Objective
Baicalin, a flavonoid compound purified from the dry roots of
Scutellaria baicalensis
Georgi, has generally been used for the treatment of various allergic diseases. However, there is ...little information about the anti-inflammatory effects of baicalin for allergic rhinitis. This study aims to investigate the anti-allergic effect of baicalin on allergic response in ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic rhinitis guinea pigs and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated human mast cells.
Methods
Using in vivo models, we evaluated the effect of baicalin on allergic rhinitis symptoms via recording the number of nasal rubs and sneezes. The levels of histamine, OVA-specific immunoglobulin E(IgE), eosinophil cationic protein (ECP) and inflammatory cytokines were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The histological changes of nasal mucosa were observed by light microscope after HE staining. In vitro, the release of histamine and β-hexosaminidase of compound 48/80-induced human mast cells were measured by ELISA and PNP-NAG colorimetry, respectively. The productions of inflammatory cytokines of LPS-stimulated human mast cells were determined using ELISA. Western blot was used to test the protein expression of JAK2, p-JAK2, STAT5, p-STAT5, IKKβ, p-IKKβ, IκBα, p-IκBα and NF-κB (p65) of LPS-stimulated human mast cells.
Results
The oral administration of baicalin at doses of 50 and 200 mg/kg improved allergic rhinitis symptoms and the histological changes of nasal mucosa and decreased the serum levels of histamine, ECP, interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-8, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and OVA-specific IgE in OVA-induced allergic rhinitis guinea pigs. In vitro, baicalin suppressed the release of histamine and β-hexosaminidase in compound 48/80-induced human mast cells. In addition, baicalin also inhibited the productions of inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α and suppressed the phosphorylation of JAK2, STAT5, IKKβ, IκBα and the nuclear translocation of NF-κB (p65) subunit in LPS-stimulated human mast cells.
Conclusions
These results suggest that baicalin can effectively prevent allergic response in OVA-induced allergic rhinitis guinea pigs and inhibit inflammatory response via blocking JAK2-STAT5 and NF-κB signaling pathways in LPS-stimulated human mast cells. Considered together,the results show that baicalin may be a useful drug in the treatment of allergic rhinitis.
Background Depression manifests as a mental disorder characterized by a low mood, suicidal tendencies, disturbances in sleep-wake cycles, psychomotor agitation, and pronounced feelings of ...hopelessness and anhedonia. Baicalin, a natural flavonoid compound, shows significant promise in alleviating depressive symptoms in animals. This study aims to assess the impact of baicalin on experimental models of depression. Methods A systematic search of electronic databases was conducted using the search terms “baicalin” AND “depression” OR “depressed” OR “anti-depression”. Preclinical animal models representing experimental depression were included in the analysis. The risk of bias in the included studies was evaluated using the CAMARADES tools. Results Baicalin significantly increased sucrose preference test (SPT) SMD= 21.31, 95%CI (16.32, 26.31), P < 0.00001. mThe tail suspension test (TST) duration significantly decreased in the baicalin group compared to the model group SMD = −39.3, 95%CI (−49.71, −28.89), P < 0.0001. Furthermore, baicalin reduced immobility time in rats subjected to the forced swim test (FST) SMD = −39.73, 95%CI (−48.77, −30.69) P < 0.0001. Compared to the model group, baicalin treatment also significantly increased the frequency of crossings in the open field test (OFT) SMD = 32.44, 95%CI (17.74, 47.13), P < 0.00001. Conclusion Baicalin significantly improves the manifestations of depressive symptoms. The effect of baicalin against depression is exerted through its anti-inflammatory actions, inhibition of oxidative stress, regulation of the HPA axis, and restoration of neuroplasticity. Future studies will be needed to further explore how these promising preclinical findings can be translated into clinical treatment for depression. Systematic Review Registration https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/ , identifier CRD42023472181.
In this work, we propose a novel cascaded V-Nets method to segment brain tumor substructures in multimodal brain magnetic resonance imaging. Although V-Net has been successfully used in many ...segmentation tasks, we demonstrate that its performance could be further enhanced by using a cascaded structure and ensemble strategy. Briefly, our baseline V-Net consists of four levels with encoding and decoding paths and intra- and inter-path skip connections. Focal loss is chosen to improve performance on hard samples as well as balance the positive and negative samples. We further propose three preprocessing pipelines for multimodal magnetic resonance images to train different models. By ensembling the segmentation probability maps obtained from these models, segmentation result is further improved. In other hand, we propose to segment the whole tumor first, and then divide it into tumor necrosis, edema, and enhancing tumor. Experimental results on BraTS 2018 online validation set achieve average Dice scores of 0.9048, 0.8364, and 0.7748 for whole tumor, tumor core and enhancing tumor, respectively. The corresponding values for BraTS 2018 online testing set are 0.8761, 0.7953, and 0.7364, respectively. We also evaluate the proposed method in two additional data sets from local hospitals comprising of 28 and 28 subjects, and the best results are 0.8635, 0.8036, and 0.7217, respectively. We further make a prediction of patient overall survival by ensembling multiple classifiers for long, mid and short groups, and achieve accuracy of 0.519, mean square error of 367240 and Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.168 for BraTS 2018 online testing set.
To evaluate and compare the image quality and diagnostic accuracy of Artificial Intelligence-assisted Compressed Sensing (ACS) sequences for lumbar disease, as an acceleration method for MRI ...combining parallel imaging, half-Fourier, compressed sensing and neural network and routine 2D sequences for lumbar spine.
We collected data from 82 healthy subjects and 213 patients who used 2D ACS accelerated sequences to examine the lumbar spine while 95 healthy subjects and 234 patients used routine 2D sequences. Acquisitions included axial T2WI, sagittal T2WI, T1WI, and T2-fs sequences. All obtained images of these subjects were analyzed in the light of calculating image quality factors such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) for selected regions of interest. The lumbar image quality, artifacts and visibility of lesion structure were assessed by two radiologists independently. Differences between the evaluation values above were tested for statistical significance by the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test. Inter-observer agreements of image quality between two radiologists were measured using Cohen's kappa correlation coefficient.
The ACS accelerated sequences not only reduced the scanning time by 18.9%, but also retained basically the same image quality as the routine 2D sequences in both healthy subjects and patients. Artifacts are less produced on ACS accelerated sequences compared with routine 2D sequences (p < 0.05). Apart from this, there were no significant differences in quantitative SNR, CNR measurements and qualitative scores within reviewing radiologists for each group (p > 0.05). Moreover, inter-observer agreement between two radiologists in scoring image quality was substantial consistently for ACS accelerated sequences and routine sequences (kappa = 0.622-0.986).
Compared with routine 2D sequences, ACS accelerated sequences allow for faster lumbar spine imaging with similar imaging quality and present reliable diagnostic accuracy, which can potentially improve workflow and patient comfort in musculoskeletal examinations.
The electronic structure near the Fermi surface determines the electrical properties of the materials, which can be effectively tuned by external pressure. Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 is a p‐type thermoelectric ...material which holds the record high figure of merit at room temperature. Here it is examined whether the figure of merit of this model system can be further enhanced through some external parameter. With the application of pressure, it is surprisingly found that the power factor of this material exhibits λ behavior with a high value of 4.8 mW m−1 K−2 at pressure of 1.8 GPa. Such an enhancement is found to be driven by pressure‐induced electronic topological transition, which is revealed by multiple techniques. Together with a low thermal conductivity of about 0.89 W m−1 K−1 at the same pressure, a figure of merit of 1.6 is achieved at room temperature. The results and findings highlight the electronic topological transition as a new route for improving the thermoelectric properties.
This paper reports the pressure‐induced electronic topological transition as a novel route for improving thermoelectric performance. With the application of high pressure, the room‐temperature zT of Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 exhibits a λ behavior, and the maximum zT value is as high as 1.6 around the vicinity of the electronic topological transition.
Nanocrystalline materials exhibit unique properties due to their extremely high grain boundary (GB) density. However, this high-density characteristic induces grain coarsening at elevated ...temperatures, thereby limiting the widespread application of nanocrystalline materials. Recent experimental observations revealed that GB segregation and second-phase pinning effectively hinder GB migration, thereby improving the stability of nanocrystalline materials. In this study, a modified phase-field model that integrates mismatch strain, solute segregation and precipitation was developed to evaluate the influence of lattice misfit on the thermal stability of nanocrystalline alloys. The simulation results indicated that introducing a suitable mismatch strain can effectively enhance the microstructural stability of nanocrystalline alloys. By synergizing precipitation with an appropriate lattice misfit, the formation of second-phase particles in the bulk grains can be suppressed, thereby facilitating solute segregation/precipitation at the GBs. This concentrated solute segregation and precipitation at the GBs effectively hinders grain migration, thereby preventing grain coarsening. These findings provide a new perspective on the design and regulation of nanocrystalline alloys with enhanced thermal stability.
Graphic abstract
Dyslipidemia is known to contribute to arterial stiffness, while the inverse association remains unknown. This study aimed to explore the association of baseline arterial stiffness and its changes, ...as determined by brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), with dyslipidemia onset in the general population.
This study enrolled participants from Beijing Health Management Cohort using measurements of the first visit from 2012 to 2013 as baseline, and followed until the dyslipidemia onset or the end of 2019. Unadjusted and adjusted Cox proportional regression models were used to evaluate the associations of baseline baPWV and baPWV transition (persistent low, onset, remitted and persistent high) with incident dyslipidemia.
Of 4362 individuals (mean age: 55.5 years), 1490 (34.2%) developed dyslipidemia during a median follow-up of 5.9 years. After adjusting for potential confounders, participants with elevated arterial stiffness at baseline had an increased risk of dyslipidemia (HR, 1.194; 95% CI, 1.050-1.358). Compared with persistent low baPWV, new-onset and persistent high baPWV were associated with a 51.2% and 37.1% excess risk of dyslipidemia.
The findings indicated that arterial stiffness is an early risk factor of dyslipidemia, suggesting a bidirectional association between arterial stiffness and lipid metabolism.
To retrospectively validate CT-based radiomics features for predicting the risk of anterior mediastinal lesions.
A retrospective study was performed through February 2013 to March 2018 on 298 ...patients who had pathologically confirmed anterior mediastinal lesions. The patients all underwent CT scans before their treatment, including 130 unenhanced computed tomography (UECT) and 168 contrast-enhanced CT (CECT) scans. The lesion areas were delineated, and a total of 1,029 radiomics features were extracted. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) algorithm method was used to select the radiomics features significantly associated with discrimination of high-risk from low-risk lesions in the anterior mediastinum. Then, 8-fold and 3-fold cross-validation logistic regression (LR) models were taken as the feature selection classifiers to build the radiomics models for UECT and CECT scan respectively. The predictive performance of the radiomics features was evaluated based on the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve.
Each of the two radiomics classifiers included the optimal 12 radiomic features. In terms of the area under ROC curve, using the radiomics model in discriminating high-risk lesions from the low-risks, CECT images accounted for 74.1% with a sensitivity of 66.67% and specificity of 64.81%. Meanwhile, UECT images were 84.2% with a sensitivity of 71.43% and specificity of 74.07%.
The association of the two proposed CT-based radiomics features with the discrimination of high and low-risk lesions in anterior mediastinum was confirmed, and the radiomics features of the UECT scan were proven to have better prediction performance than the CECT's in risk grading.
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