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Objective: To investigate the association between cardiovascular health (CVH) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) within the U.S. population., Methods: This study enrolled 12,540 participants aged 20 years and older from the 2007-2008 and 2015-2018 cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). Weighted univariate and multivariate logistic regression were utilized to examine the relationship between CVH and OSA symptoms. Life's Essential 8 (LE 8) metrics was employed to evaluate the CVH status of participants. Identification of OSA symptoms was determined based on a sleep questionnaire. They include (1) how often you snore; (2) how often you snort/stop breathing; or (3) how often you feel overly sleepy during day. Individuals who answered that they snore 3 or more per week; snort/stop breathing 3 or more per week and feel overly sleepy during day 16-30 times per month were classified as having OSA symptoms., Results: Significant inverse associations were observed between LE8 scores and symptoms of OSA after adjusting for covariates. The 95% CI was 0.750 (0.630,0.893) for the moderate CVH group and 0.573 (0.454,0.723) for the high CVH group. Subgroup analyses, stratified by age and gender, highlighted a significant interaction between LE8 scores and OSA symptoms with age ( P  < 0.0001). Participants under 60 years old in the high CVH group exhibited a reduced likelihood OSA symptoms (OR: 0.470; 95% CI: 0.345,0.641). Restricted cubic splines (RCS) in a multivariate regression analysis showed a non-linear relationship between LE8 score and OSA. Our finding demonstrates a substantial decrease in OSA symptom prevalence with increased LE 8 scores., Conclusion: The results demonstrate a strong inverse correlation between LE8 scores and OSA symptoms. Participants with higher LE8 scores showed a reduced likelihood of experiencing OSA symptoms., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© 2024 Guo, Dong, Zhou, Huang, Qiao, Dang, Wang and Zhao.)

Significant progress has been made in the pathogenesis of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). However, the relationship between chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) and ferroptosis, as well as its underlying molecular mechanism, remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between CRSwNP and ferroptosis and identify key gene associated with ferroptosis that could impact the diagnosis and treatment of CRS. To achieve this, gene expression profiles containing CRSwNP and CRSsNP samples were obtained from the GEO database. In addition, from the FerrDb V2 database, we acquired 2 sets of genes that are connected with ferroptosis, giving us a combined number of 260 genes associated with this particular biological process. Differential analysis and weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) were performed on nasal tissue samples from GSE36830, leading to the identification of 1 key gene related to ferroptosis and CRS. Using stepwise regression and logistic regression analysis, we constructed a diagnostic model for CRS using ALOX15. The AUC value demonstrates that the model exhibits a strong diagnostic performance. Furthermore, the connection between immune cell infiltration in the samples and hub gene was explored, suggesting the potential significance of the hub gene in the immune response to CRS. Finally, Five drugs targeting a central gene were identified from the DrugBank database, and a few of them have exhibited efficacy in the treatment of CRS or associated ailments. In conclusion, this model holds potential for supporting the diagnosis of CRS patients, while the central gene identified may contribute to a better understanding of CRS development and drug treatment., Competing Interests: The authors have on conflict of Interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2024 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Animals detect targets using a variety of visual cues, with the visual salience of these cues determining which environmental features receive priority attention and further processing. Surround modulation plays a crucial role in generating visual saliency, which has been extensively studied in avian tectal neurons. Recent work has reported that the suppression of tectal neurons induced by motion contrasting stimulus is stronger than that by luminance contrasting stimulus. However, the underlying mechanism remains poorly understood. In this study, we built a computational model (called Generalized Linear-Dynamic Modulation) which incorporates independent nonlinear tuning mechanisms for excitatory and inhibitory inputs. This model aims to describe how tectal neurons encode contrasting stimuli. The results showed that: (1) The dynamic nonlinear integration structure substantially improved the accuracy (significant difference ( p < 0.001, paired t -test) in the goodness of fit between the two models) of the predicted responses to contrasting stimuli, verifying the nonlinear processing performed by tectal neurons. (2) The modulation difference between luminance and motion contrasting stimuli emerged from the predicted response by the full model but not by that with only excitatory synaptic input (spatial luminance: 89 ± 2.8% (GL&#95;DM) vs. 87 ± 2.1% (GL&#95;DMexc); motion contrasting stimuli: 87 ± 1.7% (GL&#95;DM) vs. 83 ± 2.2% (GL&#95;DMexc)). These results validate the proposed model and further suggest the role of dynamic nonlinear spatial integrations in contextual visual information processing, especially in spatial integration, which is important for object detection performed by birds.

Food and predators are the most noteworthy objects for the basic survival of wild animals, and both are often deviant in both spatial and temporal domains and quickly attract an animal's attention. Although stimulus-specific adaptation (SSA) is considered a potential neural basis of salient sound detection in the temporal domain, related research on visual SSA is limited and its relationship with temporal saliency is uncertain. The avian nucleus isthmi pars magnocellularis (Imc), which is central to midbrain selective attention network, is an ideal site to investigate the neural correlate of visual SSA and detection of a salient object in the time domain. Here, the constant order paradigm was applied to explore the visual SSA in the Imc of pigeons. The results showed that the firing rates of Imc neurons gradually decrease with repetitions of motion in the same direction, but recover when a motion in a deviant direction is presented, implying visual SSA to the direction of a moving object. Furthermore, enhanced response for an object moving in other directions that were not presented ever in the paradigm is also observed. To verify the neural mechanism underlying these phenomena, we introduced a neural computation model involving a recoverable synaptic change with a "center-surround" pattern to reproduce the visual SSA and temporal saliency for the moving object. These results suggest that the Imc produces visual SSA to motion direction, allowing temporal salient object detection, which may facilitate the detection of the sudden appearance of a predator., (© 2023 The Authors. Integrative Zoology published by International Society of Zoological Sciences, Institute of Zoology/Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Birds have developed visual cognitions, especially in discriminating colors due to their four types of cones in the retina. The entopallium of birds is thought to be involved in the processing of color information during visual cognition. However, there is a lack of understanding about how functional connectivity in the entopallium region of birds changes during color cognition, which is related to various input colors. We therefore trained pigeons to perform a delayed color matching task, in which two colors were randomly presented in sample stimuli phrases, and the neural activity at individual recording site and the gamma band functional connectivity among local population in entopallium during sample presentation were analyzed. Both gamma band energy and gamma band functional connectivity presented dynamics as the stimulus was presented and persisted. The response features in the early-stimulus phase were significantly different from those of baseline and the late-stimulus phase. Furthermore, gamma band energy showed significant differences between different colors during the early-stimulus phase, but the global feature of the gamma band functional network did not. Further decoding results showed that decoding accuracy was significantly enhanced by adding functional connectivity features, suggesting the global feature of the gamma band functional network did not directly contain color information, but was related to it. These results provided insight into information processing rules among local neuronal populations in the entopallium of birds during color cognition, which is important for their daily life., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no competing interests., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2023, corrected publication 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.)

Introduction: Spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea (SCSFR) is the most common type of cerebrospinal fluid leakage and may cause serious cerebral complications. The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship between the degree of pneumatization variants of the paranasal sinus and skull base and the incidence of SCSFR., Methods: In total, 131 patients with SCSFR were analyzed, and 50 patients suffering from the nasal septal deviation were selected as controls. The pneumatization of the paranasal sinus and skull base was observed by CT scan., Results: Among the 137 fistulas, 55 (40.15%) were found in the ethmoid sinus. The incidences of Onodi cells (27.27 vs. 8%) and type 3 lateral recess of the sphenoid sinus (LRSS, 70.37 vs. 22%) in the SCSFR subgroups were significantly higher than those in the control group (p &lt; 0.05). Moreover, the occurrence of SCSFR was linearly correlated with the classification of Onodi cells and LRSS (p &lt; 0.05). There was no significant difference in the incidence of frontal cells, anterior clinoid process pneumatization, and posterior clinoid process pneumatization between the SCSFR patients and the controls., Conclusion: The most common site of SCSFR is the ethmoid sinus. The excessive pneumatization of the Onodi cell and LRSS increases the risk for the occurrence of SCSFR in the ethmoid sinus and sphenoid sinus, respectively. The possible association between the paranasal sinus ontogeny and SCSFR pathophysiology needs further studies., (© 2023 S. Karger AG, Basel.)

Background: Corynebacterium accolens ( C. accolens ) is a common nasal colonizer, whereas Staphylococcus aureus ( S. aureus ) is typically regarded a pathogenic organism in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). This study aims to evaluate the interaction of the two bacteria in vitro ., Methods: Clinical isolates of C. accolens and S. aureus from sinonasal swabs, as well as primary human nasal epithelial cells (HNECs) cultured from cellular brushings of both healthy and CRS patients were used for this study. The cell-free culture supernatants of all isolates grown alone and in co-cultures were tested for their effects on transepithelial electrical resistance (TER), FITC-Dextran permeability, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and IL-6 and IL-8 secretion of HNECs. Confocal scanning laser microscopy and immunofluorescence were also used to visualize the apical junctional complexes. C. accolens cell-free culture supernatants were also tested for antimicrobial activity and growth on planktonic and biofilm S. aureus growth., Results: The cell-free culture supernatants of 3\ C. accolens strains (at 60% for S. aureus reference strain and 30% concentration for S. aureus clinical strains) inhibited the growth of both the planktonic S. aureus reference and clinical strains significantly. The C. accolens cell-free culture supernatants caused no change in the TER or FITC-Dextran permeability of the HNEC-ALI cultures, while the cell-free culture supernatants of S. aureus strains had a detrimental effect. Cell-free culture supernatants of C. accolens co-cultured with both the clinical and reference strains of S. aureus delayed the S. aureus -dependent mucosal barrier damage in a dose-dependent manner., Conclusion: Corynebacterium accolens cell-free culture supernatants appear to inhibit the growth of the S. aureus planktonic bacteria, and may reduce the mucosal barrier damage caused by S. aureus ., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Huang, Hon, Bennett, Hu, Menberu, Wormald, Zhao, Vreugde and Liu.)

Birds can rapidly and accurately detect moving objects for better survival in complex environments. This visual ability may be attributed to the response properties of neurons in the optic tectum. However, it is unknown how neurons in the optic tectum respond differently to moving objects compared to static ones. To address this question, neuronal activities were recorded from domestic pigeon ( Columba livia domestica ) optic tectum, responsible for orienting to moving objects, and the responses to moving and flashed stimuli were compared. An encoding model based on the Generalized Linear Model (GLM) framework was established to explain the difference in neuronal responses. The experimental results showed that the first spike latency to moving stimuli was smaller than that to flashed ones and firing rate was higher. The model further implied the faster and stronger response to a moving target result from spatiotemporal integration process, corresponding to the spatially sequential activation of tectal neurons and the accumulation of information in time. This study provides direct electrophysiological evidence about the different tectal neuron responses to moving objects and flashed ones. The findings of this investigation increase our understanding of the motion detection mechanism of tectal neurons.

Surround modulation has been abundantly studied in several mammalian brain areas, including the primary visual cortex, lateral geniculate nucleus, and superior colliculus (SC), but systematic analysis is lacking in the avian optic tectum (OT, homologous to mammal SC). Here, multi-units were recorded from pigeon ( Columba livia ) OT, and responses to different sizes of moving, flashed squares, and bars were compared. The statistical results showed that most tectal neurons presented suppressed responses to larger stimuli in both moving and flashed paradigms, and suppression induced by flashed squares was comparable with moving ones when the stimuli center crossed the near classical receptive field (CRF) center, which corresponded to the full surrounding condition. Correspondingly, the suppression grew weaker when the stimuli center moved across the CRF border, equivalent to partially surrounding conditions. Similarly, suppression induced by full surrounding flashed squares was more intense than by partially surrounding flashed bars. These results suggest that inhibitions performed on tectal neurons appear to be full surrounding rather than locally lateral. This study enriches the understanding of surround modulation properties of avian tectum neurons and provides possible hypotheses about the arrangement of inhibitions from other nuclei, both of which are important for clarifying the mechanism of target detection against clutter background performed by avians.

Background: Staphylococcus aureus biofilms were linked to negative postsurgical outcomes of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). This study aims to develop a targeted nanoparticle and characterize its bactericidal effects. Methods: The authors prepared ISMN-loaded poly-lactide-co-glycolide acid (PLGA) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) nanoparticles conjugated with anti- S. aureus α-toxin (AA; ISMN-PLGA-PEG-AA), and determined its bactericidal and toxic effects. The antibiofilm propriety of ISMN-PLGA-PEG-AA was further investigated in a sheep CRS model. Results: ISMN-PLGA-PEG-AA had no toxic effect, while ISMN, ISMN-PLGA-PEG and ISMN-PLGA-PEG-AA had significantly anti- S. aureus effects. The blood concentrations and mRNA levels in sinus tissues of IL-4, IL-8 and IFN-γ in the sheep CRS model were significantly low. Conclusion: ISMN-PLGA-PEG-AA can effectively inhibit S. aureus biofilm, and is a promising drug for CRS treatment.

T helper (Th) 2 cell-medicated immune response participates in various immune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Long non-coding RNA nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (NEAT1) has been reported to be associated with T helper 2 (Th2) cell activation. Here, we demonstrated the molecular mechanism of NEAT1 in regulating Th2 cell activation. We found that NEAT1 was located in nucleus. NEAT1 overexpression promoted the levels of Th2-related cytokines IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13 in CD4 + T cells. Moreover, NEAT1 up-regulation reduced Th1-related cytokine INF-γ production and enhanced the levels of Th17-related cytokines IL-17 in CD4 + T cells. STAT6 deficiency reduced the levels of IL-4, IL-5, IL-13 and IL-17 enhanced the levels of INF-γ in CD4 + T cells, which was rescued by NEAT1 overexpression. Moreover, NEAT1 promoted STAT6 protein expression, whereas NEAT1 had no effect on the expression of STAT6 mRNA. Furthermore, NEAT1 interacted with STAT6, inhibited the ubiquitination of STAT6 in CD4 + T cells. In conclusion, our work has confirmed that NEAT1 promotes STAT6 expression by inhibiting STAT6 ubiquitination, thereby promoting Th2 cell activation. Thus, our work may highlight novel insights into the molecular mechanism of NEAT1 in regulating Th2 cell activation.

Background: Intranasal nebulization is an effective treatment for chronic rhinosinusitis and allergic rhinitis; however, terminal inhalation devices have not been fully studied. We compared the sinonasal aerosol distributions and adverse effects of different inhalation units., Methods: A mask, double-head nozzle, and single-head nozzle were applied to atomize the methylene blue solution to 3-dimensional printed models of the pediatric nasal cavity, adult nasal cavity with septal deviation, and postsurgical paranasal sinuses, and staining of the different sites was scored. Volunteers received nebulization of normal saline via different devices; thereafter, the adverse effects were assessed using the visual analogue scale (VAS)., Results: After nebulization, the staining scores for the middle turbinate and middle meatus of the pediatric and adult nasal cavity models and the score for the anterior ethmoid sinus of the sinus model with the single-head nozzle were significantly higher than those with the mask and double-head nozzle (all p < 0.05; η 2 for effect size estimates were above 0.68). Among the 31 volunteers, the adverse effects, including nasal irritation, facial pressure/pain, ear fullness/pain, postnasal drip, and throat irritation/cough, were mild. The variations in the incidence and VAS scores of the adverse effects among the devices were not significant (all p > 0.05)., Conclusion: The single-head nozzle was the most effective device in aerosol delivery to the lateral wall of the nasal cavity and sinuses; conversely, the mask yielded limited sinonasal deposition. Intranasal nebulization was well tolerated, and the adverse effects among the devices were comparable. These findings are meaningful for selecting and developing inhalation units., (© 2020 ARS-AAOA, LLC.)

The emergence of visual saliency has been widely studied in the primary visual cortex and the superior colliculus (SC) in mammals. There are fewer studies on the pop-out response to motion direction contrasting stimuli taken in the optic tectum (OT, homologous to mammalian SC), and these are mainly of owls and fish. To our knowledge the influence of spatial luminance has not been reported. In this study, we have recorded multi-units in pigeon OT and analyzed the tectal response to spatial luminance contrasting, motion direction contrasting, and contrasting stimuli from both feature dimensions. The comparison results showed that 1) the tectal response would pop-out in either motion direction or spatial luminance contrasting conditions. 2) The modulation from motion direction contrasting was independent of the temporal luminance variation of the visual stimuli. 3) When both spatial luminance and motion direction were salient, the response of tectal neurons was modulated more intensely by motion direction than by spatial luminance. The phenomenon was consistent with the innate instinct of avians in their natural environment. This study will help to deepen the understanding of mechanisms involved in bottom-up visual information processing and selective attention in the avian., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of lncRNA NEAT1 (nuclear enriched abundant transcript 1) in regulating Th2 cell differentiation. The overexpression vectors of NEAT1 and ITCH, and siRNA targeting NEAT1, EZH2 (enhancer of zeste homolog 2) and STAT6 (signal transducer and activator of transcription 6) were transfected into CD4+T cells. The mRNA expressions of ITCH and STAT6 were analyzed by qRT-PCR and western blotting. The levels of Th2 cytokines were detected by ELISA assay. RIP and ChIP assays were performed to analyze the association between NEAT1 and EZH2 as well as EZH2 and STAT6, respectively. Results showed that NEAT1 significantly repressed ITCH expression and increased STAT6 expression as well as the levels of IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13 in CD4+T cells. RIP and ChIP assays revealed that NEAT1 bound to EZH2 and EZH2 was recruited to the promoter region of ITCH in CD4+T cells. Silencing EZH2 significantly promoted STAT6 for ubiquitination. Furthermore, NEAT targeted STAT6 for ubiquitination and elevated levels of Th2 cytokines by regulating EZH2/ITCH axis. In conclusion, our data indicated that NEAT1 promotes Th2 cell differentiation through the EZH2/ITCH/STAT6 axis.

The vitamin D receptor (VDR) is a crucial mediator for the cellular effects of vitamin D. The polymorphisms in the VDR gene have been hypothesized to alter the risk of prostate cancer. However, studies investigating the association between VDR polymorphisms (BsmI and FokI) and prostate cancer (PCa) risk report conflicting results , therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to re-examine the controversy. Published literatures from PubMed, Embase, Google Scholar, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched (updated to March 9, 2013). According to our inclusion criteria, studies that observed the association between VDR BsmI and FokI polymorphisms and PCa risk were included. The principal outcome measure was the odds ratio (OR) with 95 % confidence interval (CI) for PCa risk associated with VDR BsmI and FokI polymorphisms. Thirty-four studies involving 10,267 cases and 11,489 controls were recruited. Overall, we did not find evidence to support an association between any of the VDR polymorphisms and PCa risk. For BsmI, the pooled OR was 0.894 (95 % CI 0.773 to 1.034) for the Bb vs. bb genotypes, 1.002 (95 % CI 0.869 to 1.157) for the BB vs. bb genotypes, 0.922 (95 % CI 0.798 to 1.065) for the dominant model (BB/Bb vs. bb), and 1.018 (95 % CI 0.936 to 1.107) for the recessive model (BB vs. Bb/bb). ORs for the FokI polymorphisms were similar. The results suggest that the VDR BsmI and FokI polymorphisms are not related to PCa risk. Further large and well-designed studies are required to confirm this conclusion.