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Objective For the system of two single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) placed in parallel onto a cell membrane, effects of the interaction between carbon nanotubes on wrapping manner of carbon tubes by the membrane were investigated, and the energy-optimized configurations were obtained. Methods A physical model for membrane-wrapped CNTs considering the interaction between two CNTs, and parameters describing the morphology of cell membrane and positions of CNTs were introduced. The Helfrich model based on continuum mechanics was used to calculate the membrane’s bending energy and the Lennard-Jones potential was introduced to describe the interaction between CNTs. Free energy of the system at different distances of NTs was calculated by the look-up table method, and the typical configurations of the membrane-wrapped CNTs was obtained. Results Compared with the case wherein the interaction between CNTs was not considered, the free energy profile of the system significantly changed. Deep well appeared on energy curve, when the distance between CNTs of carbon was 0.3 times of the tube diameter; as the distance between CNTs increased, the energy returned to the case wherein the interaction between CNTs was not considered. Conclusions With introduction of the interaction between CNTs, the wrapping manner of CNTs by the cell membrane changed, and the two CNTs tended to contact during their endocytosis. These results provide theoretical references for understanding and developing novel nanotube-based system for drug delivery.
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Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is a disorder of calcium metabolism, which is characterized by elevated blood calcium and PTH urine calcium, which is easy to involve multiple systems. The disease is mainly caused by a benign adenoma of parathyroid tissue, a few of which are parathyroid hyperplasia or parathyroid adenocarcinoma. As awareness of physical examination increased, the proportion of asymptomatic PHPT patients gradually increased. The disease can be cured by surgical resection of the parathyroid gland, most of which is a real good prognosis, but a few of them are complex and difficult to diagnose and treat. At present, there continue to be many controversies about the diagnosis and treatment of PHPT.This article is a review of the progress in the diagnosis and treatment of PHPT.
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Background@#and Purpose Patients with aortic disease might have an increased risk of intracranial aneurysm (IA). We conducted this research to assess the prevalence of IA in patients with aortopathy, considering the impact of gender, age, and cardiovascular risk factors. @*Methods@#We searched PubMed and Scopus from inception to August 2019 for epidemiological studies reporting the prevalence of IA in patients with aortopathy. Random-effect meta-analyses were performed to calculate the overall prevalence, and the effect of risk factors on the prevalence was also evaluated. Anatomical location of IAs in patients suffered from distinct aortic disease was extracted and further analyzed. @*Results@#Thirteen cross-sectional studies involving 4,041 participants were included in this systematic review. We reported an estimated prevalence of 12% (95% confidence interval [CI], 9% to 14%) of IA in patients with aortopathy. The pooled prevalence of IA in patients with bicuspid aortic valve, coarctation of the aorta, aortic aneurysm, and aortic dissection was 8% (95% CI, 6% to 10%), 10% (95% CI, 7% to 14%), 12% (95% CI, 9% to 15%), and 23% (95% CI, 12% to 34%), respectively. Gender (female) and smoking are risk factors related to an increased risk of IA. The anatomical distribution of IAs was heterogeneously between participants with different aortic disease. @*Conclusions@#According to current epidemiological evidence, the prevalence of IA in patients with aortic disease is quadrupled compared to that in the general population, which suggests that an early IA screening should be considered among patients with aortic disease for timely diagnosis and treatment of IA.
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Clustering is a prevalent analytical means to analyze single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data but the rapidly expanding data volume can make this process computationally challenging. New methods for both accurate and efficient clustering are of pressing need. Here we proposed Spearman subsampling-clustering-classification (SSCC), a new clustering framework based on random projection and feature construction, for large-scale scRNA-seq data. SSCC greatly improves clustering accuracy, robustness, and computational efficacy for various state-of-the-art algorithms benchmarked on multiple real datasets. On a dataset with 68,578 human blood cells, SSCC achieved 20% improvement for clustering accuracy and 50-fold acceleration, but only consumed 66% memory usage, compared to the widelyused software package SC3. Compared to k-means, the accuracy improvement of SSCC can reach 3-fold. An R implementation of SSCC is available at https://github.com/Japrin/sscClust.
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Animals , Humans , Mice , Algorithms , Cluster Analysis , Computational Biology , Methods , Databases as Topic , Gene Expression Profiling , Methods , Sequence Analysis, RNA , Single-Cell Analysis , Software , Statistics, NonparametricABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the interaction between traditional Chinese medicine syndromes of patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) and the primary pathogenesis of CHF, so as to grasp the distribution regularity of TCM syndrome caused by different primary diseases and provide reference for better intervention of CHF. Methods A total of 580 patients with CHF were included in the clinical cross-sectional study. The baseline data of the patients, the primary disease and the four diagnosis information of TCM were collected. The syndromes of TCM were judged and the logistic regression method was used to analyze the correlation of CHF and the distribution of syndromes. Results Analysis of TCM Syndromes of CHF showed that the main syndromes were Qi deficiency syndrome, blood stasis syndrome, water retention syndrome, yin deficiency syndrome, phlegm syndrome, and yang deficiency syndrome. Further analysis showed that the above causes of CHF were related to the distribution of TCM syndromes. When coronary heart disease is the primary disease, blood stasis syndrome, yang deficiency syndrome, and yin deficiency syndrome are related to the occurrence of CHF (χ2 values are 0.480, 4.445, 0.192, P<0.05). When hypertension is the primary disease, blood stasis syndrome and phlegm syndrome are related to the occurrence of CHF (χ2 values are 12.344, 10.990, P<0.05); dilated cardiomyopathy is the primary disease, blood stasis syndrome and yang deficiency syndrome and chronic heart failure It is related (χ2=5.222, 3.456, P<0.05). Conclusions The distribution patterns of TCM Syndromes of CHF caused by different primary diseases were different, which was related to the pathogenesis of CHF. It is of great significance for better application of traditional Chinese medicine CHF syndrome differentiation during treatment, so as to form optimal treatment to reduce re-admitted into hospitalization rate and mortality in patients with CHF.
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Objective To investigate the assessed value of tumor-associated macrophages ( TAMs ) and KIT expression for liver metastasis in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs) and patients′outcome. Methods A total of 79 patients who underwent surgical resection and pathologically diagnosed as PNETs in the Department of Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery in Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital from January 1995 to May 2015 were enrolled.The immunohistochemical staining of CD68 and KIT were detected and the correlations with clinicopathological factors were analyzed.Results Of 79 PNETs cases, CD68 and KIT in tumor tissue were overexpressed in 30(38%) and 35(44.3%) cases, respectively.CD68 overexpression was associated with tumor infiltration ( P<0.001 ), AJCC stage 7 ( P<0.001 ), liver metastasis ( P<0.001 ) and early recurrence (P=0.019).Patients with low CD68 level had significantly better survival than those with high CD68 expression ( P=0.0002 ).KIT overexpression was correlated with WHO 2010 and AJCC stage 7 (P<0.001;P=0.002), nonfunctional status of the tumor (P=0.002) and liver metastasis (P=0.026). The survival period of patients with low KIT expression was greatly longer than those with high KIT level (P=0.0013).CD68 and KIT co-overexpression was observed in patients with tumor invasion (P<0.001), advanced WHO and AJCC stage (both P<0.001) and better prognostic survival (P=0.0057).Multivariate analysis showed that CD68 overexpression (HR:2.9;95%CI:1.16~7.23;P=0.033) was an independent prognostic factor for PNETs.Conclusions CD68 and KIT overexpression is correlated with advanced disease stage, higher risk for liver metastasis and worse survival.CD68 is an independent prognostic factor for PNETs.
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<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study the correlation between various complications of chronic heart failure (CHF) patients and Chinese medical syndromes, thus indicating distribution laws of Chinese medical syndromes in various complications of CHF patients.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Chinese medical syndrome typing was performed in 630 CHF patients by cross-sectional study of the demographic data, history of present diseases, related information on Chinese medical four diagnostic methods, and the distribution of complications. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine the correlation of various complications of CHF patients and Chinese medical syndromes.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>In this study, recruited were common complications such as hypertension, diabetes, arrhythmia, hyperlipemia, and cerebral vascular accident, and so on. Main syndromes were sequenced as qi deficiency syndrome, blood stasis syndrome, water retention syndrome, yin deficiency syndrome, phlegm turbid syndrome, yang deficiency syndrome. Results of Logistic regression analysis indicated that correlation existed between common complications and Chinese medical syndromes. In CHF complicated hypertension patients, Logistic regression analysis showed qi deficiency syndrome and yang deficiency syndrome were negatively correlated with hypertension (P < 0.05). In CHF complicated diabetes patients, Logistic regression analysis showed phlegm turbid syndrome and water retention syndrome were positively correlated with diabetes (P < 0.05). In CHF complicated arrhythmia patients, there was no statistical difference in the distribution of each syndrome (P > 0.05). In CHF complicated hyperlipemia patients, Logistic regression analysis showed qi deficiency syndrome and water retention syndrome were negatively correlated with hyperlipemia (P < 0.05), while blood stasis syndrome, yin deficiency syndrome, and phlegm turbid syndrome were positively correlated with hyperlipemia (P < 0.01). In CHF complicated cerebral vascular accident patients, Logistic regression analysis showed qi deficiency syndrome and yang deficiency syndrome were negatively correlated with cerebral vascular accident (P < 0.01, P < 0.05).</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>There existed certain correlations between complications of CHF and the distribution of main Chinese medical syndromes. It could be used as guidance for treating CHF and its various complications by Chinese medicine and pharmacy.</p>