Effects of dietary supplementation with essential oils and protease on growth performance,antioxidation,inflammation and intestinal function of weaned pigs

This experiment evaluated the impacts of essential oils(EO)and protease(PRO),independently or in combination,on growth performance,antioxidation,inflammation and intestinal function of weaned pigs.One hundred and sixty weaned pigs(21 d of age,BW of 6.74±0.20 kg)were randomly divided into 4 treatments with 8 replicate pens of 5 pigs per pen.Dietary treatments included the following:1)control diet(CON),2)CON with 300 mg/kg essential oils(EO),3)CON with 500 mg/kg protease(PRO),4)CON with 300 mg/kg essential oil and 500 mg/kg protease(EO + PRO).On d 8,one pig from each penwas selected for sampling.The remaining pigs were fed for an additional week and growth performance was monitored during this period.Dietary treatments had no marked effects(P>0.05)on the growth performance of pigs.However,pigs receiving EO diet had higher(P<0.05)serumglutathione peroxidase(GSH-Px)activity,and tended to decrease(P=0.063)serum concentration of tumor necrosis factor-a(TNF-a).In addition,pigs receiving EO diet had higher(P<0.05)abundances of phylum Actinobacteria,and genera Bifidobacterium,and lower(P<0.05)phylum Bacteroidetes and genera Alloprevotella in colonic digesta.Pigs receiving PRO diet decreased(P<0.05)the serum concentration of malondialdehyde(MDA)and diamine oxidase activity,increased(P<0.05)the villus height and the ratio of villus height to crypt depth in duodenum,increased sucrase activity in jejunal mucosa,and also increased the abundance of phylum Actinobacteria in colonic digesta.Furthermore,the synergistic effects of EO and PROwas observed(P<0.05)for pigs with decreasing serum TNF-a concentration and increasing serum GSH-Px activity.Collectively,the results indicated that dietary supplementation of EO and PRO had no significant effects on growth performance of weaned pigs.EO diet appeared to improve antioxidant activity and intestinal microbiota,while PRO diet improved intestinal morphology and digestive enzyme activity,and there was a synergistic effect of EO and PRO on reducing inflammatory parameters in weaned pigs.

Stratification of Patients with Diabetes Using Continuous Glucose Monitoring Profiles and Machine Learning

Background.Continuous glucose monitoring(CGM)offers an opportunity for patients with diabetes to modify their lifestyle tobetter manage their condition and for clinicians to provide personalized healthcare and lifestyle advice.However,analytic toolsare needed to standardize and analyze the rich data that emerge from CGM devices.This would allow glucotypes of patients tobe identified to aid clinical decision-making.Methods.In this paper,we develop an analysis pipeline for CGM data and applyit to 148 diabetic patients with a total of 8632 days of follow up.The pipeline projects CGM data to a lower-dimensional spaceof features representing centrality,spread,size,and duration of glycemic excursions and the circadian cycle.We then useprincipal components analysis and k-means to cluster patients’records into one of four glucotypes and analyze clustermembership using multinomial logistic regression.Results.Glucotypes differ in the degree of control,amount of time spent inrange,and on the presence and timing of hyper-and hypoglycemia.Patients on the program had statistically significantimprovements in their glucose levels.Conclusions.This pipeline provides a fast automatic function to label raw CGM datawithout manual input.