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Vascular endothelial cells play a vital role in atherosclerotic changes and the progression of cardiovascular disease in older adults. Previous studies have indicated that Astragalus polysaccharides (APS), a main active component of the traditional Chinese medicine Astragalus, protect mitochondria and exert an antiaging effect in the mouse liver and brain. However, the effect of APS on rat aortic endothelial cell (RAEC) senescence and its underlying mechanism have not been investigated. In this study, we extracted RAECs from 2-month-old male Wistar rats by the tissue explant method and found that APS ameliorated the high-glucose-induced increase in the frequency of SA-β-Gal positivity and the levels of the senescence-related proteins p16, p21, and p53. APS increased the tube formation capacity of RAECs under high-glucose conditions. Moreover, APS enhanced the expression of the mitochondrial Na+/Ca2+ exchanger NCLX, and knockdown of NCLX by small interfering RNA (siRNA) transfection suppressed the antiaging effect of APS under high-glucose conditions. Additionally, APS ameliorated RAEC mitochondrial dysfunction, including increasing ATP production, cytochrome C oxidase activity and the oxygen consumption rate (OCR), and inhibited high-glucose-induced NLRP3 inflammasome activation and IL-1β release, which were reversed by siNCLX. These results indicate that APS reduces high-glucose-induced inflammasome activation and ameliorates mitochondrial dysfunction and senescence in RAECs by modulating NCLX. Additionally, APS enhanced the levels of autophagy-related proteins (LC3B-II/I, Atg7) and increased the quantity of autophagic vacuoles under high-glucose conditions. Therefore, these data demonstrate that APS may reduce vascular endothelial cell inflammation and senescence through NCLX. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The incidence of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in children is increasing globally. Due to the immature immune system in children, the prognosis of DLBCL is quite different from that of adults. We aim to use the multicenter large retrospective analysis for prognosis study of the disease., Methods: For our retrospective analysis, we retrieved data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database that included 836 DLBCL patients under 18 years old who were treated at 22 central institutions between 2000 and 2019. The patients were randomly divided into a modeling group and a validation group based on the ratio of 7:3. Cox stepwise regression, generalized Cox regression and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) were used to screen all variables. The selected prognostic variables were used to construct a nomogram through Cox stepwise regression. The importance of variables was ranked using XGBoost. The predictive performance of the model was assessed by using C-index, area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, sensitivity and specificity. The consistency of the model was evaluated by using a calibration curve. The clinical practicality of the model was verified through decision curve analysis (DCA)., Results: ROC curve demonstrated that all models except the non-proportional hazards and non-log linearity (NPHNLL) model, achieved AUC values above 0.7, indicating high accuracy. The calibration curve and DCA further confirmed strong predictive performance and clinical practicability., Conclusions: In this study, we successfully constructed a machine learning model by combining XGBoost with Cox and generalized Cox regression models. This integrated approach accurately predicts the prognosis of children with DLBCL from multiple dimensions. These findings provide a scientific basis for accurate clinical prognosis prediction., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://tcr.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/tcr-23-2358/coif). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (2024 Translational Cancer Research. All rights reserved.)

Aphidoletes aphidimyza is a predator that is an important biological agent used to control agricultural and forestry aphids. Although many studies have investigated its biological and ecological characteristics, few molecular studies have been reported. The current study was performed to identify suitable reference genes to facilitate future gene expression and function analyses via quantitative reverse transcription PCR. Eight reference genes glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase ( GAPDH ), RPS13 , RPL8 , RPS3 , α-Tub , β-actin , RPL32 , and elongation factor 1 alpha ( EF1-α ) were selected. Their expression levels were determined under four different experimental conditions (developmental stages, adult tissues, sugar treatment, and starvation treatment) using qRT-PCR technology. The stability was evaluated with five methods (Ct value, geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper, and RefFinder). The results showed that GAPDH , RPL32 , and EF1-α were ranked as the best reference gene combinations for measuring gene expression levels among different developing stages and in various starvation treatments. RPL8 and RPS3 were recommended to normalize the gene expression levels among different adult tissues. RPL32 , β-actin , and EF1-α were recommended sugar-feeding conditions. To validate the utility of the selected reference pair, RPL8, and RPS3 , we estimated the tissue-biased expression level of a chemosensory protein gene ( AaphCSP1 ). As expected, AaphCSP1 is highly expressed in the antennae and lowly expressed in the abdomen. These findings will lay the foundation for future research on the molecular physiology and biochemistry of A. aphidimyza ., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Shen, Zhang, Zhao, Zhu, Yu, Yang and Zhang.)