Development of Wistar rat model of insulin resistance

AIM: To establish a simplified and reliable animal model of insulin resistance with low cost in Wistar rats. METHODS: Wistar rats were treated with a high fat emulsion by ig for 10 d. Changes of the diets, drinking and body weight were monitored every day and insulin resistance was evaluated by hyperinsulinemic-euglycemicclamp techniques and short insulin tolerance test using capillary blood glucose. Morphologic changes of liver, fat, skeletal muscles, and pancreatic islets were assessed under light microscope. mRNA expressions of GLUT2 and α-glucosidase in small intestine epithelium, GLUT4 in skeletal muscles and Kir6.2 in beta cell of islets were determined by in situ hybridization.RESULTS: KITT was smaller in treated animals (4.5±0.9)than in untreated control Wistar rats (6.8±1.5), and so was glucose injection rate. Both adipocyte hypertrophy and large pancreatic islets were seen in high fat fed rats,but no changes of skeletal muscles and livers wereobserved. mRNA levels of GLUT2, α-glucosidase in small intestinal epithelium and Kir6.2 mRNA in beta cells of islets increased, whereas that of GLUT4 in skeletal muscles decreased in high fat fed group compared with normal control group.CONCLUSION: An insulin resistance animal model in Wistar rats is established by ig special fat emulsion.

Inhibition of small-intestinal sugar absorption mediated by sodium orthovanadate Na_3VO_4 in rats and its mechanisms

AIM: To investigate the inhibitory effects of sodium orthovanadate on small-intestinal glucose and maltose absorption in rats and its mechanism.METHODS: Normal Wistar rats were lavaged with sodium orthovanadate (16 mg/kg, 4 mg/kg and 1 mg/kg) for 6 d.Blood glucose values were measured after fasting and 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 h after glucose and maltose feeding with oxidation-enzyme method, α-glucosidase was abstracted from the upper small intestine, and its activity was examined.mRNA expression of α-glucosidase and glucose-transporter 2 (GLUT2) in epithelial cells of the small intestine was observed by in situ hybridization.RESULTS: Sodium orthovanadate could delay the increase of plasma glucose concentration after glucose and maltose loading, area under curve (AUC) in these groups was lower than that in control group. Sodium orthovanadate at dosages of 10 μmol/L, 100 μmol/L and 1000 μmol/L could suppress the activity of α-glucosidase in the small intestine of normal rats, with an inhibition rate of 68.18%, 87.22% and 91.91%,respectively. Sodium orthovanadate reduced mRNA expression of α-glucosidase and GLUT2 in epithelial cells of small intestine.CONCLUSION: Sodium orthovanadate can reduce and delay the absorption of glucose and maltose. The mechanism may be that it can inhibit the activity and mRNA expression of α-glucosidase, as well as mRNA expression of GLUT2 in small intestine.

Prevalence and risk factors of HIV and syphilis,and knowledge and risk behaviors related to HIV/AIDS among men who have sex with men in Chongqing,China

High HIV prevalence and incidence burdens have been reported in men who have sex with men（MSM）in Chongqing,China.We aimed to estimate the prevalence of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections（STIs）,to appraise the knowledge and risk behaviors related to HIV/AIDS among MSM,and to analyze the possible causes of deviation between behavior and knowledge to make better strategies.We recruited 617 MSM from February to July in 2008 by using a respondent-driven sampling（RDS） method in Chongqing,China.Through the collection of questionnaire-based data and biological testing results from all objects,we launched a crosssectional survey.STATA/SE was used for data analysis by frequency,ANOVA,rank sum test and logistic regression models.MSM with syphilis（OR=4.16,95%CI：2.35-7.33,P〈0.0001） were more likely to be HIV infected.Being a company employee（OR=3.64,95%CI：1.22-10.08,P〈0.0001） and having bought male for sex（OR=3.52,95%CI：1.10-11.32,P〈0.034） were associated with a higher probability of syphilis.MSM with younger age,higher education and greater monthly income had a higher mean knowledge score.MSM who had HIV testing had a higher mean knowledge score than those who never had.Students,venues for finding sex partners by Internet and homosexuals in MSM had a higher mean knowledge score compared to other occupations,venues for finding sex partners and sexual orientation.There is an urgent need for delivery of barrier and biomedical interventions with coordinated behavioral and structural strategies to improve the effect of HIV interventions among MSM.

CAT: A Simple yet Effective Cross-Attention Transformer for One-Shot Object Detection

Given a query patch from a novel class,one-shot object detection aims to detect all instances of this class in a target image through the semantic similarity comparison.However,due to the extremely limited guidance in the novel class as well as the unseen appearance difference between the query and target instances,it is difficult to appropriately exploit their semantic similarity and generalize well.To mitigate this problem,we present a universal Cross-Attention Transformer(CAT)module for accurate and efficient semantic similarity comparison in one-shot object detection.The proposed CAT utilizes the transformer mechanism to comprehensively capture bi-directional correspondence between any paired pixels from the query and the target image,which empowers us to sufficiently exploit their semantic characteristics for accurate similarity comparison.In addition,the proposed CAT enables feature dimensionality compression for inference speedup without performance loss.Extensive experiments on three object detection datasets MS-COCO,PASCAL VOC and FSOD under the one-shot setting demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our model,e.g.,it surpasses CoAE,a major baseline in this task,by 1.0%in average precision(AP)on MS-COCO and runs nearly 2.5 times faster.

Skeletal Muscle Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Lower Limbs in Late-onset Lipid Storage Myopathy with Electron Transfer Flavoprotein Dehydrogenase Gene Mutations

Background： Lipid storage myopathy （LSM） is a genetically heterogeneous group with variable clinical phenotypes. Late-onset multiple acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenation deficiency （MADD） is a rather common form of LSM in China. Diagnosis and clinical management of it remain challenging, especially without robust muscle biopsy result and genetic detection. As the noninvasion and convenience, muscle magnetic resonance imaging （MRI） is a helpful assistant, diagnostic tool for neuromuscular disorders. However, the disease-specific MRI patterns of muscle involved and its diagnostic value in late-onset MADD have not been systematic analyzed. Methods： We assessed the MRI pattern and fat infiltration degree of the lower limb muscles in 28 late-onset MADD patients, combined with detailed clinical features and gene spectrum. Fat infiltration degree of the thigh muscle was scored while that ofgluteus was described as obvious or not. Associated muscular atrophy was defined as obvious muscle bulk reduction. Results： The mean scores were significantly different among the anterior, medial, and posterior thigh muscle groups. The mean of fat infiltration scores on posterior thigh muscle group was significantly higher than either anterior or medial thigh muscle group （P 〈 0.00 l）. Moreover, the mean score on medial thigh muscle group was significantly higher than that of anterior thigh muscle group （P 〈 0.01）. About half of the patients displayed fat infiltration and atrophy in gluteus muscles. Of 28 patients, 12 exhibited atrophy in medial and/ or posterior thigh muscle groups, especially in posterior thigh muscle group. Muscle edema pattern was not found in all the patients. Conclusions： Late-onset MADD patients show a typical muscular imaging pattern of fat infiltration and atrophy on anterior, posterior, and medial thigh muscle groups, with major involvement of posterior thigh muscle group and gluteus muscles and a sparing involvement of anterior thigh compartment. Our findings also suggest that muscle MRI of lower limbs is a helpful tool in guiding clinical evaluation on late-onset MADD.

nfluence of Occupational Status on the Quality of Life o Chinese Adult Patients with Epilepsy

Background： Epilepsy is one of the most common serious neurological disorders. The present study aimed to investigate the influence of occupational status on the quality of life of Chinese adult patients with epilepsy. Methods： This study surveyed 819 subjects clinically diagnosed with epilepsy for more than 1 year in 11 hospitals in Beijing; 586 were employed （71.55%）. All subjects completed the case report form with inquiries on demographic data, social factors, and illness. The patients＇ quality of life was assessed using the quality of life in patients with epilepsy-31 items （QOLIE-31） questionnaire. Results： The QOLIE-31 score in the employed group was significantly higher than that in the unemployed group. Furthermore, the scores in all the sections （overall quality of life, energy/fatigue, emotional well-being, seizure worry, cognition, social function, and medication effects） of the employed group were higher than those of the unemployed group. Both the employed and unemployed groups achieved the highest difference in social function. The QOLIE-31 score of students was higher than those of farmers and workers. Both the students and workers scored higher in the quality of life compared with the adult peasants living with epilepsy. The students and farmers showed significant differences in QOL1E-31 score, cognition, emotional well-being, overall quality of life, energy/fatigue, and social function. In contrast, no significant difference was noted in seizure worry and medication effects across the three different kinds of occupation. Conclusion： Occupational status might affect the quality of life of Chinese adult patients with epilepsy, and social function is the most important contributing factor.

Bending-Induced Conductance Increase in Individual Semiconductor Nanowires and Nanobelts

Reliable ohmic contacts were established in order to study the strain sensitivity of nanowires and nanobelts.Significant conductance increases of up to 113%were observed on bending individual ZnO nanowires or CdS nanobelts.This bending strain-induced conductance enhancement was confirmed by a variety of bending measurements,such as using different manipulating tips(silicon,glass or tungsten)to bend the nanowires or nanobelts,and is explained by bending-induced effective tensile strain based on the principle of the piezoresistance effect.

Four Previously Identified Petunia inflata S-Locus F-Box Genes Are Involved in Pollen Specificity in Se If-I ncom pati bi I ity

Dear Editor, Petunia possesses self-incompatibility （SI）, by which pis- tils reject self-pollen but accept non-self pollen for fertili- zation （de Nettancourt, 2001; Iwano and Takayama, 2012）. Genes that regulate self-/non-self-recognition between pol- len and pistil are located at the highly polymorphic S-locus. An S-haplotype contains the pistil-specific S-RNase gene that regulates pistil specificity （Lee et al., 1994）. The first S-locus F-box （SLIO gene was identified in Antirrhinum hispanicum by Lai et al. （2002）, and subsequently Sijacic et al.