On detection of periodicity in C-reactive protein (CRP) levels

The Roles Played by Blood Inflammatory Parameters in Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

OBJECTIVE

The etiology of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) remains unknown; inflammation may be one cause. We retrospectively studied SSHNL cases in terms of the inflammatory parameters involved.

METHODS

We reviewed 169 SSNHL cases. The control group contained 132 patients with vocal cord polyps. The C-reactive protein (CRP) level, CRP/serum albumin (Alb) ratio, and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) were compared between the 2 groups. The relationships between these parameters and the time to treatment after SSHNL onset, hearing level, and therapeutic effects were also analyzed.

RESULTS

The CRP level, CRP/Alb ratio, and NLR were higher in SSNHL patients than in controls, but only the NLR differed significantly between the 2 groups. We found no significant differences between patients with different hearing levels, those evaluated at various times after SSNHL onset, and those with different outcomes.

CONCLUSION

The NLR is a reliable SSNHL diagnostic marker. The CRP level and CRP/Alb ratio are not useful indicators.

Phosphorylcholine-Functionalized PEDOT-Gated Organic Electrochemical Transistor Devices for Ultra-Specific and Sensitive C-Reactive Protein Detection

Affinity-based organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) sensors offer an attractive approach to point-of-care diagnostics due to their extreme sensitivity and easy operation; however, their application in the real world is frequently challenged by the poor storage stability of antibody proteins and the interference from biofouling in complex biofluids. In this work, we developed an antibody-free and antifouling OECT biosensor to detect C-reactive protein (CRP) at ultra-high specificity and sensitivity. The key to this novel biosensor is the gate coated by phosphorylcholine-functionalized poly (3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene) (PEDOT-PC), which possesses large capacitance and low impedance, prevents biofouling of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and the fetal bovine serum (FBS), and interacts specifically with CRP molecules in the presence of calcium ions. This PEDOT-PC-gated OECT biosensor demonstrated exceptional sensitivity when detecting the CRP molecules at 10 pg/mL, while significantly depressing the signal from the nonspecific binding. This indicates that this biosensor could detect the CRP molecules directly without nonspecific binding blocking, the usual process for the earlier transistor sensors before detection. We envision that this PEDOT-PC-gated OECT biosensor platform may offer a potentially valuable tool for point-of-care diagnostics as it alleviates concerns about poor antibody stability and BSA blocking inconstancy.

Hip osteoarthritis: A novel network analysis of subchondral trabecular bone structures

Hip osteoarthritis (HOA) is a degenerative joint disease that leads to the progressive destruction of subchondral bone and cartilage at the hip joint. Development of effective treatments for HOA remains an open problem, primarily due to the lack of knowledge of its pathogenesis and a typically late-stage diagnosis. We describe a novel network analysis methodology for microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) images of human trabecular bone. We explored differences between the trabecular bone microstructure of femoral heads with and without HOA. Large-scale automated extraction of the network formed by trabecular bone revealed significant network properties not previously reported for bone. Profound differences were discovered, particularly in the proximal third of the femoral head, where HOA networks demonstrated elevated numbers of edges, vertices, and graph components. When further differentiating healthy joint and HOA networks, the latter showed fewer small-world network properties, due to decreased clustering coefficient and increased characteristic path length. Furthermore, we found that HOA networks had reduced length of edges, indicating the formation of compressed trabecular structures. In order to assess our network approach, we developed a deep learning model for classifying HOA and control cases, and we fed it with two separate inputs: (i) micro-CT images of the trabecular bone, and (ii) the network extracted from them. The model with plain micro-CT images achieves 74.6% overall accuracy while the trained model with extracted networks attains 96.5% accuracy. We anticipate our findings to be a starting point for a novel description of bone microstructure in HOA, by considering the phenomenon from a graph theory viewpoint.

Single-Molecule Identification of the Conformations of Human C-Reactive Protein and Its Aptamer Complex with Solid-State Nanopores

Human C-reactive protein (CRP) is an established inflammatory biomarker and was proved to be potentially relevant to disease pathology and cancer progression. A large body of methodologies have been reported for CRP analysis, including electrochemical/optical biosensors, aptamer, or antibody-based detection. Although the detection limit is rather low until pg/uL, most of which are time-consuming and relatively expensive, and few of them provided CRP single-molecule information. This work demonstrated the nanopore-based approach for the characterization of CRP conformation under versatile conditions. With an optimized pore of 14 nm in diameter, we achieved the detection limit as low as 0.3 ng/μL, voltage polarity significantly influences the electro-osmotic force and CRP translocation behavior, and the pentameric conformation of CRP may dissociate into pro-inflammatory CRP isoforms and monomeric CRP at bias potential above 300 mV. CRP tends to translocate through nanopores faster along with the increase in pH values, due to more surface charge on both CRP and pore inner wall and stronger electro-osmotic force. The CRP could specifically bind with its aptamer of different concentrations to form complexes, and the complexes exhibited distinguishable nanopore translocation behavior compared with CRP alone. The variation of the molar ratio of aptamer significantly influences the orientation of CRP translocation. The plasma test under physiological conditions displayed the ability of the nanopore system on the CRP identification with a concentration of 3 ng/μL.

The development of tumour vascular networks

The growth of solid tumours relies on an ever-increasing supply of oxygen and nutrients that are delivered via vascular networks. Tumour vasculature includes endothelial cell lined angiogenesis and the less common cancer cell lined vasculogenic mimicry (VM). To study and compare the development of vascular networks formed during angiogenesis and VM (represented here by breast cancer and pancreatic cancer cell lines) a number of in vitro assays were utilised. From live cell imaging, we performed a large-scale automated extraction of network parameters and identified properties not previously reported. We show that for both angiogenesis and VM, the characteristic network path length reduces over time; however, only endothelial cells increase network clustering coefficients thus maintaining small-world network properties as they develop. When compared to angiogenesis, the VM network efficiency is improved by decreasing the number of edges and vertices, and also by increasing edge length. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that angiogenic and VM networks appear to display similar properties to road traffic networks and are also subject to the well-known Braess paradox. This quantitative measurement framework opens up new avenues to potentially evaluate the impact of anti-cancer drugs and anti-vascular therapies.

Fouladzadeh, Dorraki and colleagues investigate the development of angiogenic networks for in vitro cancer cell lines. They demonstrate that during the growth stages of vasculogenic mimicry, the number of edges and vertices decreases but the edge length increases resulting in improved network efficiency.

Oxidative Stress, Endocrine Disturbance, and Immune Interference in Humans Showed Relationships to Serum Bisphenol Concentrations in a Dense Industrial Area

Bisphenol A (BPA) analogues, used in a range of products due to health concerns regarding BPA, have emerged as ubiquitous environmental contaminants worldwide. This study aims to evaluate the levels of nine bisphenols (BPs) and eight biomarkers (malondialdehyde, MDA; 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine, 8-OHdG; estradiol, E2; follicle-stimulating hormone, FSH; luteinizing hormone, LH; complement compound 3, C3; immunoglobulin M, IgM and c-reaction protein, CRP) in human serum (n = 353) to explore their potential relationships. The detection rates (DRs) of eight BPs in serum samples taken from people working in a dense industrial area of Shenzhen (Guangdong Province, China) were over 72% except for bisphenol B (BPB) (DR = 27.5%). The mean concentrations of BPA, bisphenol P (BPP), BPB, bisphenol F (BPF), bisphenol FL (BPFL), 4,4'-dihydroxy-benzophenone (DHBP), bisphenol AF (BPAF), 4,4'-thiodiphenol (TDP) and bisphenol S (BPS) were 42.062, 2.083, 0.765, 0.578, 0.423, 0.402, 0.191, 0.120, and 0.071 ng/mL, respectively. BPA and BPFL were significantly correlated with the level of oxidative stress indices MDA and 8-OHdG; BPAF, BPB, and DHBP were strongly correlated with the level of endocrine disturbance indices E2, FSH, and LH; and BPF, DHBP, and BPAF were apparently related to the level of immune interference indices C3 and IgM. This study also suggests multiple impacts (oxidative stress, endocrine disturbance, and immune interference) mediated by BPs contaminants in vivo. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report the correlations among these nine serum BPs and oxidative stress and endocrine and immune system indices in human serum samples collected from dense industrial areas.

Oscillatory Dynamics in Infectivity and Death Rates of COVID-19

The analysis of systematically collected data for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infectivity and death rates has revealed, in many countries around the world, a typical oscillatory pattern with a 7-day (circaseptan) period. Additionally, in some countries, 3.5-day (hemicircaseptan) and 14-day periodicities have also been observed. Interestingly, the 7-day infectivity and death rate oscillations are almost in phase, showing local maxima on Thursdays/Fridays and local minima on Sundays/Mondays. These observations are in stark contrast to a known pattern correlating the death rate with the reduced medical staff in hospitals on the weekends. While we cannot exclude the possibility that a significant portion of the observed oscillations is associated with the reporting of the individual cases, other reasons might contribute at least partly to these data. One possible hypothesis addressing these observations is that they reflect gradually increasing stress with the progressing week, which can trigger the higher death rates on Thursdays/Fridays. Moreover, assuming the weekends provide the likely time for new infections, the maximum number of new cases might fall, again, on Thursdays/Fridays. These observations deserve further study to provide a better understanding of COVID-19 dynamics.IMPORTANCE The infectivity and death rates for COVID-19 have been observed in many countries around the world as well as in the collective data of the whole world. These oscillations show distinct circaseptan periodicity, which could be associated with numerous biological reasons as well as with improper reporting of the data collected. Since very different results are observed in different countries and even continents, such as Sweden (very significant oscillations) or India (almost no oscillations), these data provide a very important message about different conditions under which the disease is spread or is reported, which, in turn, could serve as guidance tools in future epidemics. It is necessary that follow-up studies track the observed differences and fully reliably address their origins.

Detection of C-Reactive Protein Using Histag-HRP Functionalized Nanoconjugate with Signal Amplified Immunoassay

Ultrasensitive detection of biomarkers is highly significant for disease prognosis and public health treatment. Despite wide acceptance in routine laboratory tests, the conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has been of limited use for early biomarker detection due to insufficient sensitivity and multiple long incubation time. Several nanoprobes have been introduced to circumvent the limitation, however, rapid, simple, and chemical-free nanoprobe synthesis and sensitive detection methods, particularly for ELISA, are still lacking. In this study, we have synthesized a gold nanoprobe, conjugated with multiple 6X-histidine (6X-his) peptide and nickel-horseradish peroxidase (Ni²⁺-HRP), for enhancing the colorimetric signal in ELISA. The developed nanoprobe has been tested for the detection of immunologically significant C-reactive protein (CRP) in ELISA format. The performance of designed probe is validated by testing standard and serum samples, and the detection limit of 32.0 pg/mL with R² = 0.98 is confirmed. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the developed nanoprobe was performed with ELISA developed on conventional guidelines, the proposed immunoassay showed an increase of 12-fold sensitivity for detecting CRP due to the high loading of 6Xhis peptide and binding of multiple Ni²⁺-HRP on a gold nanoparticle. Additionally, the proposed assay provides a simple, fast, and cost-efficient (not requiring multiple antibodies) detection of CRP with easy nanoprobe synthesis. Moreover, the developed Histag-HRP functionalized nanoconjugate immunoassay is flexible and can be applied to other biomarkers efficiently by using disease specific antibody.

Efficient electron-mediated electrochemical biosensor of gold wire for the rapid detection of C-reactive protein: A predictive strategy for heart failure

C-reactive protein (CRP) is considered a promising biomarker for the rapid and high-throughput real-time monitoring of cardiovascular disease and inflammation in unprocessed clinical samples. Implementation of this monitoring would enable various transformative biomedical applications. We have fabricated a highly specific sensor chip to detect CRP with a detection limit of 2.25 fg/mL. The protein was immobilized on top of a gold (Au) wire/polycarbonate (PC) substrate using 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylamino-propyl) carbodiimide hydrochloride/N-hydroxy succinimide-activated 3-mercaptoproponic acid (MPA) as a self-assembled monolayer agent and bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a blocking agent. In contrast to the bare PC substrate, the CRP/BSA/anti-CRP/MPA/Au substrate exhibited a considerably high electrochemical signal toward CRP. The influence of the experimental parameters on CRP detection was assessed via various analysis methods, and these parameters were then optimized. The linear dynamic range of the CRP was 5-220 fg/mL for voltammetric and impedance analysis. Morever, the strategy exhibited high selectivity against various potential interfering species and was capable of directly probing trace amounts of the target CRP in human serum with excellent selectivity. The analytical assay based on the CRP/BSA/anti-CRP/MPA/Au substrate could be exploited as a potentially useful tool for detecting CRP in clinical samples.

Selective single-molecule analytical detection of C-reactive protein in saliva with an organic transistor

In the last decade, saliva has been suggested as non-invasive diagnostic fluid, suitable for clinical use alternatively to blood serum and plasma. However, the clinical applicability of saliva has been hampered so far by the inadequate sensitivity of current methods to detect the lower salivary concentrations of many biomarkers monitored in blood products. Herein, a label-free biosensor based on electrolyte-gated organic thin-film transistor (EGOTFT) has been developed for the detection at the physical limit of C-reactive protein (CRP) in human saliva. CRP is a key relevant biomarker for inflammatory processes and is routinely monitored for many clinical purposes. Herein, an electrolyte-gated thin-film transistor (EGOTFT) has been proposed as a transducer of the biorecognition event taking place at the gate electrode, functionalized with a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of highly densely packed capturing anti-CRP proteins. Thanks to the SAM, the biosensing platform herein proposed is endowed with ultra-high sensitivity, along with an extremely high selectivity, assessed by measuring the dose curves of CRP interacting with a bovine serum albumin-functionalized gate. Moreover, the biosensing platform is compatible with low-cost fabrication techniques and applicable to the ultra-sensitive detection of a plethora of clinically relevant biomarkers. Therefore, the EGOTFT device herein proposed, being able to operate in physiologically relevant fluids such as saliva, will set the ground to a major revolution in biosensing applications for early clinical detection.

The Immune System and Responses to Cancer: Coordinated Evolution

This review explores the incessant evolutionary interaction and co-development between immune system evolution and somatic evolution, to put it into context with the short, over 60-year, detailed human study of this extraordinary protective system. Over millions of years, the evolutionary development of the immune system in most species has been continuously shaped by environmental interactions between microbes, and aberrant somatic cells, including malignant cells. Not only has evolution occurred in somatic cells to adapt to environmental pressures for survival purposes, but the immune system and its function has been successively shaped by those same evolving somatic cells and microorganisms through continuous adaptive symbiotic processes of progressive simultaneous immunological and somatic change to provide what we observe today. Indeed, the immune system as an environmental influence has also shaped somatic and microbial evolution. Although the immune system is tuned to primarily controlling microbiological challenges for combatting infection, it can also remove damaged and aberrant cells, including cancer cells to induce long-term cures. Our knowledge of how this occurs is just emerging. Here we consider the connections between immunity, infection and cancer, by searching back in time hundreds of millions of years to when multi-cellular organisms first began. We are gradually appreciating that the immune system has evolved into a truly brilliant and efficient protective mechanism, the importance of which we are just beginning to now comprehend. Understanding these aspects will likely lead to more effective cancer and other therapies.