[Chemical constituents of Morinda officinalis How]

This paper reports the identification of four compounds isolated from the cortex of Morinda officinalis growing in Guangdong Province. These compounds are beta-sitosterol (I), 2-methyl-anthraquinone(II), rubiadin-1-methyl ether(III) and 24-ethylcholesterol(VI). Compounds II and VI are isolated from Morinda Genus for the first time.

[Cloning and sequence analysis of truncated S gene from circulation of patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection]

OBJECTIVE

To find different mutated status of HBV DNA in circulation from chronic HBV patients.

METHODS

Specially designed primers and polymerase chain reaction method were applied to amplify the whole S gene of HBV from the serum of 2 patients. After being sequenced, 4 clones were compared with HBV adr subtype (China strain) to identify the mutant sites.

RESULTS

Sequencing results implied that there was a truncated large/middle S gene in the serum of the patients. Besides that, HBsAg and HBV DNA polymerase defective clones were also detected.

CONCLUSIONS

Truncated middle S gene is found in the circulation of patients with chronical HBV infection, suggestive of a poor prognosis.

[Studies on chemical constituents of fat oil of Polygala tenuifolia]

OBJECTIVE

To study the chemical constituents of fat oil from root of Polygala tenuifolia Willd.

METHOD

The components were separated and identified by gas chromatograpy-mass spectrometry and elucidated on the standard mass spectral data and the percentages were determined by gas chromatographic area normalization method.

RESULT

Eighteen constituents were separated and sixteen of them were identified.

CONCLUSION

The major components of the fat oil were established first time as oleic acid, linoleic acid, palmitic acid, eicosenoic acid and stearic acid, which make up 87.0%, 7.31%, 3.27%, 1.07%, 0.91% of fat oil respectively.

[AM signals' digital demodulation and its application in physiological signals' remote transmission]

Taking advantage of the characteristics of digital systems, a new digital method is given in this article to overcome the difficulties in demodulating AM signals using digital methods. Physiological signals can't be transmitted through telephone networks because they are full of ultra-low frequency components. However, if they are modulated (such as AM), they can be transmitted to the receiving end through telephone networks. Then phaselocked loops can be employed to trace the frequency of the signals' carriers so that we can demodulate and transmit them in the end.

[Study on the energy transfer fluorescence quenching among combination of acridine yellow-PAR determination of trace iron]

An energy transfers technique between 4-(2-Pyridylazo) resorcinol(PAR) and acridine yellow is studied, and optimum experimental conditions of energy transfer is done as well. It is found that in the aqueous solution of sodium lauryl sulfate, NH3.H2O-NH4Cl buffer solution at pH = 9.2, the energy transfers from acridine yellow to iron(II)-PAR complexes. So a new method of fluorometric energy transfers determination of trace iron(II) by acridine yellow--PAR was described. The range of determination of iron is 0-10 micrograms.L-1. The detection limit for iron is 0.06 microgram.L-1. The method has been applied to the determination of iron in water sample and hair with satisfactory results.

[Distribution of Prevotella intermedia in the periodontal plaques of children and their parents]

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the distribution of Prevotella intermedia (Pi) among family members by culturing technique and biochemical identification.

METHODS

Of all 60 families, 181 subjects were included in the study. Supragingival and subgingival plaques were collected and cultured, 279 strains of black-pigmented gram-negative anaerobes were obtained. Biochemical identifications were performed.

RESULTS

Pi could be identified from parents and children with healthy periodontal status. The prevalence of Pi in children was 70.49%, which was significantly higher than that in adults (43.33%).

CONCLUSION

The result indicates that Pi might be an opportunistic periodontal pathogen that could be colonized in periodontal plaques easily and early. To study the exact role of Pi in the pathogenesis of periodontitis, it is necessary to do longitudinal following study of the subjects.

[Biodegradation behavior of ethylenediaminetetraethylene acid]

Aerobic and anaerobic degradability of ethylenediaminetetraethylene acid(EDTA) were measured on Warburg respirometer and anaerobic batch reactors. Biodegradation of EDTA as a single substance was poor, but biodegradation of EDTA with co-substrate could be improved. The wastewater containing EDTA can be treated by activated sludge process. The EDTA removal efficiency was 80% under the circumstance HRT 16 h and EDTA removal efficiency reached to 92.5%-95.1% when HRT was 20 h. The main factor affecting the biodegradability of EDTA is sludge remained time.

[Screening of aberrant genes of immunocytes in severely scalded rats by inhibition of subtractive hybridization]

OBJECTIVE

To explore the relationship between the postburn changes of gene expression of immunocytes and postburn immunological functional disturbance in severely scalded rats.

METHODS

Immunocytes of female F344 rats with severe scalding were harvested and the mRNA was extracted for the inhibition of the expression of aberrant gene selected by subtractive hybridization in contrast to that before scalding. The aberrant genes were cloned and sequenced and compared to those in Genebank for homology.

RESULTS

The harvested immunocytes were identified by LM to be monocytes and lymphocytes. Multiple strips located at 200 approximately 400 bp were obtained by inhibiting subtractive hybridization and were cloned into PGEM-T easy plasmid vector. Thus the genebank of aberrant expression was constructed. Twenty clones were sequenced randomly and partial obtained known genes were in accord with postburn systemic changes. Several novel genes were accepted and registered by Genebank.

CONCLUSION

There exhibited change in the gene expression of peripheral immunocytes at early postburn stage in rats inflicted by severe burn.

Aldose reductase mRNA is an epithelial cell-specific gene transcript in both normal and cataractous rat lens

Aldose reductase (AR) is implicated in the development of sugar cataracts by its reduction of galactose or glucose to polyols. The authors' recent work suggested that AR mRNA is found to be expressed in high concentrations in rat-lens epithelial cells after exposure of the animal to a diet containing 50% galactose. They localized the AR mRNA in the lens cells by in situ hybridization with a previously described AR clone. The data establish that AR mRNA is apparently an epithelial and not a fiber-cell gene transcript. It accumulates in the epithelial cell, then it is carried into the newly differentiated fiber cell, and finally it concentrates in the posterior region of the matured fiber cell. The AR mRNA is found in all of the anterior epithelial cells including the equatorial and central epithelia. It is present at highest concentrations in the elongating epithelial cells, and it is distributed equally throughout the secondary fiber cells at the bow, with no indication of a preferential buildup of AR mRNA in any of the nucleated fiber cells in the cortex. This differs from what the authors reported to occur with MP26 mRNA, a fiber cell-specific gene transcript. They found that MP26 mRNA was absent from the epithelial cells but was preferentially found in the secondary fiber cells. Present data suggest that the increase in AR mRNA concentration observed to occur in cataractous lenses is a result of epithelial cell proliferation, where every cell appears to be competent in expressing AR mRNA. The results of this research imply that AR mRNA is a lens epithelial cell-specific gene transcript in both normal and cataractous lenses.

[Effects of aspirin and nifedipine alone or in combination on hemodynamics in anesthetized dogs]

AIM

To study the effects of the combination of aspirin (Asp) and nifedipine (Nif) on hemodynamics in 8 anesthetized dogs.

METHODS

Tension time index (TTI), left ventricular work index (LVWI), mean arterial pressure (MAP), and total peripheral vascular resistance (TPVR), femoral artery blood flow (FBF), ventricular systolic pressure (LVSP), maximum of its first derivative (dp/dt(max)), left ventricular end diastolic pressure (LVEDP) and heart rate (HR) were recorded on polygraph and electromagnetic flowmeter.

RESULTS

Asp 5, 10 mg.kg-1, i.v. exerted a significant effect on the hemodynamic indices, wheras Nif 15 micrograms.kg-1, i.v. decreased TTI, LVWI, MAP, and TRVR, increased FBF distinctively, and slightly affected LVSP, dp/dt(max), LVEDP, and HR. The effects of Asp in combination with Nif on hemodynamics were similar to those of Nif alone.

CONCLUSION

The improvement of cardiovascular function caused by Nif was not affected by the presence of Asp.

Identification of a novel missense mutation in Wilson's disease gene

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the allelic heterogeneity of the ATP7B gene in Chinese patients with Wilson's disease (WD).

METHODS

Exons of the ATP7B gene from 141 WD patients' DNA were amplified with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) 887-890. Mutations were then screened by single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis and further identified by sequencing.

RESULTS

The molecular structure of exon 7 of the ATP7B gene from 141 WD patients was analyzed. The same band shift in electrophoretic pattern of 4 cerebral type patients was identified with SSCP and subsequently sequenced. The results showed missense mutation at the second base of the codon as Ser 662 Cys, which is caused by a C to G transversion.

CONCLUSIONS

Mutations of the ATP7B gene were investigated for the first time in China and a novel missense mutation was identified in four cases.

[A simplified theory of protrusive balanced occlusion in complete denture and its application]

Based the study of the theory of protrusive balanced occlusion in complete denture construction and clinical experience the author established a new simplified theory named "the three principle factors and three laws for protrusive balanced occlusion in complete denture" to guide us to arrange teeth for balanced occlusion in complete denture construction. Based this theory the phenomena of protrusive occlusal disharmony appeared in the process of teeth arrangement and denture insertion can be corrected easily.

Searching for Heavy Dark Matter near the Planck Mass with XENON1T

Multiple viable theoretical models predict heavy dark matter particles with a mass close to the Planck mass, a range relatively unexplored by current experimental measurements. We use 219.4 days of data collected with the XENON1T experiment to conduct a blind search for signals from multiply interacting massive particles (MIMPs). Their unique track signature allows a targeted analysis with only 0.05 expected background events from muons. Following unblinding, we observe no signal candidate events. This Letter places strong constraints on spin-independent interactions of dark matter particles with a mass between 1×10^{12} and 2×10^{17}  GeV/c^{2}. In addition, we present the first exclusion limits on spin-dependent MIMP-neutron and MIMP-proton cross sections for dark matter particles with masses close to the Planck scale.

[COVID-19 treated with oral Nirmatrelvir-Ritonavir in 3 children]

Objective: To summarize the application experience and the therapeutic effect of Nirmatrelvir-Ritonavir (trade name: Paxlovid) for COVID-19 in children. Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed on the clinical data, including collecting the clinical manifestations and clinical outcomes, dynamically monitoring the blood routine, hepatic and renal function and SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid results, and observing the related side effects during the treatment, etc, of 3 cases with COVID-19 treated with Paxlovid admitted to Shanghai Children's Hospital (designated referral hospital for SARS-CoV-2 infection in Shanghai) from May 1^st to June 1^st, 2022. Results: The 3 cases were 12, 14, 17 years of age, among which 2 cases were males, 1 case was female. All 3 cases were mild cases with underlying diseases and risk of developing into severe COVID-19, with symptoms of high fever, sore throat and dry cough. The treatment of Paxlovid at 3^rd day of symptom onset contributed to the symptom-free after 1-2 days and negative results of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid after 2-4 days. All patients had no adverse manifestations of gastrointestinal tract and nervous system but a case had little skin rashes, which recovered after the withdrawal of Paxlovid. Three cases had normal hepatic and renal function during the Paxlovid treatment. At 3 months after discharge, no clinical manifestations of post-COVID syndrome were found in all 3 cases. Conclusion: Paxlovid was effective and relatively safe in the treatment of 3 children with COVID-19.

STAGAN: An approach for improve the stability of molecular graph generation based on generative adversarial networks

With the wide application of deep learning in Drug Discovery, deep generative model has shown its advantages in drug molecular generation. Generative adversarial networks can be used to learn the internal structure of molecules, but the training process may be unstable, such as gradient disappearance and model collapse, which may lead to the generation of molecules that do not conform to chemical rules or a single style. In this paper, a novel method called STAGAN was proposed to solve the difficulty of model training, by adding a new gradient penalty term in the discriminator and designing a parallel layer of batch normalization used in generator. As an illustration of method, STAGAN generated higher valid and unique molecules than previous models in training datasets from QM9 and ZINC-250K. This indicates that the proposed method can effectively solve the instability problem in the model training process, and can provide more instructive guidance for the further study of molecular graph generation.

Severity of abdominal obesity and cardiometabolic diseases in US adults

OBJECTIVES

To determine the prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) among adults with abdominal obesity and to evaluate the necessity of differentiating severity of abdominal obesity.

STUDY DESIGN

Cross-sectional study and prospective cohort study.

METHODS

National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data between 2011 and 2020 were included for cross-sectional analyses. Class I, II and III abdominal obesity were created by dividing waist circumference within sex-specific abdominal obesity range into tertiles. Age-standardized prevalence of CMDs was estimated and differences by severity of abdominal obesity were compared using Poisson regressions. Prospective analyses were performed using NHANES data between 1988 and 2018 with linked mortality data. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the association between severity of abdominal obesity and mortality.

RESULTS

Among 23,168 adults included (mean age: 47.8 years, 49.3% men), 13,307 (57.4%) had abdominal obesity. Among adults with abdominal obesity, the estimated prevalence of diabetes was 17.3% (95% confidence interval: 16.3%, 18.2%), hypertension 39.3% (38.2%, 40.3%), dyslipidemia 59.5% (58.0%, 61.1%), cardiovascular disease 9.0% (8.3%, 9.8%), chronic kidney disease 16.8% (15.9%, 17.7%) and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease 39.9% (38.4%, 41.4%). The estimated prevalence was 55.5% (53.8%, 57.2%) for having ≥2 CMDs. Compared with class I abdominal obesity, class III abdominal obesity was related to a 43%-184% higher prevalence of CMDs and a 44% higher risk of all-cause mortality.

CONCLUSIONS

The prevalence of CMDs was high and multimorbidity of CMDs was common among US adults with abdominal obesity. The prevalence of CMDs and risk of mortality differed significantly by severity of abdominal obesity.