To examine the association of fetal fraction with a wide spectrum of pregnancy-related complications among Chinese population, we carried out a single-institution retrospective cohort study of women ...with negative Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) results and singleton pregnancies between May 2018 and May 2020. Indicators of pregnancy-related complications were examined individually, including preterm birth, low birth weight, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, gestational diabetes, oligohydramnios and intrahepatic cholestasis. We evaluated disease odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs), after controlling for potential confounders including body mass index (BMI), maternal age and gestational week at NIPT. A total of 3534 women were included in our analyses. Women with fetal fraction<15.15% had increased risk of gestational hypertension (OR 4.41, CI 1.65, 12.45) and oligohydramnios (OR 2.26, CI 1.33, 3.80) compared to women with fetal fraction≥15.15%. No significant associations with fetal fraction were found for preterm birth, low birth weight, gestational diabetes, and intrahepatic cholestasis. In Summary, fetal fraction is inversely associated with the risk of gestational hypertension and oligohydramnios.
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have confirmed to participate in diverse biological functions in cancer. However, the expression patterns of circRNAs on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. In ...the present study, we clarified that hsa_circRNA_104348 was dramatically upregulated in HCC tissues and cells. Patients with HCC displaying high hsa_circRNA_104348 level possessed poor prognosis. Has_circ_104348 facilitated proliferation, migration, and invasion, meanwhile suppressed apoptosis of HCC cell. Furthermore, hsa_circRNA_104348 directly targeted miR-187-3p, could regulate miR-187-3p to affect proliferation, migration, invasion, and apoptosis of HCC cells, and may have effect on Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Moreover, RTKN2 could be a direct target of miR-187-3p. In addition, knockdown of hsa_circRNA_104348 attenuated HCC tumorigenesis and lung metastasis in vivo. Taken together, these findings indicated that circular RNA hsa_circRNA_104348 might function as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) to promotes HCC progression by targeting miR-187-3p/RTKN2 axis and activating Wnt/β-catenin pathway.
The quality and quality evaluation system of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are crucial in the safety and effectiveness assessment of TCM. However, they are also the major bottlenecks that ...restrict the quality control of TCM. Given the nature of Chinese medicine and the limitations of science and technology, the quality evaluation of TCM involves a few difficulties. Therefore, scholars have conducted considerable amount of research on this topic and obtained promising results. Biological potency and biomarkers have been used to evaluate the quality of TCM. Previous studies provided new strategies and methods to establish a system on quality evaluation.
This review aims to provide a new strategy for the quality control of Chinese herbal medicine by combining biological potency and biomarkers based on biological effects.
We reviewed the quality evaluation system of Chinese herbal medicine, focusing on quality markers (Q-markers) based on biological effects and the application of these markers in the quality evaluation of Chinese herbal medicine. We also reviewed the factors affecting quality, the difficulties related to the quality evaluation system and the attempt of researchers to improve the quality control of TCM.
We propose Q-biomarkers by integration of biological potency and biomarkers to evaluate the quality of TCM. The quality markers provided us significant insights in the process of definition. We further optimised the concept of Q-markers and summarised their definition and properties (including quantification, specificity and related to biological response) in accordance with the requirement of the quality evaluation of TCM.
We propose the use of Q-biomarkers in vivo related to specific diseases as a new strategy for the quality evaluation of Chinese herbal medicine. The quality evaluation system of Q-biomarkers would provide a new perspective to standardise and globalise TCM.
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Effects of non-isothermal aging (NIA) treatments on the mechanical properties, intergranular corrosion (IGC) and microstructures of Al-Cu-Mg-Si alloy were investigated by tensile test, intergranular ...corrosion test, electrochemical analysis, optical microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Compared with isothermal peak-aging (T6) treatment, the NIA treatments effectively improve the intergranular corrosion resistance by narrowing precipitation free zones (PFZ) and breaking the continuous distribution of precipitates on the grain boundaries. Under NIA treatments, with the increase of heating rate, the width of PFZ decreases induces the improvement of intergranular corrosion resistance. The mechanical properties of NIA treatment could be enhanced by adjusting the heating rate. The tensile strength and yield strength after NIA treatment with a heating rate of 20 °C/h are increased 1.5% and 5.8% than that after T6 treatment, respectively, which is ascribed to finer intra-grain precipitates. Reasonably, the mechanical properties and intergranular corrosion resistance could be improved simultaneously by adjusting the heating rate of NIA treatments.
•Al-Cu-Mg-Si alloys with various microstructures were prepared by non-isothermal aging treatments.•The microstructures have a great effect on the mechanical properties and intergranular corrosion resistance of the alloy.•The NIA treatments can effectively improve the intergranular corrosion resistance of Al-Cu-Mg-Si alloys.•The mechanical properties of the Al-Cu-Mg-Si alloys can be tuned by adjusting the heating rate of NIA treatments.
Olfactory ecto-mesenchymal stem cells (OE-MSCs) are a novel population of resident stem cells in the olfactory lamina propria with strong immunosuppressive function. Exosomes released by MSCs are ...considered to carry various mRNAs, microRNAs and proteins from cells and function as an extension of MSCs. However, it remains unclear whether exosomes derived from OE-MSCs (OE-MSCs-Exos) possess any immunoregulatory functions. In this study, we found that OE-MSCs-Exos possessed strong suppressive function in CD4
T cell proliferation, accompanied by reduced IL-17, IFN-γ and enhanced TGF-β, IL-10 secreted by T cells. In experimental colitis mice, treatment of OE-MSCs-Exos markedly alleviated the severity of disease, and Th1/Th17 subpopulations were remarkably reduced whereas Treg cells were increased after OE-MSCs-Exos treatment. Mechanistically, OE-MSCs-Exos were demonstrated to inhibit the differentiation of Th1 and Th17 cells, but promote the induction of Treg cells
. Taken together, our findings identified a novel function of OE-MSCs-Exos in regulating T-cell responses, indicating that OE-MSCs-Exos may represent a new cell-free therapy for the treatment of IBD and other inflammatory diseases.
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•Reviewing popular bioprinting technologies employed in craniofacial and dental tissue regeneration.•Evaluating existing biomaterials for 3D printing in dental ...applications.•Emphasizing the importance of printing materials with both excellent mechanical and biological properties for craniofacial and dental purposes.•Providing an overview of identified future research trends in the field.
The rising incidence of defects in oral and maxillofacial tissues, linked to factors such as trauma, tumors, periodontal disease, and aging, poses significant challenges. Current treatments, involving autografts, allografts, and synthetic graft materials, face obstacles like secondary trauma, inflammation, and inadequate biocompatibility. Tissue engineering, integrating cell biology and material science since the 1990s, relies heavily on biomaterial scaffolds to promote cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Traditional scaffold fabrication, including 3D printing, methods lack precision, hindering effective tissue repair by controlling cell distribution and the extracellular matrix. Biomedical engineering advancements have introduced 3D bioprinting as an innovative solution, overcoming constraints of conventional scaffolds. 3D bioprinting technology enables rapid and precise reconstruction of damaged tissues with loaded cells, mimicking in vivo environments. This paper explores key 3D bioprinting technologies such as inkjet-based, extrusion-based, fused deposition modeling, laser-assisted, VAT photopolymerization, freeform reversible embedding of suspended hydrogels, and sacrificial template printing. The selection of materials with suitable mechanical and biological properties is crucial, considering the distinct requirements of each technique. This review provides a comprehensive survey of research progress on 3D printing biomaterial applications in craniofacial and dental tissue engineering, serving as a valuable reference for future medical research.
In the context of epidemic prevention and control, food safety monitoring, data analysis and food safety traceability have become more important. At the same time, the most important reason for food ...safety issues is incomplete, opaque, and asymmetric information. The most fundamental way to solve these problems is to do a good job of traceability, and establish a reasonable and reliable food safety traceability system. The traceability system is currently an important means to ensure food quality and safety and solve the crisis of trust between consumers and the market. Research on food safety traceability systems based on big data, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things provides ideas and methods to solve the problems of low credibility and difficult data storage in the application of traditional traceability systems. Therefore, this research takes rice as an example and proposes a food safety traceability system based on RFID two-dimensional code technology and big data storage technology in the Internet of Things. This article applies RFID technology to the entire system by analyzing the requirements of the system, designing the system database and database tables, encoding the two-dimensional code and generating the design for information entry. Using RFID radio frequency technology and the data storage function in big data to obtain information in the food production process. Finally, the whole process of food production information can be traced through the design of dynamic query platform and mobile terminal. In this research, the food safety traceability system based on big data and the Internet of Things guarantees the integrity, reliability and safety of traceability information from a technical level. This is an effective solution for enhancing the credibility of traceability information, ensuring the integrity of information, and optimizing the data storage structure.
Diabetic wounds often have a slow healing process and become easily infected owing to hyperglycemia in wound beds. Once planktonic bacterial cells develop into biofilms, the diabetic wound becomes ...more resistant to treatment. Although it remains challenging to accelerate healing in a diabetic wound due to complex pathology, including bacterial infection, high reactive oxygen species, chronic inflammation, and impaired angiogenesis, the development of multifunctional hydrogels is a promising strategy. Multiple functions, including antibacterial, pro-angiogenesis, and overall pro-healing, are high priorities. Here, design strategies, mechanisms of action, performance, and application of functional hydrogels are systematically discussed. The unique properties of hydrogels, including bactericidal and wound healing promotive effects, are reviewed. Considering the clinical need, stimuli-responsive and multifunctional hydrogels that can accelerate diabetic wound healing are likely to form an important part of future diabetic wound management.
Dysregulated gene expression patterns have been reported in several mental disorders. Limited by the difficulty of obtaining samples, psychiatric molecular mechanism research still relies heavily on ...clues from genetics studies. By using reference data from brain expression studies, multiple types of comprehensive gene expression pattern analysis have been performed on psychiatric genetic results. These systems-level spatial-temporal expression pattern analyses provided evidence on specific brain regions, developmental stages and molecular pathways that are possibly involved in psychiatric pathophysiology. At present, there is no online tool for such systematic analysis, which hinders the applications of analysis by non-informatics researchers such as experimental biologists and clinical molecular biologists.
We developed the BEST web server to support Brain Expression Spatio-Temporal pattern analysis. There are three highlighted features of BEST: 1) visualization: it generates user-friendly visual results that are easy to interpret, including heatmaps, Venn diagrams, gene co-expression networks and cluster-based Manhattan gene plots; these results illustrate the complex spatio-temporal expression patterns, including expression quantification and correlation between genes; 2) integration: it provides comprehensive human brain spatio-temporal expression patterns by integrating data from currently available databases; 3) multi-dimensionality: it analyses input genes as both a whole set and several subsets (clusters) which are enriched according to co-expression patterns, and it also presents the correlation between genetic and expression data.
To the best of our knowledge, BEST is the first data tool to support comprehensive human brain spatial-temporal expression pattern analysis. It helps to bridge disease-related genetic studies and mechanism studies, provides clues for key gene and molecular system identification, and supports the analysis of disease sensitive brain region and age stages. BEST is freely available at http://best.psych.ac.cn.
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