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The pathogenesis of connective tissue disease-associated interstitial lung disease (CTD-ILD) is unclear. This study aims to identify differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) in CTD-ILD to determine the potential role of these DEPs that may play in the pathogenesis of CTD-ILD and to offer potential therapeutic targets.Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) samples were collected from four patients with CTD-ILD and four patients without CTD-ILD. Label-free mass spectrometry-based relative quantification was used to identify the DEPs. Bioinformatics were used to determine the potential biological processes and signaling pathways associated with these DEPs.We found 65 upregulated DEPs including SFTPD, CADM1, ACSL4, TSTD1, CD163, LUM, SIGLEC1, CPB2, TGFBI and HGD, and 67 downregulated DEPs including SGSH, WIPF1, SIL1, RAB20, OAS3, GMPR2, PLBD1, DNAJC3, RNASET2 and OAS2. The results of GO functional annotation for the DEPs showed that the DEPS were mainly enriched in the binding, cellular anatomical entity, cellular processes, and biological regulation GO terms. The results of KEGG analyses showed that the pathways most annotated with the DEPs were complement and coagulation cascades, metabolic pathways, pathways in cancer, and PPAR signaling pathway. COG analyses further informed the functions associated with these DEPs, with most focused on signal transduction mechanisms; posttranslational modification, protein turnover, chaperones; intracellular trafficking, secretion, and vesicular transport; amino acid transport and metabolism; and lipid transport and metabolism.DEPs identified between patients with vs. without CTD-ILD may play important roles in the development of CTD-ILD and are potential new biomarkers for early diagnosis of CTD-ILD.

To evaluate whether the percentage of total sleep time spent with apnoea and hypopnoea duration time (AHT%) is better than the apnoea-hypopnoea index (AHI) for the assessment of nocturnal hypoxaemia and excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). Patients with suspected OSA were enrolled. Polysomnography, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, self-administered surveys and anthropometric measures were performed. The efficiency of AHT% and the AHI was evaluated for nocturnal hypoxaemia and EDS. A total of 160 eligible participants were analysed. The median AHT% in normal, mild, moderate and severe OSA patients was significantly different in the four-group patients with OSA. Spearman rank correlations analysis found that the associations were stronger between AHT% with percentage of total sleep time and O2 saturation of

In this article, we consider the finite element methods (FEM) for Grwunwald–Letnikov time-fractional diffusion equation, which is obtained from the standard two-dimensional diffusion equation by replacing the first-order time derivative with a fractional derivative (of order α, with 0

In this paper, a discrete-time Hopfield neural network with delay is considered. We give some sufficient conditions ensuring the local stability of the equilibrium point for this model. By choosing the delay as a bifurcation parameter, we demonstrated that Neimark–Sacker bifurcation (or Hopf bifurcation for map) would occur when the delay exceeds a critical value. A formula for determining the direction bifurcation and stability of bifurcation periodic solutions is given by applying the normal form theory and the center manifold theorem. Some numerical simulations for justifying the theoretical results are also provided.

In this paper, we use the homotopy analysis method (shortly HAM) to obtain the numerical solutions of Poisson equation with boundary conditions. The series solution is developed and the recurrence relations are given explicitly. The initial approximation can be freely chosen with possible unknown constants which can be determined by imposing the boundary and initial conditions. The comparison of the HAM results with the exact solutions is made, the results reveal that the HAM is very effective and simple. The HAM contains the auxiliary parameter h, which provides us with a simple way to adjust and control the convergence region of solution series.