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Clonorchiasis is caused by ingestion of raw freshwater fish containing infective larvae of Clonorchis sinensis. China harbours the largest number of people with C. sinensis infection. During the past three decades, the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, affiliated to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (NIPD) conducted many studies to facilitate the control on clonorchiasis. Three national surveys have shown the updated epidemiology of clonorchiasis in China. Recently, a national surveillance system has also been established, which will enable the production of high-resolution map. The evaluation of the disease burden has enhanced the awareness on clonorchiasis. Diverse diagnosis techniques including rapid screening by questionnaire, serological tests, faecal examination and a molecular method have been developed or evaluated. The NIPD also participated in the early evaluation of praziquantel against clonorchiasis, which enhanced its application in China. Also, the NIPD has verified the efficacy of tribendimidine against clonorchiasis. A new sustainable strategy is also being explored. However, more research is expected to further facilitate control of clonorchiasis in China, as well as international cooperation in fighting human liver fluke infections in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil-transmitted helminthiases (STHs) have been widely transmitted in China and the control of STHs was initiated by NIPD-CTDR since its foundation. Three national surveys on STHs have been carried out in China, and the infection rate has dropped from 53.58% in the first national survey (1988-92) to 4.49% in the third national survey (2014-16) due to strong interventions including mass drug administration, health education and environment improvement. National surveillance of STHs started in 2006 and has been implemented successively until now, which allows to understand the endemic status and trends of STHs prevalence in China. Surveillance has been expanded to 30 provinces of China since 2016. Integrated pilot programmes have been implemented between 2006 and 2009, in which an integrated strategy, with health education and control of infection sources as key components, was adopted. Since 2019, new control pilots have been started, which will be continued for five successive years to further explore appropriate control strategies in the current "new era". With the decline of infection rate of STHs, China is approaching the elimination stage for STHs. In order to achieve this final target, poverty alleviation programmes should be integrated with precise control measures, according to real situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carboxylesterases are mainly involved in the mediation of metabolic resistance of many insects to organophosphate (OP) insecticides. Carboxylesterases underwent two divergent evolutionary events: (1) quantitative mechanism characterized by the overproduction of carboxylesterase protein; and (2) qualitative mechanism caused by changes in enzymatic properties because of mutation from glycine/alanine to aspartate at the 151 site (G/A151D) or from tryptophan to leucine at the 271 site (W271L), following the numbering of Drosophila melanogaster AChE. Qualitative mechanism has been observed in few species. However, whether this carboxylesterase mutation mechanism is prevalent in insects remains unclear. In this study, wild-type, G/A151D and W271L mutant carboxylesterases from Culex pipiens and Aphis gossypii were subjected to germline transformation and then transferred to D. melanogaster . These germlines were ubiquitously expressed as induced by tub -Gal4. In carboxylesterase activity assay, the introduced mutant carboxylesterase did not enhance the overall carboxylesterase activity of flies. This result indicated that G/A151D or W271L mutation disrupted the original activities of the enzyme. Less than 1.5-fold OP resistance was only observed in flies expressing A. gossypii mutant carboxylesterases compared with those expressing A. gossypii wild-type carboxylesterase. However, transgenic flies universally showed low resistance to OP insecticides compared with non-transgenic flies. The flies expressing A. gossypii W271L mutant esterase exhibited 1.5-fold resistance to deltamethrin, a pyrethroid insecticide compared with non-transgenic flies. The present transgenic Drosophila system potentially showed that a quantitative increase in carboxylesterases induced broader resistance of insects to insecticides than a qualitative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Walnut oil (WNO) is a high-quality vegetable oil with high nutritional value, but it may be the target for adulteration and mislabeling. Therefore, this work proposes the use of excitation–emission matrix fluorescence (EEMF) spectroscopy coupled with chemometrics and ensemble learning to identify and semi-quantify the adulterated WNO. Herein, a total of 711 vegetable oil samples were analyzed. A five-component alternating trilinear decomposition (ATLD) completed the EEMF spectra characterization of 426 pure oil samples and provided chemically meaningful information. Five authenticity identification methods, including eXtreme gradient boosting (XGB), gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT), random forest (RF), multi-way partial least squares discriminant analysis (N -PLS-DA), and k -nearest neighbor (k -NN), were used for the discrimination of WNO and counterfeited WNO. Besides, PLS regression (PLSR) models were established to semi-quantify the adulterated levels of WNO concentration in edible blended oils. The results showed that ensemble methods obtained better performance, with the correct classification rate (CCR) of cross-validation being ranged 82.7–100 %, and the value of RMSEP is less than 12.8 %. These results suggest that EEMF combined with chemometrics and ensemble methods can be used as a promising tool for rapid authenticity identification in commercial edible vegetable oils. [Display omitted] • A fluorescence method was developed for the identification of walnut oil. • ATLD completed the spectral characterization of 426 pure vegetable oils. • The classification models were established by chemometrics and ensemble methods. • Ensemble methods achieved better classification performance. • PLS regression was applied to semi-quantify the adulteration levels of walnut oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may lead to a series of changes in the central nervous system, including impaired synaptic plasticity, neuronal dendritic spine loss, enhanced apoptosis and increased inflammation. However, the specific mechanism of PTSD has not been studied clearly. In the present study, we found that the level of miR-153-3p in the hippocampus of rats exposed tosingle-prolonged stresss (SPS) was upregulated, but its downstream target σ-1R showed a significant decrease. The downregulation of miR-153 could alleviate the PTSD-like behaviors in the rats exposed to SPS, and this effect might be related to the upregulation of σ-1R and PSD95. Furthermore, anti-miR-153 could also increase the dendritic spine density and reduce cell apoptosis in the hippocampus of SPS rats. In addition, we showed that the mTOR signaling pathway might be involved in the regulation of σ-1R in the hippocampus of rats exposed to SPS. The results of this study indicated that miR-153 might alleviate PTSD-like behaviors by regulating cell morphology and reducing cell apoptosis in the hippocampus of rats exposed to SPS by targeting σ-1R, which might be related to the mTOR signaling pathway. • The level of miR-153 was upregulated in the hippocampus of rats exposed to SPS procedure, while the level of sigma-1R was downregulated. • Anti-miR-153 injection alleviated PTSD-like behaviors and this effect might be related to the upregulation of PSD95, the decreased level of apoptosis, and the increased density of dendritic spines in hippocampal neurons. • The effect of anti-miR-153 on neurons might be related to its target gene sigma-1R, which activates mTOR signal pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]