The role of wearable home blood pressure monitoring in detecting out-of-office control status.

Ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) and home blood pressure (HBP) monitoring is currently recommended for management of hypertension. Nonetheless, traditional HBP protocols could overlook diurnal fluctuations, which could also be linked with adverse cardiovascular outcomes. In this observational study, we studied among a group of treated hypertensive patients (N = 62, age: 52.4 ± 10.4 years) by using out-of-office ABP and wearable HBP. They received one session of 24-h ABP measurement with an oscillometric upper-arm monitor, and totally three sessions of 7-day/6-time-daily wearable HBP measurement separated in each month with HeartGuide. Controlled hypertension is defined as an average BP <130/80 mmHg for both daytime ABP and HBP. There was substantial reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC 0.883-0.911) and good reproducibility (Cohen's kappa = 0.600) for wearable HBP measurement, especially before breakfast and after dinner. Among all patients, 27.4% had both uncontrolled HBP and ABP, 30.6% had uncontrolled HBP only, while 6.5% had uncontrolled ABP only. Female gender and increased numbers of anti-hypertensive agents are correlated with controlled hypertension. Patients with uncontrolled hypertension had a significantly higher maximal daytime blood pressure, which was previously signified as an imperial marker for cardiovascular risk. In conclusion, wearable HBP monitoring in accordance with a dedicated daily-living schedule results in good reliability and reproducibility. Patients with an uncontrolled wearable HBP should benefit from repeated HBP or ABP measurement for risk stratification.

Encapsulating curcumin in ethylene diamine-ß-cyclodextrin nanoparticle improves topical cornea delivery.

Curcumin is a powerful scavenger of reactive oxygen species and could prevent the corneal cells from oxidative damage. However, the clinical efficacy of curcumin is limited by its low aqueous solubility and stability, leading to poor bioavailability. ß-cyclodextrin, with a hydrophilic surface and a hydrophobic cavity and self-assembling properties, can form inclusion complexes with lipophilic drugs such as curcumin for ocular delivery. We synthesized ethylene diamine (EDA)-modified ß-cyclodextrin and prepared the curcumin complexation using the solvent evaporation method. The EDA-ß-cyclodextrin provided a better thermodynamic stability and higher complex yield for curcumin complexes, compared to ß-cyclodextrin, which were demonstrated on the analysis of their van't Hoff plots and phase solubility diagrams. We characterized EDA-ß-cyclodextrin curcumin nanoparticles and determined that the EDA modified ß-cyclodextrin is a more suitable carrier than parental ß-cyclodextrin, using FT-IR, XRD, TEM, and analyses of solubility and storage stability. In addition, the curcumin-EDA-ß-cyclodextrin nanoparticles had better in vitro corneal penetration and 3 -h cumulative flux in a porcine cornea experiment, and displayed an improved biocompatibility, confirmed by the histological examination of porcine corneas and cell viability of bovine corneal epithelial cells. These results together revealed a role of EDA modification in the ß-cyclodextrin carrier, including the improvement of curcumin complex formation, thermodynamic properties, cytotoxicity, and the in vitro corneal penetration. The EDA-ß-cyclodextrin inclusion can provide curcumin a higher degree of aqueous solubility and corneal permeability.

A Decision Tree Based Classifier to Analyze Human Ovarian Cancer cDNA Microarray Datasets.

Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynaecological disease because of the high mortality rate and there is no any symptom in cancer early stage. It was often the terminal cancer period when patients were diagnosed with ovarian cancer and thus delays a good opportunity of treatment. The current common method for detecting ovarian cancer is blood testing for analyzing the tumor marker CA-125 of serum. However, specificity and sensitivity of CA-125 are insufficient for early detection. Therefore, it has become an urgent issue to look for an efficient method which precisely detects the tumor markers for ovarian cancer. This study aims to find the target genes of ovarian cancer by different algorithms of information science. Feature selection and decision tree were applied to analyze 9600 ovarian cancer-related genes. After screening the target genes, candidate genes will be analyzed by Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) software to create a genetic pathway model and to understand the interactive relationship in the different pathological stages of ovarian cancer. Finally, this research found 9 oncogenes associated with ovarian cancer and some genes had not been discovered in previous studies. This system will assist medical staffs in diagnosis and treatment at cancer early stage and improve the patient's survival.