Stem-like tumor cells comprise a highly tumorigenic and therapy-resistant tumor subpopulation, which is believed to substantially influence tumor initiation and therapy resistance in glioma. Currently, therapeutic, drug-induced differentiation is considered as a promising approach to eradicate this tumor-driving cell population; retinoic acid is well known as a potent modulator of differentiation and proliferation in normal stem cells. In glioma, knowledge about the efficacy of retinoic acid-induced differentiation to target the stem-like tumor cell pool could have therapeutic implications.Stem-like glioma cells (SLGC) were differentiated with all-trans retinoic acid-containing medium to study the effect of differentiation on angiogenesis, invasive growth, as well as radioresistance and chemoresistance of SLGCs. In vivo effects were studied using live microscopy in a cranial window model.Our data suggest that in vitro differentiation of SLGCs induces therapy-sensitizing effects, impairs the secretion of angiogenic cytokines, and disrupts SLGCs motility. Further, ex vivo differentiation reduces tumorigenicity of SLGCs. Finally, we show that all-trans retinoic acid treatment alone can induce antitumor effects in vivo.Altogether, these results highlight the potential of differentiation treatment to target the stem-like cell population in glioblastoma.
To analyze 88 cases of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) within 30 days after acute myocardial infarction(AMI).88 cases included 18 cases with emergent angioplasty, 26 cases with postinfarctional angina pectoris, 9 cases with cardiogenic shock and 25 cases with left main lesion.There were 75 cases underwent off pump coronary artery bypass(OPCAB) and 13 cases underwent beating heart CABG with cardiopulmonary bypass(BH-CPB). The mean number of bypass grafts was 3.4 +/- 0.9. Five patients with preoperative cardiogenic shock died after emergent operations. There were 4 cases with postoperative heart failure, 6 cases with PSVT and 2 cases with bradycardial and treated pacemaking.It was neccessry and feasible to perform CABG within 30 days after AMI. Both the OPCAB and BH-CPB were safe methods.
Soft robotic glove with brain computer interfaces (BCI) control has been used for post-stroke hand function rehabilitation. Motor imagery (MI) based BCI with robotic aided devices has been demonstrated as an effective neural rehabilitation tool to improve post-stroke hand function. It is necessary for a user of MI-BCI to receive a long time training, while the user usually suffers unsuccessful and unsatisfying results in the beginning. To propose another non-invasive BCI paradigm rather than MI-BCI, steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP) based BCI was proposed as user intension detection to trigger the soft robotic glove for post-stroke hand function rehabilitation. Thirty post-stroke patients with impaired hand function were randomly and equally divided into three groups to receive conventional, robotic, and BCI-robotic therapy in this randomized control trial (RCT). Clinical assessment of Fugl-Meyer Motor Assessment of Upper Limb (FMA-UL), Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT) and Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS) were performed at pre-training, post-training and three months follow-up. In comparing to other groups, The BCI-robotic group showed significant improvement after training in FMA full score (10.05±8.03, p=0.001), FMA shoulder/elbow (6.2±5.94, p=0.0004) and FMA wrist/hand (4.3±2.83, p=0.007), and WMFT (5.1±5.53, p=0.037). The improvement of FMA was significantly correlated with BCI accuracy (r=0.714, p=0.032). Recovery of hand function after rehabilitation of SSVEP-BCI controlled soft robotic glove showed better result than solely robotic glove rehabilitation, equivalent efficacy as results from previous reported MI-BCI robotic hand rehabilitation. It proved the feasibility of SSVEP-BCI controlled soft robotic glove in post-stroke hand function rehabilitation.
This study aimed to analyze the distribution of IgG subclass in diabetic nephropathy (DN) and its association with clinicopathological features.This is a single-center retrospective study enrolling 108 patients with biopsy-proven DN. Immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry staining were applied, and clinicopathological features and renal outcomes were compared between patients with different patterns or categories of IgG subclass deposition.Both IgG and its subclasses colocalized with collagen IV α5 on glomerular basement membrane (GBM) and some of tubular basement membrane (TBM). IgG1 and the Mixed type were two predominant types of deposition, no matter on GBM or TBM, and IgG1 showed a much higher deposition rate on GBM than that on TBM (P = 0.004). IgG subclass deposit on multi-location was more associated with a shorter duration of nephropathy and severer tubular interstitial injury (P < 0.05). The mixed type of IgG subclass deposit on GBM was merely associated with higher levels of proteinuria, whereas the deposition on TBM was more associated with higher levels of proteinuria, lower levels of albumin, more KIM-1 positive area, and thicker TBM (P < 0.05). Survival analysis revealed that none of the pattern or the category of IgG subclass deposit was a risk factor or a renal outcome indicator.IgG subclass was selectively deposited along GBM and/or TBM in DN, and the mixed type of IgG subclass deposition on TBM had more clinical significance than the isotype and that on GBM. IgG subclass deposition is merely a manifestation or a consequence rather than a cause in DN.
Although driving fatigue has long been recognized as one of the leading causes of fatal accidents worldwide, the underlying neural mechanisms remain largely unknown that impedes the developments of automatic detection techniques. This study investigated the effects of driving fatigue on the reorganization of dynamic functional connectivity (FC) through our newly developed temporal brain network analysis framework. EEG data were recorded from 20 healthy subjects (male/female = 15/5, age = 22.2 ± 3.2 years) using a remote wireless cap with 24 channels. Temporal brain networks in the theta, alpha and beta were estimated using a sliding window approach and quantitatively compared between the most vigilant and fatigue states during a 90-min simulated driving experiment. Behaviorally, subjects demonstrated a salient driving fatigue effect as reflected by a monotonic increase of reaction time and speed variation. Furthermore, we found a significantly disintegrated spatiotemporal topology of dynamic FC as shown in reduced temporal global efficiency and increased temporal local efficiency at fatigue state. Specifically, we found localized changes of temporal closeness centrality mainly resided in the frontal and parietal areas. Finally, the changes of temporal network measures were associated with those of behavioral metrics. Our findings provide new insights into dynamic characteristics of functional connectivity during driving fatigue and demonstrate the potential for using temporal network metrics as reliable biomarkers for driving fatigue detection.
Evolved from the conventional Fourier decomposition based on a pre-defined basis, Adaptive Fourier decomposition (AFD) uses adaptive basis to achieve the fast energy convergence. This paper extends the AFD to the multi-channel case, which finds common adaptive basis across all channels. The proposed multi-channel AFD (MAFD) scheme includes the multi-channel core AFD for general signals and the multi-channel unwinding AFD for specific signals that have common inner functions. Owing to the merits of the original AFD, the MAFD can provide sparse joint time-frequency distribution by computing the transient time frequency distribution (TTFD) across channels. Simulations on synthetic and real-world signals demonstrate that the proposed scheme can find and apply the common adaptive basis with desired properties maintained by the AFD, showing high potentials in real-world applications.
The effect of snoring on the cardiovascular system is not well-known. In this study we analyzed the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) differences between light and heavy snorers. The experiments are done on the full-whole-night polysomnography (PSG) with ECG and audio channels from patient group (heavy snorer) and control group (light snorer), which are gender- and age-paired, totally 30 subjects. A feature Snoring Density (SND) of audio signal as classification criterion and HRV features are computed. Mann-Whitney statistical test and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification are done to see the correlation. The result of this study shows that snoring has close impact on the HRV features. This result can provide a deeper insight into the physiological understand of snoring.
Objective:To develop a disease-specific questionnaire to assess the quality of life in Chinese patients following coronary artery bypass grafting(CABG).Methods:A list of 76 items that can potentially influence the quality of life was administered to 274 patients following CABG.Factor analysis(Varimax rotation) was used to create the final questionnaire.Then the reliability and validity of the questionnaire were evaluated.Results:The final questionnaire regarding 31 items contains the following five dimensions:(1)Body pain,6 items,Cronbach's α=0.81;(2)Vitality,7 items,Cronbach's α=0.72;(3) Social function,4 items,Cronbach's α=0.87;(4)Physical capability,7 items,Cronbach's α=0.82;(5)Emotional health,7 items,Cronbach's α=0.84.All questions were constituted on a 5-point scale.0=not at all;1=a little bit;2=moderately;3=quite a bit;4=extremely.Conclusion:This is the first questionnaire,which has potential application as a measure for the quality of life of Chinese patients following coronary artery bypass grafting.
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