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Aim: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is characterized by diffuse hepatic steatosis and has quickly risen to become the most prevalent chronic liver disease. Its incidence is increasing yearly, but the pathogenesis is still not fully understood. Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis) is a major pathogen widely prevalent in periodontitis patients. Its infection has been reported to be a risk factor for developing insulin resistance, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and metabolic syndrome. The aim of this review is to evaluate the association between P. gingivalis infection and NAFLD, identify the possible etiopathogenetic mechanisms, and raise public awareness of oral health to prevent and improve NAFLD.Methods: After searching in PubMed and Web of Science databases using 'Porphyromonas gingivalis', 'non-alcoholic fatty liver disease', and 'hepatic steatosis' as keywords, studies related were compiled and examined.Results:P. gingivalis infection is a direct risk factor for NAFLD based on clinical and basic research. Moreover, it induces systematic changes and systemic abnormalities by disrupting metabolic, inflammatory, and immunologic homeostasis.Conclusion:P. gingivalis-odontogenic infection promotes the occurrence and development of NAFLD. Further concerns are needed to emphasize oral health and maintain good oral hygiene for the prevention and treatment of NAFLD. Porphyromonas gingivalis exacerbates the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Porphyromonas gingivalis aggravates a homeostasis imbalance in hepatic lipid metabolism and an insulin resistance phenotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease associated with an increased risk of death, but its underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have recently been implicated in various biological processes. The aim of this study was to investigate the key circRNAs related to RA. A microarray assay was used to identify the differentially expressed circRNAs (DEcircRNAs) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients with RA compared to patients with osteoarthritis (OA) and healthy controls. Then, quantitative real-time PCR was applied to verify the DEcircRNAs, and correlations between the levels of DEcircRNAs and laboratory indices were analysed. We also performed extensive bioinformatic analyses including Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genome (KEGG) pathway and potential circRNA–miRNA–mRNA network analyses to predict the function of these DEcircRNAs. A total of 35,342 and 6146 DEcircRNAs were detected in RA patients compared to controls and OA patients, respectively. Nine out of the DEcircRNAs in RA were validated by real-time PCR. There were correlations between the levels of DEcircRNAs and some of the laboratory indices. GO analyses revealed that these DEcircRNAs in RA were closely related to cellular protein metabolic processes, gene expression, the immune system, cell cycle, posttranslational protein modification and collagen formation. Functional annotation of host genes of these DEcircRNAs was implicated in several significantly enriched pathways, including metabolic pathways, ECM–receptor interaction, the PI3K–Akt signalling pathway, the AMPK signalling pathway, leukocyte transendothelial migration, platelet activation and the cAMP signalling pathway, which might be responsible for the pathophysiology of RA. The findings of this study may help to elucidate the role of circRNAs in the specific mechanism underlying RA. Microarray assays showed that a total of 35,342 and 6146 DEcircRNAs were detected in RA patients compared to controls and OA patients, respectively. Nine out of the DEcircRNAs in RA were validated by real-time PCR, and the levels of the DEcircRNAs were related to some of the laboratory indices. GO analyses revealed that the DEcircRNAs in RA were closely related to cellular protein metabolic processes, gene expression, the immune system, etc. Functional annotation of host genes of the DEcircRNAs in RA was implicated in several significantly enriched pathways, including metabolic pathways, ECM–receptor interaction, the PI3K–Akt signalling pathway, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smell and taste dysfunctions (STD) are frequently observed in patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19). To investigate the clinical characteristics of STD in COVID-19 patients. One-hundred six COVID-19 adult patients with the Omicron variant were enrolled. The clinical features of patients with and without STD were compared using questionnaires, laboratory tests, and imaging examinations. Of the 76 patients with smell and/or taste dysfunction, age (p =.002), vaccination time (p =.024), history of systemic diseases (p =.032), and smoking status (p =.044) were significantly different from those of the controls (n = 34). Fatigue (p =.001), headache (p =.004), myalgia (p =.047), and gastrointestinal discomfort (p =.001) were observed more frequently in these patients than in controls. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale score of these patients was significantly higher than that of controls (p <.001). The taste visual assessment scale score of the STD group was significantly lower than that of the taste dysfunction group (p =.001), and perceptions of sour, sweet, and salty tastes were worse in the STD group than in the taste dysfunction group (p <.001). COVID-19 patients had similar changes in smell and/or taste dysfunctions and worse emotional states, possibly correlated with some factors, including age and vaccination time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the accuracy of phase recovery in quantitative phase imaging, a novel two-stage synthetic denoising method is proposed in this paper. In this method, to avoid the loss of effective detail information, the mode of fixed attenuation parameter setting is changed into two stages of self-adaptation setting: the first attenuation parameter is defined as the convolution of filtered pixels in the window of interest, the second attenuation parameter is defined as the noise standard deviation of each pixel after filtering in the first stage. Moreover, the Pearson coefficient expression is redefined to get a more accurate similarity evaluation, and the algorithm's operational efficiency has been improved using cross-correlation functions and fast Fourier transform. The comparative results of simulations and experiments show that this method is more effective in reducing speckle noise in quantitative phase imaging and enhancing phase recovery accuracy, providing a new digital image denoizing method for efficient and accurate imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a delayed viral infection model with diffusion and a general incidence rate. A discrete-time model was derived by applying nonstandard finite difference scheme. The positivity and boundedness of solutions are presented. We established the global stability of equilibria in terms of R 0 by applying Lyapunov method. The results showed that if R 0 is less than 1, then the infection-free equilibrium E 0 is globally asymptotically stable. If R 0 is greater than 1, then the infection equilibrium E ∗ is globally asymptotically stable. Numerical experiments are carried out to illustrate the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this investigation, eight novel 2,5-disubstituted [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-7(4H)-one and eight novel 2,5-disubstituted [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidine amine derivatives were synthesized based on the novel marine natural product Essramycin. Their anti-epileptic activities were evaluated by 4-aminopyridine (4-AP)-induced hyper excitability model in primary cultured neocortical neurons. Five compounds with [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-7(4H)-one skeleton showed remarkable anti-epileptic activities. The preliminary structure–activity relationship (SAR) showed that the pyrimidine-7(4H)-one motif is the necessary "active core" of anti-epileptic activity. To understand the action mechanism of anti-epileptic activity of [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-7(4H)-one compounds, docking studies using the model of GABAA as docking scaffolds were performed and the docking results were in concordance with the experiment observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we designed and analysed a discrete model to solve a delayed within-host viral infection model by using non-standard finite difference scheme. The original model that we considered was a delayed viral infection model with cell-to-cell transmission, cell-mediated immune response and general nonlinear incidence. We show that the discrete model has equilibria which are exactly the same as those of the original continuous model and the conditions for those equilibria to be globally asymptotically stable are consistent with the original continuous model with no restriction on the time step size. The results imply that the discretization scheme can efficiently preserves the qualitative properties of solutions for corresponding continuous model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]