Effects of apoptosis on liver aging

As an irreversible and perennial process,aging is accompanied by functional and morphological declines in organs. Generally,aging liver exhibits a decline in volume and hepatic blood flow. Even with a preeminent regenerative capacity to restore its functions after liver cell loss,its biosynthesis and metabolism abilities decline,and these are difficult to restore to previous standards. Apoptosis is a programmed death process via intrinsic and extrinsic pathways,in which Bcl-2 family proteins and apoptosis-related genes,such as p21 and p53,are involved.Apoptosis inflicts both favorable and adverse influences on liver aging.Apoptosis eliminates transformed abnormal cells but promotes age-related liver diseases,such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease,liver fibrosis,cirrhosis,and liver cancer. We summarize the roles of apoptosis in liver aging and age-related liver diseases.

Randomized Comparison of the Crush Versus the Culotte Stenting for Coronary Artery Bifurcation Lesions

Background：The crush and the culotte stenting were both reported to be effective for complex bifurcation lesion treatment.However,their comparative performance remains elusive.Methods：A total of 300 patients with coronary bifurcation lesions were randomly assigned to crush （n =150） and culotte （n =150） treatment.The primary endpoint was the occurrence of major adverse cardiac events （MACEs） at 12 months including cardiac death,myocardial infarction,stent thrombosis,and target vessel revascularization.Index lesion restenosis at 12 months was a secondary endpoint.The surface integrals of time-averaged wall shear stress at bifurcation sites were also be quantified.Results：There were no significant differences in MACE rates between the two groups at 12-month follow-up：Crush 6.7%,culotte 5.3% （P =0.48）.The rates of index lesion restenosis were 12.7% versus 6.0% （P =0.047） in the crush and the culotte groups,respectively.At 12-month follow-up,the surface integrals of time-averaged wall shear stress at bifurcation sites in the crush group were significantly lower than the culotte group （[5.01 ± 0.95] × 10^-4 Newton and [6.08 ± 1.16] × 10^-4 Newton,respectively;P =0.003）.Conclusions：Both the crush and the culotte bifurcation stenting techniques showed satisfying clinical and angiographic results at 12-month follow-up.Bifurcation lesions treated with the culotte technique tended to have lower restenosis rates and more favorable flow patterns.

Motile parameters of cell migration in anisotropic environment derived by speed power spectrum fitting with double exponential decay

Cell migration through anisotropic microenvironment is critical to a wide variety of physiological and pathological processes.However,adequate analytical tools to derive motile parameters to characterize the anisotropic migration are lacking.Here,we proposed a method to obtain the four motile parameters of migration cells based on the anisotropic persistent random walk model which is described by two persistence times and two migration speeds at perpendicular directions.The key process is to calculate the velocity power spectra of cell migration along intrinsically perpendicular directions respectively,then to apply maximum likelihood estimation to derive the motile parameters from the power spectra fitting with double exponential decay.The simulation results show that the averaged persistence times and the corrected migration speeds can be good estimations for motile parameters of cell migration.