Mendelian randomization suggests a causal relationship between gut microbiota and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in humans.

Targeting the gut microbiota is an emerging strategy to treat nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Nonetheless, the causal relationship between specific gut microbiota and NAFLD remains unclear. We first obtained genome-wide association study statistics on gut microbiota and NAFLD from publicly available databases. We then performed the Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to determine the potential causal relationship between the gut microbiota and NAFLD by 5 different methods, and conducted a series of sensitivity analyses to validate the robustness of the MR analysis results. Furthermore, we investigated the direction of causality by bidirectional MR analysis. For 211 gut microbiota, 2 MR methods confirmed that phylum Tenericutes, class Deltaproteobacteria and class Mollicutes were significantly associated with the risk of NAFLD. Heterogeneity (P > .05) and pleiotropy (P > .05) analyses validated the robustness of the MR results. There was no causal effect of NAFLD on these bacterial taxa in the reverse MR analysis. We identified specific gut microbiota with causal effects on NAFLD through gene prediction, which may provide useful guidance for targeting the gut microbiota to intervene and treat NAFLD.

Determination of Senegenin and Tenuifolin in Mouse Blood by Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry and Their Pharmacokinetics.

An ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method for the determination of senegenin and tenuifolin in mouse blood was developed. The pharmacokinetics of senegenin and tenuifolin in mice after intravenous (5 mg/kg) and oral (60 mg/kg) administration were studied, and the absolute bioavailability was calculated. A CORTECS T3 column was used, with a column temperature set at 40°C. The mobile phase was acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid. Gradient elution was adopted, using a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min and an elution time of 4 min. Quantitative analysis was performed using electrospray ionization (ESI) with multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) in negative ion mode. Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) mice were bled from the tail vein after intravenous or oral administration of senegenin and tenuifolin. A UPLC-MS/MS method was established to determine the blood concentrations of each drug in mice, and the noncompartmental model was used to fit the pharmacokinetic parameters. Senegenin and tenuifolin showed a good linear relationship (r > 0.995) within a concentration range of 5-400 ng/mL in mouse blood. The intraday precision was <12%, the interday precision was <14%, and the accuracy was 87-109%. The recovery was >88%, and the matrix effect was 87-94%. The oral bioavailability of senegenin and tenuifolin in mice was 8.7% and 4.0%, respectively. The established UPLC-MS/MS method is suitable for pharmacokinetic studies of senegenin and tenuifolin in mice.

Novel Ternary Heterogeneous Reduction Graphene Oxide (RGO)/BiOCl/TiO2 Nanocomposites for Enhanced Adsorption and Visible-Light Induced Photocatalytic Activity toward Organic Contaminants.

Herein, we describe a simple and cost-effective design for the fabrication of a novel ternary RGO/BiOCl/TiO2 nanocomposites through a simple hydrothermal process. The prepared nanocomposites were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis DRS) and N2 adsorption-desorption analysis. Organic contaminants-such as methylene blue (MB), methyl orange (MO), rhodamine B (RhB) and amido black-10B (AB-10B)-were employed as the target pollutants to evaluate the adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity of RGO/BiOCl/TiO2 nanocomposites. From experimental data, it was also found that the amount of TiO2 impressed the photocatalytic performance, and the nanocomposites with 10% of TiO2 showed the best photocatalytic activity. The improved photocatalytic performance may be mainly due to the narrow band gap, and the charge separation and migration of RGO. Moreover, good recyclability was obtained from RGO/BiOCl/TiO2 nanocomposites, and scavenger tests indicated that photogenerated holes were the main active species in the reaction system. Therefore, the prepared RGO/BiOCl/TiO2 nanocomposites have broad applications foreground in pollutants purification.

Tough, stretchable and compressive alginate-based hydrogels achieved by non-covalent interactions.

In this study, two alginate-based hydrogels with good mechanical strength, toughness and resilience were synthesized by hydrophobic interaction and coordination bonding. Sodium alginate/poly(acrylamide) semi-interpenetrating network (NaAlg/PAM semi-IPN) hydrogels were first synthesized through the micelle copolymerization of acrylamide and stearyl methacrylate in the presence of sodium alginate, then calcium alginate/poly(acrylamide) double network (CaAlg/PAM DN) hydrogels were prepared by immersing the as-prepared NaAlg/PAM semi-IPN hydrogels in a CaCl2 solution. FT-IR and XPS results revealed NaAlg/PAM semi-IPN hydrogels and CaAlg/PAM DN hydrogels were successfully synthesized through non-covalent interactions. The tensile strength of CaAlg/PAM DN hydrogels could reach 733.6 kPa, and their compressive strengths at 80% strain are significantly higher than those of the corresponding NaAlg/PAM semi-IPN hydrogels, which is attributed to the alginate network crosslinked by Ca2+. The dual physically crosslinked CaAlg/PAM DN hydrogels can achieve fast self-recovery, and good fatigue resistance, which is mainly assigned to energy dissipation through dynamic reversible non-covalent interactions in both networks. The self-healing ability, swelling behavior and morphology of the synthesized alginate-based hydrogels were also evaluated. This study offers a new avenue to design and construct hydrogels with high mechanical strength, high toughness and fast self-recovery properties, which broadens the current research and application of hydrogels.