ABSTRACT
Caduet, also known as amlodipine besylate and atorvastatin calcium (AM + AT) tablet, can improve cardiac and vascular remodeling in patients with spontaneous hypertension (SH), but the underlying mechanism remains unknown. The present study aimed to explore whether AM + AT improved hypertensive left ventricular and thoracic aortic remodeling by regulating connexin 43 (Cx43) phosphorylation. A total of 32 male spontaneous hypertension model rats (SHR) were randomly divided into four groups: SHR control group, amlodipine-alone group (SHR-AM), atorvastatin-alone (SHR-AT) and AM + AT group (SHR-AM + AT); 8 Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats with normal blood pressure were used as the normal control. Drugs were orally administered for 8 weeks; subsequently, body weight, heart rate (HR), left ventricular mass index (LVMI), blood pressure (BP), plasma lipid levels and morphological changes of myocardial tissue in each group were analyzed. The expression of total (T)-Cx43 and phosphorylated (P)-Cx43 protein in the left ventricular and thoracic aortic tissues was determined using western blotting and immunofluorescence double labeling. The results revealed that AM + AT significantly decreased LVMI and cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area compared with SHR-AM and SHR-AT group. The western blotting results demonstrated that AM + AT could inhibit the expression of T-Cx43 protein, but increased the expression of P-Cx43 in the left ventricular and thoracic aorta. Moreover, immunofluorescence results indicated AM + AT could also decrease the expression T-Cx43, and increase that of P-Cx43 in the left ventricular and thoracic aorta compared with AM and AT alone. Therefore, it was concluded that AM + AT may mitigate left ventricular and thoracic aorta remodeling in SH rats by enhancing Cx43 phosphorylation, and the efficacy of AM + AT was superior to that of AM and AT alone.
ABSTRACT
Goose down and duck down have very similar appearance but the quality of goose down is better than that of duck down in general. There is a highest allowable limit as specified by the various national standards of feather and down for the percentage of duck feather or down mixed in goose feather or down. Traditional detection method, manual inspection with a high-scale microscope, is labor intensive and not suitable for large-volume samples analysis and on-site rapid testing. In the present paper, visible/near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with successive projection algorithm (SPA) for characteristic wavelengths selection was used to determinate the content of duck down mixed in goose down. In the range of 450-930 nm, the multiple linear regression (MLR) model established with the 8 characteristic wavelengths selected by SPA achieved good prediction, the correlation coefficient of 0.983, root mean square error of calibration (RMSEC) of 5.44%, and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of 5.75%. Therefore, it is expected to be used for rapid detection of feather and down quality in future.
