Anti-bacterial mechanism of baicalin-tobramycin combination on carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

BACKGROUND: Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) is an important cause of nosocomial infections, and contributes to high morbidity and mortality, especially in intensive care units. P. aeruginosa is considered a 'critical' category bacterial pathogen by the World Health Organization to encourage an urgent need for research and development of new antibiotics against its infections. AIM: To investigate the effectiveness of baicalin combined with tobramycin therapy as a potential treatment method for carbapenem-resistant P. aeruginosa (CRPA) infections. METHODS: Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and RT-PCR were used to detect the expression levels of drug-resistant genes (including VIM, IMP and OprD2) and biofilm-related genes (including algD, pslA and lasR) in CRPA that confer resistance to tobramycin, baicalin and tobramycin combined with baicalin (0, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and 1MIC). RESULTS: There was a correlation between biofilm formation and the expression of biofilm-related genes. In addition, VIM, IMP, OprD2, algD, pslA and lasR that confer biofilm production under different concentrations in CRPA were significantly correlated. The synergistic effect of baicalin combined with tobramycin was a significant down-regulation of VIM, IMP, algD, pslA and lasR. CONCLUSION: Baicalin combined with tobramycin therapy can be an effective treatment method for patients with CRPA infection.

Occurrence and ecological risk assessment of 16 phthalates in surface water of the mainstream of the Yangtze River, China.

Phthalic acid esters (PAEs), a class of typical endocrine disruptors, have received considerable attention due to their widespread applications and adverse effects on biological health. In this study, 30 water samples, along the mainstream of the Yangtze River (YR), were collected from Chongqing (upper stream) to Shanghai (estuary) from May to June in 2019. The total concentrations of 16 targeted PAEs ranged from 0.437 to 20.5 µg/L, with an average of 1.93 µg/L, where dibutyl phthalate (DBP, 0.222-20.2 µg/L), bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP, 0.254-7.03 µg/L), and diisobutyl phthalate (DIBP, 0.0645-0.621 µg/L) were the most abundant PAEs. According to the pollution level in the YR to assess the ecological risk posed by PAEs, the results showed medium risk level of PAEs in the YR, among which DBP and DEHP posed a high ecological risk to aquatic organisms. The optimal solution for DBP and DEHP is found in ten fitting curves. The PNECSSD of them is 2.50 µg/L and 0.34 µg/L, respectively.

[Inhibition Effect of Eriodictyol to Growth of DG-75 Cells and the Related Action Mechanism].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the effects of Eriodictyol to the growth, apoptosis and oxidative stress of Burkitt lymphoma (BL) cells and phosphorylation of protein kinase B (AKT) in children. METHODS: The effects of Eriodictyol (0, 1.25, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320 µmol/L) to viability of BL cell line DG-75 cells were detected by CCK-8. The effects of Eriodictyol (0, 10, 20, 40 µmol/L) to the proliferation activity of DG-75, apoptosis rate, levels of apoptosis-related proteins, oxidative stress indexes ï¼»superoxide dismutase (SOD), malondialdehyde (MDA)ï¼½, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and phosphorylation level of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT/mammalian target of rapamycinm (mTOR) were detected by clony formation assay and Wester blot. RESULTS: When the treatment concentration of Eriodictyol was 20 µmol/L, the proliferation activity of the cells was decreased (P<0.05). The concentrations at 10, 20, 40 µmol/L were selected for subsequent experiments. Compared with 0 µmol/L Eriodictyol, the proliferation activity of DG-75, SOD activity, MMP, phosphorylation levels of PI3K, AKT and mTOR in 20 and 40 µmol/L Eriodictyol treatment groups were significantly decreased (P<0.05), while cells apoptosis rate, Cleaved-Caspase-3/Caspase-3, Bax/Bcl-2 and MDA level were significantly increased (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: Eriodictyol may promote the mitochondrial apoptosis pathway by inhibiting the abnormal activation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR to reduce the proliferation activity of DG-75, and inhibit oxidative stress response to increase the apoptosis rate and play anti-tumor roles.

Does Social Medical Insurance Achieve a Poverty Reduction Effect in China?

This paper aims to explore the impact of social medical insurance (SMI) on poverty reduction (PR) in China. Considering the time-varying characteristics of factors, this paper uses the bootstrap Granger full sample causality and subsample rolling window model to find the relationship between SMI and PR. The results highlight that in some periods, there is a bidirectional causal link between SMI and PR. Influenced by the medical insurance reform and medication measures. Social medical insurance does not have a positive impact on poverty reduction in some periods. These results are supported by the Utility Maximization Model of Insurance Consumption, which highlights that individuals make utility maximization choices when choosing insurance. The effect of medical insurance on poverty alleviation depends on whether an individual's investment in medical insurance can maximize its utility. If the proportion of social medical insurance reimbursement is too low, individuals will give up buying social medical insurance. Thus, the anti-poverty effect of social medical insurance is difficult to achieve. Therefore, authorities need to pay attention to specific contexts and social medical insurance policies and further improve the social medical insurance system to promote the realization of the anti-poverty of social medical insurance.

Antiplatelet Effect of Different Loading Doses of Ticagrelor in Patients With Non-ST-Elevation Acute Coronary Syndrome Undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: The APELOT Trial.

BACKGROUND: We hypothesized that a high ticagrelor loading dose (LD) may improve platelet inhibition in patients with non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). METHODS: This interventional multicentre open-label trial randomized 278 patients with NSTE-ACS to a high (360 mg) or conventional (180 mg) ticagrelor LD. The primary outcome was the platelet reactivity index (PRI) 1 hour after administration of the LD. Secondary outcomes included PRI at 0.5 hour, 1 hour, 8 hours, and 24 hours; periprocedural myocardial infarction (PMI); major cardiac adverse events; and bleeding events. RESULTS: Two hundred sixty-two patients completed the major end points. PRI was lower in the high-LD group than in the conventional-LD group at any time point (all, P < 0.05), including at 1 hour (12.2% vs 16.7%; P = 0.023). At 0.5 hour, the high-LD group showed a lower high-platelet reactivity rate (49.6% vs 60.2%; P = 0.013) and a higher low-platelet reactivity rate (24.8% vs 12.8%; P = 0.017) than did the conventional LD group. No significant differences in the bleeding rates were found between the 2 groups (14% vs 14.3%). Four cases of PMI and 1 death in each group, as well as 1 acute myocardial infarction in the conventional LD group, occurred. There was no stroke, target lesion revascularization, or target vessel revascularization. CONCLUSIONS: Doubling the ticagrelor LD achieved faster onset and greater platelet inhibition without an increase in adverse events in patients with NSTE-ACS undergoing PCI.

Enhancing Multiphoton Upconversion from NaYF4:Yb/Tm@NaYF4 Core-Shell Nanoparticles via the Use of Laser Cavity.

We discover that emission efficiency of Tm3+-doped upconversion nanoparticles can be enhanced through the use of a laser cavity. With suitable control of the lasing conditions, the population of the intermediate excited states of the Tm3+ can be clamped at a required value above the excitation threshold. As a result, upconversion efficiency for the 300-620 nm emission band of the Tm3+-doped nanoparticles under 976 nm excitation can be enhanced by an order of magnitude over the case without a laser cavity. This is because the intrinsic recombination process of the intermediate excited states is suppressed and the surplus of excitation power directly contributes to the enhancement of multiphoton upconversion. Furthermore, our theoretical investigation has shown that the improvement of upconversion emission efficiency is mainly dependent on the cavity loss, so that this strategy can also be extended to other lanthanide-doped systems.

Two unrelated patients with rare Crigler-Najjar syndrome type I: two novel mutations and a patient with loss of heterozygosity of UGT1A1 gene.

Crigler-Najjar syndrome type I (CN-I) is the most severe type of hereditary unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia. It is caused by homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations of the UDP-glycuronosyltransferase gene (UGT1A1) on chromosome 2q37. Two patients clinically diagnosed with CN-I were examined in this paper. We sequenced five exons and their flanking sequences, specifically the promoter region of UGT1A1, of the two patients and their parents. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to determine the UGT1A1 gene copy number of one patient. In patient A, two mutations, c.239_245delCTGTGCC (p.Pro80HisfsX6; had not been reported previously) and c.1156G>T (p.Val386Phe), were identified. In patient B, we found that this patient had lost heterozygosity of the UGT1A1 gene by inheriting a deletion of one allele, and had a novel mutation c.1253delT (p.Met418ArgfsX5) in the other allele. In summary, we detected three UGT1A1 mutations in two CN-I patients: c.239_245delCTGTGCC (p.Pro80HisfsX6), c.1253delT (p.Met418ArgfsX5), and c.1156G>T (p.Val386Phe). The former two mutations are pathogenic; however, the pathogenic mechanism of c.1156G>T (p.Val386Phe) is unknown.

Self-doped rutile titania with high performance for direct and ultrafast assay of H2O2.

Detection of H2O2 is important for the applications in environmental protection, pharmaceutical industries, food production, and clinical control. Current colorimetric assay of H2O2 based on enzyme or nanomaterials always needs TMB or other peroxidase substrate as coloration species. Furthermore, the corresponding response time including incubation process is in order of minute. In this study, we report on the synthesis of heavily Ti(3+)-doped TiO2 composed of spherelike nanoparticles by pulsed laser ablation method. This TiO2 can directly detect H2O2 without using TMB or any other peroxidase substrate and is free from incubation process. In addition, the detection sensitivity is compatible with or better than that of the natural enzyme or other nanomaterials. Hence, the self-doped TiO2 nanoparticles provide a novel, direct, ultrafast approach for H2O2 assay application.

Amplified spontaneous emission and lasing from lanthanide-doped up-conversion nanocrystals.

Lanthanide-doped nanocrystals (NCs), which found applications in bioimaging and labeling, have recently demonstrated significant improvement in up-conversion efficiency. Here, we report the first up-conversion multicolor microcavity lasers by using NaYF4:Yb/Er@NaYF4 core-shell NCs as the gain medium. It is shown that the optical gain of the NCs, which arises from the 2- and 3-photon up-conversion processes, can be maximized via sequential pulses pumping. Amplified spontaneous emission is observed from a Fabry-Perot cavity containing the NCs dispersed in cyclohexane solution. By coating a drop of silica resin containing the NCs onto an optical fiber, a microcavity with a bottle-like geometry is fabricated. It is demonstrated that the microcavity supports lasing emission through the formation of whispering gallery modes.

Low threshold amplified spontaneous emission from tin oxide quantum dots: a instantiation of dipole transition silence semiconductors.

Direct bandgap semiconductors, such as In2O3, Cu2O, and SnO2, have enormous applications in photochemistry, photovoltaics, and optoelectronics. Due to the same parity of conduction and valence bands, the dipole transition is silent in these direct bandgap semiconductors. The low band-to-band transition efficiency prevents them from high intensity light emission or absorption. Here, we report the fabrication of SnO2 quantum dots (QDs) with sizes less than the exciton Bohr radius by a facile "top-down" strategy based on laser fragmentation of SnO in water. The SnO2 QDs shows exciton emission at ∼300 nm with a high quantum yield of ~17%. Amplified spontaneous exciton emission is also achieved from a thin layer of SnO2 QDs dispersed in PEG400 on a quartz substrate. Therefore, we have shown that SnO2 QDs can be a potential luminescent material suitable for the realization of ultraviolet B lasing devices.