PURPOSE:To describe the prevalence and associations of meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) in an urban Malay population in Singapore.
METHODS:Population-based cross-sectional study of 3280 (78.7% ...response rate) Malay persons aged 40 to 80 years, living in Singapore. MGD was defined by a slit-lamp clinical examination as either lid margin telangiectasia or meibomian gland orifice plugging in at least one eye. Participants underwent a standardized questionnaire and clinical examination, including laboratory investigations. Data were analyzed for 3271 persons.
RESULTS:The age-standardized prevalence of MGD was 56.3% 95% confidence interval (CI), 53.3–59.4. A higher MGD prevalence was found in male participants across all age groups odds ratio (OR), 1.30; 95% CI, 1.35–1.79, postmenopausal women (OR, 1.64; 95% CI, 1.19–2.33), and all participants with pinguecula (OR, 2.43; 95% CI, 2.08–2.85), high diastolic blood pressure (OR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.08–1.62), and use of angiotensin II receptor blockers (OR, 4.02; 95% CI, 1.74–9.27).
CONCLUSIONS:MGD was highly prevalent in this Asian population and associated with various systemic and ocular conditions.
Cohort evidence linking long-term survival with exposure to multiple air pollutants (e.g., fine particulate matter PM2.5 and ozone) was extensively sparse in low- and middle-income countries, ...especially among older adults. This study aimed to investigate potential associations of long-term exposures to PM2.5 and ozone with all-cause mortality in Chinese older adults.
A dynamic nationwide prospective cohort comprising 20,352 adults aged ≥65 years were enrolled from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study and followed up through 2005–2018. Participants’ annual exposures to warm-season ozone and year-round PM2.5 were assigned using satellite-derived spatiotemporal estimates. A directed acyclic graph (DAG) was developed to identify confounding variables. Associations of annual mean exposures to PM2.5 and ozone with mortality were evaluated using single- and two-pollutant Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for time-dependent individual risk factors and ambient temperature.
During 100 thousand person-years of follow-up (median: 3.6 years), a total of 14,313 death events occurred. The participants were averagely aged 87.1 years at baseline and exposed to a wide range of annual average concentrations of warm-season maximum 8-hour ozone (mean, 54.4 ppb; range, 23.3–81.6 ppb) and year-round PM2.5 (mean, 65.5 μg/m3; range, 10.1–162.9 μg/m3). Approximately linear concentration-response relationship was identified for ozone, whereas significant increases in PM2.5-associated mortality risks were observed only when concentrations were above 60 μg/m3. Rises of 10 ppb in ozone and 10 µg/m3 in PM2.5 above 60 µg/m3 were associated with increases in all-cause mortality of 13.2% (95% confidence interval CI: 10.2–16.2%) and 6.2% (95% CI: 4.6–7.7%) in DAG-based single-pollutant model, and of 9.7% (95% CI: 6.6–13.0%) and 5.3% (95% CI: 3.7–6.9%) in DAG-based two-pollutant model, respectively. We detected significant effect modification by temperature in associations of mortality with ozone (P <0.001 for interaction), suggesting greater ozone-related risks among participants in warmer locations.
This study provided longitudinal evidence that long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 and ozone significantly and independently contributed to elevated risks of all-cause mortality among older adults in China.
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•Later-life exposure to ozone and PM2.5 hinders long-term survival of Chinese older adults.•An approximately linear concentration-response relationship was identified for ozone.•Significant increases in PM2.5-associated mortality risks were observed only above 60 μg/m3.•Ozone-mortality associations were more prominent in older adults living in warmer locations.
Topical treatment of oral lichen planus Sun, S.‐L.; Liu, J.‐J.; Zhong, B. ...
British journal of dermatology (1951),
December 2019, 2019-12-00, 20191201, Letnik:
181, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Summary
Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a skin disease affecting the mouth, which can cause a burning or stinging discomfort in the mouth when eating or drinking. Ulcers may occur and these are ...especially painful. The cause of oral lichen planus is not known in most instances, but it is likely to be related to the body's immune system.
In this study, the authors from China aimed to compare the efficacy and safety of drugs called topical calcineurin inhibitors (TCI) with medicines applied to the skin called topical corticosteroids (TCS), in the treatment of OLP.
The authors looked at globally published randomized controlled trials (RCTs) reporting TCI (tacrolimus, pimecrolimus, and cyclosporine) compared with TCS for OLP from eight medical databases.
Twenty‐one RCTs with a total of 965 patients published between 1995 and 2017 were included (tacrolimus‐TCS: 12 studies, 578 patients; pimecrolimus‐TCS: 3 studies, 98 patients; cyclosporine‐TCS: 6 studies, 289 patients).
The authors found that TCI including tacrolimus, pimecrolimus and cyclosporine were similar to TCS in efficacy for the short‐term treatment of OLP (3‐8 weeks). In addition, tacrolimus 0.1% was similar to TCS in relapse rate.
The blood levels of tacrolimus and cyclosporine were usually extremely low, while the few cases of patients with high levels may have been caused by swallowing the drug accidentally. Although a few adverse events (unwanted side effects) were observed in the tacrolimus and cyclosporine groups, no serious events were found.
Therefore, TCI may be an alternative approach when OLP does not improve with use of TCS. Due to the limited trials of pimecrolimus and cyclosporine, as well as a few adverse events and high cost of cyclosporine, tacrolimus 0.1% should be the first drug of choice in TCI for the short‐term treatment of OLP that is not improving with TCS. More well‐designed RCTs are needed to evaluate the long‐term efficacy and safety of TCI compared with TCS.
Linked Article: Sun et al. Br J Dermatol 2019; 181:1166–1176
Extreme climate events are becoming more frequent, with poorly understood implications for carbon sequestration by terrestrial ecosystems. A better understanding will critically depend on accurate ...and precise quantification of ecosystems responses to these events. Taking the 2019 US Midwest floods as a case study, we investigate current capabilities for tracking regional flux anomalies with “top‐down” inversion analyses that assimilate atmospheric CO2 observations. For this analysis, we develop a regionally nested version of the NASA Carbon Monitoring System‐Flux system for North America (CMS‐Flux‐NA) that allows high resolution atmospheric transport (0.5° × 0.625°). Relative to a 2018 baseline, we find the 2019 US Midwest growing season net carbon uptake is reduced by 11–57 TgC (3%–16%, range across assimilated CO2 data sets). These estimates are found to be consistent with independent “bottom‐up” estimates of carbon uptake based on vegetation remote sensing (15–78 TgC). We then investigate current limitations in tracking regional carbon budgets using “top‐down” methods. In a set of observing system simulation experiments, we show that the ability of atmospheric CO2 inversions to capture regional carbon flux anomalies is still limited by observational coverage gaps for both in situ and satellite observations. Future space‐based missions that allow for daily observational coverage across North America would largely mitigate these observational gaps, allowing for improved top‐down estimates of ecosystem responses to extreme climate events.
Plain Language Summary
Extreme climate events, such as floods or heatwaves, can have major impacts on the carbon cycle. For example, widespread flooding in the US Midwest during 2019 delayed the planting of crops leading to reduced plant growth and carbon uptake relative to 2018. Here, we test how well this reduction in carbon uptake can be inferred from measurements of atmospheric CO2. We find that these data can identify reduced net carbon uptake to the US Midwest during the 2019 floods, but that sparse observational coverage limits our ability to quantify the anomaly in net carbon uptake. We show that expanded space‐based observations of CO2 would fill these gaps, allowing for improved estimates of interannual variations in the US CO2 budget.
Key Points
Bottom‐up and top‐down methods capture reduced 2019 US Midwest carbon uptake relative to 2018
Gaps in atmospheric CO2 observations drive uncertainties in top‐down estimates
Nested inversion better localizes US Midwest ΔNEE relative to coarse global model
Summary
A prerequisite for the successful clinical application of gene therapy in erectile dysfunction (ED) is the availability of safe and efficient gene delivery systems. The aim of this study was ...to examine the effectiveness of guanidinylated bioreducible polymer (GBP) polyplexes for gene delivery systems, which take advantage of the biodegradability of reducible disulfide bonds and the cell‐penetrating ability of guanidine groups. For in vitro transfection experiments, we used mouse cavernous endothelial cells and A7r5 rat vascular smooth muscle cells. For in vivo experiments, we used a mouse model of hypercholesterolaemic ED in which 2‐month‐old male C57BL/6 mice were fed a diet containing 4% cholesterol and 1% cholic acid for 3 months. Animals or cells were treated with pCMV‐Luc, poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI)25k/pCMV‐Luc polyplex (weight ratio: 1) and GBP/pCMV‐Luc polyplexes (weight ratio: 20, 40, 60 and 80). Gene expression was evaluated by luciferase assay, and the gene expression area was evaluated by immunohistochemistry. GBP had greater transfection efficiency as the weight ratio increased. GBP had sevenfold higher gene delivery efficiency in A7r5 cells at a weight ratio of 80 than did PEI25k. Moreover, the gene expression was more profoundly induced by GBP/pCMV‐Luc than by pCMV‐Luc in both the corpus cavernosum tissue of hypercholesterolaemic mice and in mouse cavernous endothelial cells, although the expression levels induced by the GBP gene delivery system were lower than those induced by the PEI25k gene delivery system. GBP revealed no considerable cytotoxicity to A7r5 cells and mouse cavernous endothelial cells (relative cell viability: 95 and 88% respectively), whereas PEI25k resulted in high cytotoxicity. Interestingly, immunofluorescent double staining revealed that luciferase expression induced by the GBP polyplex mainly overlapped with cavernous endothelial cells, but rarely with smooth muscle cells. The GBP‐based non‐viral gene expression system may be useful for the development of gene therapy in vasculogenic ED.
LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a second-generation direct dark matter experiment with spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering sensitivity above 1.4 × 10-48 cm2 for a WIMP mass of 40 GeV/c 2 and a 1000 d ...exposure. LZ achieves this sensitivity through a combination of a large 5.6 t fiducial volume, active inner and outer veto systems, and radio-pure construction using materials with inherently low radioactivity content. The LZ collaboration performed an extensive radioassay campaign over a period of six years to inform material selection for construction and provide an input to the experimental background model against which any possible signal excess may be evaluated. The campaign and its results are described in this paper. We present assays of dust and radon daughters depositing on the surface of components as well as cleanliness controls necessary to maintain background expectations through detector construction and assembly. Finally, examples from the campaign to highlight fixed contaminant radioassays for the LZ photomultiplier tubes, quality control and quality assurance procedures through fabrication, radon emanation measurements of major sub-systems, and be spoke detector systems to assay scintillator are presented.
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