bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Etanercept for patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis: drug levels and influence of concomitant methotrexate
Authors: Levälampi Tiina , Kärki Johanna , Rebane Katariina , Vähäsalo Paula , Malin Merja , Kröger Liisa , Grönlund Minna-Maija , Backström Maria , Pohjankoski Heini , Kautiainen Hannu , Jokiranta Sakari , Aalto Kristiina 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Purpose
Etanercept (ETN) is widely used tumour necrosis factor (TNF) blocker in the treatment of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) when traditional sDMARD therapy is not sufficient. There is limited information about the effects of methotrexate (MTX) on serum ETN concentration in children with JIA. We aimed to investigate whether ETN dose and concomitant MTX affect ETN serum trough levels in JIA patients and whether concomitant MTX affects clinical response in patients with JIA receiving ETN.
Methods
This study collected the medical records data of 180 JIA patients from eight Finnish paediatric rheumatological centres. All these patients were treated with ETN monotherapy or combination therapy, with or without sDMARD. To evaluate the ETN concentrations, blood samples of the patients were collected between injections right before the subsequent drug. Free ETN level was measured from serum.
Results
Ninety-seven (54%) of the patients used concomitant MTX, and 83 (46%) received either ETN monotherapy or used sDMARDs other than MTX. A significant correlation was noted between ETN dose and drug level [r = 0.45 (95% CI: 0.33–0.56)]. The ETN dose and serum drug level were correlated (p = 0.030) in both subgroups— in MTX group [r = 0.35 (95% CI: 0.14–0.52)] and in non– MTX group [r = 0.54 (95% CI: 0.39–0.67)].
Conclusion
In the present study, a significant correlation was observed between ETN dose and ETN concentration. We also found that concomitant MTX had no effect on serum ETN concentration or on clinical response.
Cash Transfer Program and Food Security: a Comparative Study Between Quilombola Communities and the General Population of Alagoas, Brazil
Authors: Santos Ewerton Amorim dos , Barbosa Lídia Bezerra , Vasconcelos Nancy Borges Rodrigues , Santos Tamara Rodrigues dos , Ferreira Haroldo Silva , Gurgel Ricardo Queiroz 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Background: The Cash Transfer Program (CTP) is one of the main strategies to combat Food and Nutritional Insecurity (FNI) in the world and is primarily aimed at population groups subject to greater social vulnerability. Alagoas is one of the Brazilian states that has the worst socioeconomic indicators in the country. However, within its population, there are groups of people who are even more vulnerable due to a historical process of discrimination and social exclusion, such as the remaining quilombo communities, which make them more susceptible to FNI and its consequences.
Objective: Compare the Quilombola people with the non-Quilombola population regarding the association between the condition of users of the Cash Transfer Program and the occurrence of Food and Nutritional insecurity and its associated factors.
Methods: Data from two cross-sectional studies were used; the first completed in 2015 with a probabilistic sample representative of families of the state of Alagoas, and the second completed in 2018 with families from Quilombola communities in that state. The Brazilian Scale of Nutritional Insecurity was used to define the FNI situation of the families. Both studies were approved by the research ethics committee. Ajusted prevalence ratios were estimated by Poisson regression with robust variance.
Results: A total of 5,764 families were investigated (n = 3299 in 2015; n = 2465 in 2018). FNI was identified in 58.4% of non-Quilombola and 67.4% in Quilombola families. FNI was associated with participation in the CTP, lower economic classes, per capita family income ≤1 minimum wage, rooms in the household ≤4, families with children under 18 years of age, no home of their own, and households with four or more people.
Conclusion: FNI frequency was higher among Quilombola families and, in general, among families using the CTP. Despite the correct targeting of the CTP, which assists a large contingent of the population in poverty, it is necessary to link structural actions to it to ensure socioeconomic increases that can reverse the scenario of low education and professional training, low income, and, consequently, less access to goods and services in a sustainable way.
Avatars help measure, predict, and improve interpersonal effectiveness
Authors: Nagendran Arjun , Compton Scott , Follette William , Golenchenko Artem , Compton Anna , Grizou Jonathan 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Experiential learning has been known to be an engaging and effective modality for personal and professional development. In this work, we introduce a novel interpersonal effectiveness improvement framework (ELAINE) that combines Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality to create a highly immersive and efficient learning experience using avatars. We present findings from a study that uses this framework to measure and improve the interpersonal effectiveness of individuals interacting with an avatar. Results reveal that individuals with deficits in their interpersonal effectiveness show a significant improvement (p < 0.02) after multiple interactions with an avatar. The results also reveal that individuals interact naturally with avatars within this framework, and exhibit similar behavioral traits as they would in the real world. We use this as a basis to analyze the underlying audio and video data streams of individuals during these interactions. We extract relevant features from these data and present a machine-learning based approach to predict interpersonal effectiveness during human-avatar conversation. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings to build beneficial applications for the real world.
B7H6 silencing enhanced MKN-45 cancer cells' chemosensitivity to 5-fluorouracil
Authors: dolatkhah katayoun , alizadeh nazila , Mohajjel-Shoja Haniyeh , Aghebati-Maleki Leili , Baghbanzadeh Amir , Ahangar Noora Karim , Baradaran Behzad 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Background
Gastrointestinal cancers are a serious health threat on a global scale. Immunotherapeutic methods are also being investigated in this circumstance, and early data from ongoing studies with checkpoint inhibitors such as B7H6 inhibitors is impressive. As a result, we studied the effects of B7H6 suppression on the MKN-45 cancer cell line using particular siRNA and underlying processes when 5-fluorouracil is used (5-FU).
Methods
B7H6 siRNA and 5-FU were used alone or in combination to treat MKN-45 cells. Following that, the MTT test was used to determine the IC50 of 5-FU and cell viability. The apoptotic induction (using Annexin V / PI) and cell cycle activity were investigated through flow cytometry. The migration of cells was determined with a wound healing test, accordingly. Additionally, we evaluated the clonogenic potential of MKN-45 cells and assessed gene expression in treated groups using qRT-PCR.
Results
Our findings indicate that silencing B7H6 sensitizes MKN-45 cells to 5-FU treatment by inducing apoptosis and modulating the expression of genes such as Bax, Bcl-2, caspase-3, and MMP3, which are the key mediators of apoptosis. Additionally, both B7H6 silencing and 5-Fu therapy decreased cell migration cooperatively. Moreover, combination treatment stopped the MKN-45 cells' ability to form colonies by stopping the cell cycle in the sub-G1 stage.
Conclusion
Silencing B7H6 enhanced MKN-45 cells' chemosensitivity to 5-Fu and exerted anti-tumor effects. After completing studies, this technique may be considered an effective therapy option for this malignancy.
Deep pairwise learning for user preferences via dual graph attention model in location-based social networks
Authors: Gong Weihua , Zheng Kechen , Zhang Shubin , Hu Ping 
Published: September 2022

Abstract

The rapid growth of location-based social networks (LBSN) has generated massive multi-mode entities such as users, locations and social topics, as well as multi-relationships among them. Learning deep user preferences over POIs and social topics in LBSN has attracted more and more attentions. However, most of the previous studies have failed to incorporate the severely sparse and multi-dimensional relational data of heterogeneous LBSN, which plays a vital role to enhance the prediction performance. Toward this challenge, in this paper, we propose a unified pairwise relationship prediction framework based on graph neural networks combined with dual attention mechanism model, dubbed GE2AT, which has fully considered to incorporate three types of user behavioral relations to better capture user preference over different entities. Specifically, we first model LBSN as one user social graph only including social relations, and other two bipartite graphs involved user-location check-in relations and user-social topics following relations respectively. Then, we propose dual graph attention networks to jointly learn deep latent representations of different entities by aggregating features from neighbors with different importance weights. After that, we adopt two MLPs to output the pairwise preferences of users over POIs and social topics. In addition, to alleviate data sparsity problem, on the basis of MLPs output results, we further leverage social relationships as social-aware influence for similar user preferences so as to enhance the pairwise prediction performance. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets have demonstrated that our proposed framework GE2AT significantly outperform the state-of-the-art baselines on both prediction tasks for user preferences on POIs and social topics.
Cathepsin V plays a crucial role in the metastasis and growth of lung cancer
Authors: Wang Wen , Xiao Mei , Shi Shan , Liu Xiaoli , Qiu Yeqing , Chen Nan , Chen Hongtao , Zhu Lifei , Cheng Zhixue , Huang Xiaodan , Zhang Hongyu 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Cathepsin V (CTSV) is a cysteine cathepsin protease located in lysosome and plays crucial role in extracellular matrix degradation. It is reported that CTSVis correlated with poor prognosis with multiple cancers, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to clarify the molecular mechanism of how CTSV functions in lung cancer. Here, we identified that CTSV is upregulated in high metastatic property lung cancer cells. Depletion of CTSV inhibited the metastasis and growth of lung cancer. Mechanistic studies showed that CTSV functions by cleaving fibronectin, E-cadherin and N-cadherin and remodeling the extracellular matrix (ECM) of lung cancer. Our data showed that CTSV is an essential component of lysosome, reduction of CTSV increased pH value of lysosome and led to lysosome dysfunction. Together, our findings reveal a molecular mechanism of how CTSV drive metastasis and growth of lung cancer, suggesting that CTSV-targeting approach is a promising strategy for lung cancer.
Ethanol tolerance of Clostridium thermocellum: the role of chaotropicity, temperature and pathway thermodynamics on growth and fermentative capacity
Authors: Kuil Teun , Yayo Johannes , Pechan Johanna , Küchler Jan , Maris Antonius J. A. 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
BACKGROUND
Clostridium thermocellum is a promising candidate for consolidated bioprocessing of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol. The low ethanol tolerance of this microorganism is one of the remaining obstacles to industrial implementation. Ethanol inhibition can be caused by end-product inhibition and/or chaotropic-induced stress resulting in increased membrane fluidization and disruption of macromolecules. The highly reversible glycolysis of C. thermocellum might be especially sensitive to end-product inhibition. The chaotropic effect of ethanol is known to increase with temperature. This study explores the relative contributions of these two aspects to investigate and possibly mitigate ethanol-induced stress in growing and non-growing C. thermocellum cultures.
RESULTS
To separate chaotropic from thermodynamic effects of ethanol toxicity, a non-ethanol producing strain AVM062 (Pclo1313_2638::ldh* ∆adhE) was constructed by deleting the bifunctional acetaldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenase gene, adhE, in a lactate-overproducing strain. Exogenously added ethanol lowered the growth rate of both wild-type and the non-ethanol producing mutant. The mutant strain grew quicker than the wild-type at 50 and 55 °C for ethanol concentrations ≥ 10 g L-1 and was able to reach higher maximum OD600 at all ethanol concentrations and temperatures. For the wild-type, the maximum OD600and relative growth rates were higher at 45 and 50 °C, compared to 55 °C, for ethanol concentrations ≥ 15 g L-1. For the mutant strain, no positive effect on growth was observed at lower temperatures. Growth-arrested cells of the wild-type demonstrated improved fermentative capacity over time in the presence of ethanol concentrations up to 40 g L-1 at 45 and 50 °C compared to 55 °C.
CONCLUSION
Positive effects of temperature on ethanol tolerance were limited to wild-type C. thermocellum and are likely related to mechanisms involved in the ethanol-formation pathway and redox cofactor balancing. Lowering the cultivation temperature provides an attractive strategy to improve growth and fermentative capacity at high ethanol titres in high-cellulose loading batch cultivations. Finally, non-ethanol producing strains are useful platform strains to study the effects of chaotropicity and thermodynamics related to ethanol toxicity and allow for deeper understanding of growth and/or fermentation cessation under industrially relevant conditions.
Chemometrics integrated with in silico pharmacology to reveal antioxidative and anti-inflammatory markers of dandelion for its quality control
Authors: Liu Feng-Jie , Yang Jiao , Chen Xu-Yan , Yu Ting , Ni Hui , Feng Liang , Li Ping , Li Hui-Jun 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Background
Dandelion is an herb with high nutritional and medicinal values, which has been listed in Chinese Pharmacopeia, European Pharmacopoeia and British Pharmacopoeia, gaining increasing acceptance around the world. However, the current quality control of dandelion is poor. Only in Chinese Pharmacopeia, cichoric acid, is applied as a marker compound for its quality evaluation, which can not comprehensively reflect the bioactivity of dandelion.
Methods
This study developed a strategy by integrating chemometrics with in silico pharmacology to reveal the bioactive markers of dandelion for its quality control. First, HPLC-DAD-MS/MS was applied to profile the major chemicals in dandelion. Second, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities were evaluated in vitro. Third, the active components were screened by grey relational assay and partial least squares regression analysis and were then subjected to a validation. Fourth, in silico pharmacology was utilized to evaluate the contribution of active components to efficacy.
Results
A total of 22 phenolic compounds were characterized. Among them, cichoric acid, caffeic acid and luteolin were identified as quality markers, which showed good correlation with the bioactivities of dandelion. The three markers were quantified in frequently used dandelion species, viz. Taraxacum mongolicum Hand.-Mazz. (TAM) and T. officinale F. H. Wigg. (TAO). TAM contained significantly higher cichoric acid and caffeic acid, showing better antioxidant activity than TAO. While TAO included higher content of luteolin, presenting a slight advantage on anti-inflammatory effect.
Conclusions
This study provide not only a useful strategy for the quality marker discovery, but also more knowledge for the quality evaluation of dandelion.
TAK-715 alleviated IL-1β-induced apoptosis and ECM degradation in nucleus pulposus cells and attenuated intervertebral disc degeneration ex vivo and in vivo
Authors: Wang Kun , Yao Dengbo , Li Yuxi , Li Ming , Zeng Weike , Liao Zhuangyao , Chen Engming , Lu Shixin , Su Kaihui , Che Zhen , Liang Yuwei , Wang Peng , Huang Lin 
Published: September 2022

Abstract

Background Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is one of the most common disorders related to the spine. Inflammation, apoptosis and extracellular matrix (ECM) degradation contribute to disc degeneration in nucleus pulposus cells (NPCs). This study focused on the role and mechanism of the p38 inhibitor TAK-715 in intervertebral disc degeneration. Methods NPCs were treated with IL-1β to mimic apoptosis, followed by the addition of TAK-715. It was determined that apoptosis, inflammatory mediators (COX-2), inflammatory cytokines (HMGB1), and ECM components (collagen II, MMP9, ADAMTS5, and MMP3) existed in NPCs. In addition, the p38MAPK signaling pathways were examined. The role of TAK-715 in vivo was determined by acupuncture-induced intervertebral disc degeneration. Following an intraperitoneal injection of TAK-715, MRI and a histopathological analysis were conducted to assess the degree of degeneration. IL-1β-induced apoptosis was alleviated by TAK-715 in vitro, and antiapoptotic proteins were upregulated. Furthermore, TAK-715 blocked Results IL-1β-induced inflammatory mediator production (COX-2) and inflammatory cytokine production (HMGB1) and degraded the ECM (collagen II, MMP9, ADAMTS5, and MMP3). By inhibiting the phosphorylation of p38, TAK-715 exerted its effects. In a rat tail model, TAK-715 ameliorates puncture-induced disc degeneration based on MRI and histopathology evaluations. Conclusion TAK-715 attenuated intervertebral disc degeneration in vitro and in vivo, suggesting that it might be an effective treatment for IDD.
Upper ureteral calculi complicated with severe hydronephrosis and renal medullary carcinoma in elderly Chinese woman: a case report
Authors: Yu Qiwei , Wu Yufan , Yao Linya , Zhang Xi , Wang Jun , Li Xiang , Zeng Xueming 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Renal medullary carcinoma is a rare and aggressive malignancy that commonly occurs in young African men with sickle cell disease. we report a case of a 64-year-old female patient with left renal medullary carcinoma who was hospitalized for severe hydronephrosis due to upper ureteral calculi obstruction. A laparoscopic left nephrectomy was performed, and the tumor was pathologically diagnosed with renal medullary carcinoma. Postoperative pain was not significantly relieved and the patient developed retroperitoneal metastasis 1 month later and died after 3 months of follow-up. For elderly patients with long-term kidney stones and altered kidney morphology, renal tumors should be considered.
An in-depth analysis of the clinical outcome of ischemic stroke patients with atrial fibrillation
Authors: Fan Fenghua , Li Shuai , Lin Kaibin , Zhao YuWu , Li Yuehua , Huang Dong , Li Jingbo 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Background
Atrial fibrillation (AF) increases the risk of ischemic stroke (IS) in the general population. We sought to obtain the association of in-hospital mortality, stroke severity, and other clinic parameters with AF in IS patients.
Methods
We retrospectively analyzed the patients with acute IS in our hospital. They were divided into 2 groups: the AF group and the non-AF group. All patients received cranial computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) within 2 weeks of the onset of clinical symptoms. All patients were evaluated for stroke severity using the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine whether AF was associated with stroke severity and in-hospital death. A propensity score-matched analysis was used to estimate differences in severity and infarct volume between the two groups.
Result
The study cohort included 586 patients (AF group: n = 190, 103 female, median age = 80 years; non-AF group: n = 396, 182 female, median age = 68 years). Compared with non-AF group, AF group had higher admission and discharge NIHSS scores (median, 11 vs 3, and 7 vs 2; both P < 0.0001), longer hospital stays (median, 11 vs 10 days; P = 0.001), higher in-hospital mortality rate (24.2% vs 4.8%, P < 0.0001), and higher hospitalization costs [19182.64(11368.45,40808.35) vs 13329.54(10850.33,18629.34), China Yuan (CNY); P < 0.0001]. Multivariate logistic regression analyses found that AF was an independent risk factor for severe stroke (NIHSS score, ≥ 16) and inpatient death. In the two groups after a propensity score matching, the AF group had greater infarct volume [25.8(7.9–83.8) vs 1.4 (0.7–9.5) ml; P < 0.0001].
Conclusions
AF was associated with higher inpatient mortality, greater infarction volume, worse neurological deficits, and higher hospital cost. AF should be considered an independent risk factor for worse clinical outcomes in the IS patient.
TI-LMD-based multi-path effect extraction for GNSS coordinate time series
Authors: Huang Yinghua , LIU Chang-rui , Xudong Zheng , CHEN Zhuang , LI Hao , TANG Hao-yao , ZHANG Xian-zhou 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
A modified LMD (TI-LMD) method is proposed for the problems of endpoint effects, sliding average step size taking and modal confounding in the multipath effect extraction of GNSS coordinate time series applied by the local mean decomposition (LMD) method. Three main improvements are included: For the LMD endpoint effect, a matching delayed endpoint effect method based on similar triangular waveforms (MEBSTW) is proposed to find the best matching waveform from within the signal to the endpoint for endpoint delay. To address the problem of taking the sliding average step size, a method of taking the sliding average step size based on the sample skewness of the adjacent extreme point spacing (MSDAEP) is proposed to reduce the number of smoothing iterations while ensuring the smoothing accuracy as much as possible in order to improve the computational efficiency. For the LMD modal mixing problem, a Complementary Ensemble Local Mean Decomposition method based on alignment entropy detection (MCELMD) is proposed to combine alignment entropy detection, CELMD and LMD to solve the modal mixing in the decomposition process. Finally, the method is applied to the extraction of multi-path effects in actual GNSS coordinate time series, and it is verified that the method can extract multi-path effects in GNSS coordinate time series more effectively than the traditional LMD method, which has important practical significance for GNSS coordinate time series processing
3D Soil Corrosivity signature and model of Delta State, Nigeria for corrosion control
Authors: Amadi Azubuike H. , Ajienka Joseph A. , Akaranta Onyewuchi , Ola Victor D. , Ekeoma Bernard C. , Ajayi Kehinde E. 
Published: September 2022

AbstractThe challenge of data availability for accurately assessing a location's level of corrosivity has lingered for so long and as such, researchers are constantly seeking factors with great influence that can assist in describing how corrosive a location will be toward buried oil and gas infrastructure. Alternative measures are required for making rapid and realistic investment decisions because accumulating these factors to make perfect sense is sometimes time-consuming and expensive. Using MATLAB mathematical computational analysis, this study capitalizes on this gap to build a 3D corrosivity signature and model for Delta state, Nigeria to aid in rapid and realistic investment decision-making. The soil pH and resistivity were identified as key variables that determine the extent of corrosion in this investigation. Vertical Electrical Soundings were utilized to collect soil resistivity data, which was then combined with the soil pH to create a 3D corrosivity signature and model with a 98% R-square factor. During the study, potential limitations were found, and recommendations were made.