Application of Patient-Based Real-Time Quality Control Based on Artificial Intelligence Monitoring Platform in Continuously Quality Risk Monitoring of Down Syndrome Serum Screening.

BACKGROUND: Patient-based real-time quality control (PBRTQC) has gained attention because of its potential to continuously monitor the analytical quality in situations wherein internal quality control (IQC) is less effective. Therefore, we tried to investigate the application of PBRTQC method based on an artificial intelligence monitoring (AI-MA) platform in quality risk monitoring of Down syndrome (DS) serum screening. METHODS: The DS serum screening item determination data and relative IQC data from January 4 to September 7 in 2021 were collected. Then, PBRTQC exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) and moving average (MA) procedures were built and optimized in the AI-MA platform. The efficiency of the EWMA and MA procedures with intelligent and traditional control rules were compared. Next, the optimal EWMA procedures that contributed to the quality assurance of serum screening were run and generated early warning cases were investigated. RESULTS: Optimal EWMA and MA procedures on the AI-MA platform were built. Comparison results showed the EWMA procedure with intelligent QC rules but not traditional quality rules contained the best efficiency. Based on the AI-MA platform, two early warning cases were generated by using the optimal EWMA procedure, which finally found were caused by instrument failure. Moreover, the EWMA procedure could truly reflect the detection accuracy and quality in situations wherein traditional IQC products were unstable or concentrations were inappropriate. CONCLUSIONS: The EWMA procedure built by the AI-MA platform could be a good complementary control tool for the DS serum screening by truly and timely reflecting the detection quality risks.

Advances in the study of endocannabinoid receptors in experimental acupuncture analgesia. / å† æºæ€§å¤§éº»ç´ å—ä½“åœ¨é’ˆåˆºé•‡ç—›æœºåˆ¶ä¸­çš„ç ”ç©¶è¿›å±•.

The endocannabinoid system, an important biological network for maintaining and balancing various functions of the human body, is involved in many physiological functions such as pain, emotion, learning and memory, etc. Among which the endocannabinoid receptors ï¼»including type I (CB1) and type II (CB2) receptorsï¼½ play an important role in the regulation of pain and have become an important target in the mechanism research of acupuncture analgesia. CB1 is mainly distributed in the central nervous system, including the spinal cord, cerebral cortex, amygdala, insular cortex, and basal ganglia, etc. CB2 is mainly distributed in peripheral immune tissues, such as spleen, bone, skin, etc. In the central and peripheral nervous systems, acupuncture can activate CB1 and CB2 receptors respectively, which is involved in the transmission of central nociceptive signals and related transmitters as well as the peri-pheral pro-nociceptive inflammatory response, thereby alleviating the nociceptive hypersensitivity in animal models. In this paper, we systematically summarize the roles of the above mechanisms in different types of animal models (inflammatory pain, neuropathological pain, visceral pain, etc.), so as to provide new ideas for the study of the underlying mechanisms of acupuncture analgesia.

Astragaloside IV inhibits epithelial-mesenchymal transition and pulmonary fibrosis via lncRNA-ATB/miR-200c/ZEB1 signaling pathway.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, progressive lung disease involving multiple factors and genes. Astragaloside IV (ASV) is one of the main bioactive ingredients extracted from the root of Astragalus membranaceus, which plays an important role in anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and improve cardiopulmonary function. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a key driver of the process of pulmonary fibrosis, and Zinc finger E-box-binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1) can promote pulmonary fibrosis in an EMT-dependent manner. Here, we found that ASV effectively inhibited the ZEB1 and EMT in both bleomycin (BLM)-induced rat pulmonary fibrosis and TGF-ß1-treated A549 cells. To further elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying effects of ASV in IPF, we explored the truth using bioinformatics, plasmid construction, immunofluorescence staining, western blotting and other experiments. Dual luciferase reporter assay and bioinformatics proved that miR-200c not only acts as an upstream regulatory miRNA of ZEB1 but also has binding sites for the lncRNA-ATB. In A549 cell-based EMT models, ASV reduced the expression of lncRNA-ATB and upregulated miR-200c. Furthermore, overexpression of lncRNA-ATB and silencing of miR-200c reversed the down-regulation of ZEB1 and the inhibition of EMT processes by ASV. In addition, the intervention of ASV prevented lncRNA-ATB as a ceRNA from regulating the expression of ZEB1 through sponging miR-200c. Taken together, the results showed that ASV inhibited the EMT process through the lncRNA-ATB/miR-200c/ZEB1 signaling pathway, which provides a novel approach to the treatment of IPF.

Electrospun Nanofiber-Based Bioinspired Artificial Skins for Healthcare Monitoring and Human-Machine Interaction.

Artificial skin, also known as bioinspired electronic skin (e-skin), refers to intelligent wearable electronics that imitate the tactile sensory function of human skin and identify the detected changes in external information through different electrical signals. Flexible e-skin can achieve a wide range of functions such as accurate detection and identification of pressure, strain, and temperature, which has greatly extended their application potential in the field of healthcare monitoring and human-machine interaction (HMI). During recent years, the exploration and development of the design, construction, and performance of artificial skin has received extensive attention from researchers. With the advantages of high permeability, great ratio surface of area, and easy functional modification, electrospun nanofibers are suitable for the construction of electronic skin and further demonstrate broad application prospects in the fields of medical monitoring and HMI. Therefore, the critical review is provided to comprehensively summarize the recent advances in substrate materials, optimized fabrication techniques, response mechanisms, and related applications of the flexible electrospun nanofiber-based bio-inspired artificial skin. Finally, some current challenges and future prospects are outlined and discussed, and we hope that this review will help researchers to better understand the whole field and take it to the next level.

Localized magnetic moment induced by boron adatoms chemisorbed on graphene.

Inducing local spin-polarization in pristine graphene is highly desirable and recent experiment shows that boron adatom chemical attachment to graphene exhibits local high spin state. Using hybrid exchange-correlation functional, we show that boron (B) monomer chemisorbed on the bridge site of graphene is energically favorable, and indeed induces a weak local spin-polarization ∼0.56µB. The localized magnetic moment can be attributed to the charge transfer from boron atom to graphene, resulting in local spin charge dominantly surrounding to the adsorbed B and neighboring carbon (C) atoms. We also surprisingly find that boron dimer can even much more stable upright anchor the same site of graphene, giving rise to sizable spin magnetic moment 2.00µB. Although the apparent spin state remains mainly contributed by Bpand Cporbitals as the case of boron monomer, the delicate and substantial charge transfer of theintra-dimerplays a fundamental role in producing such sizable local spin-polarization. We employed various van der Waals corrections to check and confirm the validity of appeared local spin-polarization. In terms of the almost identical simulated scanning tunneling microscope between boron monomer and dimer, we might tend to support the fact that boron dimer can also be chemisorbed on graphene with much larger and stable localized spin magnetic moment.

A Self-Supporting, Conductor-Exposing, Stretchable, Ultrathin, and Recyclable Kirigami-Structured Liquid Metal Paper for Multifunctional E-Skin.

Electronic skin (E-skin) is a crucial seamless human-machine interface (HMI), holding promise in healthcare monitoring and personal electronics. Liquid metal (LM) has been recognized as an ideal electrode material to fabricate E-skins. However, conventional sealed LM electrodes cannot expose the LM layer for direct contact with the skin resulting in the low performance of electrophysiological monitoring. Furthermore, traditional printed LM electrodes are difficult to transfer or recycle, and fractures easily occur under stretching of the substrate. Here, we report a kind of LM electrode that we call a kirigami-structured LM paper (KLP), which is self-supporting, conductor-exposing, stretchable, ultrathin, and recyclable for multifunctional E-skin. The KLP is fabricated by the kirigami paper cutting art with three types of structures including uniaxial, biaxial, and square spiral. The KLP can act as an E-skin to acquire high-quality electrophysiological signals, such as electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG), and electromyogram (EMG). Upon integration with a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), the KLP can also operate as a self-powered E-skin. On the basis of the self-powered E-skin, we further developed a smart dialing communication system, which is applied on human skin to call a cellphone. Compared with conventional sealed or printed LM electrodes, the KLP can simultaneously achieve self-supporting, conductor-exposing, stretchable, ultrathin, and recyclable features. Such KLP offers potential for E-skins in healthcare monitoring and intelligent control, as well as smart robots, virtual reality, on-skin personal electronics, etc.

Adaptive current harmonics suppression strategy for grid-tie inverters.

Since the observed angle of a phase-locked loop (PLL) is relatively accurate even under distorted grid conditions, the mathematical model of the voltage errors caused by the switching modulation and the dead-time effect are derived as a function of the grid voltage angle in this paper. Based on the model analysis, an adaptive compensation algorithm is proposed to suppress the grid-side current harmonics in three-phase converters. The proposed algorithm fits the unmeasurable voltage errors by a truncated Fourier series expansion, and then takes it as an equivalent disturbance in the current control loop to achieve harmonic compensation. By the feed-forward compensation, the design and tuning of the controller parameters are simplified and separated from the dynamic performance. In addition, the controller can adapt to the grid frequency variation by updating the grid voltage angle with the PLL block. To reduce the computational burden, a simplified version of the proposed method is also presented. Simulation and experiment results show that the proposed methods can suppress the current harmonics and achieve better performance in terms of total harmonic distortion, strong robustness and insensitivity to the grid frequency variations, compared with the traditional PI control or repetitive control strategy.

Up-regulation of BTLA expression in myeloid dendritic cells associated with the treatment outcome of neonatal sepsis.

Dentritic cells (DCs) dysfunction has been verified detrimental for sepsis and B and T lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA) is an immune-regulatory receptor shown to be associated with DCs dysfunction. However, the role of BTLA expression in myeloid DCs (mDCs) in neonatal sepsis is unknown. In the current study, we found BTLA-expressing mDCs were elevated in neonates with sepsis and the BTLA expression level in mDCs was positively correlated to the severity of sepsis. The presence of BTLA negatively regulated the phagocytosis capacity and bactericidal ability of mDCs as well as the maturation markers expression of mDCs. Our data also showed BTLA+mDCs shifted into an anti-inflammatory phenotype with decreased expression of IL-6, TNF-α and IL-12, but increased IL-10. in addition, we found BTLA expression indeedly altered the mDCs allo-stimulatory capacity. Therefore, BTLA expression in mDCs could be a useful predictive marker for neonatal sepsis and targeting BTLA expression in mDCs may be a new therapeutic strategy.

Development and validation of an LC-MS/MS method for quantifying nine antimicrobials in human serum and its application to study the exposure of Chinese pregnant women to antimicrobials.

BACKGROUND: To study the prevalence of the exposure of pregnant women to antimicrobials, a sensitive and reliable liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method was developed and validated to determine nine antimicrobials, namely sulfadimidine, sulfapyridine, sulfadiazine, sulfathiazole, ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, tetracycline, and lincomycin, in human serum. METHODS: The sample preparation procedure included protein precipitation followed by a cleanup step with solid phase extraction (SPE). Separation was carried out using a CORTECS T3 column (100 × 2.1 mm, 2.7 µm) by gradient elution with a runtime of 8.0 min. Detection was performed on a triple quadruple tandem mass spectrometer with scheduled multiple reaction monitoring (sMRM) in positive ion scan mode. RESULTS: The calibration curves were linear over the concentration range of 0.5-50 ng/ml, and the limit of quantitation was between 0.01 and 0.2 ng/ml. For each level of quality control samples, the inter- and intra-assay precision values were less than 12.0%, and the accuracy ranged from 86.1% to 109.0%. No significant matrix effect or carryover was observed. The antimicrobials of interest were stable under all investigated conditions. The validated method was applied to analyze clinical samples from pregnant women in China, and 10 out of 500 samples showed the presence of antimicrobial residues. Moreover, compared with the time-resolved fluoro-immunoassay (TRFIA) method, the developed method showed greater sensitivity and specificity. CONCLUSION: This study provides a simple and rapid LC-MS/MS method for the simultaneous measurement of nine antimicrobials in serum samples, which could be a useful tool in clinical utilization.

Europium chelate-labeled lateral flow assay for rapid and multiple detection of ß-lactam antibiotics by the penicillin-binding protein.

For the multiple and rapid detection of ß-lactams, the broadly specific penicillin-binding protein (PBP) that recognizes the ß-lactam structure was prepared. A chromatographic strip based on europium chelate-loaded fluorescent microspheres was assembled with a goat anti-mouse antibody (C line) and penicillin coating (T line). The penicillin coating competes with free ß-lactam antibiotics to bind PBP-labeled fluorescent microspheres. The strip can theoretically detect all kinds of ß-lactams, including amoxicillin, ampicillin, oxacillin, ceftazidime, lenampicillin, cefoperazone, sultamicillin, cefotaxime, ceftriaxone, sulbenicillin, piperacillin, cephalothin, flucloxacillin, and mezlocillin, in samples within 10 min. The europium chelate-labeled lateral flow assay does not cross-react with other antibiotics, including chloramphenicol, tetracycline, sulfamethazine, enrofloxacin, gentamicin or lincomycin. In short, we developed a very useful method for preliminary screening of ß-lactams.

[The discriminant analysis of the silicosis's induction on cytokines in phlegm and combined multi-markers].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the changes of cytokines in induced sputum at different stages of silicosis patients. METHODS: A total of 200 workers from one of the Shandong Province gold mine were chosen as object of observation. Among which 40 patients at silicosis stage I and 40 patients at silicosis stage II were divided into silicosis observed object group, silicosis stage I group, silicosis stage II group, and another 80 workers exposed to silica dust without suffering from silicotic Clinical symptoms, however, were chosen as group of dust exposed, and 40 logistical workers without being exposed and history of silicosis's illness were chosen as control group. And ask their basic information by questionnaire. Then, spray-inhalation the induced sputum and apply the ELISA to assess the level of tumor necrosis factor (TNF), interleukin (IL), macrophage inflammatory protein-1 (MIP-1α), monocyte chemotactic factor-1 (MCP-1), metalloproteinases (MMP), transforming growth factor-ß (TGF-ß), platelet derived growth factor (PDGF) in induced sputum from subjects. RESULTS: The level of TGF-ß [(901.60 ± 30.09) ng/L] in the induced sputumof patients in silicosis stage I group is lower than that in the observed object group [(913.02 ± 20.51) ng/L], and the level of MMP-9 [(212.49 ± 5.97) ng/L], MCP-1 [(129.91 ± 4.30) ng/L] has various degrees of increase than that in control group, observed object group and dust exposed group. All the differences have statistical significances (P < 0.05). The level of TNF-α [(85.76 ± 3.78) ng/L] in the induced sputum of patients in silicosis stage I group reaches the maximum, there are significant differences comparing with that level in the silica dust exposure group and the control group, whose differences are statistically significant (P < 0.05). Compared with the control group, the level of MMP-2 (427.95 ± 23.64) in the induced sputum of patients in silicosis stage I group has increased, whose differences also have statically significant (P < 0.05). Compared with the control group, silica dust exposed group, the observation group of objects, the pneumosilicosis patients of IL-16 in induced sputum IL-16 (21.40 ± 9.24) decreased, the content of PDGF [(5.96 ± 0.51) ng/L], MMP-2 [(447.86 ± 27.10) ng/L], MMP-9 [(223.91 ± 12.28) ng/L], MCP-1 [(122.87 ± 6.08) ng/L] increased, the differences are statistically significant (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: As silicosis biomarkers, TNF-alpha, TGF-beta, IL-16, PDGF, MMP-2, MMP-9 and MCP-1 have certain significance, further suggesting that early detection rate of patients with silicosis can be improved by employing the multiple indexes discriminate equation.

[Research on Early Diagnosis of Gastric Cancer by the Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy of Human Hemoglobin].

Early diagnosis have great positive effect on the treatment of gastric cancer patients. Raman spectroscopy can provide a useful monitor for hemoglobin dynamics. Besides, Raman spectroscopy has notable advantages in the fields of abnormal hemoglobin diagnosis, hemoglobin oxygen saturation deter mination and blood methemoglobin analysis. In this paper, novel silver colloid was synthesized by microwave heated method. The surface enhanced Raman spectrums of hemoglobin from 11 normal persons and 20 gastric cancer patients are measured and analyzed in order to obtain spectrums which are high repeatability and characteristic peaks protruding. By analyzing the assignations of the SERS bands, it found that the content of asparagine, tyrosine and phenylalanine in the hemoglobin are significantly lower than healthy people. Discussing the structure of hemoglobin, when hemoglobin combines with oxygen, Fe²âº is in a low spin state, ionic radius shrinks and moves 0. 075 nm and fall into the pore in the middle of the heme porphyrin ring plane. This spatial variation affects F8His connected with the iron, will narrow the gap between the globin in the two strands of the helix, as a result, HC2 tyrosine pushed out of the void. Using this mechanism, the absorption peak of 1 560 cm⁻¹ confirmed that the tyrosine content in patients with gastric cancer was lower than that of normal people. Principal component analysis(PCA) is employed to get a three-dimensional scatter plot of PC scores for the health and cancer groups, and it can be learned that they are distributed in separate areas. By using the method of discriminate analysis, it is found that the diagnostic algorithm separates the two groups with sensitivity of 90.0% and diagnostic specificity of 90.9%, the overall diagnostic accuracy was 90.3%. The results from this exploratory study demonstrate that, SERS detection of oxyhemoglobin combined with multivariate analysis would be an effective method for early diagnosis of gastric cancer.