Several epidemiological studies have examined the association between shortened telomere length and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), while the results remained conflicting. We conducted a ...meta-analysis to derive a more precise estimation of the relationship between them.
We systematically reviewed the databases of PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science for all studies on the association between telomere length and T2DM. We conducted this study assessed by STATA 11.0. Data were summarized using random-effects or fixed-effects meta-analysis. The heterogeneity and publication bias among studies were examined by using χ(2)-based Q statistic test and Egger's test, respectively.
Nine cohorts consisting of 5759 cases and 6518 controls were selected into the meta-analysis. The results indicated that shortened telomere length was significantly associated with T2DM risk (OR: 1.291; 95% CI: 1.112, 1.498; P<0.001) with heterogeneity (I(2) = 71.6%). When three cohorts responsible for the heterogeneity were excluded, the pooled OR for the remaining cohorts indicated a significant association between shortened telomere length and T2DM (OR: 1.117; 95% CI: 1.002, 1.246; P = 0.045) without heterogeneity.
We found a statistically significant association between shortened telomere length and T2DM.
The gastrointestinal tract of sheep contain complex microbial communities that influence numerous aspects of the sheep's health and development. The objective of this study was to analyze the ...composition and diversity of the microbiota in the gastrointestinal tract sections (rumen, reticulum, omasum, abomasum, duodenum, jejunum, ileum, cecum, colon, and rectum) of sheep.
This analysis was performed by 454 pyrosequencing using the V3-V6 region of the 16S rRNA genes. Samples were collected from five healthy, small tailed Han sheep aged 10 months, obtained at market. The bacterial composition of sheep gastrointestinal microbiota was investigated at the phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species levels.
The dominant bacterial phyla in the entire gastrointestinal sections were
,
, and
. In the stomach, the three most dominant genera in the sheep were
, unclassified
, and
. In the small intestine, the three most dominant genera in the sheep were
, unclassified
, and
. In the large intestine, the three most dominant genera in the sheep were
, unclassified
, and
.
,
, and
were three most dominant species in the sheep gastrointestinal tract. Principal Coordinates Analysis showed that the microbial communities from each gastrointestinal section could be separated into three groups according to similarity of community composition: stomach (rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum), small intestine (duodenum, jejunum, and ileum), and large intestine (cecum, colon, and rectum).
This is the first study to characterize the entire gastrointestinal microbiota in sheep by use of 16S rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing, expanding our knowledge of the gastrointestinal bacterial community of sheep.
With the world moving towards low-carbon and environmentally friendly development, the rapid growth of new-energy vehicles is evident. The utilization of deep-learning-based license-plate-recognition ...(LPR) algorithms has become widespread. However, existing LPR systems have difficulty achieving timely, effective, and energy-saving recognition due to their inherent limitations such as high latency and energy consumption. An innovative Edge–LPR system that leverages edge computing and lightweight network models is proposed in this paper. With the help of this technology, the excessive reliance on the computational capacity and the uneven implementation of resources of cloud computing can be successfully mitigated. The system is specifically a simple LPR. Channel pruning was used to reconstruct the backbone layer, reduce the network model parameters, and effectively reduce the GPU resource consumption. By utilizing the computing resources of the Intel second-generation computing stick, the network models were deployed on edge gateways to detect license plates directly. The reliability and effectiveness of the Edge–LPR system were validated through the experimental analysis of the CCPD standard dataset and real-time monitoring dataset from charging stations. The experimental results from the CCPD common dataset demonstrated that the network’s total number of parameters was only 0.606 MB, with an impressive accuracy rate of 97%.
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified Aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) as a susceptibility locus for coronary artery disease (CAD) previously. However, the impacts of common variants ...in this gene on CAD and its outcomes have not been extensively studied. This study explored the association between the Tagging SNPs in ALDH2 and CAD as well as its main outcomes. Six common variants in ALDH2 were selected as tagging SNPs and two cohorts containing 7296 individuals were genotyped to investigate the impacts of ALDH2 on CAD and its main outcomes. The results show that the variant rs671 in ALDH2 is associated with an increased risk of CAD in southern Chinese (OR=1.26, 95%CI: 1.07–1.48, p=0.004), while not in northern Chinese (OR=1.00, 95%CI: 0.86–1.50, p=0.94). Meanwhile, we find that rs671 genotypes may not influence the outcomes of CAD (HR=1.11, 95%CI: 0.892–1.38, p=0.346). Additionally, we also tested the effect of rs671 genotype on CAD severity, while no significant association was found between them. In the subgroup analysis, the results revealed that rs671 were significantly associated with CAD (OR=1.24, 95%CI: 1.11–1.38, p<0.001) in non-alcoholic subjects. Overall, our findings indicate that the associations between rs671 in ALDH2 and CAD are regional disparity, and rs671 genotypes may not influence the main outcomes of CAD.
•The variant rs671 in ALDH2 is associated with an increased risk of CAD in southern Chinese, while not in northern Chinese;•We find that rs671 genotypes may not influence the outcomes and severity of CAD;•No significant association was found between rs671 and blood glucose levels as well as plasma lipids.
The evidence that the variants GCK rs1799884, GCKR rs780094, MTNR1B rs10830963 and G6PC2 rs560887, which are related to fasting plasma glucose levels, increase the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus ...(T2DM) is contradictory. We therefore performed a meta-analysis to derive a more precise estimation of the association between these polymorphisms and T2DM.
All the publications examining the associations of these variants with risk of T2DM were retrieved from the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases. Using the data from the retrieved articles, we computed summary estimates of the associations of the four variants with T2DM risk. We also examined the studies for heterogeneity, as well as for bias of the publications.
A total of 113,025 T2DM patients and 199,997 controls from 38 articles were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, the pooled results indicated that GCK (rs1799884), GCKR (rs780094) and MTNR1B (rs10830963) were significantly associated with T2DM susceptibility (OR, 1.04; 95%CI, 1.01-1.08; OR, 1.08; 95%CI, 1.05-1.12 and OR, 1.05; 95%CI, 1.02-1.08, respectively). After stratification by ethnicity, significant associations for the GCK, MTNR1B and G6PC2 variants were detected only in Caucasians (OR, 1.09; 95%CI, 1.02-1.16; OR, 1.10; 95%CI, 1.08-1.13 and OR, 0.97; 95%CI, 0.95-0.99, respectively), but not in Asians (OR, 1.02, 95% CI 0.98-1.05; OR, 1.01; 95%CI, 0.98-1.04 and OR, 1.12; 95%CI, 0.91-1.32, respectively).
Our meta-analyses demonstrated that GCKR rs780094 variant confers high cross-ethnicity risk for the development of T2DM, while significant associations between GCK, MTNR1B and G6PC2 variants and T2DM risk are limited to Caucasians.
As a medium for developing brain-computer interface systems, EEG signals are complex and difficult to identify due to their complexity, weakness, and differences between subjects. At present, most of ...the current research on sleep EEG signals are single-channel and dual-channel, ignoring the research on the relationship between different brain regions. Brain functional connectivity is considered to be closely related to brain activity and can be used to study the interaction relationship between brain areas.
Phase-locked value (PLV) is used to construct a functional connection network. The connection network is used to analyze the connection mechanism and brain interaction in different sleep stages. Firstly, the entire EEG signal is divided into multiple sub-periods. Secondly, Phase-locked value is used for feature extraction on the sub-periods. Thirdly, the PLV of multiple sub-periods is used for feature fusion. Fourthly, the classification performance optimization strategy is used to discuss the impact of different frequency bands on sleep stage classification performance and to find the optimal frequency band. Finally, the brain function network is constructed by using the average value of the fusion features to analyze the interaction of brain regions in different frequency bands during sleep stages.
The experimental results have shown that when the number of sub-periods is 30, the α (8-13 Hz) frequency band has the best classification effect, The classification result after 10-fold cross-validation reaches 92.59%.
The proposed algorithm has good sleep staging performance, which can effectively promote the development and application of an EEG sleep staging system.
This study aimed to compare the accuracy and performance of four genotyping methods for detecting single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in aldehyde dehydrogenase-2 (ALDH2), which is the principal ...enzyme involved in alcohol metabolism.
We genotyped rs671 of ALDH2 in 96 coronary heart disease (CHD) patients with four methods including high resolution melting analysis (HRM), TaqMan allelic discrimination assay (TaqMan), allele-specific PCR (AS-PCR) and pyrosequencing. Meanwhile, we compared the accuracy and performance of these methods.
All selected patients were successfully genotyped with referred methods. The results of these four assays showed 100% concordant results and had 100% accuracy as verified by Sanger sequencing.
All of the referred methods can be used for genotyping ALDH2 rs671 with the same accuracy compared to Sanger sequencing. In small size of clinical samples, HRM and AS-PCR outperform over others due to their lower cost and less hands-on operation, which are suitable for clinical application.
Objective:
This study was aimed at investigating whether the addition of nicorandil to a dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker (DHP-CCB) regimen might decrease the occurrence of major adverse ...cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD).
Methods:
A multicenter, retrospective, real-world study was conducted. Between August 2002 and March 2020, 7413 eligible patients with CHD were divided into DHP-CCB plus nicorandil combination (n = 1843) and DHP-CCB (n = 5570) treatment groups. The primary outcome was MACE, defined as a composite of myocardial infarction, stroke, and all-cause mortality. Propensity score matching was used to adjust for confounding factors.
Results:
After propensity score matching, combination therapy, compared with DHP-CCBs alone, was associated with a lower risk of MACE (HR: 0.80, 95% CI: 0.67–0.97). The combination group also had a lower risk of stroke (HR: 0.55, 95% CI: 0.44–0.69), but not myocardial infarction (HR: 1.21, 95% CI: 0.91–1.61) or all-cause mortality (HR: 1.24, 95% CI: 0.63–2.44). Subgroup analysis revealed more prominent benefits of the combined treatment on MACE in patients with than without diabetes.
Conclusions:
The combination of nicorandil and DHP-CCBs may be more beneficial than DHP-CCBs alone in decreasing long-term risks of MACE and stroke in patients with CHD.
The objective of this study was to describe the fecal microbiota succession of piglets from birth to postweaning by pyrosequencing. The dominant bacterial phyla were Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, ...Proteobacteria, and Fusobacteria,although the composition of the fecal microbiota changed as the piglets grew. Bacteroides,Parabacteroides, Prevotella, Lactobacillus, unclassified Lachnospiraceae, Ruminococcus, Oscillospira, Phascolarctobacterium,and Desulfovibrio were the core genera in the feces of piglets and existed from birth to post-weaning.Bacteroides was the most abundant at birth; however, the proportion of Bacteroides decreased as the piglets aged,while the proportion of Prevotella increased until it became the most abundant genus at the post-weaning stage. Principal coordinate analysis indicated that the microbial communities of piglet fecal samples from birth to postweaning could be separated into four groups according to the similarity of community composition. These corresponded to time points on day 0 (birth); day 7; days 14, 21,and 28 (pre-weaning); and day 35 (post-weaning). This study suggests that the development of the intestinal microbiota in the piglet is a gradual and sequential process.This methodology establishes a basis for broader studies to investigate the microbiota of the piglet intestinal tract.
•The basalt with 6.44% TiO2 could not be prepared into continuous fiber because of the Rayleigh instability.•The dielectric properties of basalt glass doped with TiO2 can be well explained by the ...degree of glass polymerization.•0.83 ∼ 6.44 wt% TiO2 addition agent do not cause the crystallization of basalt glasses.•Compared with diffuse reflection infrared testing, Raman is suitable to test the surface structure of the polished glass block.
The Emeishan basalt in China could be classified as high and low TiO2 level. However, the effect of TiO2 on producing continuous basalt fiber and their electrical properties remained unknow. XRD, FT-IR, and Raman were used to determine the structure of basalt glasses with 0.83∼6.44 wt% TiO2. TiO2 did not cause the crystallization of basalt glasses according to XRD data. The Raman results revealed that the glass network was loose when the samples contained 4.64 wt% TiO2. Due to the loose glass network, the dielectric constant and loss exhibited the highest values, which was 9.8 and 0.016 respectively. The higher the TiO2 concentration was, the lower the volume resistivity was. Continuous basalt fibers with diameters ranging from 9 μm to 11 μm could be produced by basalt with 0.83∼4.64 wt% TiO2.The basalt with 6.44% TiO2 could not be prepared into continuous fiber because of the Rayleigh instability
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