Search

Background Carotid atherosclerosis (CAS) is a significant indicator of early systemic atherosclerosis. Previous studies have demonstrated a close relationship between elevated remnant cholesterol (RC) levels and the pathogenesis of CAS. However, limited information is available regarding the association between RC and the development of CAS in menopausal women. Objective To investigate the correlation between RC and the pathogenesis of CAS in menopausal women. Methods A total of 307 menopausal women from Fengxiang Town, Anding District, Dingxi City were selected as the research subjects. These women had participated in the national high-risk stroke screening project and completed carotid artery ultrasound examination between January 2020 and October 2023. General information on the ordinary people was collected and participants' characteristics of the carotid artery intima were analyzed by means of using color doppler ultrasound. Based on the cervical ultrasound results, the subjects were divided into CAS group and non-CAS group. Spearman rank correlation analysis was used to explore the correlation between RC and other risk factors for CAS. Furthermore, multifactor Logistic regression was employed to analyze and explore the correlation between RC and CAS in menopausal women. Results The findings revealed that participants in the CAS group (n=130) has higher levels than those in the non-CAS group (n=177) in terms of menopausal female age, history of stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), total cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), RC and pulse pressure (P

Objective This study aims to elucidate the underlying mechanism of hyperglycemia induced Alzheimer's disease (AD)-like pathological changes. Methods Thirty Sprague Dawley rats (aged 18 weeks) were randomly divided into one control groups and two experimental groups (n=10 for each group), including control group, STZ+HFD group, and STZ+HFD+AICAR group. Control rats (n=10) was fed with the standard diet and experimental rats (n=20) was fed with high fat diet (HFD) for 8 weeks. 8 weeks after feeding, we estimated the reliability of the experimental model by measuring blood glucose levels (each week) of rats, serum insulin concentrations and oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) test. Then experimental rats were injected with 50 mg/kg/ day Streptozotocin (STZ) intraperitoneally for three days, whereas the control rats were given the same dose of citric acid buffer for comparison. Morris water maze tests was performed to observe the functional changes of brain regions related to spatial learning and memory in each group. Western blot was performed to detect the abundances of AMPK, p-AMPK, SIRT1, H3acK9 and CDK5 in rats. Immunohistochemistry staining was performed to evaluate the levels of MAPT/Tau which can reflect the AD-like pathological changes. Furthermore, AMPK agonist (AICAR) was used to assess whether AMPK/SIRT1 pathway, which participate in the AD-like pathological changes, is the upstream molecules of H3acK9 and CDK5. Results We found treatment with HFD and STZ significantly increased blood glucose and serum insulin levels, and impaired glucose tolerance in rats. Hyperglycemia led to a decrease in the activity of AMPK and expression of SIRT1. The expression levels of underlying molecules of AMPK including H3acK9 and CDK5 significantly increased. The levels of phosphorylated Tau significantly increased in brain tissues. Additonally, AICAR administration partial reversed hyperglycemia-induced AD-like molecular pathologic changes through activating AMPK/SIRT1, decreasing expression of H3acK9 and CDK5, and inhibiting Tau protein hyperphosphorylation in rat brain tissues. Conclusion Hyperglycemia induces inactivation of AMPK/SIRT1 pathway which promotes excessive deacetylation of H3K9 and over expression of CDK5, these changes in turn lead to Tau protein hyperphosphorylation and AD-like molecular pathologic changes.

In this paper, an additive margin network with adaptive feature recalibration, AMNets, for handling a wide range of visual tasks, is proposed. The new AMNets consists of three improvements on convolutional neural networks: (1) squeeze‐and‐excitation mechanism was embedded into the the residual block of single layer to improve the performance of the classification, (2) softmax loss was replaced by the additive margin softmax loss to minimize intra‐class variance and maximize inter‐class variance, and (3) Adam optimizer was exploited to update iteratively the network parameters. Experiments on the Brain Stroke CT Image Dataset show that our additive margin network is quite effective to improve state‐of‐the‐art algorithms. Network algorithms have been extensively used in medical image field to pursuit a more accuracy of disease recognition. This paper proposes AMNets, an additive margin network with adaptive feature recalibration for handling a wide range of visual tasks in medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-cardioembolic ischemic stroke (IS) is the predominant subtype of IS. This study aimed to construct a nomogram for recurrence risks in patients with non-cardioembolic IS in order to maximize clinical benefits. From April 2015 to December 2019, data from consecutive patients who were diagnosed with non-cardioembolic IS were collected from Lanzhou University Second Hospital. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis was used to optimize variable selection. Multivariable Cox regression analyses were used to identify the independent risk factors. A nomogram model was constructed using the "rms" package in R software via multifactor Cox regression. The accuracy of the model was evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), calibration curve, and decision curve analyses (DCA). A total of 729 non-cardioembolic IS patients were enrolled, including 498 (68.3%) male patients and 231 (31.7%) female patients. Among them, there were 137 patients (18.8%) with recurrence. The patients were randomly divided into training and testing sets. The Kaplan–Meier survival analysis of the training and testing sets consistently revealed that the recurrence rates in the high-risk group were significantly higher than those in the low-risk group (p < 0.01). Moreover, the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis of the risk score demonstrated that the area under the curve was 0.778 and 0.760 in the training and testing sets, respectively. The nomogram comprised independent risk factors, including age, diabetes, platelet–lymphocyte ratio, leukoencephalopathy, neutrophil, monocytes, total protein, platelet, albumin, indirect bilirubin, and high-density lipoprotein. The C-index of the nomogram was 0.752 (95% CI: 0.705~0.799) in the training set and 0.749 (95% CI: 0.663~0.835) in the testing set. The nomogram model can be used as an effective tool for carrying out individualized recurrence predictions for non-cardioembolic IS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The influence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) on the severity and prognosis of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) has been scarcely investigated. We aimed to explore the association of admission estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) levels with hemorrhagic stroke severity and outcomes in ICH patients.Materials and Methods: The patients enrolled in this study were from the China Stroke Center Alliance study (CSCA). Patients were divided into four groups according to differences in eGFR at admission (≥90; 60-89; 45-59; < 45). Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to determine the association of the eGFR at admission with hemorrhagic stroke severity, in-hospital complications, discharge disposition, and in-hospital mortality after ICH.Results: A total of 85,167 patients with acute ICH were included in the analysis. Among them, 9493 (11.1%) had a baseline eGFR<60 ml/min/1.73 m2. A low eGFR was associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality [eGFR 60-89 ml/min/1.73 m2, odds ratio (OR) 1.36 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.21-1.53); eGFR 45-59, 2.35 (1.97-2.82); eGFR<45, 4.18 (3.7-4.72); P for trend < 0.0001], non-routine discharge [eGFR 60-89, 1.11 (1.03-1.2); eGFR 45-59, 1.16 (1-1.35); eGFR<45, 1.37 (1.23-1.53); P for trend < 0.0001], hemorrhagic stroke severity [eGFR 60-89, 1 (0.95-1.05); eGFR 45-59, 1.39 (1.26-1.53); eGFR<45, 1.81 (1.67-1.96); P for trend < 0.0001], in-hospital complications of pneumonia [eGFR 60-89, 1.1 (1.05-1.14); eGFR 45-59, 1.3 (1.2-1.4); eGFR<45, 1.66 (1.57-1.76); P for trend < 0.0001] and hydrocephalus [eGFR 60-89, 0.99 (0.87-1.12); eGFR 45-59, 1.37 (1.1-1.7); eGFR<45, 1.54 (1.32-1.8); P for trend = 0.0139] after adjusting for confounding factors. With the decline in eGFR, the risk of hematoma evacuation increased in patients with an eGFR 45 to 59 ml/min/1.73 m2 (OR 1.48; 95% CI 1.37-1.61). No significant association between differences in eGFR at baseline and in-hospital complication of recurrent intracerebral hemorrhage was observed.Conclusions: Low eGFR at baseline was associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality, non-routine discharge, hemorrhagic stroke severity and in-hospital complications such as pneumonia, hydrocephalus and hematoma evacuation in acute ICH patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hydrogen produced by water splitting is limited due to the high theoretical potential of the anode. So, the lower theoretical potential of the urea oxidation reaction (UOR) was selected. In this work, a highly efficient bifunctional catalyst, cobalt nitride doped with reduced graphene oxide nanosheets supported on Ni foam (Co5.47N/rGO@NF), was synthesized by hydrothermal and calcination methods for both UOR and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The morphology and composition of Co5.47N/rGO@NF was studied through XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, HRTEM and elemental mapping. A parallel two-electrode electrolyzer (Co5.47N/rGO@NF||Co5.47N/rGO@NF) was constructed for electrochemical testing. To drive 100 mA/cm2, the voltage of Co5.47N/rGO@NF||Co5.47N/rGO@NF only 1.684 V is required, which is much lower than that of Pt/C||IrO2 (1.875 V) and the current density can be maintained for at least 30 h. This demonstrates that its high activity and stability have commercial feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background : Extracorporeal life support echniques as an Adjunct to Advanced Cardiac Life Support is usually suitable for complex heart surgery such as cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Cerebral perfusion is a clinically feasible neuroprotective strategy; however, the lack of a reliable small animal model. Methods : Based on the rat model of ECLS we evaluate the effects of ECLS-CP using HE staining, Nissl staining, TUNEL staining and ELISA. Result : We found that ECLS combined with the cerebral perfusion model did not cause brain injury and immune inflammation. There was no difference between the two by a left carotid artery or right carotid artery CP. Conclusion : These experimental results can provide the experimental basis for selecting blood vessels for ECLS patients and clinical CP to offers a trustworthy animal model for future exploration of applying brain perfusion strategies during ECLS-CP., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Compared with conventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CCPR), extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) can improve the survival rate of patients with cardiac arrest, and reduce the risk of reperfusion injury. However, it is still difficult to avoid the risk of secondary brain damage. Low temperature management has good neuroprotective potential for ECPR patients, which minimizes brain damage. However, unlike CCPR, ECPR has no clear prognostic indicator. The relationship between ECPR combined with hypothermia management-related treatment measure and neurological prognosis is not clear. This article reviews the effect of ECPR combined with different therapeutic hypothermia on brain protection and provides a reference for the prevention and treatment of neurological injury in patients with ECPR.