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Objectives: An automated infrared pupillometer measures quantitative pupillary light reflex using a calibrated light stimulus. We examined whether the timing of performing quantitative pupillary light reflex or standard pupillary light reflex may impact its neuroprognostic performance in postcardiac arrest comatose patients and whether quantitative pupillary light reflex may outperform standard pupillary light reflex in early postresuscitation phase.Data Sources: PubMed and Embase databases from their inception to July 2020.Study Selection: We selected studies providing sufficient data of prognostic values of standard pupillary light reflex or quantitative pupillary light reflex to predict neurologic outcomes in adult postcardiac arrest comatose patients.Data Extraction: Quantitative data required for building a 2 × 2 contingency table were extracted, and study quality was assessed using standard criteria.Data Synthesis: We used the bivariate random-effects model to estimate the pooled sensitivity and specificity of standard pupillary light reflex or quantitative pupillary light reflex in predicting poor neurologic outcome during early (< 72 hr), middle (between 72 and 144 hr), and late (≧ 145 hr) postresuscitation periods, respectively. We included 39 studies involving 17,179 patients. For quantitative pupillary light reflex, the cut off points used in included studies to define absent pupillary light reflex ranged from 0% to 13% (median: 7%) and from zero to 2 (median: 2) for pupillary light reflex amplitude and Neurologic Pupil index, respectively. Late standard pupillary light reflex had the highest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (0.98, 95% CI [CI], 0.97-0.99). For early standard pupillary light reflex, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.80 (95% CI, 0.76-0.83), with a specificity of 0.91 (95% CI, 0.85-0.95). For early quantitative pupillary light reflex, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.83 (95% CI, 0.79-0.86), with a specificity of 0.99 (95% CI, 0.91-1.00).Conclusions: Timing of pupillary light reflex examination may impact neuroprognostic accuracy. The highest prognostic performance was achieved with late standard pupillary light reflex. Early quantitative pupillary light reflex had a similar specificity to late standard pupillary light reflex and had better specificity than early standard pupillary light reflex. For postresuscitation comatose patients, early quantitative pupillary light reflex may substitute for early standard pupillary light reflex in the neurologic prognostication algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Aquatic animals have great economic and ecological importance. Among them, non-model organisms have been studied regarding eco-toxicity, stress biology, and environmental adaptation. Due to recent advances in next-generation sequencing techniques, large amounts of RNA-seq data for aquatic animals are publicly available. However, currently there is no comprehensive resource exist for the analysis, unification, and integration of these datasets. This study utilizes computational approaches to build a new resource of transcriptomic maps for aquatic animals. This aquatic animal transcriptome map database dbATM provides de novo assembly of transcriptome, gene annotation and comparative analysis of more than twenty aquatic organisms without draft genome. Results: To improve the assembly quality, three computational tools (Trinity, Oases and SOAPdenovo-Trans) were employed to enhance individual transcriptome assembly, and CAP3 and CD-HIT-EST software were then used to merge these three assembled transcriptomes. In addition, functional annotation analysis provides valuable clues to gene characteristics, including full-length transcript coding regions, conserved domains, gene ontology and KEGG pathways. Furthermore, all aquatic animal genes are essential for comparative genomics tasks such as constructing homologous gene groups and blast databases and phylogenetic analysis. Conclusion: In conclusion, we establish a resource for non model organism aquatic animals, which is great economic and ecological importance and provide transcriptomic information including functional annotation and comparative transcriptome analysis. The database is now publically accessible through the URL http://dbATM.mbc.nctu.edu.tw/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anguilla japonica (Japanese eel) is currently one of the most important research subjects in eastern Asia aquaculture. Enigmatic life cycle of the organism makes study of artificial reproduction extremely limited. Henceforth genomic and transcriptomic resources of eels are urgently needed to help solving the problems surrounding this organism across multiple fields. We hereby provide a reconstructed transcriptome from deep sequencing of juvenile (glass eels) whole body samples. The provided expressed sequence tags were used to annotate the currently available draft genome sequence. Homologous information derived from the annotation result was applied to improve the group of scaffolds into available linkage groups. Results: With the transcriptome sequence data combined with publicly available expressed sequence tags evidences, 18,121 genes were structurally and functionally annotated on the draft genome. Among them, 3,921 genes were located in the 19 linkage groups. 137 scaffolds covering 13 million bases were grouped into the linkage groups in additional to the original partial linkage groups, increasing the linkage group coverage from 13 to 14 %. Conclusions: This annotation provide information of the coding regions of the genes supported by transcriptome based evidence. The derived homologous evidences pave the way for phylogenetic analysis of important genetic traits and the improvement of the genome assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pogostemon cablin (PC) is a herbal medicine traditionally applied to treat not only common cold, nausea and diarrhea but also headache and fever. The aim of this study was to investigate the analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties of standardized PC methanol extract (PCMeOH) in vivo. Investigations were performed in mice with two analgesic models. One was acetic acidinduced writhing response and the other formalin-induced paw licking. The anti-inflammatory effect was tested by ?-carrageenan (Carr)-induced mice paw edema. These analgesic experimental results indicated that PCMeOH (1.0 g/kg) decreased the acetic acid-induced writhing responses and PCMeOH (0.5 and 1.0 g/kg) decreased the licking time in the second phase of the formalin test. Moreover, Carr-induced paw edema inflammation was significantly reduced in a dose-dependent manner when PCMeOH (0.5 and 1.0 g/kg) was administered 3 and 4 h after the Carr injection. Mechanistic studies showed that PCMeOH decreased the levels of malondialdehyde in the edema paw by increasing the activities of anti-oxidant enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and glutathione reductase, in the liver and decreasing the cyclooxygenase 2 and tumor necrosis factor-a activities in the edema paw. This study has demonstrated the analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects of PCMeOH, thus verifying its popular use in traditional medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atherosclerosis and its associated complications represent major causes of morbidity and mortality in the industrialized or Western countries. Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) is critical for the initiating and developing of atherosclerotic lesions. Interleukin-8 (IL-8), a CXC chemokine, stimulates neutrophil chemotaxis. Ticlopidine is one of the antiplatelet drugs used to prevent thrombus formation relevant to the pathophysiology of atherothrombosis. In this study, we found that ticlopidine dose-dependently decreased the mRNA and protein levels of TNF-α-stimulated MCP-1, IL-8, and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). Ticlopidine declined U937 cells adhesion and chemotaxis as compared to TNF-α stimulated alone. Furthermore, the inhibitory effects were neither due to decreased HUVEC viability, nor through NF-kB inhibition. These results suggest that ticlopidine decreased TNF-α induced MCP-1, IL-8, and VCAM-1 levels in HUVECs, and monocyte adhesion. Therefore, the data provide additional therapeutic machinery of ticlopidine in treatment and prevention of atherosclerosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]