MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as critical modulators of ECs function and play a vital role in the development of cardiovascular disease. Among them, miR-126 is a crucial regulator of ...atherosclerosis. Endothelial cells (ECs) death and autophagy have been described in cells to cope with the progression of atherosclerosis. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the effects of miR-126 on atherosclerosis in oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL)-stimulated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and the potential roles of autophagy flux in these processes. Our results showed that miR-126 level was significantly reduced in ox-LDL-treated HUVECs and miR-126 overexpression induced by miR-126 mimics remarkably blocked ox-LDL-induced HUVECs injury as evidenced by the reduced cell viability, and the increased LDH release, caspase-3 activity and apoptosis ratio. In addition, ox-LDL increased LC3-II, Beclin 1, and p62 expressions in HUVECs, while these changes were nullified in the presence of treatment with bafilomycin A1 (BafA1, an inhibit autophagic flux inhibitor). However, we found that ox-LDL-induced impaired autophagy flux was recused by miR-126 mimics. Subsequently, we found that Bafi A1 pretreatment reversed the protection of miR-126 mimics against ox-LDL-induced HUVECs injury. Finally, our results showed that miR-126 mimics rescued ox-LDL-induced impaired autophagy flux through inhibiting PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling. Taken together, our findings suggested that miR-126 alleviates ox-LDL-induced HUVECs injury through restoring autophagy flux via repressing PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway, and further implicate the potential therapeutic targets to reverse atherosclerosis.
•MiR-126 overexpression induced by miR-126 mimics reverses ox-LDL-induced HUVECs injury.•Ox-LDL induces the impairment of autophagy flux in HUVECs.•MiR-126 mimics mitigate ox-LDL-induced HUVECs injury through rescuing autophagy flux.•MiR-126 mimics restore ox-LDL-induced impaired autophagy flux through inhibiting PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway in HUVECs.
To unveil the possible protective role of isorhamnetin, an immediate 3′-O-methylated metabolite of quercetin, in cardiomyocyte under hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) condition and the underlying ...mechanisms involved, H9c2 cardiomyocytes were exposed to the vehicle or H/R for 6 h (2 h of hypoxia following by 4 h of reoxygenation) with isorhamnetin (0, 3, 6, 12, 25, 50 μM for 4 h prior to H/R exposure). Apoptosis was evaluated by TUNEL staining, flow cytometry analysis and western blot assay for cleaved caspase-3. Myocardial injure in vivo was determined by infarct size using TTC staining, histological damage using H&E staining and myocardial apoptosis. Here, we found that isorhamnetin dose-dependently protected H9c2 cardiomyocytes against H/R-induced injure, as evidenced by the reduction in lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels, increases in cell viability, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activity, with the maximal effects at 25 μΜ. In addition, isorhamnetin treatment significantly inhibited apoptosis in H/R-induced H9c2 cardiomyocytes and ameliorated H/R-induced myocardial injure in vivo, concomitant with the upregulation of sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) expression. Mechanism studies demonstrated that isorhamnetin pretreatment remarkably abolished H/R-induced downregulation of Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) expressions and upregulation of NADPH oxidase-2/4 (NOX-2/4) expressions in cardiomyocytes. However, SIRT1 inhibition (Sirtinol) not only inhibited isorhamnetin-induced Nrf2/HO-1 upregulation and NOX-2/4 downregulation, but also alleviated its anti-apoptotic effects. Taken together, these data indicate that isorhamnetin can exhibit positive effect on H/R-induced injure by attenuating apoptosis and oxidative stress in H9c2 cardiomyocytes, which is partly attributable to the upregulation of SIRT1 and Nrf2/HO-1-mediated antioxidant signaling pathway.
•Isorhamnetin could protect H9c2 cardiomyocytes against H/R-induced apoptosis•Isorhamnetin reduces myocardial injure induced by H/R.•Isorhamnetin induces cardioprotection by upregulation of SIRT1 expression.•Isorhamnetin upregulates the SIRT1 expression and Nrf2, HO-1 levels, which further downregulation of NOX-2/4.•SIRT1 inhibitior (Sirtinol) could inhibit the cardioprotection effect of isorhamnetin
Community‐acquired pneumonia (CAP) in adults is an infectious disease with high morbidity in China and the rest of the world. With the changing pattern in the etiological profile of CAP and advances ...in medical techniques in diagnosis and treatment over time, Chinese Thoracic Society of Chinese Medical Association updated its CAP guideline in 2016 to address the standard management of CAP in Chinese adults. Extensive and comprehensive literature search was made to collect the data and evidence for experts to review and evaluate the level of evidence. Corresponding recommendations are provided appropriately based on the level of evidence. This updated guideline covers comprehensive topics on CAP, including aetiology, antimicrobial resistance profile, diagnosis, empirical and targeted treatments, adjunctive and supportive therapies, as well as prophylaxis. The recommendations may help clinicians manage CAP patients more effectively and efficiently. CAP in pediatric patients and immunocompromised adults is beyond the scope of this guideline. This guideline is only applicable for the immunocompetent CAP patients aged 18 years and older. The recommendations on selection of antimicrobial agents and the dosing regimens are not mandatory. The clinicians are recommended to prescribe and adjust antimicrobial therapies primarily based on their local etiological profile and results of susceptibility testing, with reference to this guideline.
Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is a serious complication of hyperglycemia. Currently, there is no effective therapeutic intervention for DKD. In this study, we sought to provide a set of gene profile ...in diabetic kidneys. We identified 338 genes altered in diabetes-induced DKD glomeruli, and PLK2 exhibited the most dramatic change. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) indicated multiple signaling pathways are involved DKD pathogenesis. Here, we investigated whether PLK2 contributes to podocyte dysfunction, a characteristic change in the development of DKD. High D-glucose (HDG) significantly increased PLK2 expression in mouse podocytes. Suppressing PLK2 attenuated HDG-induced apoptosis and inflammatory responses both in vitro and in vivo. NAC, an antioxidant reagent, rescued HDG and PLK2 overexpression-induced kidney injuries. In summary, we demonstrated that silencing PLK2 attenuates HDG-induced podocyte apoptosis and inflammation, which may serve as a future therapeutic target in DKD.
Broad learning system (BLS) is an emerging learning algorithm for the connectionist models, which have enjoyed much popularity on many applications. As an alternative approach of learning in deep ...structure, the BLS develops an incremental learning neural network that can be modeled in a flexible way, and becomes a promising technique in the field of knowledge discovery and data engineering. To further improve the performance of BLS, our focus is to investigate these algorithms which can enhance the BLS. On one hand, from the viewpoint of feature engineering, unsupervised group-wise encoding is conducted for feature extraction, and broadly fused feature representation is used to improve the ability of BLS, in terms of the learning and reusing multi-level features. On the other hand, for imbalanced learning from disproportionate size of categories instances, a cost-sensitive BLS framework is proposed in this paper, which aims to minimize the total misclassifying cost in classification learning. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on a wide range of datasets (e.g., computer vision and bug reports) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed BLS framework.
Human adipose stromal cells-derived extracellular vesicles (haMSC-EVs) have been shown to alleviate inflammation in acute lung injury (ALI) animal models. However, there are few systemic studies on ...clinical-grade haMSC-EVs. Our study aimed to investigate the manufacturing, quality control (QC) and preclinical safety of clinical-grade haMSC-EVs.
haMSC-EVs were isolated from the conditioned medium of human adipose MSCs incubated in 2D containers. Purification was performed by PEG precipitation and differential centrifugation. Characterizations were conducted by nanoparticle tracking analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Western blotting, nanoflow cytometry analysis, and the TNF-α inhibition ratio of macrophage after stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). RNA-seq and proteomic analysis with liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) were used to inspect the lot-to-lot consistency of the EV products. Repeated toxicity was evaluated in rats after administration using trace liquid endotracheal nebulizers for 28 days, and respiratory toxicity was evaluated 24 h after the first administration. In vivo therapeutic effects were assessed in an LPS-induced ALI/ acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) rat model.
The quality criteria have been standardized. In a stability study, haMSC-EVs were found to remain stable after 6 months of storage at - 80°C, 3 months at - 20 °C, and 6 h at room temperature. The microRNA profile and proteome of haMSC-EVs demonstrated suitable lot-to-lot consistency, further suggesting the stability of the production processes. Intratracheally administered 1.5 × 10
particles/rat/day for four weeks elicited no significant toxicity in rats. In LPS-induced ALI/ARDS model rats, intratracheally administered haMSC-EVs alleviated lung injury, possibly by reducing the serum level of inflammatory factors.
haMSC-EVs, as an off-shelf drug, have suitable stability and lot-to-lot consistency. Intratracheally administered haMSC-EVs demonstrated excellent safety at the tested dosages in systematic preclinical toxicity studies. Intratracheally administered haMSC-EVs improved the lung function and exerted anti-inflammatory effects on LPS-induced ALI/ARDS model rats.
Extreme learning machine is a popular machine learning technique for single hidden layer feed-forward neural network. However, due to the assumption of equal misclassification cost, the conventional ...extreme learning machine fails to properly learn the characteristics of the data with skewed category distribution. In this paper, to enhance the representation of few-shot cases, we break down that assumption by assigning penalty factors to different classes, and minimizing the cumulative classification cost. To this end, a case-weighting extreme learning machine is developed on a sparse cost matrix with a diagonal form. To be more actionable, we formulate a multi-objective optimization with respect to penalty factors, and optimize this problem using an evolutionary algorithm combined with an error bound model. By doing so, this proposed method is developed into an adaptive cost-sensitive learning, which is guided by the relation between the generalization ability and the case-weighting factors. In a broad experimental study, our method achieves competitive results on benchmark and real-world datasets for software bug reports identification.
•A new imbalanced learning.•Adaptive cost-sensitive learning.•Error bound model for fitness function.•Deriving the relation between the generalization ability and the weighting factors.•Good performance on imbalanced issues.
Rapid and correct diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) plays a crucial role in saving patients' life. Although some biomarkers (such as cardiac troponin and creatine kinase) are available ...for AMI diagnosis so far, there is still a clinical need for novel biomarkers, which can reliably rule in or rule out AMI immediately on admission. Circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) are a potential choice for novel biomarkers in AMI diagnosis and prognosis with high sensitivity and specificity. Circulating microRNAs are endogenous miRNAs that are detectable in whole blood, serum, or plasma in a highly stable form. Until now, around 20 circulating miRNAs were reported to be closely associated with AMI. In this minireview, we summarized recent available data on the correlation between circulating miRNAs and AMI. Some miRNAs, such as miR-208, miR-499, miR-133, and miR-1, were given special attention, since they may have a potential prospect in diagnosis and prognosis of AMI.
Vascular endothelial cell injury is considered to be the major factor inducing vascular complications in metabolic diseases and plays an important role in other organ damage. With diabetic and ...hyperlipidemic rats and cultured VSMCs, the present study was aimed at investigating whether the early damage of VSMCs during metabolic diseases plays a critical role in vascular dysfunction and the underlying mechanisms and would be a promising treatment target. With diabetic and hyperlipidemic rats and cultured VSMCs, the changes and relationships of vascular relaxation and contractile function to the vital organ damage and the underlying mechanisms were investigated; meanwhile, the protective and preventive effects of lowering blood lipid and glucose and inhibition of diabetes and hyperlipidemia-induced vascular hyperreactivity were observed. Diabetic and hyperlipidemic rats presented hyperreactivity in vascular contractile response in the early stages. Hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia directly affected the contractile function of VSMCs. Early application of fasudil, a specific antagonist of Rho kinase, significantly alleviated diabetes and hyperlipidemia-induced organ damage by inhibiting vascular hyperreactivity. Diabetes and hyperlipidemia-induced inflammatory response could upregulate the expression of connexins and Rho kinase by selective downregulation of the expression of miR-10a, miR-139b, miR-206, and miR-222. These findings suggest that hyperglucose and lipid may directly impair VSMCs and induce vascular hyperreactivity in the early stages. Metabolic inflammation-induced changes in the miRNA-connexin/Rho kinase regulatory pathway are the main mechanism for vascular hyperreactivity and organ damage. Measures inhibiting vascular hyperreactivity are promising for the prevention of organ damage induced by metabolic diseases.
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•Unveiled common DEGs in EAT linking T2DM and AF, spotlighting metabolic and immune dysregulation.•Employed bioinformatics and db/db mouse models to validate hub genes' roles in T2DM ...and AF crosstalk.•Revealed CEBPZ, PAK1IP1, and BCCIP as central regulators in EAT, influencing T2DM and AF pathology.•Regulatory networks of miRNAs and TFs related to hub genes deepen understanding of T2DM and AF interplay.
The complex relationship between atrial fibrillation (AF) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) suggests a potential role for epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) that requires further investigation. This study employs bioinformatics and experimental approaches to clarify EAT's role in linking T2DM and AF, aiming to unravel the biological mechanisms involved.
Bioinformatics analysis initially identified common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in EAT from T2DM and AF datasets. Pathway enrichment and network analyses were then performed to determine the biological significance and network connections of these DEGs. Hub genes were identified through six CytoHubba algorithms and subsequently validated biologically, with further in-depth analyses confirming their roles and interactions. Experimentally, db/db mice were utilized to establish a T2DM model. AF induction was executed via programmed transesophageal electrical stimulation and burst pacing, focusing on comparing the incidence and duration of AF. Frozen sections and Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) staining illuminated the structures of the heart and EAT. Moreover, quantitative PCR (qPCR) measured the expression of hub genes.
The study identified 106 DEGs in EAT from T2DM and AF datasets, underscoring significant pathways in energy metabolism and immune regulation. Three hub genes, CEBPZ, PAK1IP1, and BCCIP, emerged as pivotal in this context. In db/db mice, a marked predisposition towards AF induction and extended duration was observed, with HE staining verifying the presence of EAT. Additionally, qPCR validated significant changes in hub genes expression in db/db mice EAT. In-depth analysis identified 299 miRNAs and 33 TFs as potential regulators, notably GRHL1 and MYC. GeneMANIA analysis highlighted the hub genes' critical roles in stress responses and leukocyte differentiation, while immune profile correlations highlighted their impact on mast cells and neutrophils, emphasizing the genes' significant influence on immune regulation within the context of T2DM and AF.
This investigation reveals the molecular links between T2DM and AF with a focus on EAT. Targeting these pathways, especially EAT-related ones, may enable personalized treatments and improved outcomes.
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