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1.
Prognostic potential of nutritional risk screening and assessment tools in predicting survival of patients with pancreatic neoplasms: a systematic review.
Yu, M, Li, X, Chen, M, Liu, L, Yao, T, Li, J, Su, W
Nutrition journal. 2024;(1):17
Abstract
BACKGROUNDS & AIMS The nutritional evaluation of pancreatic cancer (PC) patients lacks a gold standard or scientific consensus, we aimed to summarize and systematically evaluate the prognostic value of nutritional screening and assessment tools used for PC patients. METHODS Relevant studies were retrieved from major databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library) and searched from January 2010 to December 2023. We performed meta-analyses with STATA 14.0 when three or more studies used the same tool. RESULTS This analysis included 27 articles involving 6,060 PC patients. According to a meta-analysis of these studies, poor nutritional status evaluated using five nutritional screening tools Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI), Geriatric Nutritional Risk Index (GNRI), Controlling Nutritional Status Score (CONUT), Nutrition Risk Screening (NRS2002) and Glasgow Prognostic Score (GPS) was associated with all-cause mortality in PC patients. But Modified Glasgow Prognostic Score (mGPS) did not. Of all tools analyzed, CONUT had the maximum HR for mortality (HR = 1.978, 95%CI 1.345-2.907, P = 0.001). CONCLUSION All-cause mortality in PC patients was predicted by poor nutritional status. CONUT may be the best nutritional assessment tool for PC patients. The clinical application value of Short Form Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA-SF), Generated Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) and Patient-generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) in PC patients need to be confirmed. In order to improve patients' nutritional status and promote their recovery, nutritional screening tools can be used. REGISTRATION This systematic review was registered at the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) (number CRD42022376715).
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2.
Electrospinning Chitosan/Fe-Mn Nanofibrous Composite for Efficient and Rapid Removal of Arsenite from Water.
Min, L, Ma, Y, Zhang, B, He, D, Chen, J, Li, X, Wang, S, Chi, Y
Toxics. 2024;(3)
Abstract
Efficient removal of extremely mobile and toxic As(III) from water is a challenging but critical task. Herein, we developed a functionalized sorbent of chitosan nanofiber with iron-manganese (Fe-Mn@CS NF) using a one-step hybrid electrospinning approach to remove trace As(III) from water. Batch adsorption studies were performed to determine the adsorption efficiency under a variety of conditions, including contact time, starting concentration of As(III), ionic strength, and the presence of competing anions. The experimental results demonstrated that the concentration of As(III) dropped from 550 to less than 1.2 µg/L when using 0.5 g/L Fe-Mn@CS NF. This demonstrates the exceptional adsorption efficiency (99.8%) of Fe-Mn@CS NF for removing As(III) at pH 6.5. The kinetic tests revealed that the adsorption equilibrium was reached in 2.6 h, indicating a quick uptake of As(III). The ionic strength effect analysis showed that the adsorbed As(III) formed inner-sphere surface complexes with Fe-Mn@CS NF. The presence of SO42- or F- had a negligible impact on As(III) uptake, while the presence of PO43- impeded As(III) absorption by competing for adsorption sites. The exhausted sorbent could be effectively regenerated with a dilute NaOH solution. Even after 10 cycles of regenerating Fe-Mn@CS NF, the adsorption efficiency of As(III) in natural groundwater was maintained over 65%. XPS and FTIR analyses show that the presence of M-OH and C-O groups on the sorbent surface is essential for removing As(III) from water. Overall, our study highlights the significant potential of Fe-Mn@CS NF for the efficient and quick elimination of As(III) from water.
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Kalidium cuspidatum colonization changes the structure and function of salt crust microbial communities.
Pan, Y, Kang, P, Zhang, Y, Li, X
Environmental science and pollution research international. 2024;(13):19764-19778
Abstract
The changes of soil moisture, salinity, and nutrients by halophyte colonization in high-salinity environment profoundly affect the assembly and structure of microbial communities. However, salt marshes in arid region have received little attention. This study was conducted in Lianhuachi Lake, a typical inland salt marsh wetland in China, to determine the physicochemical characteristics of salt crusts in [Kalidium cuspidatum (Ung.-Sternb.) Grub.] colonization areas and bulk soil, respectively, and to analyze the microbial community structure of salt crusts by high-throughput sequencing. Kalidium cuspidatum colonization significantly decreased total salinity, soil water content, and water-soluble ions of salt crusts and increased total carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus content. At the same time, changes in physicochemical properties caused by Kalidium cuspidatum colonization affect the ecological processes of bacterial, fungal, and archaeal community assemblies in salt crusts. In addition, cross-kingdom network analysis showed that Kalidium cuspidatum colonization increased the complexity and stability of microbial networks in salt crust soils. Functional projections further showed that bacterial diversity had a potential driving effect on the nitrogen cycle function of salt crust. Our study further demonstrated the different ecological strategies of microorganisms for halophyte colonization in extreme environments and contributed to the understanding of restoration and management of salt marsh wetlands in arid region.
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Proteomic insights into modifiable risk of venous thromboembolism and cardiovascular comorbidities.
Yuan, S, Xu, F, Zhang, H, Chen, J, Ruan, X, Li, Y, Burgess, S, Åkesson, A, Li, X, Gill, D, et al
Journal of thrombosis and haemostasis : JTH. 2024;(3):738-748
Abstract
BACKGROUND Venous thromboembolism (VTE) has been associated with several modifiable factors (MFs) and cardiovascular comorbidities. However, the mechanisms are largely unknown. OBJECTIVES We aimed to decipher proteomic pathways underlying the associations of VTE with MFs and cardiovascular comorbidities. METHODS A 2-stage network Mendelian randomization analysis was conducted to explore the associations between 15 MFs, 1151 blood proteins, and VTE using data from a genome-wide meta-analysis including 81 190 cases of VTE. We used protein data from 35 559 individuals as the discovery analysis, and from 2 independent studies including 10 708 and 54 219 participants as the replication analyses. Based on the identified proteins, we assessed the druggability and examined the cardiovascular pleiotropy. RESULTS The network Mendelian randomization analyses identified 10 MF-VTE, 86 MF-protein, and 34 protein-VTE associations. These associations were overall consistent in the replication analyses. Thirty-eight pathways with directionally consistent direct and indirect effects in the MF-protein-VTE pathway were identified. Low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 12 (LRP12: 34.3%-58.1%) and coagulation factor (F)XI (20.6%-39.6%) mediated most of the associations between 3 obesity indicators and VTE. Likewise, coagulation FXI mediated most of the smoking-VTE association (40%; 95% CI, 20%-60%) and insomnia-VTE association (27%; 95% CI, 5%-49%). Many VTE-associated proteins were highly druggable for thrombotic conditions. Five proteins (interleukin-6 receptor subunit alpha, LRP12, prothrombin, angiopoietin-1, and low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 4) were associated with VTE and its cardiovascular comorbidities. CONCLUSION This study suggests that coagulation FXI, a druggable target, is an important mediator of the associations of obesity, smoking, and insomnia with VTE risk.
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ROS mediated by TrPLD3 of Trichothecium roseum participated cell membrane integrity of apple fruit by influencing phosphatidic acid metabolism.
Zhang, Q, Liu, Q, Xue, H, Bi, Y, Li, X, Xu, X, Liu, Z, Prusky, D
Food microbiology. 2024;:104484
Abstract
Trichothecium roseum is a typical necrotrophic fungal pathogen that not only bring about postharvest disease, but contribute to trichothecenes contamination in fruit and vegetables. Phospholipase D (PLD), as an important membrane lipid degrading enzyme, can produce phosphatidic acid (PA) by hydrolyzing phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylinositol (PI). PA can promote the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by activating the activity of NADPH oxidase (NOX), thereby increasing the pathogenicity to fruit. However, the ROS mediated by TrPLD3 how to influence T. roseum infection to fruit by modulating phosphatidic acid metabolism, which has not been reported. In this study, the knockout mutant and complement strain of TrPLD3 were constructed through homologous recombination, TrPLD3 was tested for its effect on the colony growth and pathogenicity of T. roseum. The experimental results showed that the knockout of TrPLD3 inhibited the colony growth of T. roseum, altered the mycelial morphology, completely inhibited the sporulation, and reduced the accumulation of T-2 toxin. Moreover, the knockout of TrPLD3 significantly decreased pathogenicity of T. roseum on apple fruit. Compared to inoculated apple fruit with the wide type (WT), the production of ROS in apple infected with ΔTrPLD3 was slowed down, the relative expression and enzymatic activity of NOX, and PA content decreased, and the enzymatic activity and gene expression of superoxide dismutase (SOD) increased. In addition, PLD, lipoxygenase (LOX) and lipase activities were considerably decreased in apple fruit infected with ΔTrPLD3, the changes of membrane lipid components were slowed down, the decrease of unsaturated fatty acid content was alleviated, and the accumulation of saturated fatty acid content was reduced, thereby maintaining the cell membrane integrity of the inoculated apple fruit. We speculated that the decreased PA accumulation in ΔTrPLD3-inoculated apple fruit further weakened the interaction between PA and NOX on fruit, resulting in the reduction of ROS accumulation of fruits, which decreased the damage to the cell membrane and maintained the cell membrane integrity, thus reducing the pathogenicity to apple. Therefore, TrPLD3-mediated ROS plays a critical regulatory role in reducing the pathogenicity of T. roseum on apple fruit by influencing phosphatidic acid metabolism.
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6.
Consumption of ultra-processed foods and multiple health outcomes: An umbrella study of meta-analyses.
Wang, Z, Lu, C, Cui, L, Fenfen, E, Shang, W, Wang, Z, Song, G, Yang, K, Li, X
Food chemistry. 2024;:137460
Abstract
Consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is associated with various adverse health outcomes, which significantly influence the global disease burden. This umbrella review aimed to fill the knowledge gap and guide public health practices by summarizing the association between UPFs and multiple health outcomes. A total of four databases were systematically searched from inception to December 2022, and 14 eligible systematic reviews (SRs) with meta-analyses (MAs) were identified. The SRs were published in 10 journals from 2020 to 2023, with 54,147-5,750,133 participants and 5-61 studies. The overall corrected covered area (CCA) was corresponded to a slight overlap. The results showed that an increased UPFs consumption is associated with multiple health outcomes (e.g., obesity, diabetes, hypertension, mortality). Only two SRs were "Moderate" regarding the overall methodological quality, while the other twelve were "Low" or "Critically low". Therefore, well-conducted SRs with high-quality prospective cohorts with a particular focus on special populations are needed to verify these findings further.
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7.
An improved supervised and attention mechanism-based U-Net algorithm for retinal vessel segmentation.
Ma, Z, Li, X
Computers in biology and medicine. 2024;:107770
Abstract
The segmentation results of retinal blood vessels are crucial for automatically diagnosing ophthalmic diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, hypertension, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. To improve the accuracy of vessel segmentation and better extract information about small vessels and edges, we introduce the U-Net algorithm with a supervised attention mechanism for retinal vessel segmentation. We achieve this by introducing a decoder fusion module (DFM) in the encoding part, effectively combining different convolutional blocks to extract features comprehensively. Additionally, in the decoding part of U-Net, we propose the context squeeze and excitation (CSE) decoding module to enhance important contextual feature information and the detection of tiny blood vessels. For the final output, we introduce the supervised fusion mechanism (SFM), which combines multiple branches from shallow to deep layers, effectively fusing multi-scale features and capturing information from different levels, fully integrating low-level and high-level features to improve segmentation performance. Our experimental results on the public datasets of DRIVE, STARE, and CHASED_B1 demonstrate the excellent performance of our proposed network.
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8.
Effects of a fortified balanced salt solution and Ringer's lactate solution on anterior chamber inflammation after phacoemulsification in diabetes.
Ma, M, Wang, M, Zhang, X, Shao, Y, Li, X
Journal of cataract and refractive surgery. 2024;(4):352-359
Abstract
PURPOSE To compare the effects of a fortified balanced salt solution (fSS) and Ringer's lactate solution (Ringer) on anterior chamber (AC) inflammation in patients undergoing phacoemulsification. SETTING Tianjin Medical University Eye Hospital, Tianjin, China. DESIGN Prospective masked controlled trial. METHODS 80 patients (40 patients with regular cataract and 40 cataract patients with diabetes mellitus [DM]) were randomized to receive either fSS (n = 40) or Ringer's solution (n = 40). Anterior-segment optical coherence tomography was used to evaluate AC cells and flare. Transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) and zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) immunofluorescence were used for tight junction examination. Monocytic leukemia cell line (Tohoku Hospital Pediatrics-1 [THP-1]) transmigration assay was performed to observe the effects of the 2 perfusates on the inflammatory response in vitro. RESULTS In patients with regular cataracts, postoperative AC cells and flare on the 1st and 7th days were not significantly different between the Ringer and fSS groups. However, in cataract patients with DM, AC cells were higher in the Ringer group than in the fSS group ( P = .003) on postoperative day 1. The AC flare was also significantly higher in the Ringer group than in the fSS group ( P < .0001). No significant differences between the groups were observed on day 7. Compared with Ringer, fSS increased the TEER value and ZO-1 content and reduced the adhesion of THP-1 cells. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study indicated that early postoperative AC inflammation is more severe in patients with cataracts and DM. In addition, fSS attenuates inflammation by protecting the blood-aqueous barrier and inhibiting the exudation of inflammatory cells.
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Observation of Dark States in Two-Dimensional Electronic Spectra of Chlorosomes.
Erić, V, Li, X, Dsouza, L, Huijser, A, Holzwarth, AR, Buda, F, Sevink, GJA, de Groot, HJM, Jansen, TLC
The journal of physical chemistry. B. 2024;(15):3575-3584
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Abstract
Observations of low-lying dark states in several photosynthetic complexes challenge our understanding of the mechanisms behind their efficient energy transfer processes. Computational models are necessary for providing novel insights into the nature and function of dark states, especially since these are not directly accessible in spectroscopy experiments. Here, we will focus on signatures of dark-type states in chlorosomes, a light-harvesting complex from green sulfur bacteria well-known for uniting a broad absorption band with very efficient energy transfer. In agreement with experiments, our simulations of two-dimensional electronic spectra capture the ultrafast exciton transfer occurring in 100s of femtoseconds within a single chlorosome cylinder. The sub-100 fs process corresponds to relaxation within the single-excitation manifold in a single chlorosome tube, where all initially created populations in the bright exciton states are quickly transferred to dark-type exciton states. Structural inhomogeneities on the local scale cause a redistribution of the oscillator strength, leading to the emergence of these dark-type exciton states, which dominate ultrafast energy transfer. The presence of the dark-type exciton states suppresses energy loss from an isolated chlorosome via fluorescence quenching, as observed experimentally. Our results further question whether relaxation to dark-exciton states is a leading process or merely competes with transfer to the baseplate within the photosynthetic apparatus of green sulfur bacteria.
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Cross-regulation between proteome reallocation and metabolic flux redistribution governs bacterial growth transition kinetics.
Yuan, H, Bai, Y, Li, X, Fu, X
Metabolic engineering. 2024;:60-68
Abstract
Bacteria need to adjust their metabolism and protein synthesis simultaneously to adapt to changing nutrient conditions. It's still a grand challenge to predict how cells coordinate such adaptation due to the cross-regulation between the metabolic fluxes and the protein synthesis. Here we developed a dynamic Constrained Allocation Flux Balance Analysis method (dCAFBA), which integrates flux-controlled proteome allocation and protein limited flux balance analysis. This framework can predict the redistribution dynamics of metabolic fluxes without requiring detailed enzyme parameters. We reveal that during nutrient up-shifts, the calculated metabolic fluxes change in agreement with experimental measurements of enzyme protein dynamics. During nutrient down-shifts, we uncover a switch of metabolic bottleneck from carbon uptake proteins to metabolic enzymes, which disrupts the coordination between metabolic flux and their enzyme abundance. Our method provides a quantitative framework to investigate cellular metabolism under varying environments and reveals insights into bacterial adaptation strategies.