Detection, isolation, and characterization of a novel impurity from several folic acid products / 浙江大学学报（英文版）（B辑：生物医学和生物技术）

Folic acid belongs to the group of water-soluble B vitamins and naturally exists in multiple forms in a wide variety of foods such as legumes, vegetables, liver, and milk (Iyer and Tomar, 2009; Lyon et al., 2020). It is involved in many biochemical reactions critical for cell division, such as purine and pyrimidine biosynthesis, DNA/RNA biosynthesis, and amino acid metabolism (Iyer and Tomar, 2009). Mammals cannot synthesize folic acid and thus they must acquire it from food. Although folic acid is ubiquitous in foods, folic acid deficiency still often occurs due to various causes such as unhealthy diet (Hildebrand et al., 2021; Iimura et al., 2022), disease-related malabsorption (Arcot and Shrestha, 2005), medication-related depletion (Arcot and Shrestha, 2005), or vitamin B12 deficiency (Fishman et al., 2000). Folic acid deficiency has been associated with several health problems, such as anemia (Carmel, 2005; Bailey and Caudill, 2012), cancer (Duthie, 1999), cardiovascular diseases (Wald et al., 2002), neural tube defects in newborns (van der Put et al., 2001), neuropsychiatric dysfunction (Shea et al., 2002), depression (Falade et al., 2021), inflammatory diseases (Suzuki and Kunisawa, 2015; Jones et al., 2019), and eye diseases (Sijilmassi, 2019). To prevent folic acid deficiency, its daily intake (400 μg/d) has been recommended for adults in the European Union, and its increased intake (600 μg/d) is advised for women before and during pregnancy (FAO/WHO, 2002; IOM, 2004). The New Zealand government mandated the fortification of non-organic wheat flour with folic acid in July 2021, and the UK government mandated the fortification of non-wholemeal wheat flour with folic acid in September 2021 (Haggarty, 2021).

Comparison of the clinical features and therapeutics of COVID-19 in cardio-cerebrovascular disease (CCVD) and non-CCVD patients / 医学前沿

Cardio-cerebrovascular disease (CCVD) is a major comorbidity of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, the clinical characteristics and outcomes remain unclear. In this study, 102 cases of COVID-19 from January 22, 2020 to March 26, 2020 in Xixi Hospital of Hangzhou were included. Twenty cases had pre-existing CCVD. Results showed that compared with non-CCVD patients, those with CCVD are more likely to develop severe disease (15% versus 1%), and the proportion of pneumonia severity index grade IV was significantly higher (25% versus 3.6%). Computed tomography images demonstrated that the proportion of multiple lobe lesion involvement was significantly higher in the CCVD group than in the non-CCVD group (90% versus 63.4%). Compared with non-CCVD group, the levels of C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, D-dimer, and serum amyloid-A were higher, whereas the total protein and arterial partial PaO

Optimization of Performance of Toroidal Ion Trap with Triangular Electrode by Theoretical Simulation / 分析化学

The toroidal ion trap is an ideal candidate for miniaturized ion trap because it has much higher ion trapping capacity than a standard quadrupole ion trap of equal trapping dimensions. A novel toroidal ion trap mass analyzer with triangular electrode which contained a filament end cap, a detector endcap, an inner ring and an outer ring was reported. After designing and optimizing the electrodes by theoretical simulations, we found that the asymmetric triangle electrodes could reduce the affection from toroidal shape and improve the ion ejection rate and the mass resolution of the ion trap. The best design of the toroidal ion trap with a mass resolution of 1486 at m/z 609 was obtained.