Significance of serum glucagon-like peptide-1 and matrix Gla protein levels in patients with diabetes and osteoporosis

BACKGROUND Osteoporosis is a systemic bone disease characterized by decreased bone mass,impaired bone mass,and reduced bone strength that leads to increased bone fragility and fracture.Type 2 diabetes mellitus(T2DM)complicated with osteoporosis is a common systemic metabolic bone disease,and reduced bone mass and bone strength are considered the main clinical features;however,the pathogenesis of this disease has not been fully clarified.Its occurrence is considered related to sex,age,and genetic factors.There are many risk factors for diabetes complicated with osteoporosis.Therefore,exploring these risk factors will help prevent it.AIM To investigate the relationships among serum glucagon-like peptide-1(GLP-1)levels,matrix Gla protein(MGP)levels,and diabetes with osteoporosis.METHODS Sixty patients with T2DM complicated with osteoporosis confirmed by the endocrinology department of our hospital were selected as the case group.Sixty T2DM patients with bone loss were selected as the control group.Sixty healthy participants were selected as the healthy group.The general data,bone mineral density index,and bone metabolic markers of the three groups were compared.The relationships among GLP-1 levels,MGP levels,and the bone mineral density index of the case group were analyzed using linear correlation analysis and a logistic regression model.RESULTS Differences in sex,smoking,and drinking among the case group,control group,and healthy group were not statistically significant(P>0.05).The mean age of the case group was older than those of the control and healthy groups(P<0.05).The body mass index,fasting plasma glucose level,HbA1c level,hypertension rate,and coronary heart disease rate of the case and control groups were higher than those of the healthy group(P<0.05).The serum GLP-1 and MGP levels of the case group were lower than those of the control and healthy groups;these differences were statistically significant(P<0.05).The serum GLP-1 and MGP levels of the control group were lower than those of the healthy group;these differences were statistically significant(P<0.05).The serum GLP-1 and MGP levels of the case group were significantly positively correlated with the bone mineral density values of the hip and lumbar spine(P<0.05).The results of the logistic regression model showed that age and duration of diabetes were independent risk factors for osteoporosis in diabetic patients(P<0.05)and that increased GLP-1 and MGP values were protective factors against osteoporosis in diabetic patients(P<0.05).CONCLUSION Serum GLP-1 and MGP levels of diabetic patients with osteoporosis were significantly decreased and positively correlated with bone mineral density and were independent risk factors for osteoporosis in diabetic patients.

FMT:A Potential Therapeutic and Rehabilitative Intervention for COVID-19

Coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19),which was outbreak in December 2019 Wuhan,China,has spread to more than 100 countries.In addition to respiratory symptoms,COVID-19 can also cause some digestive symptoms such as nausea and diarrhea.As a variety of respiratory diseases which are associated with a dysbiosis in both airway microbiota and the intestinal microbiota,COVID-19 may cause digestive symptoms through a constant cross-talk between the system which is known as the Gut_Lung Axis.Additionally,lymphopenia and hypercytokinemia were also common in COVID-19 patients which suggest that COVID-19 could compromise the immune system.Given the fact that gut microbiota not only could maintain immune homeostasis and immune responses at local mucosal surfaces,but also has distal protective effects and protect against respiratory virus.FMT is an effective way to enhance immunity and would be a potential therapy for individuals with viral infection.However,currently no direct clinical evidence proved that modulation of gut microbiota has the therapeutic role in treatment of COVID-19,from the perspective of microbiota and immunity after viral infection,we speculate that targeting gut microbiota might be a new therapeutic option or at least adjuvant therapeutic choice.In this Personal View,we describe the five aspects:COVID-19 and compromised immunity system,Microbiota,immune system and viral infection,FMT,immunity and virus infection,potential application of FMT in the treatment of COVID-19.

Effect of Decanoic Acid on the Cognitive Function of AD Mice

[Objectives] To study the effect of PPARγ agonist DA on the cognitive function of AD mice as well as the mechanism.[Methods]50 Kunming male mice were randomly divided into normal control group,model group and decanoic acid administration group,the AD mice model was established by subcutaneous injection of D-galactose for 8 weeks,and the treatment group was administered orally with different doses of decanoic acid( low dose of 50 mg/kg,middle dose of 100 mg/kg,high dose of 200 mg/kg). After 8 weeks,the Morris water maze was used to detect the learning and memory capability of mice; HE staining was used to observe the morphological change of hippocampal cells in brain tissue; Western-blot and immunohistochemistry technique were used to detect the expression of PPARγ and Aβ42 protein in brain tissue; the ELISA method was used for the determination of TNF-α and i NOS level in serum. [Results]Morris water maze results showed that DA could significantly improve the learning and memory function in AD mice( P < 0. 05); HE staining showed that DA could significantly reduce degeneration in hippocampal cells; Western-blot and immunohistochemistry results showed that DA could promote the expression of PPARγ and reduce the expression of Aβ42 in brain tissue( P < 0. 05); ELISA results showed that the TNF-α,i NOS levels decreased in AD mice serum after DA treatment( P < 0. 05). [Conclusions] DA could significantly improve the cognitive function of AD mice,improve the degeneration of hippocampal cells in brain tissue,and decrease the expression of Aβ42 in brain tissue. The mechanism might be related to activation of PPARγ protein and down-regulation of expression of relevant inflammatory factors.

PCRTAM-Net:A Novel Pre-Activated Convolution Residual and Triple Attention Mechanism Network for Retinal Vessel Segmentation

Retinal images play an essential role in the early diagnosis of ophthalmic diseases.Automatic segmentation of retinal vessels in color fundus images is challenging due to the morphological differences between the retinal vessels and the low-contrast background.At the same time,automated models struggle to capture representative and discriminative retinal vascular features.To fully utilize the structural information of the retinal blood vessels,we propose a novel deep learning network called Pre-Activated Convolution Residual and Triple Attention Mechanism Network(PCRTAM-Net).PCRTAM-Net uses the pre-activated dropout convolution residual method to improve the feature learning ability of the network.In addition,the residual atrous convolution spatial pyramid is integrated into both ends of the network encoder to extract multiscale information and improve blood vessel information flow.A triple attention mechanism is proposed to extract the structural information between vessel contexts and to learn long-range feature dependencies.We evaluate the proposed PCRTAM-Net on four publicly available datasets,DRIVE,CHASE_DB1,STARE,and HRF.Our model achieves state-of-the-art performance of 97.10%,97.70%,97.68%,and 97.14%for ACC and 83.05%,82.26%,84.64%,and 81.16%for F1,respectively.

Single cell atlas of developing mouse dental germs reveals populations of CD24^(+)and Plac8^(+)odontogenic cells

The spatiotemporal relationships in high-resolution during odontogenesis remain poorly understood.We report a cell lineage and atlas of developing mouse teeth.We performed a large-scale(92,688 cells)single cell RNA sequencing,tracing the cell trajectories during odontogenesis from embryonic days 10.5 to 16.5.Combined with an assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with high-throughput sequencing,our results suggest that mesenchymal cells show the specific transcriptome profiles to distinguish the tooth types.Subsequently,we identified key gene regulatory networks in teeth and bone formation and uncovered spatiotemporal patterns of odontogenic mesenchymal cells.CD24^(+)and Plac8^(+)cells from the mesenchyme at the bell stage were distributed in the upper half and preodontoblast layer of the dental papilla,respectively,which could individually induce nonodontogenic epithelia to form tooth-like structures.Specifically,the Plac8^(+)tissue we discovered is the smallest piece with the most homogenous cells that could induce tooth regeneration to date.Our work reveals previously unknown heterogeneity and spatiotemporal patterns of tooth germs that may lead to tooth regeneration for regenerative dentistry.