for detecting SCAs, 45,X, 47,XXX, 47,XXY, and 47,XYY, respectively. NIPS can be a useful method to detect the fetal SCAs using high-throughput gene sequencing, though accuracy can still be improved, especially for 45,X. Although the value of NIPS compare favorably with those seen in traditional screening approaches for SCAs, it is important to highlight the limitations of NIPS while educating clinicians and patients.
Nudel is a newly discovered factor related to cell migration. The tubular epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) includes four steps: the loss of the adhesive properties of epithelial cells, the ...acquisition of a mesenchymal cell phenotype, the destruction of the tubular basal membrane and the migration into the renal interstitium. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of Nudel in the high glucose-induced EMT of tubular epithelial cells. Human renal proximal tubular epithelial cells (HKCs) were treated with Nudel shRNA to clarify the role and mechanism of Nudel in tubular EMT induced by high glucose. We found that Nudel was expressed at a high level in high glucose-stimulated HKCs, and the expression of Nudel was associated with the activation of STAT3. After transfection with Nudel shRNA, we detected the expression levels of E-cadherin, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), and the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome family of proteins (including WASP, N-WASP, WAVE1, WAVE2 and WAVE3) via assay. Cell migration was analyzed by the scratching method. The results showed that high glucose downregulated E-cadherin expression, upregulated α-SMA expression, and promoted the migration of HKCs. The expression levels of N-WASP, WAVE1 and WAVE2 were also elevated in HKCs treated with high glucose. All changes induced by high glucose were ameliorated by Nudel depletion. We conclude that Nudel participates in the transition and the migration of tubular epithelial cells via the regulation of WASP family proteins.
Pathogenic (P) copy number variants (CNVs) may be associated with second-trimester ultrasound soft markers (USMs), and noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS) can enable interrogate the entire fetal ...genome to screening of fetal CNVs. This study evaluated the clinical application of NIPS for detecting CNVs among fetuses with USMs in pregnant women not of advanced maternal age (AMA).
Fetal aneuploidies and CNVs were identified in 6647 pregnant women using the Berry Genomics NIPS algorithm.Those with positive NIPS results underwent amniocentesis for prenatal diagnosis. The NIPS and prenatal diagnosis results were analyzed and compared among different USMs. A total of 96 pregnancies were scored positive for fetal chromosome anomalies, comprising 37 aneuploidies and 59 CNVs. Positive predictive values (PPVs) for trisomy 21, trisomy 18, trisomy 13, and sex chromosome aneuploidies were 66.67%, 80.00%, 0%, and 30.43%, respectively. NIPS sensitivity for aneuploidies was 100%. For CNVs, the PPVs were calculated as 35.59% and false positive rate of 0.57%. There were six P CNVs, two successfully identified by NIPS and four missed, of which three were below the NIPS resolution limit and one false negative. The incidence of aneuploidies was significantly higher in fetuses with absent or hypoplastic nasal bone, while that of P CNVs was significantly higher in fetuses with aberrant right subclavian artery (ARSA), compared with other groups.
NIPS yielded a moderate PPV for CNVs in non-AMA pregnant women with fetal USM. However, NIPS showed limited ability in identifying P CNVs. Positive NIPS results for CNVs emphasize the need for further prenatal diagnosis. We do not recommend the use of NIPS for CNVs screening in non-AMA pregnant women with fetal USM, especially in fetuses with ARSA.
Abstract Short-time oxidation behavior of nanocrystalline Ta coating is studied at 850 °C in comparison with that of the Ta sheet. Owing to the large PBR value and insufficient expansion space, the ...oxide scale on Ta sheet is dramatically cracked, delaminated and pulverized, resulting in rapid deterioration. For nanocrystalline Ta coatings with columnar structures and quantitative grain boundaries, a rapid oxygen diffusion rate causes no initial Ta 2 O 5 to form. The gap between columns provides spaces for bulk expansion, resulting in few opening cracks and delamination. Ta oxidation experiences a crystallization course from amorphous Ta oxide, leading to in situ temperature surging and thus pulverization.
The paper presents an efficient method to calculate dyadic Green's function of eddy current field in a conducting plate. The spectral domain integrands in vector potential are approximated by a short ...series of complex exponential functions, and the generalized Sommerfeld integrals (GSI) in vector potential can be evaluated as a closed-form expression. The poles and residues of integrands are obtained by using the matrix pencil method (MPM). The singular-value decomposition and total least-squares method are used to find the poles and residues accurately. An efficient technique of determining the sampling interval is presented. A closed-form expression of the spatial Green's function is obtained straightforward. The variations of different Green's function components with spatial coordinates are studied. The accuracy and calculation speed of the present method are compared with those of numerical integration. It is shown that this method can give an error of <1% at the distance between field-to-source point less than 5 skin depths, and achieve a computation speed of over 100 times faster than numerical integration.
We aimed to assess the clinical application of noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS) based on second-trimester ultrasonographic soft markers (USMs) in low-risk pregnant women.
Data of pregnant women ...between April 2015 and December 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. Pregnant women age at expected date of confinement (EDC) of <35 years; low risks for trisomy 21 (T21) and trisomy 18 (T18) based on maternal serum screening; presenting second-trimester USMs (7 types) who successfully underwent NIPS and had available follow-up information were included in our study. Cases with positive NIPS results were prenatally diagnosed. All patients were followed up for 6 months to 2 years after NIPS, and their clinical outcomes were obtained. Subgroup analyses were performed according to the different USMs.
NIPS suggested that among a total of 10,023 cases, 37 (0.37%) were at high risk of aneuploidy, including 4 T21, 6 trisomy 13 (T13), and 27 sex chromosome abnormalities (SCA). Ten cases with aneuploidy (0.10%) were confirmed by prenatal diagnosis, consisting of two T21 and eight SCA. The eight fetuses with SCA consisted of one monosomy X, two XXY, one XXXY, one XXX, one XYY, and two mosaicisms. T21 was detected in one fetus with absent or hypoplastic nasal bone and one fetus with echogenic intracardiac focus (EICF). SCA was detected in five fetuses with EICF, two fetuses with multiple soft markers, and one fetus with echogenic bowel. The positive rate of chromosomal aneuploidy was significantly higher in fetuses with absent or hypoplastic nasal bone (6.25 vs. 0.10%,
= 0.017), echogenic bowel (3.7 vs. 0.10%,
= 0.029), and multiple soft markers (0.678 vs. 0.10%,
= 0.045) than in the total fetuses. The positive predictive values (PPVs) of NIPS in these three groups were 100%, 50%, and 100%, respectively. EICF accounted for 93.25% (9,346/10,023) of the study population, whereas the PPV of NIPS was only 20%.
NIPS is an advanced screening test for low-risk pregnant women. In the 10,023 pregnant women sampled, SCA were more common than autosomal trisomy, and EICF was the most frequent USM but the least predictive aneuploidy. Further aneuploidy evaluation is suggested for low-risk pregnant women whose ultrasound indicates absent or hypoplastic nasal bone, echogenic bowel, or multiple soft markers. NIPS can serve as a second-line complementary screening for these women.
Abstract Multilayered Ni coatings were successfully deposited on martensitic stainless-steel substrates by electrodeposition method with intermittent ultrasound. It is a novel kind of multilayered ...microstructure of stacked-up sandwiches, whose compositions of each monolayer are the same to those of its adjacent layers. The grains of ordinary Ni layers are columnar, vertically to the substrate surface, but the grains of ultrasonic Ni layers grow parallel along the substrate surface. By multilayered structure, the pinholes running through the coating were obviously inhibited, because the multilayered Ni coating can cover the whole surface of the substrate without the direct pinhole passages down to the substrate. Therefore, its corrosion mechanism is the uniform corrosion. For the ordinary Ni coating, the direct corrosion on the substrate can occur through the pinholes, which are the convenient passages for corrosive media to reach the substrate easily. This behavior can lead to the Fe/Ni galvanic corrosion, coating adhesion reduction, and quick formation of coating cracks in the ordinary Ni coating.
Our aim was to provide a theoretical basis for clinicians to conduct genetic counseling and choose further prenatal diagnosis methods for pregnant women who failed non-invasive prenatal screening ...(NIPS).
A retrospective analysis was performed on pregnant women who had failed NIPS tests.
Among the 123,291 samples, 394 pregnant women did not obtain valid results due to test failures. A total of 378 pregnant women were available for follow-up, while 16 patients were lost to follow-up. Of these 378, 135 pregnant women chose further prenatal diagnosis through amniocentesis, and one case of dysplasia was recalled for postpartum chromosome testing. The incidence rate of congenital chromosomal abnormalities in those who failed the NIPS was 3.97% (15/378), which was higher than that of the chromosomal abnormalities in the common population (1.8%). Among the pregnant women who received prenatal diagnosis, the positive rates of chromosomal abnormalities in the chromosomal microarray analysis/copy number variation sequencing (CMA/CNV-seq) group and in the karyotyping group were 15.28 and 4.76%, respectively.
Prenatal diagnosis should be strongly recommended in posttest genetic counseling for pregnant women with NIPS failures. Further, high-resolution detection methods should be recommended for additional prenatal diagnoses.
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