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The present study aimed to investigate the effect of androgens on chronic heart failure (CHF) in a rat model. A total of 120 Sprague Dawley male rats were randomly divided into the following groups: (A) sham operation group, (B) castrated group, (C) heart failure (HF) group, (D) castrated + HF group, and (E) castrated + HF + testosterone (T) replacement therapy group. There were 20 rats in group A, and 25 rats in the other groups. Surgical castration was performed on groups B, D and E, and T replacement therapy was administered to group E. Groups C, D and E were treated with doxorubicin hydrochloride to prepare the CHF animal model. The insulin sensitivity index (ISI) was calculated from fasting blood glucose and fasting insulin levels. Echocardiography was performed. Venous blood was collected for plasma T level test. Myocardial tissue was used for apoptosis index analysis. The expression levels of myocardial insulin receptor (IR) and insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) were measured by reverse transcription semi-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Compared with group A, the T level and ISI decreased, whereas the expression level of IR and IRS-1 were increased in the CHF group (P<0.05). Following castration, the T level and ISI were significantly decreased, and the expression of IR and IRS-1 were increased compared with the uncastrated CHF rats (P<0.01). Following androgen administration, the ISI increased, expression of IR and IRS-1 decreased, and the myocardial apoptosis index decreased (P<0.05). Taken together, these results demonstrated that androgen supplementation could improve insulin resistance and affect the expression of IR and IRS-1 in CHF, thereby reducing myocardial apoptosis and improving cardiac function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Increasing evidences have shown that dissolved organic components are responsible for the significant C and N exports from terrestrial ecosystems to the surrounding aquatic ecosystems and very sensitive to CO2 enrichment. However, there is still a lack of direct evidence about CO2-led effects on these components at the ecosystem scale, especially in wetlands. We, therefore, simultaneously investigated the contents of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and dissolved nitrogen (DN) in the surface water and soil layer in a paddy field under FACE facility in Eastern China. Elevated CO2 significantly increased the contents of DOC and DN in the surface water by 18.0% and 14.3% on average. Elevated CO2 also increased DOC content in the soil, but decreased DN content. The contents of DOC and DN in the soil–water interface of 0–1cm soil layer were on average 22.4% and 47.5% higher than in the 5–15cm soil layer. Besides, significant higher DOC and DN contents existed in the soil porewater than in the surface water. Due to multiple drainage regime and rainstorm-induced runoffs in rice cropping regions, CO2-led DOC and DN increments in the surface water may increase C and N exports from paddies to the surrounding aquatic ecosystems under future climate patterns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: Epidemiological evidence suggests that long-term exposure to outdoor ultrafine particles (UFPs, <0.1 μm) may have important human health impacts. However, less is known about the acute health impacts of these pollutants as few models are available to estimate daily within-city spatiotemporal variations in outdoor UFPs., Methods: Several machine learning approaches (i.e., generalized additive models, random forest models, and extreme gradient boosting) were used to predict daily spatiotemporal variations in outdoor UFPs (number concentration and size) across Montreal and Toronto, Canada using a large database of mobile monitoring measurements. Separate models were developed for each city and all models were evaluated using a 10-fold cross-validation procedure., Results: In total, our models were based on measurements from 12,705 road segments in Montreal and 10,929 road segments in Toronto. Daily median outdoor UFP number concentrations varied substantially across both cities with 1st-99th percentiles ranging from 1389 to 181,672 in Montreal and 2472 to 118,544 in Toronto. Outdoor UFP size tended to be smaller in Montreal (mean [SD]: 34 nm [15]) than in Toronto (mean [SD]: 44 nm [25]). Extreme gradient boosting models performed best and explained the majority of spatiotemporal variations in outdoor UFP number concentrations (Montreal, R 2 : 0.727; Toronto, R 2 : 0.723) and UFP size (Montreal, R 2 : 0.823; Toronto, R 2 : 0.898) with slopes close to one and intercepts close to zero for relationships between measured and predicted values., Conclusion: These new models will be applied in future epidemiological studies examining the acute health impacts of outdoor UFPs in Canada's two largest cities., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest with regard to the content of this report., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of The Environmental Epidemiology. All rights reserved.)

Rationale: Outdoor fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) contributes to millions of deaths around the world each year, but much less is known about the long-term health impacts of other particulate air pollutants including ultrafine particles (a.k.a. nanoparticles) which are in the nanometer size range (<100 nm), widespread in urban environments, and not currently regulated., Objectives: Estimate the associations between long-term exposure to outdoor ultrafine particles and mortality., Methods: Outdoor air pollution levels were linked to the residential addresses of a large, population-based cohort from 2001 - 2016. Associations between long-term exposure to outdoor ultrafine particles and nonaccidental and cause-specific mortality were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models., Measurements: An increase in long-term exposure to outdoor ultrafine particles was associated with an increased risk of nonaccidental mortality (Hazard Ratio = 1. 073, 95% Confidence Interval = 1. 061, 1. 085) and cause-specific mortality, the strongest of which was respiratory mortality (Hazard Ratio = 1.174, 95% Confidence Interval = 1.130, 1.220)., Main Results: Long-term exposure to outdoor ultrafine particles was associated with increased risk of mortality. We estimated the mortality burden for outdoor ultrafine particles in Montreal and Toronto, Canada to be approximately 1100 additional nonaccidental deaths every year. Furthermore, we observed possible confounding by particle size which suggests that previous studies may have underestimated or missed important health risks associated with ultrafine particles., Conclusions: As outdoor ultrafine particles are not currently regulated, there is great potential for future regulatory interventions to improve population health by targeting these common outdoor air pollutants.

The 16S rRNA gene works as a rapid and effective marker for the identification of microorganisms in complex communities; hence, a huge number of microbiomes have been surveyed by 16S amplicon-based sequencing. The resolution of the 16S rRNA gene is always considered only at the genus level; however, it has not been verified on a wide range of microbes yet. To fully explore the ability and potential of the 16S rRNA gene in microbial profiling, here, we propose Qscore, a comprehensive method to evaluate the performance of amplicons by integrating the amplification rate, multitier taxonomic annotation, sequence type, and length. Our in silico assessment by a "global view" of 35,889 microbe species across multiple reference databases summarizes the optimal sequencing strategy for 16S short reads. On the other hand, since microbes are unevenly distributed according to their habitats, we also provide the recommended configuration for 16 typical ecosystems based on the Qscores of 157,390 microbiomes in the Microbiome Search Engine (MSE). Detailed data simulation further proves that the 16S amplicons produced with Qscore-suggested parameters exhibit high precision in microbiome profiling, which is close to that of shotgun metagenomes under CAMI metrics. Therefore, by reconsidering the precision of 16S-based microbiome profiling, our work not only enables the high-quality reusability of massive sequence legacy that has already been produced but is also significant for guiding microbiome studies in the future. We have implemented the Qscore as an online service at http://qscore.single-cell.cn to parse the recommended sequencing strategy for specific habitats or expected microbial structures. IMPORTANCE 16S rRNA has long been used as a biomarker to identify distinct microbes from complex communities. However, due to the influence of the amplification region, sequencing type, sequence processing, and reference database, the accuracy of 16S rRNA has not been fully verified on a global range. More importantly, the microbial composition of different habitats varies greatly, and it is necessary to adopt different strategies according to the corresponding target microbes to achieve optimal analytical performance. Here, we developed Qscore, which evaluates the comprehensive performance of 16S amplicons from multiple perspectives, thus providing the best sequencing strategies for common ecological environments by using big data., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Here, we report a simple but effective nose/tongue-mimic sensor array based on HAuCl 4 /3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) for colorimetric discrimination and determination of antioxidants. Two concentrations of HAuCl 4 were employed as receptor units to construct the colorimetric sensor array. The sensing strategy is based on the fact that HAuCl 4 with different concentrations (0.08 and 0.03 mM) could oxidize TMB to oxidized TMB (oxTMB), resulting in a blue and green color solution, respectively, corresponding to an absorption peak centered at 440 nm and 657 nm. However, the presence of different antioxidants could cause the reduction in HAuCl 4 , leading to the fading of the blue and green color and the decrease in the absorbance at 440 nm and 657 nm to varying degrees. Based on the above phenomena, by taking advantage of linear discriminant analysis (LDA), five antioxidants (i.e. ascorbic acid (AA), melatonin (MT), uric acid (UA), tannic acid (TCA), and glycine (Gly)) at five concentrations (200, 120, 60, 20, and 1 nM) were successfully discriminated both in buffer and serum. More importantly, this approach is simple, fast, and without the use of any nanomaterials.