Association of osteoporotic fracture with smoking, alcohol consumption, tea consumption and exercise among Chinese nonagenarians/centenarians

OBJECTIVE

To observe the association of osteoporotic fracture with habits of smoking, alcohol consumption, tea consumption and exercise among very old people.

DESIGN AND SETTING

A cross-sectional study conducted in Dujiangyan Sichuan China.

PARTICIPANTS

703 unrelated Chinese nonagenarians and centenarians (67.76% women, mean age 93.48 years) resident in Dujiangyan.

MEASUREMENTS

Medical history of osteoporosis and the statement of fracture and habits (current and former) of smoking, alcohol consumption, tea consumption and exercise were collected.

RESULTS

In women, subjects with current or former habit of alcohol consumption had significantly higher prevalence osteoporotic fracture than those without this habit; but subjects with former habit of exercise had significantly lower prevalence osteoporotic fracture than those without this habit. However, in men, there was no significant difference in prevalence of these habits between subjects with and without osteoporotic fracture. After adjust for age, gender, sleep habits educational levels, religion habits and temperament, we found that former habit of alcohol consumption had a significant odds ratio (OR=2.473 95% CI (1.074, 5.526)) for osteoporotic fracture.

CONCLUSIONS

In summary, among nonagenarians and centenarians, among habits (current and former) of smoking, alcohol consumption, tea consumption and exercise, there seems to be significant association of osteoporotic fracture only with current or former habits of alcohol consumption, former habit of exercise. The habit of alcohol consumption might be associated with a greater risk of osteoporotic fracture, but the former habit of exercise might be associated with a lower risk of osteoporotic fracture.

Changes in gene expression after phencyclidine administration in developing rats: a potential animal model for schizophrenia

Repeated administration of phencyclidine (PCP), an N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, during development, may result in neuronal damage that leads to behavioral deficits in adulthood. The present study examined the potential neurotoxic effects of PCP exposure (10mg/kg) in rats on postnatal days (PNDs) 7, 9 and 11 and the possible underlying mechanism(s) for neurotoxicity. Brain tissue was harvested for RNA extraction and morphological assessments. RNA was collected from the frontal cortex for DNA microarray analysis and quantitative RT-PCR. Gene expression profiling was determined using Illumina Rat Ref-12 Expression BeadChips containing 22,226 probes. Based on criteria of a fold-change greater than 1.4 and a P-value less than 0.05, 19 genes including NMDAR1 (N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor) and four pro-apoptotic genes were up-regulated, and 25 genes including four anti-apoptotic genes were down-regulated, in the PCP-treated group. In addition, the schizophrenia-relevant genes, Bdnf (Brain-derived neurotrophic factor) and Bhlhb2 (basic helix-loop-helix domain containing, class B, 2), were significantly different between the PCP and the control groups. Quantitative RT-PCR confirmed the microarray results. Elevated neuronal cell death was further confirmed using Fluoro-Jade C staining. These findings support the hypothesis that neurodegeneration caused by PCP occurs, at least in part, through the up-regulation of NMDA receptors, which makes neurons possessing these receptors more vulnerable to endogenous glutamate. The changes in schizophrenia-relevant genes after repeated PCP exposure during development may provide important information concerning the validation of an animal model for this disorder.

Supernumerary nostril. A rare congenital nasal deformity: case report and literature review

Supernumerary nostril is one of the rarest congenital nasal deformities, and only a limited number of articles have been published so far on this topic. We present a typical case of a supernumerary nostril located above the left nostril in a male infant. We describe the appearance, physical examination, surgical procedure and histopathological examination of this case.

Using pseudo amino acid composition to predict transmembrane regions in protein: cellular automata and Lempel-Ziv complexity

Transmembrane (TM) proteins represent about 20-30% of the protein sequences in higher eukaryotes, playing important roles across a range of cellular functions. Moreover, knowledge about topology of these proteins often provides crucial hints toward their function. Due to the difficulties in experimental structure determinations of TM protein, theoretical prediction methods are highly preferred in identifying the topology of newly found ones according to their primary sequences, useful in both basic research and drug discovery. In this paper, based on the concept of pseudo amino acid composition (PseAA) that can incorporate sequence-order information of a protein sequence so as to remarkably enhance the power of discrete models (Chou, K. C., Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics, 2001, 43: 246-255), cellular automata and Lempel-Ziv complexity are introduced to predict the TM regions of integral membrane proteins including both alpha-helical and beta-barrel membrane proteins, validated by jackknife test. The result thus obtained is quite promising, which indicates that the current approach might be a quite potential high throughput tool in the post-genomic era. The source code and dataset are available for academic users at liml@scu.edu.cn.

Mature data on capecitabine (X) + fractionated cisplatin (P) as first-line therapy in patients (pts) with advanced gastric carcinoma (AGC)

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Background: Gastric cancer is one of the most common malignancies in Asia with an adjusted mortality rate above 20/100,000 population. 5-FU + fractionated P is a standard treatment for AGC in China. In a Korean study by Kim et al., X + P produced a response rate of 55% in pts with previously untreated AGC. Here we present mature efficacy/safety results in Chinese pts with AGC. Methods: 154 pts of a planned population of 120 pts were enrolled between Jun 2002 and Aug 2004. All had measurable AGC (WHO), Karnofsky performance status ≥60, adequate bone marrow, renal and hepatic functions. Prior radiotherapy or adjuvant chemotherapy was permitted. Pts received × 1000 mg/m2 orally bid on days 1–14 + P 20mg/m2/day i.v. on days 1–5, every 3 weeks for 6 cycles. The primary endpoint was time to disease progression (TTP). Results: Baseline characteristics of the 141 evaluable pts (104 men, 37 women) are: median age 54 years (range 23–80), main sites of metastases: lymph nodes 45%, liver 40%, stomach 18%, skin 6%, other 6%, lung 5%, abdomen 4%. The overall response rate was 36%, including 13 complete responses and 38 partial responses. After a median follow-up period of 12 months, the median TTP is 9 months (95% CI, 9–12 months) and the median overall survival is 12 months (95% CI, 12–15 months). Median treatment duration was 6 cycles (range 3–6). The most common treatment-related clinical adverse events (all grades >5%) were: hand-foot syndrome (HFS) 25%, leucopenia 13%, and SGOT abnormality 12%. The most commongrade 3 adverse events were SGPT abnormality 3%, HFS 2%, and anemia 2%. There were no grade 4 adverse events. Most grade 3 adverse events improved or resolved after treatment or interruption except in 1 pt with anemia who withdrew after 2 cycles. Conclusions: X combined with fractionated P is highly active and very well tolerated as first-line treatment for AGC, with comparable results to 5-FU + P.

No significant financial relationships to disclose.

Classifying G protein-coupled receptors and nuclear receptors on the basis of protein power spectrum from fast Fourier transform

As the potential drug targets, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and nuclear receptors (NRs) are the focuses in pharmaceutical research. It is of great practical significance to develop an automated and reliable method to facilitate the identification of novel receptors. In this study, a method of fast Fourier transform-based support vector machine was proposed to classify GPCRs and NRs from the hydrophobicity of proteins. The models for all the GPCR families and NR subfamilies were trained and validated using jackknife test and the results thus obtained are quite promising. Meanwhile, the performance of the method was evaluated on GPCR and NR independent datasets with good performance. The good results indicate the applicability of the method. Two web servers implementing the prediction are available at http://chem.scu.edu.cn/blast/Pred-GPCR and http://chem.scu.edu.cn/blast/Pred-NR.

Delaunay triangulation with partial least squares projection to latent structures: a model for G-protein coupled receptors classification and fast structure recognition

As an important transmembrane protein family in eukaryon, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) play a significant role in cellular signal transduction and are important targets for drug design. However, it is very difficult to resolve their tertiary structure by X-ray crystallography. In this study, we have developed a Delaunay model, which constructs a series of simplexes with latent variables to classify the families of GPCRs and projects unknown sequences to principle component space (PC-space) to predict their topology. Computational results show that, for the classification of GPCRs, the method achieves the accuracy of 91.0 and 87.6% for Class A, more than 80% for the other three classes in differentiating GPCRs from non-GPCRs and 70% for discriminating between four major classes of GPCR, respectively. When recognizing the structure of GPCRs, all the N-terminals of sequences can be determined correctly. The maximum accuracy of predicting transmembrane segments is achieved in the 7th transmembrane segment of Rhodopsin, which is 99.4%, and the average error is 2.1 amino acids, which is the lowest in all of the segments prediction. This method could provide structural information of a novel GPCR as a tool for experiments and other algorithms of structure prediction of GPCRs. Academic users should send their request for the MATLAB program for classifying GPCRs and predicting the topology of them at liml@scu.edu.cn .

137Cs budget during the period of 1960s in a small drainage basin on the Loess Plateau of China

A sediment profile with a thickness of 28.12 m in a failed reservoir in a small catchment of the Yuntaishan Gully in the Loess Plateau of China consisted of 44 flood couplets deposited during the period from 1960 to 1970 with total volume of 2.36 x 10(6)m(3). Specific sediment yields for a flood event varied from 300 t km(-2) to 14,400 t km(-2) and annual sediment yields varied from 2500 t km(-2) in 1966 to 40,000 t km(-2) in 1964 with a mean value of 12,700 t km(-2)a(-1) for the period. Average annual (137)Cs concentrations of the sediments increased from 0.92 Bq kg(-1) in 1960 to 4.82 Bq kg(-1) in 1963, then decreased to 1.53 Bq kg(-1) in 1970. The total (137)Cs activity in the reservoir sediments was 9.22 x 10(9) Bq, which accounted for 31.9% of the total (137)Cs fallout precipitation of 2.89 x 10(10) Bq within the catchment during the period. The proportion of the (137)Cs loss from the catchment to the (137)Cs fallout precipitation within the catchment in a year varied between 8.01% and 66.8%, and it was 20.9% for the peak (137)Cs deposition year of 1963 and 52.0% in 1964. By analysis of the (137)Cs budget in the catchment for the (137)Cs peak precipitation period from 1962 to 1964, the (137)Cs surface enrichment coefficient Gamma should be much less than 0.23. And for calculation of soil losses on the cultivated land in the inter-gully area by using the Mass Balance Model II, the value of Gamma should be 0.05-0.1.

Performance of a static-anode/flat-panel x-ray fluoroscopy system in a diagnostic strength magnetic field: A truly hybrid x-ray/MR imaging system

Minimally invasive procedures are increasing in variety and frequency, facilitated by advances in imaging technology. Our hybrid imaging system (GE Apollo flat panel, custom Brand x-ray static anode x-ray tube, GE Lunar high-frequency power supply and 0.5 T Signa SP) provides both x-ray and MR imaging capability to guide complex procedures without requiring motion of the patient between two distant gantries. The performance of the x-ray tube in this closely integrated system was evaluated by modeling and measuring both the response of the filament to an externally applied field and the behavior of the electron beam for field strengths and geometries of interest. The performance of the detector was assessed by measuring the slanted-edge modulation transfer function (MTF) and when placed at zero field and at 0.5 T. Measured resonant frequencies of filaments can be approximated using a modified vibrating beam model, and were at frequencies well below the 25 kHz frequency of our generator for our filament geometry. The amplitude of vibration was not sufficient to cause shorting of the filament during operation within the magnetic field. A simple model of electrons in uniform electric and magnetic fields can be used to estimate the deflection of the electron beam on the anode for the fields of interest between 0.2 and 0.5 T. The MTF measured at the detector and the DQE showed no significant difference inside and outside of the magnetic field. With the proper modifications, an x-ray system can be fully integrated with a MR system, with minimal loss of image quality. Any x-ray tube can be assessed for compatibility when placed at a particular location within the field using the models. We have also concluded that a-Si electronics are robust against magnetic fields. Detailed knowledge of the x-ray system installation is required to provide estimates of system operation.