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The effects of dietary cadmium (Cd) supplementation on growth, antioxidant capacity and accumulation of Cd in tissues (body wall, digestive tracts, and respiratory tree) of sea cucumber, Apostichopus japonicus , exposed to sub-chronic concentrations (0, 10, 50, 100, and 500 mg Cd/kg dry weight) of Cd were investigated. In addition, the potential protective effects of vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid, AsA) against the effects of Cd on sea cucumbers were investigated. Sea cucumbers were exposed to dietary Cd for 30 days, after which another group of healthy sea cucumbers was supplied diet supplemented with mixed Cd and AsA for another 30 days. Cd exposure for 30 days resulted in increased Cd accumulation in tissues of sea cucumbers with exposure time and concentration. The order of Cd accumulation in organs was digestive tracts>respiratory tree>body wall. On day 30, the body weight gain (BWG) and specific growth rate (SGR) decreased significantly ( P <0.05) in the 500 mg Cd/kg treatment. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity and catalase (CAT) activity in the coelomic fluid of sea cucumbers decreased with increasing dietary Cd concentration, but malondialdehyde (MDA) content in the coelomic fluid increased. Providing diet supplemented with Cd and AsA indicated that although sea cucumbers exhibited signs of Cd toxicity, no death occurred in response to 50 mg Cd/kg for 30 days. Based on these findings, five treatments were provided: 50 mg Cd/kg+0 mg AsA/kg, 50 mg Cd/kg+ 3000 mg AsA/kg, 50 mg Cd/kg+ 5000 mg AsA/kg, 50 mg Cd/kg+10,000 mg AsA/kg, and 50 mg Cd/kg+15,000 mg AsA/kg. The BWG and SGR of sea cucumbers fed the AsA supplemented diet mixed with Cd increased. Additionally, MDA levels in coelomic fluid were negatively correlated with dietary AsA levels, while antioxidant capacities (SOD, GSH-Px and CAT) were positively correlated with dietary AsA levels. Moreover, Cd accumulation in tissues decreased in response to dietary AsA supplementation of treatments. Overall, antioxidant capacity and bioaccumulation in sea cucumber was found to decrease and be induced in response to Cd, but vitamin C mitigated these effects, with 5000 mg AsA/kg providing the optimum protection against 50 mg/kg Cd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to determine the effects of dietary supplementation with vitamin C ( l -ascorbic acid, AsA) on lead (Pb) accumulation and toxicity in sea cucumber, Apostichopus japonicus . Three hundred sea cucumbers (10.02±0.02 g) fed a basal diet containing 100 mg Pb/kg were subjected to 5 levels of l -ascorbate-2-polyphosphate (LAPP) supplementation to achieve 5 AsA treatment levels of 0, 2727, 4630, 9171, 13,893 mg AsA/kg. After 30 days, specific growth rate (SGR) and body weight gain (BWG) of supplementation groups were significantly ( P <0.05) higher than the control group. Pb contents of the intestine significantly ( P <0.05) decreased from 20 days to 30 days in all supplementation groups. Pb contents of the respiratory tree in sea cucumbers in the 2727 and 4630 mg AsA/kg treatment groups significantly ( P <0.05) decreased from 10 days to 30 days. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity and total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) of the sea cucumber body wall in supplementation groups increased after 30 days. Malondialdehyde (MDA) content of the body wall significantly ( P <0.05) declined with increasing AsA level. Therefore, it can be demonstrated that vitamin C could mitigate the effects of Pb on sea cucumber and the optimum levels ranged from 2727 mg AsA/kg to 4630 mg AsA/kg when Pb levels were 100 mg/kg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tussah immunoreactive substance (TIS) comprises a number of active chemicals with various bioactivities. The current study investigated the effects of these substances on the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus . The specific growth rate (SGR) of TIS-fed sea cucumbers was significantly enhanced, whereas no significant difference in SGR was observed between those soaked in antibiotics and those fed with basal diet only. TIS also improved the immune response of the animals when given at a dose of 1.0% or 2.0%, as shown by increased phagocytic, lysozyme, superoxide dismutase, alkaline phosphatase, acid phosphatase, and catalase activities following injection with live Vibrio splendidus . At a dose of 1.0% or 2.0%, TIS significantly enhanced the immune ability ( P < 0.05) of the sea cucumbers, but except for lysozyme activity, other immune indices were reduced one day after the animals were injected with Vibrio splendidus . However, the values of these immune indexes were still significantly higher compared to those of the control groups ( P < 0.05). Intestinal micro flora counts and high-throughput sequencing showed that dietary TIS could improve the amount of probiotic bacteria, yielding a 6-fold increase in Bacillus and 10-fold increase in Lactobacillus for sea cucumbers fed with 2.0% TIS diet compared to the control. Furthermore, TIS-containing diet also greatly reduced the number of harmful bacteria, with the number of Vibrio in sea cucumbers fed with 1%TIS diet decreased by 67% compared to the control. The results thus indicated that TIS increased the growth of sea cucumbers and enhanced their resistance to V. splendidus infection by improving the immunity of the animals. TIS also improved the gut microbiota profiles of the animals by increasing the probiotics and reducing the harmful bacteria within their guts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To determine the associations between the presence and depth of uterine corpus invasion and survival in patients with cervical cancer. Clinical data of patients with stage IA2–IIB cervical cancer who underwent radical hysterectomy between 2004 and 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. Uterine corpus invasion was identified from a review of uterine pathology. Independent prognostic factors for 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were identified using multivariate forward stepwise Cox proportional hazards regression models. A total of 1414 patients with stage IA2–IIB cervical cancer from 11 medical institutions in China were included. Retrospective review of the original pathology reports revealed a missed diagnosis of uterine corpus invasion in 38 (13.4%) patients and a misdiagnosis in 20 (1.8%) patients. Therefore, 284 patients with cervical cancer and uterine corpus invasion (90 [31.7%] patients had endometrial invasion, 105 [37.0%] patients had myometrial invasion <50%, and 89 [31.3%] patients had myometrial invasion ≥50%), and 1130 patients with cervical cancer without uterine corpus invasion were included in the analysis. The 5-year DFS and OS were significantly shorter for patients with uterine corpus invasion compared to patients with no uterine corpus invasion. Myometrial invasion ≥50% was an independent prognostic factor associated with decreased 5-year DFS (aHR, 2.307, 95% CI, 1.588–3.351) and 5-year OS (aHR, 2.736, 95% CI, 1.813–4.130), while myometrial invasion <50% or endometrial invasion had no effect on patient outcomes. Diagnosis of uterine corpus invasion is frequently missed. Myometrial invasion ≥50% within the uterine corpus was an independent factor associated with worse prognosis in patients with cervical cancer, while myometrial invasion <50% or endometrial invasion had no effect on outcomes. • Retrospective review of uterine corpus invasion revealed a rate of 13.4% for missed diagnosis and 1.8% for misdiagnosis. • The depth of myometrial invasion within the uterine corpus significantly affected survival in patients with cervical cancer. • Myometrial invasion ≥50% within the uterine corpus was an independent prognostic factor associated with decreased survival. • Myometrial invasion <50% or endometrial invasion within the uterine corpus had no effect on patient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient classification of vibration signals detected by phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometer (Φ-OTDR) based on small samples is an effective method to reduce the false alarm rate without GPU or large data sets. This paper proposes a fiber optic system vibration event recognition method based on a combination of image segmentation pre-processing, texture, statistical, morphological feature extraction, and weighted support vector machine (WSVM), which can effectively classify-five types of vibration events in high-speed railway perimeter intrusion detection with small sample data and no parallel processing units. Erosion and dilation operations are applied to vibration signal image feature enhancement in image pre-processing. The vibration signal region and background are separated by the maximum inter-class variance method, then 35 features of the vibration signal region are calculated and finally employed to construct a WSVM. Experiments show that the method achieves 99 FPS and 98.8% accuracy on the test set with 330 vibration images as the training set to build the model without GPU and in the presence of interference signals. It provides a generalized Φ-OTDR vibration event recognition method for small samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]