Effects of nocturnal snacks on body composition in patients with liver cirrhosis

BACKGROUND Patients with liver cirrhosis are universally malnourished and the nocturnal snacks intervention is the currently recommended nutritional intervention for patients with liver cirrhosis.Body composition is an important indicator for the assessment of nutritional conditions.We investigated the effects of nocturnal snacks(200 kcal/day)for 3 months on body composition in patients with liver cirrhosis.Seventy patients with liver cirrhosis and 30 healthy controls were enrolled,and differences in body composition were detected using InBody 720,a body composition analyzer.The patients were further randomized into a normal diet group(three meals a day)and nocturnal snacks group(three meals a day+nocturnal snacks).The effect of nocturnal snacks on the body composition of patients with cirrhosis was assessed after 3 months of intervention.RESULTS Body fat mass(BFM),skeletal muscle mass(SMM),fat free mass,visceral fat area(VFA),and body cell mass(BCM)were significantly lower in the liver cirrhosis patients than in the healthy controls.After 3 months’intervention,BFM,VFA and BCM were significantly higher in the nocturnal snacks group than in the normal diet group,with no significant differences in total caloric intake and daily activity.However,there was no significant difference in SMM between the nocturnal snacks and normal diet groups.CONCLUSION Long-term nocturnal snacks may improve body composition indices such as BFM,VFA and BCM in patients with cirrhosis.However,the improvement was minor for SMM.

Integrated spoof plasmonic circuits

Using a metamaterial consisting of metals with subwavelength surface patterning, one can mimic surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs) and achieve surface waves with subwavelength confinement at microwave and terahertz frequencies, thus bringing most of the advantages associated with the optical SPPs to lower frequencies. Due to the properties of strong field confinement and high local field intensity, spoof SPPs have demonstrated the improved performance for data transmission and device miniaturization in an intensively integrated environment. The distinctive abilities, such as suppression of transmission loss and bending loss, and increase of signal integrity, make spoof SPPs a promising candidate for future generation of electronic circuits and electromagnetic systems. This article reviews the progress in spoof SPPs with a special focus on their applications in circuits from transmission lines to passive and active devices in microwave and terahertz regimes. The integration of versatile spoof SPP devices on a single platform,which is compatible with established electronic circuits, is also discussed.