Cellular composition and circuit organization of the locus coeruleus of adult mice

The locus coeruleus (LC) houses the vast majority of noradrenergic neurons in the brain and regulates many fundamental functions, including fight and flight response, attention control, and sleep/wake cycles. While efferent projections of the LC have been extensively investigated, little is known about its local circuit organization. Here, we performed large-scale multipatch recordings of noradrenergic neurons in adult mouse LC to profile their morpho-electric properties while simultaneously examining their interactions. LC noradrenergic neurons are diverse and could be classified into two major morpho-electric types. While fast excitatory synaptic transmission among LC noradrenergic neurons was not observed in our preparation, these mature LC neurons connected via gap junction at a rate similar to their early developmental stage and comparable to other brain regions. Most electrical connections form between dendrites and are restricted to narrowly spaced pairs or small clusters of neurons of the same type. In addition, more than two electrically coupled cell pairs were often identified across a cohort of neurons from individual multicell recording sets that followed a chain-like organizational pattern. The assembly of LC noradrenergic neurons thus follows a spatial and cell-type-specific wiring principle that may be imposed by a unique chain-like rule.

Development and validation of risk prediction models for stroke and mortality among patients with type 2 diabetes in northern China

BACKGROUND

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability and mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Risk models have been developed for predicting stroke and stroke-associated mortality among patients with T2DM. Here, we evaluated risk factors of stroke for individualized prevention measures in patients with T2DM in northern China.

METHODS

In the community-based Tianjin Chronic Disease Cohort study, 58,042 patients were enrolled between January 2014 and December 2019. We used multiple imputation (MI) to impute missing variables and univariate and multivariate Cox's proportional hazard regression to screen risk factors of stroke. Furthermore, we established and validated first-ever prediction models for stroke (Model 1 and Model 2) and death from stroke (Model 3) and evaluated their performance.

RESULTS

In the derivation and validation groups, the area under the curves (AUCs) of Models 1-3 was better at 5 years than at 8 years. The Harrell's C-index for all models was above 0.7. All models had good calibration, discrimination, and clinical net benefit. Sensitivity analysis using the MI dataset indicated that all models had good and stable prediction performance.

CONCLUSION

In this study, we developed and validated first-ever risk prediction models for stroke and death from stroke in patients with T2DM, with good discrimination and calibration observed in all models. Based on lifestyle, demographic characteristics, and laboratory examination, these models could provide multidimensional management and individualized risk assessment. However, the models developed here may only be applicable to Han Chinese.

Lipolysis is accompanied by immune microenvironment remodeling in adipose tissue of obesity with different exercise intensity

OBJECTIVE

Obesity and overweight are risk factors for chronic disease worldwide. The purpose of this study was to compare the transcriptome of exercise-induced fat mobilization in obese people, and to explore the effect of different exercise intensity on the correlation of immune microenvironment remodeling and lipolysis in adipose tissue.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Microarray datasets of adipose tissue before and after exercise were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus. Then, we used gene-enrichment analysis and PPI-network construction to elucidate the function and enrichment pathways of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and to identify the central genes. A network of protein-protein interactions was obtained using STRING and visualized with Cytoscape.

RESULTS

A total of 929 DEGs were identified between 40 pre-exercise (BX) samples and 65 post-exercise (AX) samples from GSE58559, GSE116801, and GSE43471. Among these DEGs, adipose tissue-expressed genes were duly recognized. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses indicated that DEGs were mostly enriched in lipid metabolism. Studies have found that mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway and forkhead box O (FOXO) signaling pathway are up-regulated, while Ribosome, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and IGF-1 gene are down-regulated. Although we found the up-regulated genes that noted IL-1 among others, and the down-regulated gene was IL-34. The increase of inflammatory factors leads to changes in cellular immune microenvironment, and high-intensity exercise leads to increased expression of inflammatory factors in adipose tissue, leading to inflammatory responses.

CONCLUSIONS

Exercise at different intensities leads to the degradation of adipose and is accompanied by changes in the immune microenvironment within adipose tissue. High intensity exercise can cause the imbalance of immune microenvironment of adipose tissue while causing fat degradation. Therefore, moderate intensity and below exercise is the best way for the general population to reduce fat and weight.

[Analysis of the characteristics of retracted scientific papers in the field of global liver diseases published by Chinese scholars]

Objective: To analyze the characteristics of scientific papers in the field of global liver diseases published by Chinese scholars that were retracted for diverse reasons from the Retraction Watch database, so as to provide a reference to publishing-related papers. Methods: The Retraction Watch database was retrieved for retracted papers in the field of global liver disease published by Chinese scholars from March 1, 2008 to January 28, 2021. The regional distribution, source journals, reasons for retraction, publication and retraction times, and others were analyzed. Results: A total of 101 retracted papers that were distributed across 21 provinces/cities were retrieved. Zhejiang area (n = 17) had the most retracted papers, followed by Shanghai (n = 14), and Beijing (n = 11). The vast majority were research papers (n = 95). The journal PLoS One had the highest number of retracted papers. In terms of time distribution, 2019 (n = 36) had the most retracted papers. 23 papers, accounting for 8.3% of all retractions, were retracted owing to journal or publisher concerns. Liver cancer (34%), liver transplantation (16%), hepatitis (14%), and others were the main areas of retracted papers. Conclusion: Chinese scholars have a large number of retracted articles in the field of global liver diseases. A journal or publisher chooses to retract a manuscript after investigating and discovering more flawed problems, which, however, require further support, revision, and supervision from the editorial and academic circles.

Preoperative prediction of mediastinal lymph node metastasis in non-small cell lung cancer based on 18F-FDG PET/CT radiomics

AIM

To establish and verify a 2-[¹⁸F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (FDG) positron-emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT)-based radiomics nomogram to predict mediastinal lymph node metastasis (LNM) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients preoperatively.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This retrospective study enrolled 155 NSCLC patients (primary cohort, n=93; validation cohort, n=62). For each patient, 2,704 radiomic features were extracted from the primary lung cancer regions. Four procedures including the Mann-Whitney U-test, Spearman's correlation analysis, minimum redundancy-maximum relevance (mRMR), and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) binary logistic regression were utilised for determining essential features and establishing a radiomics signature. After that, a nomogram was established. The nomogram's potential was assessed based on its discrimination, calibration, and clinical usefulness. The radiomics signature and nomogram predictive performances were evaluated with respect to the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), specificity, accuracy, and sensitivity.

RESULTS

The radiomics signature composed of eight selected features had good discriminatory performance of LNM versus non-LNM groups an AUC of 0.851 and 0.826 in primary and validation cohorts, respectively. The nomogram also indicated good discrimination with an AUC of 0.869 and 0.847 in the primary and validation cohorts, respectively. Furthermore, good calibration was demonstrated utilising the nomogram.

CONCLUSIONS

An ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT-based radiomics nomogram that integrates the radiomics signature and age was promoted to predict mediastinal LNM within NSCLC patients, which could potentially facilitate individualised therapy for mediastinal LNM before treatment. The nomogram was beneficial in clinical practice, as illustrated by decision curve analysis.

[Characterization of highly active tyrosine ammonia lyase and its application in biosynthesis of p-coumaric acid]

p-coumaric acid is one of the aromatic compounds that are widely used in food, cosmetics and medicine due to its properties of antibacterium, antioxidation and cardiovascular disease prevention. Tyrosine ammonia-lyase (TAL) catalyzes the deamination of tyrosine to p-coumaric acid. However, the lack of highly active and specific tyrosine ammonia lyase limits cost-effective microbial production of p-coumaric acid. In order to improve biosynthesis efficiency of p-coumaric acid, two tyrosine ammonia-lyases, namely Fc-TAL2 derived from Flavobacterium columnare and Fs-TAL derived from Flavobacterium suncheonense, were selected and characterized. The optimum temperature (55 ℃) and pH (9.5) for Fs-TAL and Fc-TAL2 are the same. Under optimal conditions, the specific enzyme activity of Fs-TAL and Fc-TAL2 were 82.47 U/mg and 13.27 U/mg, respectively. Structural simulation and alignment analysis showed that the orientation of the phenolic hydroxyl group of the conserved Y50 residue on the inner lid loop and its distance to the substrate were the main reasons accounting for the higher activity of Fs-TAL than that of Fc-TAL2. The higher activity and specificity of Fs-TAL were further confirmed via whole-cell catalysis using recombinant Escherichia coli, which could convert 10 g/L tyrosine into 6.2 g/L p-coumaric acid with a yield of 67.9%. This study provides alternative tyrosine ammonia-lyases and may facilitate the microbial production of p-coumaric acid and its derivatives.

Alteration of the faecal microbiota composition in patients with constipation: evidence of American Gut Project

There is limited information is known about the composition difference of the gut microbiota in patients with constipation and healthy controls. Here, the faecal 16S rRNA fastq sequence data of microbiota from the publicly available American Gut Project (AGP) were analysed. The tendency score matching (PSM) method was used to match in a 1:1 manner to control for confounding factors age, gender, body mass index (BMI), and country. A total of 524 participants including 262 patients with constipation and 262 healthy controls were included in this analysis. The richness and evenness of the gut microbiota in the constipation group were significantly lower than those in the control group. The dominant genera in the constipation group include Escherichia_Shigella, Pseudomonas, and Citrobacter. The dominant genera in the control group include Faecalibacterium, Prevotella, Roseburia, Clostridium_XlVa, and Blautia. The abundance of three butyrate production-related pathways were significantly higher in the constipation group than in the control groups. There was no significant difference in the diversity and gut microbiota composition in patients with constipation at different ages. In conclusion, patients with constipation showed gut microbiota and butyrate metabolism dysbiosis. This dysbiosis might provide a reference for the diagnosis and clinical therapy of diseases.

Myosteatosis predicting risk of transition to severe COVID-19 infection

BACKGROUND

About 10-20% of patients with Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection progressed to severe illness within a week or so after initially diagnosed as mild infection. Identification of this subgroup of patients was crucial for early aggressive intervention to improve survival. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether computer tomography (CT) - derived measurements of body composition such as myosteatosis indicating fat deposition inside the muscles could be used to predict the risk of transition to severe illness in patients with initial diagnosis of mild COVID-19 infection.

METHODS

Patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection presenting initially as having the mild common-subtype illness were retrospectively recruited between January 21, 2020 and February 19, 2020. CT-derived body composition measurements were obtained from the initial chest CT images at the level of the twelfth thoracic vertebra (T12) and were used to build models to predict the risk of transition. A myosteatosis nomogram was constructed using multivariate logistic regression incorporating both clinical variables and myosteatosis measurements. The performance of the prediction models was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve including the area under the curve (AUC). The performance of the nomogram was evaluated by discrimination, calibration curve, and decision curve.

RESULTS

A total of 234 patients were included in this study. Thirty-one of the enrolled patients transitioned to severe illness. Myosteatosis measurements including SM-RA (skeletal muscle radiation attenuation) and SMFI (skeletal muscle fat index) score fitted with SMFI, age and gender, were significantly associated with risk of transition for both the training and validation cohorts (P < 0.01). The nomogram combining the SM-RA, SMFI score and clinical model improved prediction for the transition risk with an AUC of 0.85 [95% CI, 0.75 to 0.95] for the training cohort and 0.84 [95% CI, 0.71 to 0.97] for the validation cohort, as compared to the nomogram of the clinical model with AUC of 0.75 and 0.74 for the training and validation cohorts respectively. Favorable clinical utility was observed using decision curve analysis.

CONCLUSION

We found CT-derived measurements of thoracic myosteatosis to be associated with higher risk of transition to severe illness in patients affected by COVID-19 who presented initially as having the mild common-subtype infection. Our study showed the relevance of skeletal muscle examination in the overall assessment of disease progression and prognosis of patients with COVID-19 infection.

Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter-Electron Scattering from the CDEX-10 Experiment

We present improved germanium-based constraints on sub-GeV dark matter via dark matter-electron (χ-e) scattering using the 205.4  kg·day dataset from the CDEX-10 experiment. Using a novel calculation technique, we attain predicted χ-e scattering spectra observable in high-purity germanium detectors. In the heavy mediator scenario, our results achieve 3 orders of magnitude of improvement for m_{χ} larger than 80  MeV/c^{2} compared to previous germanium-based χ-e results. We also present the most stringent χ-e cross-section limit to date among experiments using solid-state detectors for m_{χ} larger than 90  MeV/c^{2} with heavy mediators and m_{χ} larger than 100  MeV/c^{2} with electric dipole coupling. The result proves the feasibility and demonstrates the vast potential of a new χ-e detection method with high-purity germanium detectors in ultralow radioactive background.

Exotic Dark Matter Search with the CDEX-10 Experiment at China's Jinping Underground Laboratory

A search for exotic dark matter (DM) in the sub-GeV mass range has been conducted using 205 kg day data taken from a p-type point contact germanium detector of the CDEX-10 experiment at China's Jinping underground laboratory. New low-mass dark matter searching channels, neutral current fermionic DM absorption (χ+A→ν+A) and DM-nucleus 3→2 scattering (χ+χ+A→ϕ+A), have been analyzed with an energy threshold of 160 eVee. No significant signal was found; thus new limits on the DM-nucleon interaction cross section are set for both models at the sub-GeV DM mass region. A cross section limit for the fermionic DM absorption is set to be 2.5×10^{-46}  cm^{2} (90% C.L.) at DM mass of 10  MeV/c^{2}. For the DM-nucleus 3→2 scattering scenario, limits are extended to DM mass of 5 and 14  MeV/c^{2} for the massless dark photon and bound DM final state, respectively.

The efficacy and safety of tofacitinib, peficitinib, solcitinib, baricitinib, abrocitinib and deucravacitinib in plaque psoriasis - A network meta-analysis

Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors are novel treatment approaches for psoriasis. However, there is no direct comparison of JAK inhibitors in plaque psoriasis. In order to compare the efficacy and safety of JAK inhibitors in psoriasis, we conducted a network meta-analysis using eligible randomized clinical trials (RCTs). The efficacy of JAK inhibitors was evaluated using a 75% improvement in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI75) from baseline, and the proportion of patients achieving the Physician's Global Assessment (PGA) response. The incidence of treatment-related adverse events (AEs) was also assessed. A total of eight RCTs with tofacitinib, peficitinib, solcitinib, baricitinib, abrocitinib and deucravacitinib were included. A total of 3612 participants who were diagnosed with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis were analysed. Overall, JAK inhibitors showed superior PASI75 response over placebo at both 8 and 12 weeks. Among all included JAK inhibitors, tofacitinib 15 mg twice a day (BID) had the highest probability of achieving PASI75 at both 8 and 12 weeks (SUCRA = 0.938 and 0.937, separately), followed by tofacitinib 10 mg BID (SUCRA = 0.905 and 0.908, separately) and deucravacitinib 12 mg once daily (QD) (SUCRA = 0.874 and 0.837, separately). A similar finding was observed for PGA response. Safety assessment showed that all JAK inhibitors had non-inferior safety compared with placebo, except for deucravacitinib 6 mg BID and 12 mg QD. Tofacitinib 2 mg BID was the first-ranked drug for safety profile followed by deucravacitinib 3 mg QD, and tofacitinib 5 mg BID. When comprehensively evaluated the efficacy and safety, tofacitinib (2 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg, 15 mg BID) was superior to other included JAK inhibitors with satisfying PASI75 and PGA response, as well as relatively low incidence of AEs. Our study confirmed that JAK inhibitors had promising treatment efficacy for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. Tofacitinib showed superior efficacy and safety over peficitinib, solcitinib, baricitinib, abrocitinib and deucravacitinib.

Distinct organization of two cortico-cortical feedback pathways

Neocortical feedback is critical for attention, prediction, and learning. To mechanically understand its function requires deciphering its cell-type wiring. Recent studies revealed that feedback between primary motor to primary somatosensory areas in mice is disinhibitory, targeting vasoactive intestinal peptide-expressing interneurons, in addition to pyramidal cells. It is unknown whether this circuit motif represents a general cortico-cortical feedback organizing principle. Here we show that in contrast to this wiring rule, feedback between higher-order lateromedial visual area to primary visual cortex preferentially activates somatostatin-expressing interneurons. Functionally, both feedback circuits temporally sharpen feed-forward excitation eliciting a transient increase-followed by a prolonged decrease-in pyramidal cell activity under sustained feed-forward input. However, under feed-forward transient input, the primary motor to primary somatosensory cortex feedback facilitates bursting while lateromedial area to primary visual cortex feedback increases time precision. Our findings argue for multiple cortico-cortical feedback motifs implementing different dynamic non-linear operations.

A chromosome-scale genome assembly of Quercus gilva: Insights into the evolution of Quercus section Cyclobalanopsis (Fagaceae)

Quercus gilva is an ecologically and economically important species of Quercus section Cyclobalanopsis and is a dominant species in evergreen broad-leaved forests in subtropical regions of East Asia. In the present study, we reported a high-quality chromosome-scale genome assembly of Q. gilva, the first reference genome for section Cyclobalanopsis, using the combination of Illumina and PacBio sequencing with Hi-C technologies. The assembled genome size of Q. gilva was 889.71 Mb, with a contig number of 773 and a contig N50 of 28.32 Mb. Hi-C scaffolding anchored 859.07 Mb contigs (96.54% of the assembled genome) onto 12 pseudochromosomes, with a scaffold N50 of 70.35 Mb. A combination of de novo, homology-based, and transcript-based predictions predicted a final set of 36,442 protein-coding genes distributed on 12 pseudochromosomes, and 97.73% of them were functionally annotated. A total of 535.64 Mb (60.20%) of repetitive sequences were identified. Genome evolution analysis revealed that Q. gilva was most closely related to Q. suber and they diverged at 40.35 Ma, and Q. gilva did not experience species-specific whole-genome duplication in addition to the ancient gamma (γ) whole-genome triplication event shared by core eudicot plants. Q. gilva underwent considerable gene family expansion and contraction, with 598 expanded and 6,509 contracted gene families detected. The first chromosome-scale genome of Q. gilva will promote its germplasm conservation and genetic improvement and provide essential resources for better studying the evolution of Quercus section Cyclobalanopsis.

[Effect of exercise intervention on musculoskeletal disorders in nursing staff]

Objective: To evaluate the effects of exercise intervention on musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) in nursing staff. Methods: In september 2021, we searched the articles on exercise intervention for nurses with musculoskeletal diseases in Embase, PubMed, ClinicalTrails, Wanfang, CNKI and other databases in September 2021, and the search period was from database creation to August 2021. The quality of article was evaluated by Cochrane bias risk assessment tool and MINORS. The systematic review method with narrative synthesis was used to analyze the research results. Results: A total of 7 studies were included, including 6 randomized controlled trials and 1 quasi-experiment. The sample size of the experimental group was 276, and the control group was 273. Depending on the type of exercise intervention, muscle strength training, muscle strength training+stretch/flexibility training, Back School program can reduce the local pain of nursing staff. Among them, muscle strength training can improve the nursing staff's muscle function and quality of life, muscle strength training+stretching/flexibility training can increase muscle strength, range of physical activity and self-efficacy, the Back School program is effective for improving poor posture. Conclusion: Exercise intervention is effective on controlling musculoskeletal disorder symptoms in nursing staff, managers can develop exercise strategies for different MSD symptoms.

[The importance of standardized periorbital steroid injections for thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy]

Thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) is now the most prevalent orbital disease in adults, with a complex pathophysiology and a wide range of clinical symptoms. In recent years, significant progress has been made in the research on the treatment of TAO. Periorbital steroid injections are considered a precise local treatment and can improve ocular symptoms with minor side effects. However, there is no standardized orbital injection protocol in China, resulting in increased complications. Therefore, it is essential to standardize periorbital steroid injections in treating TAO.

P11.75.B Survival benefit of radiotherapy and surgery in patients with lung cancer brain metastases with poor prognosis factors

Background

Radiotherapy and surgery are the standard treatments for lung cancer brain metastases (BMs). However, limitted studies focused on the treatments for patients with lung cancer BMs with poor prognosis factors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of radiotherapy and surgery in patients with lung cancer BMs with poor prognosis factors, providing reference for clinical strategies.

Material and Methods

We analyzed retrospectively 714 patients with lung cancer BMs. A 1:1 propensity score matching (PSM) was performed to balance potential confounders. Analyses of overall survival (OS) and risk factors for OS were assessed by log-rank test and Cox proportional hazard model.

Results

Age ≥65 years, Karnofsky Performance Scale (KPS) score ≤70, anaplastic large-cell lymphoma kinase (ALK)/epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) wild type, extracranial metastases, non-surgery and non-radiotherapy led to poor prognosis. Patients were stratified according to these factors. Radiotherapy and surgery showed no survival benefit in patients with aged ≥65 years or pretreatment KPS score ≤70 before and after PSM. Before PSM, whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) improved the OS and predicted good prognosis in patients with ALK/EGFR wild type or extracranial metastases. WBRT also predicted good prognosis in patients with non-surgery. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) improved the OS and predicted good prognosis in patients with ALK/EGFR wild type or non-surgery. WBRT plus SRS improved the OS and predicted good prognosis in patients with extracranial metastases or non-surgery. WBRT plus SRS also predicted good prognosis in patients with ALK/EGFR wild type. Surgery improved the OS and predicted good prognosis in patients with non-radiotherapy. After PSM, SRS improved the OS and predicted good prognosis in patients with non-surgery. WBRT plus SRS improved the OS and predicted good prognosis in patients with non-surgery or extracranial metastases. WBRT plus SRS also predicted good prognosis in patients with ALK/EGFR wild type. Surgery improved the OS of patients with non-radiotherapy. We defined that the treatment would provide significant survival benefit if it both prolonged the OS and predicted good prognosis. Meanwhile, the results after PSM were more convincing than the results before PSM.

Conclusion

Radiotherapy has significant survival benefit in patients with lung cancer BMs with poor prognosis factors, including patients with ALK/EGFR wild type or extracranial metastases or non-surgery. Surgery only has significant survival benefit in patients with non-radiotherapy.

Learning From Architectural Redundancy: Enhanced Deep Supervision in Deep Multipath Encoder-Decoder Networks

Deep encoder-decoders are the model of choice for pixel-level estimation due to their redundant deep architectures. Yet they still suffer from the vanishing supervision information issue that affects convergence because of their overly deep architectures. In this work, we propose and theoretically derive an enhanced deep supervision (EDS) method which improves on conventional deep supervision (DS) by incorporating variance minimization into the optimization. A new structure variance loss is introduced to build a bridge between deep encoder-decoders and variance minimization, and provides a new way to minimize the variance by forcing different intermediate decoding outputs (paths) to reach an agreement. We also design a focal weighting strategy to effectively combine multiple losses in a scale-balanced way, so that the supervision information is sufficiently enforced throughout the encoder-decoders. To evaluate the proposed method on the pixel-level estimation task, a novel multipath residual encoder is proposed and extensive experiments are conducted on four challenging density estimation and crowd counting benchmarks. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our EDS over other paradigms, and improved estimation performance is reported using our deeply supervised encoder-decoder.

Removal of KCNQ2 from parvalbumin-expressing interneurons improves anti-seizure efficacy of retigabine

Anti-seizure drug (ASD) targets are widely expressed in both excitatory and inhibitory neurons. It remains unknown if the action of an ASD upon inhibitory neurons could counteract its beneficial effects on excitatory neurons (or vice versa), thereby reducing the efficacy of the ASD. Here, we examine whether the efficacy of the ASD retigabine (RTG) is altered after removal of the Kv7 potassium channel subunit KCNQ2, one of its drug targets, from parvalbumin-expressing interneurons (PV-INs). Parvalbumin-Cre (PV-Cre) mice were crossed with Kcnq2-floxed (Kcnq2fl/fl) mice to conditionally delete Kcnq2 from PV-INs. In these conditional knockout mice (cKO, PV-Kcnq2fl/fl), RTG (10 mg/kg, i.p.) significantly delayed the onset of either picrotoxin (PTX, 10 mg/kg, i.p)- or kainic acid (KA, 30 mg/kg, i.p.)-induced convulsive seizures compared to vehicle, while RTG was not effective in wild-type littermates (WT). Immunostaining for KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 revealed that both subunits were enriched at axon initial segments (AISs) of hippocampal CA1 PV-INs, and their specific expression was selectively abolished in cKO mice. Accordingly, the M-currents recorded from CA1 PV-INs and their sensitivity to RTG were significantly reduced in cKO mice. While the ability of RTG to suppress CA1 excitatory neurons in hippocampal slices was unchanged in cKO mice, its suppressive effect on the spike activity of CA1 PV-INs was significantly reduced compared with WT mice. In addition, the RTG-induced suppression on intrinsic membrane excitability of PV-INs in WT mice was significantly reduced in cKO mice. These findings suggest that preventing RTG from suppressing PV-INs improves its anticonvulsant effect.