Background/Aims In a recent study, attenuation imaging (ATI) with ultrasound was used as a new approach for detecting liver steatosis. However, although there are many studies on ATI and controlled ...attenuation parameter (CAP) that prove their practicability, there are few studies comparing these two methods. As such, this study compared CAP and ATI for the detection and evaluation of liver steatosis. Methods A prospective analysis of 28 chronic liver disease patients who underwent liver biopsy, FibroScan® imaging, and ATI with ultrasound was conducted. The presence and degree of steatosis, as measured with the FibroScan® device and ATI, were compared with the pathological results obtained using liver biopsy. Results The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of ATI and CAP for differentiating between normal and hepatic steatosis were 0.97 (95% confidence interval CI 0.83–1.00) and 0.96 (95% CI 0.81–0.99), respectively. ATI has a higher AUROC than CAP does in liver steatosis, at 0.99 (95% CI, 0.86–1.00) versus 0.91 (95% CI, 0.74–0.98) in grade ≥ 2 and 0.97 (95% CI, 0.82–1.00) versus 0.88 (95% CI, 0.70–0.97) in grade = 3, respectively. Conclusion The ATI and CAP results showed good consistency and accuracy for the steatosis grading when compared with the liver biopsy results. Moreover, ATI is even better than CAP in patients with moderate or severe steatosis. Therefore, ATI represents a non-invasive and novel diagnostic tool with which to support the diagnosis of liver steatosis in clinical practice.
Biomechanical properties of the extracellular matrix (ECM) are important regulators in cell development, including proliferation, apoptosis and migration. Recent studies have shown that stiffening of ...the ECM resulting from deposition and crosslinking of collagen may promote invasion and migration of tumor cells. In our previous study, a laser speckle contrast shear wave (SW) imaging system was developed, and a feasibility study on non-invasive, non-superficial and exogenous-tracer-free evaluation of the mechanical property of the 3-D cell matrix was performed. In this report, the system is used to measure the stiffness of 3-D cancer metastasis models. We hypothesize that the developed system can provide temporal and spatial information of the cell matrix during cancer progression related to cancer cell migration and metastasis.
Periodontal pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis) increased cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and apoptosis whereas Actinobaeillus actinomycetemcomitans and Prevotella intermedia had no effects. ...The purpose of this study is to clarify the role of calcineurin signaling pathway in P. gingivalis-induced H9c2 myocardial cell hypertrophy and apoptosis.
DNA fragmentation, nuclear condensation, cellular morphology, calcineurin protein, Bcl2-associated death promoter (Bad) and nuclear factor of activated T cell (NFAT)-3 protein products in cultured H9c2 myocardial cell were measured by agarose gel electrophoresis, DAPI, immunofluorescence, and Western blotting following P. gingivalis and/or pre-administration of CsA (calcineurin inhibitors cyclosporin A).
P. gingivalis not only increased calcineurin protein, NFAT-3 protein products and cellular hypertrophy, but also increased DNA fragmentation, nuclear condensation and Bad protein products in H9c2 cells. The increased cellular sizes, DNA fragmentation, nuclear condensation, and Bad of H9c2 cells treated with P. gingivalis were all significantly reduced after pre-administration of CsA.
Our findings suggest that the activity of calcineurin signal pathway may be initiated by P. gingivalis and further lead to cell hypertrophy and death in culture H9c2 myocardial cells.
UV radiation and H
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are the primary factors that cause skin aging. Both trigger oxidative stress and cellular aging. It has been reported that deacetylase silent information regulator 1 (SIRT1), a ...longevity gene, enhances activation of NF-E2-related factor-2 (Nrf2)
as well as its downstream key antioxidant gene hemeoxygenase-1 (HO-1), to protect cells against oxidative damage by deacetylating the transcription coactivator PPARγ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α). Galangin, a flavonoid, possesses anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory potential. In the present study, we applied Ultraviolet B/H
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-induced human dermal fibroblast damage as an in vitro model and UVB-induced photoaging of C57BL/6J nude mice as an in vivo model to investigate the underlying dermo-protective mechanisms of galangin. Our results indicated that galangin treatment attenuates H
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/UVB-induced cell viability reduction, dermal aging, and SIRT1/PGC-1α/Nrf2 signaling activation. Furthermore, galangin treatment enhanced Nrf2 activation and nuclear accumulation, in addition to inhibiting Nrf2 degradation. Interestingly, upregulation of antioxidant response element luciferase activity following galangin treatment indicated the transcriptional activation of Nrf2. However, knockdown of SIRT1, PGC-1α, or Nrf2 by siRNA reversed the antioxidant and anti-aging effects of galangin. In vivo evidence further showed that galangin treatment, at doses of 12 and 24 mg/kg on the dorsal skin cells of nude mice resulted in considerably reduced UVB-induced epidermal hyperplasia and skin senescence, and promoted SIRT1/PGC-1α/Nrf2 signaling. Furthermore, enhanced nuclear localization of Nrf2 was observed in galangin-treated mice following UVB irradiation. In conclusion, our data indicated that galangin exerts anti-photoaging and antioxidant effects by promoting SIRT1/PGC-1α/Nrf2 signaling. Therefore, galangin is a potentially promising agent for cosmetic skin care products against UV-induced skin aging.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease affecting approximately 1% of the global population, with a higher prevalence in women than in men. Chronic inflammation and oxidative ...stress play pivotal roles in the pathogenesis of RA. Anethole, a prominent compound derived from fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), possesses a spectrum of therapeutic properties, including anti-arthritic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and tumor-suppressive effects. However, its specific impact on RA remains underexplored. This study sought to uncover the potential therapeutic value of anethole in treating RA by employing an H2 O2 -induced inflammation model with HIG-82 synovial cells. Our results demonstrated that exposure to H2 O2 induced the inflammation and apoptosis in these cells. Remarkably, anethole treatment effectively countered these inflammatory and apoptotic processes triggered by H2 O2 . Moreover, we identified the aquaporin 1 (AQP1) and protein kinase A (PKA) pathway as critical regulators of inflammation and apoptosis. H2 O2 stimulation led to an increase in the AQP1 expression and a decrease in p-PKA-C, contributing to cartilage degradation. Conversely, anethole not only downregulated the AQP1 expression but also activated the PKA pathway, effectively suppressing cell inflammation and apoptosis. Furthermore, anethole also inhibited the enzymes responsible for cartilage degradation. In summary, our findings highlight the potential of anethole as a therapeutic agent for mitigating H2 O2 -induced inflammation and apoptosis in synovial cells, offering promising prospects for future RA treatments.
The treatment of human glioma tumor is still an unmet medical need. Natural products are always promising resources for discovery of anticancer drugs. Lauryl gallate (LG) is one of the derivatives of ...gallic acid, widely present in plants, that has been shown to induce anticancer activities in many human cancer cell lines; however, it has not been studied in human glioma cell lines. Thus, the effects of LG on human glioblastoma U87 cells were investigated in the present in vitro study.
Cell morphology and viability were examined by phase-contrast microscopy. Annexin V/Propidium iodide (PI) double staining were performed and assayed by flow cytometry to confirm that viable cell number reduction was due to the induction of apoptosis. Furthermore, U87 cells were exposed to LG in various concentrations and were analyzed by caspase activity assay. To further confirm that LG induced apoptotic cell death, the expression of apoptosis-associated proteins in LG-treated U87 cells was tested by western blot.
LG induced morphological changes and decreased viability in U87 cells. Annexin V/PI double staining revealed that LG induced apoptotic cell death in U87 cells in a dose-dependent manner. The increased activities of caspase-2, -3, -8 and -9 demonstrated that LG induced U87 cell apoptosis through a caspase-dependent pathway. In terms of molecular level, LG increased pro-apoptotic proteins Bax and Bak and decreased anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 in U87 cells. Furthermore, LG also suppressed the expression of p-Akt, Pak1, Hif-1α and Hif-2α, β-catenin and Tcf-1 in U87 cells.
These results suggest that LG induced apoptotic cell death via the caspase-dependent pathway in U87 cells.
This paper proposes an intelligent scalp inspection and diagnosis system based on the deep learning techniques for caring hair scalp health. The proposed system can automatically recognize the status ...of the user's scalp. Moreover, we can continuously increase in the number of samples to enhance the accuracy rate by adopting deep learning techniques. The proposed system consists of a scalp detector, an app running on a tablet, and a cloud management platform. The scalp detector will be connected with the tablet via Wi-Fi wireless network. Thus, a scalp photo can be captured via the proposed scalp detector. The scalp photo will be recognized by scalp detector, and the recognized result of the scalp will also be sent and displayed to the tablet. As a result, we can get the quantitative data on the scalp, including bacteria, allergies, dandruff, grease, and hair loss. Moreover. The experimental results showed that the accuracy can be achieved 90.909%.
In this paper, we consider the augmentation problem of an undirected graph with
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partitions of its vertices. The main issue is how to add a set of edges with the smallest possible cardinality so ...that the resulting graph is 2-edge-connected, i.e., bridge-connected, while maintaining the original partition constraint. To solve the problem, we propose a simple linear-time algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, the most efficient sequential algorithm runs in
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Mechanobiology is an emerging field of research that studies the influences on the cell behaviors by mechanical stimuli. In this research, the previously developed laser speckle contrast shear wave ...imaging system is implemented for monitoring the temporal and spatial changes in the stiffness of the self-designed in vitro cancer metastasis model. Results from the immunostaining with laminin and collagen type I are analyzed to provide information about the changes of the cell culture matrix, in correlation with the mechanical measurements. The variations of shear wave speed measurements are highly correlated with the changes in the content of the cell culture matrix. Thus, quantitative measurement of the stiffness of the extracellular matrix may provide information about the matrix remodeling process during cancer progression, which may lead to the improvements in the cancer treatment strategy.
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