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The increasing prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) poses a growing challenge in terms of its prevention and treatment. The ‘multiple hits’ hypothesis of multiple insults, such as dietary fat intake, de novo lipogenesis, insulin resistance, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, gut dysbiosis and hepatic inflammation, can provide a more accurate explanation of the pathogenesis of NAFLD. Betaine plays important roles in regulating the genes associated with NAFLD through anti-inflammatory effects, increased free fatty oxidation, anti-lipogenic effects and improved insulin resistance and mitochondrial function; however, the mechanism of betaine remains elusive.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is currently the leading cause of chronic liver disease in developing countries. The pathogenesis is complex, and there is currently no effective treatment. Betaine is an essential intermediate in choline catabolism and an important component of the methionine cycle. Betaine deficiency is associated with NAFLD severity, and its mechanism needs to be further elaborated. In this study, an NAFLD mouse model was established by feeding ApoE−/− mice a high-fat diet. The effects of betaine on NAFLD were investigated, including its mechanism. In this study, after treatment with betaine, blood lipid levels and liver damage were significantly decreased in the NAFLD mouse model. The fat infiltration of the liver tissues of high-fat diet (HFD)-fed mice after betaine administration was significantly improved. Betaine treatment significantly upregulated AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), fibroblast growth factor 10 (FGF10), and adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) protein levels both in vivo and in vitro and suppressed lipid metabolism-related genes. Furthermore, the overexpression of FGF10 increased the protein level of AMPK and decreased lipid accumulation in HepG2 cells. Taken together, the data strongly suggest that betaine significantly prevents high-fat diet-induced NAFLD through the FGF10/AMPK signaling pathway in ApoE−/− mice.

A noninvasive continue measurement of blood pressure(BP) is of great significance for indicating the status cardiovascular system and evaluating circulatory function in homecare monitoring. Pulse transit time(PTT) is one of the most popular indicator for cuffless systolic BP(SBP) and diastolic BP(DBP) measurement. However, different PTT definitions have been used in relative researches and no comparative study reported which was the most reliable one. Moreover, an indivudal-based method is necessary because value of specific parameters differ from person to person due to their corporeity. In this study, an individual based PTT-BP calibration method was proposed, taking three PTT definition into consideration to effectively avoid the sharp deviation of blood pressure caused by single PTT measurement. Model was innovatively trained with back-propagation method and evaluated with five-fold cross validation. Results verified parameters in our PTT-BP model were different in individuals and showed our calibration method was valid. Correlation coefficients for SBP and DBP with the reference BP in our model were 0.9634 and 0.9740 respectively, and mean absolute deviation(MAD) were 2.83 and 2.82 mmHg, which indicates a more stable estimation in a large dataset.

Hongyun Huang,1 Lin Chen,2 Qingyan Zou,3 Fabin Han,4 Tiansheng Sun,5 Gengsheng Mao,1 Xijing He6 1Institute of Neurorestoratology, General Hospital of Armed Police Forces, 2Department of Neurosurgery, Yuquan Hospital, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 3Guangdong 999 Brain Hospital, Guangzhou, 4Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Taishan Medical University, Liaocheng, Shandong, 5Department of Orthopedics, Beijing Army General Hospital, Beijing, 6Second Department of Orthopedics, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China On behalf of the Chinese Association of Neurorestoratology and Chinese Branch of the International Association of Neurorestoratology Abstract: Cell therapy has been shown to be a key clinical therapeutic option for central ­nervous system disease or damage, and >30 types of cells have been identified through preclinical studies as having the capacity for neurorestoration. To standardize the clinical procedures of cell therapy as one of the strategies for treating neurological disorders, the first set of guidelines governing the clinical application of neurorestoration was completed in 2011 by the Chinese Branch of the International Association of Neurorestoratology. Given the rapidly advancing state of the field, the Neurorestoratology Professional Committee of Chinese Medical Doctor Association (Chinese Association of Neurorestoratology) and the Chinese Branch of the International Association of Neurorestoratology have approved the current version known as the “Clinical Cell Therapy Guidelines for Neurorestoration (China Version 2016)”. We hope this guideline will reflect the most recent results demonstrated in preclinical research, transnational studies, and evidence-based clinical studies, as well as guide clinical practice in applying cell therapy for neurorestoration. Keywords: cell therapy, neurorestoration, China, clinical application

This paper presents a powerful and accurate convolutional neural network (CNN) model of QRS detection in electrocardiogram (ECG) based on one dimensional residual network. The one dimensional CNN model can obtain the time-domain characteristics of QRS waveform and determine whether each sampling point in ECG signal belongs to the QRS wave. Because of denoising and normalization of ECG signal before being input into the model, the model has a great generalization ability. The main advantages of the model are reducing the complex preprocessed steps of ECG signal and achieving the detection of QRS end to end, which greatly improve the efficiency of detection. Compared with traditional methods, our model is more robust to noise and it's easier to implement. We use 30 records in mitdb to train the model and use 16 records in mitdb to test the model. The positive predictivity rate and sensitivity are 99.98% and 99.92% respectively in test set.

Qiang Ao,1,* Juan Xiao,2,3,* Yanqiu Yu,4 Gengsheng Mao,2 Qingyan Zou,5 Wenyong Gao,2,3 Hongyun Huang2,3 On behalf of Neurorestoratology Professional Committee of Chinese Medical Doctor Association (Chinese Association of Neurorestoratology) 1Department of Tissue Engineering, China Medical University, Shen Yang, 2Institute of Neurorestoratology, General Hospital of Armed Police Forces, Beijing, 3Cell Therapy Center, Beijing Hongtianji Neuroscience Academy, Beijing, 4Department of Pathophysiology, China Medical University, Shen Yang, 5Guangdong 999 Brain Hospital, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: Formulating common standards for the culture and quality control of umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) is crucial for the standardization of clinical neurorestorative therapy. But to date, there have been no standardized guidelines for the culture and quality control of MSCs in neurorestorative clinical application. Based on a relatively comprehensive review of published clinical studies as well as the existing methods of MSC culture and quality control, the Chinese Association of Neurorestoratology has developed standards for the culture and quality control of umbilical cord MSCs which possess the potential in neurorestorative clinical application. These guidelines include standardized training and management procedures for laboratory operators; standardized use and management of materials and equipment; standardized collection, culture and proliferation of umbilical cord MSCs; standardized management for cell preservation, transport and related safeguard measures; as well as standardization of a clean environment, routine maintenance and related tests and examinations and so on. These guidelines represent the minimum required standards for the culture and quality control of umbilical cord MSCs for potential use in current neurorestorative clinical therapy, and will be further optimized according to the progress of preclinical and clinical studies. Keywords: standardization, cell culture, quality control, mesenchymal stromal cells, clinical treatment, neurorestoratology, translational medicine