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Previous studies have shown that puerarin plays a key role in protecting humans and animals from cardiovascular diseases. The exact mechanism of the therapeutic effect of puerarin on various cardiovascular diseases (protective effect on cardiomyocytes) is still unclear. In the present study, we identify the role of puerarin in an animal model of experimental heart failure (HF) and explore its underlying mechanisms. The HF rat model is induced by intraperitoneal injection of adriamycin (ADR), and puerarin is administered intragastrically at low, medium, and high concentrations. We demonstrate that puerarin significantly improves myocardial fibrosis and inflammatory infiltration and, as a result, improves cardiac function in ADR-induced HF rats. Mechanistically, we find for the first time that puerarin inhibits overactivated Na+/H+ exchange isoform 1 (NHE1) in HF, which may improve HF by decreasing Na+ and Ca2+ ion concentrations and attenuating mitochondrial damage caused by calcium overload; on the other hand, puerarin inhibits the activation of the p38 pathway in HF, reduces the expressions of TGF-β and proinflammatory cytokines, and suppresses myocardial fibrosis. In conclusion, our results suggest that Puerarin is an effective drug against HF and may play a protective role in the myocardium by inhibiting the activation of p38 and its downstream NHE1.

Beauty tutorials, one of the most popular media genres among young Chinese women, promote makeup as a self-beautifying ‘masquerade’ for women to cope with societal lookism. This genre celebrates postfeminist self-empowerment by providing young women with role models (i.e. beauty influencers) who successfully transform themselves with makeup. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of social media engagement, social comparison, and postfeminism, this study investigates the psychological mechanism through which active beauty tutorial engagement influences young Chinese women’s appearance satisfaction. Results of an online cross-sectional survey (N = 473) indicated that (a) cognitive-affective, behavioural, and relational engagement with beauty tutorials positively predicted women’s appearance satisfaction. (b) Perceived similarity to beauty influencers mediated the relationship between beauty tutorial engagement and appearance satisfaction. (c) The moderating effect was more pronounced in predicting appearance satisfaction against perceived similarity when female audiences held stronger postfeminist beliefs. This study contributes to our understanding of the impact of active social media engagement on female well-being and broadens the applicability of postfeminism by quantitatively validating it in the understudied Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) not only play essential roles in bone development but also are involved in embryonic growth, organogenesis cell proliferation and differentiation. However, the previous studies on the functions of shellfish BMPs genes are still very limited. To better understand its molecular structure and biological function, BMP7 of the razor clam Sinonovacula constricta (Sc-BMP 7) was cloned and characterized in this study. The full length of Sc-BMP7 is 2252 bp, including an open reading frame (ORF) of 1257 bp encoding 418 amino acids. The protein sequence included a signal peptide (1–32 aa), a prodomain (38–270 aa) and a TGF-β domain (317–418 aa). The quantitative expression of eleven adult tissues showed that Sc-BMP 7 was significantly higher expressed in the gill, foot, and mantle (P < 0.05), but lower in hemocytes and hepatopancreas. In the early development stages, low expression was detected in the stages of unfertilized mature eggs, fertilized eggs, 4-cell embryos, blastula, gastrulae, whereas it increased after the stage of trochophore and demonstrated the highest expression in umbo larvae (P < 0.01). In shell repair experiment, Sc-BMP 7 showed increasing expression level after 12 h. The higher expression of Sc-BMP 7 was detected while Ca2+ concentration was reduced in seawater. After inhibiting Sc-BMP 7 expression using RNA interference (RNAi) technology, expression of Sc-BMP 7 mRNA and protein were significantly down-regulated (P < 0.05) in the central zone of mantle (nacre formation related tissue) and the pallial zone of mantle (prismatic layer formation related tissue). Association analysis identified two shared SNPs in exon of Sc-BMP 7 gene from 246 individuals of two groups. These results indicated that BMP 7 might be involved in shell formation and growth. These results would contribute to clarify the role of Sc-BMP 7 in the regulation of growth and shell formation, and provide growth-related markers for molecular marker assisted breeding of this species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]