Recent Advances in Liver Engineering With Decellularized Scaffold

Liver transplantation is currently the only effective treatment for patients with end-stage liver disease; however, donor liver scarcity is a notable concern. As a result, extensive endeavors have been made to diversify the source of donor livers. For example, the use of a decellularized scaffold in liver engineering has gained considerable attention in recent years. The decellularized scaffold preserves the original orchestral structure and bioactive chemicals of the liver, and has the potential to create a de novo liver that is fit for transplantation after recellularization. The structure of the liver and hepatic extracellular matrix, decellularization, recellularization, and recent developments are discussed in this review. Additionally, the criteria for assessment and major obstacles in using a decellularized scaffold are covered in detail

Association between visceral adiposity index and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in the non-elderly adults

BackgroundThe visceral adiposity index (VAI) reflects changes in visceral adipose function and is also linked to cardiometabolic risk. The study aimed to investigate the association between VAI and both all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality in the U.S. population aged 20-65 years.MethodsThis study included data from 9,094 American adults aged 20-65 years from the 2009-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The exposure variable was VAI, while the outcome variables were all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. The Cox regression model was employed to explore the correlation between VAI and mortality among participants. Restricted cubic splines (RCS) were used to explore the nonlinear associations, and a two-piecewise Cox proportional hazards model was applied on both sides of the inflection point. We used subgroup analyses and interaction tests to further investigate the association between VAI and mortality in different populations. Additionally, time-dependent Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were performed to evaluate the capability of VAI in forecasting survival.ResultsDuring a median follow-up period of 74 months, 251 deaths from all causes and 50 cardiovascular-related deaths were recorded. RCS analyses did not find a nonlinear correlation between VAI and all-cause mortality (P for overall = 0.0006, P for nonlinear = 0.9927) but showed a nonlinear correlation with cardiovascular mortality (P for overall = 0.0010, P for nonlinear = 0.0062). For cardiovascular mortality, when VAI was below the threshold value (2.49), a significant positive association was observed with cardiovascular mortality. When VAI was below 2.49, the risk of cardiovascular mortality increased by 122 percent for each unit increase in VAI (HR=2.22, 95% CI:1.36-3.61). For VAI ≥ 2.49, changes in VAI did not significantly impact cardiovascular mortality risk. In subgroup analyses, the stratified results remained consistent, with no significant interactions observed in any of the subgroups (all P for interaction> 0.05). Furthermore, the areas under the curve (AUC) for 2-, 5-, and 10-year survival rates were 0.82, 0.80, and 0.79 for all-cause mortality and 0.86, 0.86, and 0.82 for cardiovascular mortality, respectively.ConclusionVAI was found to have a positive association with all-cause mortality and a nonlinear association with cardiovascular mortality in the non-elderly adults, with a threshold value of 2.49 for cardiovascular mortality

Association between dietary niacin intake and abdominal aortic calcification among the US adults: the NHANES 2013–2014

BackgroundAbdominal aortic calcification (AAC) serves as a reliable predictor of future cardiovascular incidents. This study investigated the association between dietary niacin intake and AAC in US adults.MethodsIn this study, we conducted a cross-sectional study of 2,238 individuals aged 40 years and older using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2013–2014. AAC was evaluated using the Kauppila scoring system through dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Daily niacin intake was calculated by averaging the two dietary recalls and classified in tertiles for analysis. In this study, multiple regression analyses and smoothed curve fitting were used to examine the relationship between dietary niacin intake and AAC, subgroup analyses and interaction tests were used to assess the stability of this relationship across different segments of the population, and forest plots were used to present the results. In addition, we validated the predictive performance of dietary niacin intake on the risk of severe AAC through Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.ResultsAmong 2,238 participants aged >40 years, the results showed that the higher dietary niacin intake group was associated with lower AAC score (β = −0.02, 95% CI: −0.04 – −0.01), and a lower risk of severe AAC (OR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.96–0.99). In the fully adjusted model, the higher tertile group was associated with lower AAC score (β = −0.37, 95% CI: −0.73 – −0.02; P for trend = 0.0461) and a lower risk of severe AAC (OR = 0.60, 95% CI: 0.38–0.93; P for trend = 0.0234). The relationship between dietary niacin intake and AAC differed significantly between diabetic and non-diabetic population. The ROC curve analysis revealed that the area under the curve (AUC) for predicting severe AAC risk based on dietary niacin intake was 0.862, indicating good predictive performance.ConclusionHigher dietary niacin intake group was associated with lower AAC score and a lower risk of severe AAC. Our findings suggest that dietary niacin intake has the potential to offer benefits in preventing AAC in the general population

Association between dietary mineral intakes and urine flow rate: data from the 2009–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

BackgroundMinerals play an important role in human health, but their effect on urinary function remains controversial. The aim of this study was to assess the association between dietary intake of minerals (Ca, P, Mg, Fe, Zn, Cu, Na, K, Se) and urine flow rate (UFR).MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2009–2018) database. Multivariate regression and smooth curve fitting were used to investigate the association between dietary mineral intakes and UFR. Subgroup analyses and interaction tests were used to investigate whether this association was stable in the population.ResultsOur study involving 10,229 representative adult NHANES participants showed an association between Mg intake and UFR in a linear regression model for continuous variables. And in the model analysis of tertile categorical variables, we observed a positive association between six mineral intakes (Ca, Mg, Zn, Cu, Na, and K) and UFR. Smoothed curve fitting and threshold effect analysis further support the nonlinear relationship between mineral intakes and UFR. Subgroup analyses and interaction tests ensured the reliability and robustness of the findings.ConclusionThis study examined the effects of nine dietary minerals on UFR and found that intake of Ca, Mg, Zn, Cu, Na, and K were positively correlated with UFR, suggesting that these minerals may have a positive effect on improving urinary function. In particular, Mg showed a more significant positive correlation with UFR in women, while Na showed a stronger positive correlation in diabetics. However, P, Fe and Se did not show significant correlations. In summary, although these findings provide a preliminary understanding of the relationship between dietary minerals and urinary function, further prospective studies are still necessary to validate these relationships and explore the physiologic mechanisms underlying them

Preparation, structural characteristics and antioxidant activity of Cardamine violifolia oligopeptides

Objective: This study aimed to prepare oligopeptidess of Camelina violifolia and expand its application range. Methods: C. violifolia protein was hydrolyzed by alkaline protease, and then used ultrafiltration membrane for isolating and concentrating, and obtained oligopeptides by freeze-drying. The structure and antioxidant activity of C. violifolia oligopeptides were analyzed. Results: The optimum conditions for the hydrolysis of C.violifolia protein were as follows: hydrolysis temperature 50 ℃, pH 10, enzyme dosage 4%, substrate concentration 2%, and hydrolysis degree 17.9%. The C. violifolia oligopeptides contents of protein and polypeptide were 49.01% and 42.87%, respectively. The oligopeptides had a strong absorption band at 200~220 nm, amide bond-specific absorption peaks, β-angle was the main secondary structure, and a 90% relative molecular weight of less than 1 000 Da. When the oligopeptides concentration was 20 mg/mL, the scavenging rates of hydroxyl radical, ABTS radical and DPPH radical were 84.54%, 98.22% and 60.33% respectively. Conclusion: The preparation process of the oligopeptides of C. violifolia is reasonable and feasible. The oligopeptides have good antioxidant capacity

Towards Personalized Evaluation of Large Language Models with An Anonymous Crowd-Sourcing Platform

Large language model evaluation plays a pivotal role in the enhancement of its capacity. Previously, numerous methods for evaluating large language models have been proposed in this area. Despite their effectiveness, these existing works mainly focus on assessing objective questions, overlooking the capability to evaluate subjective questions which is extremely common for large language models. Additionally, these methods predominantly utilize centralized datasets for evaluation, with question banks concentrated within the evaluation platforms themselves. Moreover, the evaluation processes employed by these platforms often overlook personalized factors, neglecting to consider the individual characteristics of both the evaluators and the models being evaluated. To address these limitations, we propose a novel anonymous crowd-sourcing evaluation platform, BingJian, for large language models that employs a competitive scoring mechanism where users participate in ranking models based on their performance. This platform stands out not only for its support of centralized evaluations to assess the general capabilities of models but also for offering an open evaluation gateway. Through this gateway, users have the opportunity to submit their questions, testing the models on a personalized and potentially broader range of capabilities. Furthermore, our platform introduces personalized evaluation scenarios, leveraging various forms of human-computer interaction to assess large language models in a manner that accounts for individual user preferences and contexts. The demonstration of BingJian can be accessed at https://github.com/Mingyue-Cheng/Bingjian

Study on characteristic of epileptic multi-electroencephalograph base on Hilbert-Huang transform and brain network dynamics

Lots of studies have been carried out on characteristic of epileptic Electroencephalograph (EEG). However, traditional EEG characteristic research methods lack exploration of spatial information. To study the characteristics of epileptic EEG signals from the perspective of the whole brain，this paper proposed combination methods of multi-channel characteristics from time-frequency and spatial domains. This paper was from two aspects: Firstly, signals were converted into 2D Hilbert Spectrum (HS) images which reflected the time-frequency characteristics by Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). These images were identified by Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model whose sensitivity was 99.8%, accuracy was 98.7%, specificity was 97.4%, F1-score was 98.7%, and AUC-ROC was 99.9%. Secondly, the multi-channel signals were converted into brain networks which reflected the spatial characteristics by Symbolic Transfer Entropy (STE) among different channels EEG. And the results show that there are different network properties between ictal and interictal phase and the signals during the ictal enter the synchronization state more quickly, which was verified by Kuramoto model. To summarize, our results show that there was different characteristics among channels for the ictal and interictal phase, which can provide effective physical non-invasive indicators for the identification and prediction of epileptic seizures

Autophagic Degradation Deficit Involved in Sevoflurane-Induced Amyloid Pathology and Spatial Learning Impairment in APP/PS1 Transgenic Mice

The adverse effects of anesthetics on elderly people, especially those with brain diseases are very concerning. Whether inhaled anesthetics have adverse effects on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which is the most common form of dementia with brain degenerative changes, remains controversial. Autophagy, a crucial biological degradation process, is extremely important for the pathogenesis of AD. In this study, the inhaled anesthetic sevoflurane elicited many enlarged autolysosomes and impaired the overall autophagic degradation in the hippocampus of an AD mouse model, which is involved in the accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) and spatial learning deficits. However, rapamycin treatment counteracted all these effects. The results suggested that inhaled anesthetics may accelerate the pathological process of AD, and enlarged autolysosomes may be a new marker for prediction and diagnosis of the neurotoxicity of anesthetics in AD

The Changes of Intrinsic Excitability of Pyramidal Neurons in Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Neuropathic Pain

To find satisfactory treatment strategies for neuropathic pain syndromes, the cellular mechanisms should be illuminated. Central sensitization is a generator of pain hypersensitivity, and is mainly reflected in neuronal hyperexcitability in pain pathway. Neuronal excitability depends on two components, the synaptic inputs and the intrinsic excitability. Previous studies have focused on the synaptic plasticity in different forms of pain. But little is known about the changes of neuronal intrinsic excitability in neuropathic pain. To address this question, whole-cell patch clamp recordings were performed to study the synaptic transmission and neuronal intrinsic excitability 1 week after spared nerve injury (SNI) or sham operation in male C57BL/6J mice. We found increased spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (sEPSC) frequency in layer II/III pyramidal neurons of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) from mice with neuropathic pain. Elevated intrinsic excitability of these neurons after nerve injury was also picked up, which was reflected in gain of input-output curve, inter-spike interval (ISI), spike threshold and Refractory period (RP). Besides firing rate related to neuronal intrinsic excitability, spike timing also plays an important role in neural information processing. The precision of spike timing measured by standard deviation of spike timing (SDST) was decreased in neuropathic pain state. The electrophysiological studies revealed the elevated intrinsic excitation in layer II/III pyramidal neurons of ACC in mice with neuropathic pain, which might contribute to central excitation