bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Brown adipose tissue activity is modulated in olanzapine-treated young rats by simvastatin
Authors: Liu Xuemei , Feng Xiyu , Deng Chao , Liu Lu , Zeng Yanping , Hu Changhua 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background Prescription of second-generation antipsychotic drugs (SGAs) to childhood/adolescent has exponentially increased in recent years, which was associated with the greater risk of significant weight gain and dyslipidemia. Statin is considered a potential preventive and treatment approach for reducing SGA-induced weight gain and dyslipidemia in schizophrenia patients. However, the effect of statin treatment in children and adolescents with SGA-induced dyslipidemia is not clearly demonstrated. Methods To investigate the efficacy of statin interventions for reversing SGA-induced dyslipidemia, young Sprague Dawley rats were treated orally with either olanzapine (1.0 mg/kg, t.i.d.), simvastatin (3.0 mg/kg, t.i.d.), olanzapine plus simvastatin (O+S), or vehicle (control) for 5 weeks. Results Olanzapine treatment increased weight gain, food intake and feeding efficiency compared to the control, while O+S co-treatment significantly reversed body weight gain but without significant effects on food intake. Moreover, olanzapine treatment induced a slight but significant reduction in body temperature, with a decrease in locomotor activity. Fasting plasma glucose, triglycerides (TG), and total cholesterol (TC) levels were markedly elevated in the olanzapine-only group, whereas O+S co-treatment significantly ameliorated these changes. Pronounced activation of lipogenic gene expression in the liver and down-regulated expression of uncoupling protein-1 (UCP1) and peroxisome-proliferator-activated receptor-γ co-activator-1α (PGC-1α) in brown adipose tissue (BAT) was observed in the olanzapine-only group. Interestingly, these protein changes could be reversed by co-treatment with O+B. Conclusions Simvastatin is effective in ameliorating TC and TG elevated by olanzapine. Modulation of BAT activity could be a partial mechanism in reducing metabolic side effects caused by SGAs in child and adolescent patients.
Estimating Utility value for Female Genital Mutilation
Authors: Alinia Cyrus , Piroozi Bakhtiar , Jahanbin Fariba , Safari Hossein , Mohamadi-Bolbanabad Amjad , Kazemi-Karyani Ali , Moradi Ghobad , Farhadifar Fariba , Ebrahimi Mohammad 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background: Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a clear violation of women's rights and can have adverse and irreversible health effects as well. Worldwide, more than 200 million women and girls have undergone FGM/C. Utility value of FGM/C has not been estimated yet, so we designed this study to extract the health utility value of FGM/C for the first time in the world. Methods: In a cross-sectional study in Iran, 125 girls and women who underwent FGM/C procedure were examined by the trained midwives in order to determine its type. In addition, a questionnaire was completed for identifying the socio -demographic factors and extracting the health utility of these individuals . Health utility was measured using Time Trade-off method and also to determine the effects of the socio -demographic factors on the health utility a two-limit censored regression model was applied. Findings : The mean and median of the health utility of women with FGM/C were 0.971 (SE: 0.003) and 0.968 (IQR: 1-0.95), respectively . Number of non-traders was 58 (46.4%) who reported perfect health utility. However, the mean of health utility among traders was 0.946 (SE: 0.002). Only type 1 (Clitoridectomy) and type 2 (Excision) FGM/C were seen in this study. Women with Type 1 FGM/C had significantly lower health utility value (Mean: 0.968, Median: 0.957) than their type 2 counterparts (Mean: 0.987, Median: 1.00). Moreover, women in the age group of 31-45 years (Mean: 0.962, Median: 0.956), single (Mean: 0.950, Median: 0.954), divorced (Mean: 0.951, Median: 0.950), employed (Mean: 0.959, Median: 0.956), and with supplementary insurance (Mean: 0.962, Median: 0.950) had significantly lower health utility than their counterparts . Conclusion: FGM/C affects physical and psychological well-being of these individuals, resulting in a lack of personal and marital satisfaction, which ultimately leads to a 3% reduction in their health related quality of life. Therefore, preventing from this practice is very important and should be considered by health system policy makers more than before .
Pro-cathepsin D as a diagnostic marker in differentiating malignant pleural effusion from benign pleural effusion: A retrospective cohort study
Authors: Choi Hayoung , Ko Yousang , Lee Chang Youl 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background: Malignant pleural effusion (MPE) causes substantial symptomatic burden in advanced malignancy. Although pleural fluid cytology is a commonly accepted gold standard of diagnosis, its low diagnostic yield is a challenge for clinicians. The aim of this study was to determine whether pro-cathepsin D can serve as a novel biomarker to discriminate between MPE and benign pleural effusion (BPE). Methods : This study included 81 consecutive patients with exudative pleural effusions who had underwent thoracentesis or pleural biopsy. Pleural fluid and serum were collected as a standard procedure for all individuals at the same time. The level of pro-cathepsin D was measured by the sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method. Results : Though there were no significant differences in plasma pro-cathepsin D between the two groups, the level of pleural fluid pro-cathepsin D was signiﬁcantly higher in the MPE group than the BPE group (0.651 versus 0.590 pg/mL, P = 0.034). The discriminative power of pleural fluid pro-cathepsin D for diagnosing MPE was moderate, with 81% sensitivity and 53% specificity at a pro-cathepsin D cut-off >0.596 pg/mL (area under the curve: 0.656). The diagnostic sensitivity and negative predictive value for MPE were 81% and 89%, respectively, at the pro-cathepsin D cut-off >0.596 pg/mL. Conclusions : The level of pleural fluid pro-cathepsin D was found to be significantly higher in MPE than in BPE; thus, pleural fluid pro-cathepsin D may be useful for discriminating MPE from BPE.
Multiplex and On-site PCR detection of swine diseases based on the microfluidic chip system
Authors: Jiang Yan , Jiang Shan , Wu Yue , Zhou Bin , Wang Kaiming , Jiang Luyan , Long Yunfeng , Chen Gan , Zeng Dexin 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background： At present, the process of inspection and quarantine starts with sampling at the customs port, continues with transporting the samples to the central laboratory for inspection experiments, and ends with the inspected results being fed back to the port. This process had the risks of degradation of biological samples and generation of pathogenic microorganisms and did not meet the rapid on-site detection demand because it took a rather long time. Therefore, it is urgently needed to develop a rapid and high-throughput detection assay of pathogenic microorganisms at the customs port. The aim of this study was to develop a microfluidic chip to rapidly detect swine pathogenic microorganisms with high-throughput and higher accuracy. Moreover, this chip will decrease the risk of spreading infection during transportation. Results: A series of experiments were performed to establish a microfluidic chip. The resulting data showed that the positive nucleic acid of four swine viruses were detected by using a portable and rapid microfluidic PCR system, which could achieve a on-site real-time quantitative PCR detection. Furthermore, the detection results of eight clinical samples were obtained within an hour. The detection limit of this microfluidic PCR detection system was as low as 1 copies/μL. The results showed that the high sensitivity and specificity of this chip system in disease detection played an important role in customs inspection and quarantine during customs clearance. Conclusion: The microfluidic PCR detection system established in this study could meet the requirement for rapid detection of samples at the customs port. This chip could avoid the risky process of transporting the samples from the sampling site to the testing lab, and drastically reduce the inspection cycle. Moreover, it would enable parallel inspections on one chip, which greatly raised the efficiency of inspection.
The assessment of quality of life and satisfaction with life of patients before and after surgery of an isolated apical defect using synthetic materials
Authors: Zalewski Maciej , Kołodyńska Gabriela , Mucha Anna , Bełza Łukasz , Nowak Krzysztof , Andrzejewski Waldemar 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background: Pelvic floor static disorders constitute a significant clinical and social problem. The incidence of the problem increases with the age of female patients up to 80 years of age. Due to various methods of procedural treatment, eligibility for surgery should be carefully discussed with the patient. Ideally, the surgery should be effective and with the least possible number of complications. The objective of this study was to assess the quality of life of patients before and after the surgery of an isolated apical defect with the use of BSC mesh.Methods: The study involved 60 patients who were diagnosed with pelvic floor static disorder on the basis of physical examination. Standardised questionnaires were used to assess the quality of life and satisfaction with life: the Perceived Quality of Life (P-QOL) and the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Results: The P-QOL results for each domain were higher in patients before surgery compared to the results obtained after the surgery. For almost all domains, the results obtained were statistically significant. The results obtained in the SWLS questionnaire in most answers also show that after the procedure there was an improvement in satisfaction with life in the examined female patients.Conclusion: In most patients, surgical treatment of an isolated apical defect using BSC mesh results in the subsidence of bothersome symptoms and improves the quality of life.
Latent-space embedding of expression data identifies gene signatures from sputum samples of asthmatic patients
Authors: LOU Shaoke , Li Tianxiao , Spakowicz Daniel , Yan Xiting , Chupp Geoffrey Lowell , Gerstein Mark 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background: The pathogenesis of asthma is a complex process involving multiple genes and pathways. Identifying biomarkers from asthma datasets, especially those that include heterogeneous subpopulations, is challenging. Potentially, autoencoders provide ideal frameworks for such tasks as they can embed high-dimensional gene expression data into a low-dimensional latent space in an unsupervised fashion, enabling us to extract distinguishing features from expression data.Results: Here, we developed a framework combining a denoising autoencoder and a supervised learning classifier to identify gene signatures related to asthma severity. Using the trained autoencoder with 50 hidden units, we found that hierarchical clustering on the low-dimensional embedding corresponds well with previously defined and clinically relevant clusters of patients. Moreover, each hidden unit has contributions from each of the genes, and pathway analysis of these contributions shows that the hidden units are significantly enriched in known asthma-related pathways. We then used genes that contribute most to the hidden units to develop a secondary random-forest classifier for directly predicting asthma severity. The feature importance metric from this classifier identified a signature based on 50 key genes, which can predict severity with an AUROC of 0.81 and thus have potential as diagnostic biomarkers. Furthermore, we could use these key genes for successfully estimating, via support-vector-machine regression, the FEV1/FVC ratios across patients, achieving pre- and post-treatment correlations of 0.56 and 0.65, respectively (between predicted and observed values). Conclusion: We found that the denoising autoencoder framework can extract meaningful patterns corresponding to functional gene groups and patient clusters from the gene expression of asthma patients. Specifically, from the top-weighted gene set in the hidden units, we identified 50 genes that are predictive of asthma severity and other relevant clinical traits. Furthermore, we found that these genes play central roles in biological networks and pathways. Thus, we believe that they could provide a potential source for biomarkers for asthma severity.
Blood parasites in vectors reveal a united blackfly community in the upper canopy
Authors: Chakarov Nayden , Kampen Helge , Wiegmann Anja , Werner Doreen , Bensch Staffan 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background The behaviour of blood-sucking arthropods is a crucial determinant of blood protozoan distribution and hence of host-parasite coevolution, but it is very challenging to study in the wild. The molecular identification of parasite lineages in vectors can be a useful key to understand the behaviour and transmission patterns realised by these vectors. Methods In this study, we collected blackflies around nests of three raptor species in the upper forest canopy in Central Europe and examined the presence of vertebrate DNA and haemosporidian parasites in them. We molecularly analysed 156 blackfly individuals, their vertebrate blood meals, and the haemosporidian parasite lineages they carried. Results We identified nine species of Simulium blackflies, largely belonging to the subgenera Nevermannia and Eusimulium. Only 1% of the collected specimens was visibly engorged, and only 4% contained remains of host DNA. However, in 29% of the blackflies Leucocytozoon-lineages were identified, which is evidence of a previous blood meal on an avian host. Based on the known vertebrate hosts of the recorded Leucocytozoon-lineages, we can infer that large and/or abundant birds, such as thrushes, crows, pigeons, birds of prey, owls and tits are the main targets of ornithophilic blackflies in the canopy. Blackfly species contained similar proportions of host group-specific parasite lineages and thus do not appear to be associated with particular host groups. Conclusions The Leucocytozoon clade infecting thrushes, crows, and pigeons present in most represented blackfly species suggests a lack of association between hosts and blackflies, which can increase the probability of host switches of blood parasites. However, the composition of simuliid species differed between nests of common buzzards, goshawks and red kites. This segregation can be explained by coinciding habitat preferences between host and vector, and may lead to the fast speciation of Leucocytozoon parasites. Thus, subtle ecological preferences and lack of host preference of vectors in the canopy may enable both parasite diversification and host switches, and enforce a habitat-dependent evolution of avian malaria parasites and related haemosporidia.
Prevalence of fosfomycin resistance and gene mutations in clinical isolates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
Authors: Lee Yi-Chien , Chen Pao-Yu , Wang Jann-Tay , Chang Shan-Chwen 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background: Fosfomycin exhibits excellent in vitro activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Increasing fosfomycin resistance among clinical MRSA isolates was reported previously, but little is known about the relative abundance of Fosfomycin resistance genes in MRSA isolates circulating in Taiwan.Methods: All MRSA isolates, collected in 2002 and 2012 by the Taiwan Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (TSAR) program, were used in this study. Susceptibility to various antimicrobial agents, including fosfomycin, was determined by broth microdilution. Genetic determinants of fosfomycin resistance, including fosB carriage and murA, glpT and uhpT mutations, were investigated using PCR and sequencing of amplicons. Staphylococcal protein A (spa) typing was also performed to determine the genetic relatedness of MRSA isolates.Results: A total of 969 MRSA strains, 495 in the year 2002 and 474 in the year 2012, were analyzed. The overall in vitro susceptibility was 8.2% to erythromycin, 18.0% to clindamycin, 29.0% to tetracycline, 44.6% to ciprofloxacin, 57.5% to trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, 86.9% to rifampicin, 92.9% to fosfomycin and 100% to linezolid and vancomycin. A significant increase in the fosfomycin resistance rate was observed from 3.4% in 2002 to 11.0% in 2012. Of 68 fosfomycin-resistant MRSA isolates, several genetic backgrounds probably contributing to fosfomycin resistance were identified. Twelve isolates harbored the fosB gene, and various mutations in murA, uhpT, and glpT genes were noted in 11, 59, and 66 isolates, respectively. The most prevalent gene mutations were found in the combination of uhpT and glpT genes (58 isolates). The vast majority of the fosfomycin-resistant MRSA isolates belonged to spa type t002.Conclusions: An increased fosfomycin resistance rate of MRSA isolates was observed in our present study, mostly due to mutations in the glpT and uhpT genes. Clonal spread probably contributed to the increased fosfomycin resistance.
Detection of p53 mutation and serum monitoring alert caused by Marek's disease virus
Authors: Zhang Huixia , Liu Mengda , Zhang Hui , Cao Shengliang , Li Yue , Jiang Shengnan , Song Yinuo , Liu Sidang 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background: Marek’s disease as a chicken neoplastic disease, brings huge economic losses to the global poultry industry. The tumor suppressor gene, wild type P53, plays a key role in blocking cell cycle, promoting apoptosis and maintaining stability of genome. However, the p53 could become an oncogene from a tumor inhibitory role, if a mutation happened. Results: The mutation rate of p53 was 60 percent in experimentally and naturally infected chickens. The mutations included point-mutations and deletions, and mostly located in the DNA-binding domain. The mutated P53 can be expressed in tumors of various tissues in an infected chicken. They accumulated in cytoplasm due to the loss of nuclear localization function. Unlike the researches on human cancer, the concentration of P53 serum of MD infected chicken was significantly lower than control group. Conclusions: The p53 mutations were relevant with the development of MD. Detecting the concertation of P53 and P53 antibody in serum could be helpful for diagnosis and monitor of MD.
Enhanced biohydrogen production from cotton stalk hydrolysate of Enterobacter cloacae WL1318 by overexpression of the formate hydrogen lyase activator gene
Authors: Zhang Qin , You Shaolin , Li Yanbin , Qu Xiaowei , Jiang Hui 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background: Biohydrogen production from lignocellulose has become an important hydrogen production method due to its diversity, renewability, and cheapness. Overexpression of the formate hydrogen lyase activator (fhlA) gene is a promising tactic for enhancement of hydrogen production in facultative anaerobic Enterobacter. As a species of Enterobacter, Enterobacter cloacae was reported as high efficient hydrogen-producing bacterium. However, little work has been reported in terms of cloning and expressing the fhlA gene in E. cloacae for lignocellulose-based hydrogen production.Results: In this study, the formate hydrogen lyase activator (fhlA) gene was cloned and overexpressed in Enterobacter cloacae WL1318. We found that the recombinant strain significantly enhanced cumulative hydrogen production by 188% following fermentation of cotton stalk hydrolysate for 24 h, and maintained improved production above 30% throughout the fermentation process compared to the wild strain. Accordingly, overexpression of the fhlA gene resulted in an enhanced hydrogen production potential (P) and maximum hydrogen production rate (Rm), as well as a shortened lag phase time (λ) for the recombinant strain. Additionally, the recombinant strain also displayed improved glucose (12%) and xylose (3.4%) consumption and hydrogen yield Y(H2/S) (37.0%) compared to the wild strain. Moreover, the metabolites and specific enzyme profiles demonstrated that reduced flux in the competitive branch, including succinic, acetic, and lactic acids, and ethanol generation, coupled with increased flux in the pyruvate node and formate splitting branch, benefited hydrogen synthesis. Conclusions: The results conclusively prove that overexpression of fhlA gene in E. cloacae WL1318 can effectively enhance the hydrogen production from cotton stalk hydrolysate, and reduce the metabolic flux in the competitive branch. It’s the first attempt to engineer the fhlA gene in the hydrogen producing bacterium E. cloacae. This work provides a highly efficient engineered bacterium for biohydrogen production from fermentation of lignocellulosic hydrolysate in the future.
Ferulic acid attenuates microglia-mediated neuroinflammation in retinal degeneration
Authors: Sun Xiaowei , Sun Peng , Liu Limei , Jiang Pengfei , LI YUANBIN 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Background : To explore the impact of Ferulic acid (FA) on microglia-mediated neuroinflammation as well as associated retinal degeneration by using a rd10 mouse model as a means. Methods : Rd10 mice received different concentrations of FA treatment every day from postnatal day (P)4 to P24. At P25, mice visual function were detected by electroretinogram, then retinae were collected for further investigation. Retinal microglia activation state and relevant cytokines were evaluated by qPCR, Western blot and immunofluorescent staining. The retinal structure was assessed by HE Staining. Results :50mg/kg FA supplement exhibited optimal protection against retinal degeneration, with treated mice exhibiting more photoreceptor nuclei as well as significant wave amplitude amplification in electroretinograms. FA suppressed microglia activation both in vivo and in vitro , inhibited pro-inflammatory factors Tnfα, IL1β, Ccl2 expression in rd10 retinae. Furthermore, FA suppressed the activation of STAT1 and subsequently IRF8 expression, potentially highlighting a role for these pathways in FA-mediated immunomodulatory activity. Conclusions : Attenuating neuroinflammation by FA may be beneficial to retard retinal degeneration.