Ion doping is regarded as an effective method to improve the intrinsic properties of semiconductor photoanode. In this paper, Bi-doped Ti/Co
3
O
4
NWs with n-type characteristics were prepared by ...one-step hydrothermal method and applied into photoelectrocatalystic (PEC) decolorization of dyeing wastewater (reactive brilliant blue KN-R). By adjusting the content of bismuth, the performance of the Ti/Co
3
O
4
NWs can be optimized, and the physicochemical properties of as-obtained electrodes were also characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM, XPS, EDS and so on. It is found that the Bi doping can tune the morphology of Ti/Co
3
O
4
NWs, and enhance the PEC activity of Ti/Co
3
O
4
NWs. Furthermore, the Bi-doped Ti/Co
3
O
4
electrode exhibited obvious photoelectric synergism and good reproducibility. The improvement of PEC performance for Bi-doped Ti/Co
3
O
4
NWs can be ascribed to its higher efficiency of generating hydroxyl radical, better conductivity and more active sites.
Co3O4 nanowires (NWs) are a promising photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) material; however, they still need to be improved to increase the transport rate and separation efficiency of induced hole/electron ...pairs, thereby enhancing PEC performance. In this work, we demonstrate that the photodeposition of Ag into Ti/Co3O4 NW coatings can promote its PEC ability toward degrading high concentrations of dyeing wastewater. The PEC evaluation shows that the decolorization rate of anthraquinone dye (reactive brilliant blue KN-R) over Ag-modified Ti/Co3O4 NWs is 91.7%, which is higher than that of Ti/Co3O4 NWs (68.3%). This improvement in PEC activity can be ascribed to Ag-modified Ti/Co3O4 NWs having fast carrier transport, a low resistance, a high oxygen evolution overpotential, a large active area and good electron migration efficiency. Moreover, photoelectric synergy can be observed for Ag-modified Ti/Co3O4 NWs in the PEC process. The present study provides an effective strategy for the photoelectrochemical treatment of dyeing wastewater by using Ag-modified Ti/Co3O4 NWs as an anode.
Transmembrane 4 L six family member 1 (TM4SF1) is upregulated in several epithelial cancers and is closely associated with poor prognosis. However, the role of TM4SF1 and its potential mechanism in ...colorectal cancer (CRC) remain elusive.
We investigated the expression of TM4SF1 in the Oncomine, the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases and confirmed the results by immunohistochemistry (IHC), qPCR and Western blotting (WB) of CRC tissues. The effect of TM4SF1 on the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and cancer stemness of CRC cells was investigated by Transwell, wound healing and sphere formation assays. A series of in vitro and in vivo experiments were conducted to reveal the mechanisms by which TM4SF1 modulates EMT and cancer stemness in CRC.
TM4SF1 expression was markedly higher in CRC tissues than in non-tumour tissues and was positively correlated with poor prognosis. Downregulation of TM4SF1 inhibited the migration, invasion and tumour sphere formation of SW480 and LoVo cells. Conversely, TM4SF1 overexpression significantly enhanced the migration, invasion and tumoursphere formation potential of CRC cells, Additionally, TM4SF1 silencing inhibited the EMT mediated by transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1). Mechanistically, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) predicted that the Wnt signalling pathway was one of the most impaired pathways in TM4SF1-deficient CRC cells compared to controls. The results were further validated by WB, which revealed that TM4SF1 modulated SOX2 expression in a Wnt/β-catenin activation-dependent manner. Furthermore, we found that knockdown of TM4SF1 suppressed the expression of c-Myc, leading to decreased c-Myc binding to the SOX2 gene promoter. Finally, depletion of TM4SF1 inhibited metastasis and tumour growth in a xenograft mouse model.
Our study substantiates a novel mechanism by which TM4SF1 maintains cancer cell stemness and EMT via the Wnt/β-catenin/c-Myc/SOX2 axis during the recurrence and metastasis of CRC.
The 2019 Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has become an unprecedented public crisis. We retrospectively investigated the clinical data of 197 COVID-19 patients and identified 88 patients as disease ...aggravation cases. Compared with patients without disease aggravation, the aggravation cases had more comorbidities, including hypertension (25.9%) and diabetes (20.8%), and presented with dyspnoea (23.4%), neutrophilia (31.5%), and lymphocytopenia (46.7%). These patients were more prone to develop organ damage in liver, kidney, and heart (P < 0.05). A multivariable regression analysis showed that advanced age, comorbidities, dyspnea, lymphopenia, and elevated levels of Fbg, CTnI, IL-6, and serum ferritin were significant predictors of disease aggravation. Further, we performed a Kaplan-Meier analysis to evaluate the prognosis of COVID-19 patients, which suggested that 64.9% of the patients had not experienced ICU transfers and survival from the hospital.
Ischemic stroke (IS) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally. Environmental exposure to metals may be linked to the risk of IS, but the association remains uncertain in Chinese ...populations.
The present study aimed to examine the associations between the concentrations of 11 metals (aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, thallium, and zinc) in plasma and the risk of IS in a Chinese population.
A total of 1277 pairs of newly diagnosed IS patients and controls matched on age (±3 years) and sex were recruited in our study. Plasma metal concentrations were measured using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Multivariable conditional logistic regression models were conducted to investigate the impacts of single and multiple metals, respectively.
In the single-metal model, exposure to seven metals (aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, iron, manganese and selenium) was individually associated with the risk of IS based on the trend test. Further stepwise regression analyses with the multiple-metal model revealed increasing trends in the risk of IS associated with aluminum, arsenic, and cadmium quartiles and decreasing trends with iron and selenium quartiles (p-trend < 0.01). Compared to the lowest quartiles, the odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for the highest quartiles of these five metals were 4.23 (2.63, 6.79), 1.88 (1.25, 2.81), 5.02 (3.30, 7.63), 0.59 (0.40, 0.89), and 0.10 (0.06, 0.17), respectively.
Our study suggested that higher plasma concentrations of aluminum, arsenic, and cadmium, and lower concentrations of iron and selenium may increase the risk of IS. Further prospective studies in larger populations are warranted to confirm our findings.
•First study on the associations of multiple plasma metals with ischemic stroke risk in China•Plasma Al, As, and Cd were positively associated with ischemic stroke risk•Plasma Fe and Se were negatively associated with ischemic stroke risk
Background:
Anterior tibial subluxation (ATS) of the lateral compartment entails a pathological tibiofemoral alignment in knees with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. Causes of increased ATS ...after an acute ACL injury are not clear, but soft tissue abnormalities and bony variations of the knee are potential causes.
Purpose:
To determine whether increased ATS of the lateral compartment in knees with acute ACL injury is associated with (1) anterolateral ligament (ALL) status and (2) inherent anatomy of the lateral femoral condyle (LFC) and lateral tibial plateau (LTP).
Study Design:
Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3.
Methods:
A total of 337 patients with clinically diagnosed ACL injuries treated between September 2019 and August 2021 were retrospectively reviewed, and 119 patients with acute ACL injury were included. Of them, 79 patients with impaired ALL (ALL injury group) and 40 patients with intact ALL (ALL intact group) were identified based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The ATS of the lateral compartment measured on MRI was compared between the 2 groups. The bony anatomy of knees, quantified by the LFC length, LFC height, LTP length, and LTP slope, was also evaluated on MRI and correlated with the ATS with partial correlation coefficients. Multivariate linear regression was used to identify the independent predictors of increased ATS.
Results:
The ATS of the lateral compartment in the ALL injury group was significantly larger than that in the ALL intact group (6.3 mm vs 4.0 mm, respectively; P = .001). In all included patients, the presence of ALL injuries independently predicted a mean increase in ATS of 1.8 mm (P = .003). In the ALL injury group, ATS was significantly correlated with LFC length (r = 0.463; P < .001), LFC height (r = −0.415; P < .001), and LTP slope (r = 0.453; P < .001); further, a 1-mm increase in LFC length, 1-mm decrease in LFC height, and 1° increase in LTP slope independently predicted a mean increase in ATS of 0.7 mm (P < .001), 0.6 mm (P < .001), and 0.5 mm (P < .001), respectively. In the ALL intact group, there was no significant correlation between ATS and any bony parameter.
Conclusion:
An impaired ALL increased the ATS of the lateral compartment after acute ACL injuries. In patients with combined ALL injuries, a flatter LFC and a steeper LTP in the sagittal plane were predictors of a further increase in ATS.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most lethal and malignant type of cancer in the world. Abnormal expression of human microRNA-200a (hsa-miRNA-200a or miR-200a) has previously been characterized ...as a clinically noticeable biomarker in several cancers, but its role in CRC is still unclear.
Three CRC miRNA expression datasets were integratively analyzed by Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selector Operation (LASSO) and Support Vector Machine-Recursive Feature Elimination (SVM-RFE) algorithms. Nine candidate miRNAs were identified and validated for diagnostic and prognostic capability with the prediction model. The potential roles of the tumor suppressor miR-200a-3p in invasion, migration, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition of CRC cells were elaborated by
studies.
Nine miRNAs (miR-492, miR-200a, miR-338, miR-29c, miR-101, miR-148a, miR-92a, miR-424, and miR-210) were identified as potentially useful diagnostic biomarkers in the clinic. The overall accuracy rate of the nine miRNAs in the diagnostic model was 0.94, 0.89, and 0.978 in the testing, validation, and independent validation dataset, respectively. CRC patients in the GSE29622 cohort were separated by the prognostic model into the low-risk score group and the high-risk score group. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was 0.872 and 0.783 for predicting the 1- to 10-year survival of CRC patients. The performance of the prognostic model was validated by an independent TCGA-Colon Adenocarcinoma (COAD) dataset with AUC values between 0.911 and 0.796 in predicting 1- to 10-year survival. Nomograms comprising risk scores, tumor stage, and TNM staging were generated for predicting 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival (OS) in the GSE29622 and TCGA-COAD datasets. Colony formation, invasion, and migration in DLD1 and SW480 cells were suppressed by overexpression of miR-200a-3p. Inhibition of miR-200a-3p function contributed to abnormal colony formation, migration, invasion, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). miR-200a-3p binding sites were located within the 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) of the Forkhead box protein A1 (FOXA1) mRNA.
We developed and validated a diagnostic and prognostic prediction model for CRC. miR-200a-3p was determined to be a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for CRC.
The use of doxorubicin (DOX) as an anthraquinone antineoplastic agent is limited due to its cardiotoxicity. Our previous study suggested that low-dose radiation (LDR) could mitigate the ...cardiotoxicity induced by DOX via suppressing oxidative stress and cell apoptosis. However, the molecular targets and protective mechanism of LDR are not understood. In the present study, we sought to investigate the mechanisms underlying LDR’s cardioprotection. Balb/c mice were randomly divided into four groups: Control group (no treatment), DOX group, LDR group (75 mGy), and LDR-72 h-DOX group (LDR pretreatment followed by intraperitoneal injection of DOX). Electron microscopy, PCR, and Western blot analyses indicated that LDR pretreatment mitigated changes in mitochondrial morphology caused by DOX, upregulated activity of mitochondrial complexes, and restored ATP levels in cardiomyocytes that were decreased by DOX. Whole genome microarray and PCR analyses showed that mitochondrial-related genes were altered by LDR pretreatment. Thus, our study showed that LDR can protect cardiomyocytes against DOX through improving mitochondrial function and increasing ATP production. This research could inform DOX chemotherapy strategies and provide new insight into the molecule mechanisms underlying the cardioprotective effects of LDR.
To study the corrosion mechanism of high-nitrogen steel welds, this study investigated the effects of laser outputs on the corrosion behavior of high-nitrogen steel hybrid welded joints in hybrid ...laser-arc welding. The relationship between the ferrite content and laser output was characterized. The ferrite content increased with the increase in the laser power. The corrosion phenomenon first occurred at the two-phase interface, thereby forming corrosion pits. Ferritic dendrites were first corroded to form dendritic corrosion channels. Furthermore, first-principles calculations were performed to investigate the properties of the austenite and ferrite content. The work function and surface energy indicated that solid-solution nitrogen austenite exhibits a higher surface structural stability than austenite and ferrite. This study provides useful information for high-nitrogen steel weld corrosion.