Effect of tight junction protein of intestinal epithelium and permeability of colonic mucosa in pathogenesis of injured colonic barrier during chronic recovery stage of rats with inflammatory bowel disease

Objective: To discuss the changes in the tight junction protein of intestinal epithelium and permeability of colonic mucosa and its possible mechanism by building the rat mode of inflammatory bowel disease at the chronic recovery stage. Methods: A total of 36 SD rats were divided into the model group and control one according to the random number table, with 18 rats in each group. Rats in the model group were given the 3% dextran sulfate sodium solution by the way of drinking for 7 d to build the rat model of inflammatory bowel disease, while rats in the control group were given free drinking of water. Six rats were executed at day 7, 14 and 21 respectively. The colonic tissues were collected from rats to observe the pathological changes of colonic mucosa. The activity of myeloperoxidase was detected and the white blood count was performed for rats in each group. The Ussing chamber technique was employed to detect the transepithelial electrical resistance(TER) and short-circuit current(SC) of colonic mucosa of rats in different time intervals; the quantum dots labeling technique was employed to detect the expression level of claudin-1 and claudin-2 in the colonic tissues. Results: After the successful modeling, the weight of rats in the model group was significantly reduced, while the disease activity index score was increased. The weight was at the lowest level at day 14 and then it began to increase afterwards. The disease activity index score was at the highest level at day 12 and then it began to decrease gradually. The activity of myeloperoxidase and WBC for rats in the model group all reached the peak value at day 14 and then decreased gradually. There was no significant difference in the changes of TER and SC in different time intervals for rats in the control group(P>0.05). TER of model group was at the lowest level at day 14 and then increased gradually; SC was at the highest level at day 14 and then decreased gradually. TER of model group at day 7, 14 and 21 was significantly lower than that of control group, while SC of model group was significantly higher than that of control group(P<0.05). There was no significant difference in the change of mean fluorescence intensity of claudin-1 and claudin-2 in different time intervals for rats in the control group(P>0.05). The claudin-1 and claudin-2 for rats in the model group reached the highest level at day 14 and then decreased gradually. The claudin-1 and claudin-2 of model group at day 7, 14 and 21 was significantly higher than that of control group(P<0.05). Conclusions: After the acute stage, the inflammatory bowel disease is then in the chronic recovery stage; the increased permeability of colonic mucosa and increased expression of tight junction protein of intestinal epithelium are closely related to the pathogenesis and development of disease. The tight junction protein plays a key role in the pathogenesis of injured colonic barrier of inflammatory bowel disease.

Correlation of pelvic floor ultrasound parameter with extracellular matrix remodeling and apoptosis in patients with stress urinary incontinence

Objective: To study the correlation of pelvic floor ultrasound parameter with extracellular matrix remodeling and apoptosis in patients with stress urinary incontinence. Methods:Patients with stress urinary incontinence who underwent surgical treatment in Tianmen First People's Hospital in Hubei Province between March 2015 and August 2017 were selected as the SUI group of the research and patients who underwent total hysterectomy due to benign uterine lesions in Tianmen First People's Hospital in Hubei Province over the same period were selected as the control group of the research. Pelvic floor ultrasonography was done before surgery to measure the bladder neck descent (BND), and pelvic floor tissue was collected after surgery to determine the contents of Col-I, Col-III, TGF-β1, MMP1, MMP9, TIMP1, E-cadherin, Bax, Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, Caspase-3 and HIF-1 . Results: The pelvic floor ultrasound parameter BND of SUI group was significantly higher than that of control group;Col-I, Col-III, TIMP1, E-cadherin, Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL contents in the pelvic floor tissue of SUI group were significantly lower than those of control group whereas TGF-β1, MMP1, MMP9, Bax, Caspase-3 and HIF-1 contents were significantly higher than those of control group;Col-I, Col-III, TIMP1, E-cadherin, Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL contents in the pelvic floor tissue of SUI group of patients with high BND were significantly lower than those of patients with low BND whereas TGF-β1, MMP1, MMP9, Bax, Caspase-3 and HIF-1 contents were significantly higher than those of patients with low BND. Conclusion: The change of pelvic floor ultrasound parameter BND in patients with stress urinary incontinence is closely related to the extracellular matrix remodeling and apoptosis in pelvic floor tissue.

Diagnostic value of gadobenate dimeglumine-enhanced hepatocyte-phase magnetic resonance imaging in evaluating hepatic fibrosis and hepatitis

AIM To evaluate the diagnostic value of gadobenate dimeglumine(Gd-BOPTA)-enhanced hepatocyte-phase magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) in evaluating hepatic fibrosis and hepatitis.METHODS Hepatocyte-phase images of Gd-BOPTA-enhanced MRI were retrospectively evaluated in 76 patients with chronic liver disease. These patients were classified into five groups according to either the histopathological fibrosis stage(S0-S4) or the histopathological hepatitis grade(G0-G4). The relative enhancement ratio(RE) of the liver parenchyma in the T1-vibe sequence was calculated by measuring the signal intensity before(SI pre) and 90 min after(SI post) intravenous injection of Gd-BOPTA using the following formula: RE =(SI post-SI pre)/SI pre. One-way analysis of variance was used to compare the difference between the relative RE in the hepatocyte phase(REh) and the stage of hepatic fibrosis and the grade of hepatitis. Pearson's productmoment correlation analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between the REh and the levels of serologic liver functional parameters.RESULTS According to histopathological hepatic fibrosis stage, the 76 patients were classified into five groups: 16 in S0, 15 in S1, 21 in S2, 9 in S3, and 15 in S4 group. According to histopathological hepatitis grade, the 76 patients were also classified into five groups: 0 in G0, 44 in G1, 22 in G2, 8 in G3, and 2 in G3 group. With regard to the stage of hepatic fibrosis, REh showed significant differences between the S2 and S3 groups and between the S2 and S4 groups(P < 0.05), but no significant difference was observed between the other groups. With regard to the grade of hepatitis, REh showed significant differences between the G1 and G2 groups and between the G1 and G4 groups(P < 0.05), but no significant difference was observed between the other groups. Increased REh showed correlations with decreased serum levels of TB, ALT and AST(P < 0.05). CONCLUSION To some extent, measuring the REh using Gd-BOPTAenhanced MRI might be a noninvasive technique for assessing the stage of hepatic fibrosis. This method is able to differentiate no/mild hepatitis from advanced hepatitis. TB, ALT and AST levels can predict the degree of liver enhancement in the hepatocyte phase of Gd-BOPTA-enhanced MRI.

Prevalence of developmental dyslexia in primary school children:a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Developmental dyslexia(DD)is a specific impairment during the acquisition of reading skills and may have a lifelong negative impact on individuals.Reliable estimates of the prevalence of DD serve as the basis for evidence-based health resource allocation and policy making.However,the prevalence of DD in primary school children varies largely across studies.Moreover,it is unclear whether there are differences in prevalence in different genders and writing systems.Hence,the present study aims to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the global prevalence of DD and to explore related factors.Methods We will undertake a comprehensive literature search in 14 databases,including EMBASE,PubMed,Web of Science,China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Cochrane,from their inception to June 2021.Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies that describe the prevalence of DD will be eligible.The quality of the included observational studies will be assessed using the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology statement.The risk of bias will be determined by sensitivity analysis to identify publication bias.Results One meta-analysis will be conducted to estimate the prevalence of DD in primary school children.Heterogeneity will be assessed in terms of the properties of subjects(e.g.,gender,grade and writing system)and method of diagnosis in the included primary studies.Subgroup analyses will also be performed for population and secondary outcomes.Conclusion The results will synthesize the prevalence of DD and provide information for policy-makers and public health specialists.

Accelerating geospatial analysis on GPUs using CUDA

Inverse distance weighting (IDW) interpolation and viewshed are two popular algorithms for geospatial analysis.IDW interpolation assigns geographical values to unknown spatial points using values from a usually scattered set of known points,and viewshed identifies the cells in a spatial raster that can be seen by observers.Although the implementations of both algorithms are available for different scales of input data,the computation for a large-scale domain requires a mass amount of cycles,which limits their usage.Due to the growing popularity of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for general purpose applications,we aim to accelerate geospatial analysis via a GPU based parallel computing approach.In this paper,we propose a generic methodological framework for geospatial analysis based on GPU and its programming model Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA),and explore how to map the inherent parallelism degrees of IDW interpolation and viewshed to the framework,which gives rise to a high computational throughput.The CUDA-based implementations of IDW interpolation and viewshed indicate that the architecture of GPU is suitable for parallelizing the algorithms of geospatial analysis.Experimental results show that the CUDA-based implementations running on GPU can lead to dataset dependent speedups in the range of 13-33-fold for IDW interpolation and 28-925-fold for viewshed analysis.Their computation time can be reduced by an order of magnitude compared to classical sequential versions,without losing the accuracy of interpolation and visibility judgment.