Improved durability, enhanced interfacial stability, and room temperature applicability are desirable properties for all‐solid‐state lithium metal batteries (ASSLMBs), yet these desired properties ...are rarely achieved simultaneously. Here, in this work, it is noticed that the huge resistance at Li metal/electrolyte interface dominantly impeded the normal cycling of ASSLMBs especially at around room temperature (<30 °C). Accordingly, a supramolecular polymer ion conductor (SPC) with “weak solvation” of Li+ was prepared. Benefiting from the halogen‐bonding interaction between the electron‐deficient iodine atom (on 1,4‐diiodotetrafluorobenzene) and electron‐rich oxygen atoms (on ethylene oxide), the O‐Li+ coordination was significantly weakened. Therefore, the SPC achieves rapid Li+ transport with high Li+ transference number, and importantly, derives a unique Li2O‐rich SEI with low interfacial resistance on lithium metal surface, therefore enabling stable cycling of ASSLMBs even down to 10 °C. This work is a new exploration of halogen‐bonding chemistry in solid polymer electrolyte and highlights the importance of “weak solvation” of Li+ in the solid‐state electrolyte for room temperature ASSLMBs.
PEO‐based electrolytes suffer from huge interfacial resistance, poor Li+ transport, and Li dendrite formation in all‐solid‐state lithium metal batteries (ASSLMBs) operating at around room‐temperature. This work proposes the regulation of the Li+ solvation environment through halogen‐bonding interaction and highlights the importance of “weak solvation” of Li+ in solid electrolytes for room temperature ASSLMBs.
With a rapidly aging population, adequate blood pressure (BP) control is critical for hypertension management and prevention of cardiovascular events. Impressive cardiovascular benefits have been ...observed with intensive BP control (SBP target, <120 mmHg) in the SPRINT (Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial) study, even in patients 75 years of age or older. A most recent meta-analysis including 51 randomized trials with over 350,000 participants from the BPLTTC (The Blood Pressure Lowering Treatment Trialists' Collaboration) showed that BP lowering is effective in older people for reducing major cardiovascular events. The STEP (Strategy of Blood Pressure Intervention in the Elderly Hypertensive Patients) study-a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial conducted in China, provided important evidence that intensive BP treatment (SBP target, 110 mmHg to <130 mmHg) benefits older hypertensive patients (aged 60-80 years) and reduced the incidence of cardiovascular events than standard treatment (target 130 mmHg to <150 mmHg). Because Asian people have a higher burden of hypertension and stroke than Caucasian people, intensive BP treatment has more advantages in reducing the risk of cardiovascular events including stroke in Asian hypertensive patients than in Caucasian people. Home BP monitoring is helpful to facilitate hypertension management for older patients. It should also be noted that clinical decision-making should be on a patient basis, such as fragility, diabetes, stroke, and other comorbidities, with tailored BP targets. Here we review the important clinical trials of BP control in elderly hypertension, interpretate the main findings of STEP, and also discuss the perspectives of managing hypertension in Asia.
ObjectiveTo investigate the source of Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP) isolated in a hospital in the past decade and the in vitro drug susceptibility, and to provide clinical references for the treatment ...of KP-associated infection. MethodsThe detection rate, the sources of the specimens, and in vitro susceptibility to antimicrobial agents of KP isolated from clinical specimens in a hospital between January 2012 and December 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. Resistance rate of the extended-spectrum β-lactamases-producing isolates vs. that of the non-enzyme-producing ones, and the resistance rate of imipenem-resistant strains vs. that of imipenem-susceptible ones were compared and analyzed. Carbapenase inhibitor enhancement test was used to identify the types of the carbapenemases. ResultsIn total, 34 573 strains of KP were isolated from 1 684 668 clinical specimens, accounting for 14.6% of bacterial isolates. There were 16 888 non-repeated strains of KP. The main specimen sources of the isolates were sputum (10 27
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic, relapsing, and nonspecific inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Phillygenin (PHI), a natural bioactive ingredient, isolated from
, exhibits anti-inflammatory, ...anti-oxidative, and hepatoprotective activities. However, few reports provide direct evidence on the efficacy of PHI in improving colitis mice. The present study elucidated that the symptoms of DSS-induced colitis mice were alleviated after PHI administration, including body weight loss, the disease activity index, colon length shortening, colonic pathological damage, splenomegaly, and hepatomegaly. PHI treatment improved the intestinal mucosal barrier by protecting goblet cells, promoting gene expressions of
,
, and
, increasing tight junction proteins (TJs), and reducing epithelial cell apoptosis. In addition, the levels of oxidative stress (MPO, SOD, and MDA) and inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-10) were reversed by PHI in colitis mice. According to transcriptome and network pharmacology analysis, inflammatory pathway might be an important mechanism for PHI to improve colitis. Western blotting displayed that the PHI inhibited the activation of tyrosine kinase Src mediated by TLR4, and then reduced the phosphorylation of downstream proteins p38, JNK, and NF-κB in colitis mice. In summary, our results suggested that PHI might be an appropriate and effective drug candidate to protect colitis.
To systematically review and assess the efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for treating primary Sjogren's syndrome (pSS).
Five electronic databases (Pubmed, EMBASE, Web of science, Ovid, ...Cochrane Library) were searched for randomized controlled trials and retrospective or prospective studies published in English that reported the effect of HCQ on pSS. The subjective symptoms (sicca symptoms, fatigue and pain) and the objective indexes (erythrocyte sedimentation rate and Schirmer test) were assessed as main outcome measures. A meta-analysis and descriptive study on the efficacy and safety of HCQ were conducted. The estimate of the effect of HCQ treatment was expressed as a proportion together with 95% confidence interval, and plotted on a forest plot.
Four trials with totals of 215 SS patients, including two randomized controlled trials, one double blind crossover trial and one retrospective open-label study, were analyzed in this review. For dry mouth and dry eyes, the effectiveness of HCQ treatment was essentially the same as placebo treatment. For fatigue, the effectiveness of HCQ was lower than placebo. The efficacy of HCQ in treating pain associated with pSS was superior to that of the placebo. There was no significant difference between HCQ-treated groups and controls in terms of Schirmer test results, but HCQ could reduce the erythrocyte sedimentation rate compare with placebo. A descriptive safety assessment showed that gastrointestinal adverse effects were the most common adverse effects associated with HCQ.
This systematic review showed that there is no significant difference between HCQ and placebo in the treatment of dry mouth and dry eye in pSS. Well-designed, randomized, controlled trials are needed to provide higher-quality evidence to confirm our findings, and future studies should focus on some other index or extraglandular measures, such as cutaneous manifestations, to further explore the therapeutic effect of HCQ in pSS.
Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), a mycotoxin contaminating food and feed, can trigger liver immune toxicity and threaten the poultry industry. Phillygenin (PHI) is a natural lignan derived primarily from ...Forsythia suspensa with hepatoprotective pharmacological and medicinal properties. This research aimed to investigate the preventive effects of PHI on the toxicity of AFB1 in the liver of chickens. Chickens were administered with AFB1 (2.8 mg/kg) and/or treated with PHI (24 mg/kg) for 33 days. The histopathological changes, serum biochemical indices, oxidative damage, inflammatory mediators, apoptosis, and activation of the NF-κB and Nrf2 signaling pathways were measured. Results revealed that dietary PHI ameliorated liver function indicators, reduced the malondialdehyde and inflammatory mediator production and the apoptotic cell number, and increased the antioxidant enzyme contents and Bcl-2 level. The quantitative realtime PCR and Western blot results revealed that PHI reduced p53, cytochrome c, Bax, caspase-9, and caspase-3 levels, normalized the NF-κB p65 phosphorylation, and upregulated the Nrf2 and its downstream genes expression in chicken liver. These results indicated that PHI has beneficial effects on AFB1-induced liver damage, oxidative damage, inflammatory response, apoptosis, and immunotoxicity by inhibiting NF-κB and activating the Nrf2 signaling pathway in chickens. This study provides new insight into the therapeutic uses of PHI.
Display omitted
•Phillygenin(PHI) ameliorates aflatoxin B1- induced liver damage in chicken.•PHI inhibits oxidative stress and inflammation in the AFB1-induced liver damage.•PHI reduces AFB1-induced hepatocytes apoptosis in the liver of chicken.•PHI alleviates AFB1 toxicity by the NF-κB and Nrf2 signaling pathways.
•Oxidative stress was induced in PTZ kindling mice.•Metformin attenuated the intensity of seizures during PTZ kindling.•Metformin ameliorated learning and memory impairment induced by epileptic ...seizures.•Metformin reduced the brain oxidative stress in PTZ kindling mice.
Cognitive impairment, the most common and severe comorbidity of epilepsy, greatly diminishes the quality of life. However, current therapeutic interventions for epilepsy can also cause untoward cognitive effects. Thus, there is an urgent need for new kinds of agents targeting both seizures and cognition deficits. Oxidative stress is considered to play an important role in epileptogenesis and cognitive deficits, and antioxidants have a putative antiepileptic potential. Metformin, the most commonly prescribed antidiabetic oral drug, has antioxidant properties. This study was designed to evaluate the ameliorative effects of metformin on seizures, cognitive impairment and brain oxidative stress markers observed in pentylenetetrazole-induced kindling animals. Male C57BL/6 mice were administered with subconvulsive dose of pentylenetetrazole (37mg/kg, i.p.) every other day for 14 injections. Metformin was injected intraperitoneally in dose of 200mg/kg along with alternate-day PTZ. We found that metformin suppressed the progression of kindling, ameliorated the cognitive impairment and decreased brain oxidative stress. Thus the present study concluded that metformin may be a potential agent for the treatment of epilepsy as well as a protective medicine against cognitive impairment induced by seizures.
Daidzein, which is scarce in nature, has gained significant attention due to its superior biological activity and bioavailability compared with daidzin. So far, it has been widely used in the ...medicine and health care products industries. The enzymatic approach for the preparation of daidzein has prevailed, benefitted by its high efficiency and eco-friendly nature. Our present research aimed at providing a preparation method of daidzein by enzymatic hydrolysis of daidzin in a new "green" reaction medium-deep eutectic solvents (DESs). Herein, the DESs were screened via evaluating enzyme activity, enzyme stability and the substrate solubility, and the DES (ChCl/EG 2:1, 30 vol %) was believed to be the most appropriate co-solvent to improve the bioconversion efficiency. Based on the yield of daidzein, response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to model and optimize the reaction parameters. Under these optimum process conditions, the maximum yield of 97.53% was achieved and the purity of daidzein crude product reached more than 70%, which is more efficient than conversions in DESs-free buffer. Importantly, it has been shown that DESs medium could be reused for six batches of the process with a final conversion of above 50%. The results indicated that this procedure could be considered a mild, environmentally friendly, highly efficient approach to the economical production of daidzein, with a simple operation process and without any harmful reagents being involved.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a cancer with extremely high mortality. Epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) may play an important role in the occurrence, invasion and prognosis of HCC; however, ...its relationship with immunity in HCC has not yet been studied. Therefore, we investigated the diagnostic and prognostic values of EMT and explored its potential connections with tumorigenic immune infiltrates in HCC. We first proposed a quantitative metric of EMT activity, the EMT score. After applying this metric to 20 datasets from the Integrative Molecular Database of Hepatocellular Carcinoma, the Cancer Genome Atlas, and the Gene Expression Omnibus, we explored the ability of the EMT score to stratify across sample types. We then applied the EMT score for survival analysis and to differentiate patients with/without vascular invasion to test its prognostic value. We also collected and calculated data on the abundance of immune cells and immune cell markers in HCC and investigated their correlations with EMT scores. Finally, we synthesized and analyzed 20 datasets and constructed an EMT‐gene‐immune linkage network. The results showed higher EMT scores in HCC samples than in cirrhotic and normal livers. The cases with higher EMT scores also showed poorer performance in terms of prognostic factors such as vascular invasion and overall survival time. Our research demonstrated a broad correlation between EMT and the tumor immune microenvironment, and we uncovered multiple potential linkers associated with both EMT and immunity. Studying EMT has clinical relevance and high diagnostic and prognostic value for HCC.
Epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) may play an important role in the occurrence, invasion, and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC); however, its relationship with immunity in HCC has not yet been studied. Therefore, we investigated the diagnostic and prognostic values of EMT and explored its potential connections with tumorigenic immune infiltrates in HCC.
Background:Pre-procedure liver dysfunction was associated with acute kidney injury after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The aim of this study is to assess and compare the predictive value ...of different liver function scoring systems for contrast-associated acute kidney injury (CA-AKI) in patients undergoing elective PCI.Methods and Results:A total of 5,569 patients were retrospectively enrolled. The model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) including albumin (MELD-Albumin) score (AUC=0.661) had the strongest predictive value in comparison to the MELD score (AUC=0.627), the MELD excluding the international normalized ratio (MELD-XI) score (AUC=0.560), and the MELD including sodium (MELD-Na) score (AUC=0.652). In the fully adjusted logistic regression model, the MELD-Albumin score and the MELD-Na score were independently associated with CA-AKI regardless of whether they were treated as continuous or categorical variables; however, this was not the case for the MELD score and the MELD-XI score. Furthermore, the addition of the MELD-Albumin score significantly improved the reclassification beyond the fully adjusted logistic regression model. The study further explored the association between different versions of the MELD score and CA-AKI using restricted cubic splines and found a linear relationship between the MELD-Albumin score and the risk of CA-AKI.Conclusions:The MELD-Albumin score had the highest predictive value for CA-AKI in patients undergoing elective PCI. The addition of the MELD-Albumin score to the existing risk prediction model significantly improved the reclassification for CA-AKI.
PDF
