Immunogenicity and safety of quadrivalent influenza vaccine among young and older adults in Tianjin, China: implication of immunosenescence as a risk factor.

BACKGROUND: Older adults are more vulnerable to seasonal influenza than younger adults. The immune responses of older persons to the influenza vaccine are usually poorer than those of young individuals, which is hypothesized due to immunosenescence. We conducted a study to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of a quadrivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV4) in a total of 167 young (< 65 years, n = 79) and older (≥ 65 years, n = 88) adults from October 2021 to March 2022 in Tianjin, China. A single dose was administered to all participants. Blood samples were collected and strain-specific hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) antibody titers were measured before and 21 to 28 days after vaccination. Safety information was also collected for 28 days and 6 months after vaccination. Differences in immunogenicity and safety were compared between young and old age groups, and multivariate logistic regression was used to estimate the effect of age and other factors on HAI antibody responses. RESULTS: Overall, geometric mean titers (GMTs) against all four vaccine strains in older adults were lower than those in the young, whereas the seroconversion rates (SCRs) were similar. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that age, influenza vaccination history, and pre-vaccination HAI titers were independent factors affecting SCRs and seroprotection rates (SCRs). Older age had significant negative impact on SCRs against H1N1 (OR, 0.971; 95% CI: 0.944-0.999; P = 0.042) and B/Victoria (OR, 0.964; 95% CI: 0.937-0.992; P = 0.011). In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between chronological age (years) and post-vaccination HAI titers against H1N1 (rho = -0.2298, P < 0.0001), B/Victoria (rho = -0.2235, P = 0.0037), and B/Yamagata (rho = -0.3689, P < 0.0001). All adverse events were mild (grade 1 or grade 2) that occurred within 28 days after vaccination, and no serious adverse event was observed. CONCLUSIONS: IIV4 is immunogenic and well-tolerated in young and older adults living in Tianjin, China. Our findings also indicate that age is an independent factor associated with poorer humoral immune responses to IIV4.

PlaASDB: a comprehensive database of plant alternative splicing events in response to stress.

BACKGROUND: Alternative splicing (AS) is a co-transcriptional regulatory mechanism of plants in response to environmental stress. However, the role of AS in biotic and abiotic stress responses remains largely unknown. To speed up our understanding of plant AS patterns under different stress responses, development of informative and comprehensive plant AS databases is highly demanded. DESCRIPTION: In this study, we first collected 3,255 RNA-seq data under biotic and abiotic stresses from two important model plants (Arabidopsis and rice). Then, we conducted AS event detection and gene expression analysis, and established a user-friendly plant AS database termed PlaASDB. By using representative samples from this highly integrated database resource, we compared AS patterns between Arabidopsis and rice under abiotic and biotic stresses, and further investigated the corresponding difference between AS and gene expression. Specifically, we found that differentially spliced genes (DSGs) and differentially expressed genes (DEG) share very limited overlapping under all kinds of stresses, suggesting that gene expression regulation and AS seemed to play independent roles in response to stresses. Compared with gene expression, Arabidopsis and rice were more inclined to have conserved AS patterns under stress conditions. CONCLUSION: PlaASDB is a comprehensive plant-specific AS database that mainly integrates the AS and gene expression data of Arabidopsis and rice in stress response. Through large-scale comparative analyses, the global landscape of AS events in Arabidopsis and rice was observed. We believe that PlaASDB could help researchers understand the regulatory mechanisms of AS in plants under stresses more conveniently. PlaASDB is freely accessible at http://zzdlab.com/PlaASDB/ASDB/index.html .

ASTool: An Easy-to-Use Tool to Accurately Identify Alternative Splicing Events from Plant RNA-Seq Data.

Alternative splicing (AS) is an essential co-transcriptional regulatory mechanism in eukaryotes. The accumulation of plant RNA-Seq data provides an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the global landscape of plant AS events. However, most existing AS identification tools were originally designed for animals, and their performance in plants was not rigorously benchmarked. In this work, we developed a simple and easy-to-use bioinformatics tool named ASTool for detecting AS events from plant RNA-Seq data. As an exon-based method, ASTool can detect 4 major AS types, including intron retention (IR), exon skipping (ES), alternative 5' splice sites (A5SS), and alternative 3' splice sites (A3SS). Compared with existing tools, ASTool revealed a favorable performance when tested in simulated RNA-Seq data, with both recall and precision values exceeding 95% in most cases. Moreover, ASTool also showed a competitive computational speed and consistent detection results with existing tools when tested in simulated or real plant RNA-Seq data. Considering that IR is the most predominant AS type in plants, ASTool allowed the detection and visualization of novel IR events based on known splice sites. To fully present the functionality of ASTool, we also provided an application example of ASTool in processing real RNA-Seq data of Arabidopsis in response to heat stress.

Short-term effects of outdoor air pollution on acute ischaemic stroke occurrence: a case-crossover study in Tianjin, China.

OBJECTIVE: Ambient air pollution is associated with ischaemic stroke incidence. However, most of the previous studies used stroke-related hospital admission rather than stroke onset itself. This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between ambient air pollutant exposures and acute ischaemic stroke based on the timing of symptom onset. METHODS: A time-stratified, case-crossover analysis was performed among 520 patients who had ischaemic stroke admitted to the Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University (Tianjin, China) between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019 (365 days). Daily air pollutant concentrations of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter 2.5 µm, particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter 10 µm (PM10), sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone were obtained from fixed-site monitoring stations. We used conditional logistic regression to estimate OR and 95% CI corresponding to an increase in IQR of each air pollutant after adjusting for the effects of temperature and relative humidity. RESULTS: Overall, a higher risk of ischaemic stroke was found between April and September. During this period PM10 was associated with an increased risk of ischaemic stroke (1-day lag: OR=1.49, 95% CI 1.09 to 2.02; 3-day mean: OR=1.58, 95% CI 1.09 to 2.29) among patients between 34 and 70 years old. Positive associations were also observed between PM10 (1-day lag: OR=1.51, 95% CI 1.10 to 2.07; 3-day mean: OR=1.57, 95% CI 1.08 to 2.29), ozone (1-day lag: OR=1.83, 95% CI 1.16 to 2.87; 3-day mean: OR=1.90, 95% CI 1.06 to 3.42) and ischaemic stroke occurrence among those with hyperlipidaemia. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that air pollution is associated with a higher risk of ischaemic stroke in younger people or people with hyperlipidemia. These findings still need to be further investigated.

The comparison of cognitive function and risk of dementia in CKD patients under peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis: A PRISMA-compliant systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUNDS: Cognitive functions (CF) decline has been reported in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. However, the influence of dialysis modalities on CF has not been investigated systematically. METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane library and unpublished database Clinicaltrials.gov to identify the studies comparing the cognitive functions or risk of dementia between hemodialysis (HD) and peritoneal dialysis (PD). After data extraction, quality of studies was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed. RESULTS: After study inclusion, totally 15 cohort or cross-sectional studies were included, comparing the cognitive functions using neuropsychological tests and covering the executive function, memory, orientation, attention, etc. By qualitative analysis, it showed that more studies are inclined to PD compared with HD with better cognitive functions. By quantitative analysis, it showed that PD showed better performance in the tests of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), stroop interference test and exhibited lower risk of dementia compared with HD. CONCLUSIONS: In this meta-analysis, we draw preliminary conclusion that patients treated with PD had better cognitive functions and lower dementia risk compared with patients with HD. Still more large-scale and well-conducted prospective cohort studies are needed to draw more convincing conclusions.

Effects of atorvastatin and/or probucol on recovery of atherosclerosis in high-fat-diet-fed apolipoprotein E-deficient mice.

INTRODUCTION: We have investigated the possible effects and mechanism of atorvastatin, a statin, and/or probucol, a powerful antioxidant used to lower cholesterol before 1995, on the atherosclerosis development. METHODS: Apolipoprotein-E-deficient (ApoE-/-) mice fed with the high fat diet were randomly divided into 3 groups (n = 10/each group): Placebo, Atorvastatin (10 mg/ kg/d), and atorvastatin (10 mg/kg/d) plus probucol (10 mg/kg/d) groups. C57BL/6 J mice were fed with normal diet as the control group (n = 10). Animals were sacrificed 10 weeks after the intervention. To evaluate the experimental atherosclerosis, blood tests were used for measuring serum lipoprotein profile, Western blots for endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress protein expression, H&E staining for plaque lesions, immunohistology for macrophages, inflammatory cytokines, innate immune receptor TLR-4, transcription factor NF-κB, and atherosclerosis plaques. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, ApoE-/- mice in the placebo group showed with the significantly (p < 0.05) higher levels of serum total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) and oxidized low density lipoprotein (ox-LDL), PERK, GRP78, CHOP, IL-1ß, TNF-α and NF-κB, but with the lower levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) and TLR-4, and also the increase in macrophages and the aortic media collagen, and the decrease in the elastic fibers (p < 0.01). Treatment with atorvastatin recovered all these features (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) near to the levels in the control group. In addition, the combination of atorvastatin and probucol has shown the slightly stronger effect than the use of atorvastatin alone without statistical significances when comparing most bio-markers of atherosclerosis, but with significant differences in the reduction of the plaque lesion areas and macrophages (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Atorvastatin and/or probucol suppresses ER stress and increase the level of TLR-4, which lowers NF-κB, resulting in the recovery of atherosclerosis in the ApoE-/- mouse model.

Relationship between health literacy of primary school teachers and health behavior of students in Baoji city / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To understand the current situation and the relationship between the health literacy of primary school teachers and health behavior literacy of students, and to provide some inspiration for the reform of health promotion and education in school.@*Methods@#Twelve primary schools were selected from Jintai district, Chencang district and Long county，and we used stratified cluster random sampling method to choose 334 primary school teachers and 622 students of grade 4 and 6 to fill out the questionnaire.@*Results@#Nearly 46.71% of all the teachers had adequate health literacy. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that the urban and rural (OR=2.30, 95%CI=1.30-4.07) and gender (OR=2.62, 95%CI=1.36-5.05) were statistically significant for the health literacy among teachers; Adequate health behavior literacy was found in 46.78% of all the students，multivariate Logistic regression analysis also showed the urban and rural (OR=2.07, 95%CI=1.33-3.24）and mother’s education (OR=2.01-2.41, 95%CI=1.25-4.76) were statistically significant. Spearman correlation coefficient between health literacy of the teachers and students was(r=0.69, P<0.05).@*Conclusion@#The relation between health literacy of the teachers and students is positive. To improve the health literacy of primary school students, health literacy of primary school teachers should be improved first in China.

Characteristic antioxidant activity and comprehensive flavor compound profile of scallop (Chlamys farreri) mantle hydrolysates-ribose Maillard reaction products.

The objective of the present study was to improve the utilization of scallop (Chlamys farreri) byproducts by using Maillard reaction. Scallop mantle hydrolysates (SMHs) were prepared using neutrase then reacted with ribose. Thirty-four peptides were identified from SMHs by UPLC-Q-TOF-MS, and the abundance of Asp and Lys suggested the strong Maillard reactivity. The formation of Schiff's base as well as modification of amide I, II and III bands in Maillard reaction products (MRPs) was confirmed by ultraviolet-visible, fluorescence, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Thirty volatile compounds were produced by the reaction of SMHs with ribose. Moreover, MRPs with enhanced radical scavenging and anti-linoleic acid peroxidation activities over SMHs promoted the survival and reduced the DNA damage of HepG2 cells treated with hydrogen peroxide. These results suggest that SMHs-ribose MRPs can be potentially used as food antioxidant for suppressing of lipid oxidation or protecting of cell from oxidative damage.

Overexpression of an EIN3-binding F-box protein2-like gene caused elongated fruit shape and delayed fruit development and ripening in tomato.

Ethylene signaling converges on the ETHYLENE-INSENSITIVE3 (EIN3)/EIN3-like (EIL) transcription factors to regulate a wide range of developmental processes in plants. EBF1/2 (EIN3-binding F-box protein 1 and 2) negatively regulate the ethylene signaling pathway by mediating the degradation of EIN3/EIL proteins. We uncovered previously that SlEBF1 and SlEBF2 are involved in ethylene response, plant senescence, and fruit ripening in tomato. The present study reports on the identification of a novel tomato F-box gene, designated as SlEBF2-like due that its encoded protein is greater similarity to SlEBF2. The SlEBF2-like promoter region contains three ethylene-response elements (EREs). SlEBF2-like is upregulated by ethylene and downregulated by ethylene inhibitors in tomato seedlings. It is dynamically expressed in flowers during bud-to-anthesis and anthesis-to-post-anthesis transitions, and at the onset of fruit ripening, suggesting its role in these situations where ethylene is required for flower opening and fruit ripening. SlEBF2-like overexpression leaded to fruit elongation, caused ripening and color change to start from fruit bottom and expand gradually to the pedicel, and strongly delayed fruit development and ripening in tomato. Our study indicates that the novel EBF gene, SlEBF2-like, is involved in fruit development and ripening via regulating the ethylene response in tomato.

Nicotine increases apoptosis in HUVECs cultured in high glucose/high fat via Akt ubiquitination and degradation.

It is well-documented that nicotine, the main active ingredient in cigarettes, results in endothelial cell injury in numerous diseases. However, whether nicotine plays a crucial role in endothelial cell injury in diabetes and the exact molecular mechanism that mediates this process have not been fully elucidated. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of nicotine on endothelial cell injury in diabetes and the specific molecular mechanism by which it plays a role. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were incubated in HG/HF media and treated with nicotine, PYR-41 (a selective ubiquitin E1 inhibitor), Akt-overexpressing adenovirus, or TTC3 and MUL1 shRNA adenovirus. Cell viability was subsequently detected by the CCK8 assay, and apoptosis was examined by caspase-3 cleavage and activity analysis. Compared to the HG/HF incubated group, nicotine incubation significantly decreased cell survival and increased apoptosis. Moreover, nicotine induced Akt degradation via UPS, and Akt overexpression blocked nicotine-induced apoptosis in HUVECs cultured in HG/HF media. Furthermore, the TTC3 and MUL1 shRNA adenovirus dramatically decreased the Akt ubiquitination and apoptosis induced by nicotine. These results indicate that nicotine-induced Akt ubiquitination and degradation occurs through TTC3 and MUL1 and results in a dramatic increase in apoptosis in HUVECs cultured in HG/HF media.