Diet changes due to urbanization in South Africa are linked to microbiome and metabolome signatures of Westernization and colorectal cancer

Transition from traditional high-fiber to Western diets in urbanizing communities of Sub-Saharan Africa is associated with increased risk of non-communicable diseases (NCD), exemplified by colorectal cancer (CRC) risk. To investigate how urbanization gives rise to microbial patterns that may be amenable by dietary intervention, we analyzed diet intake, fecal 16 S bacteriome, virome, and metabolome in a cross-sectional study in healthy rural and urban Xhosa people (South Africa). Urban Xhosa individuals had higher intakes of energy (urban: 3,578 ± 455; rural: 2,185 ± 179 kcal/d), fat and animal protein. This was associated with lower fecal bacteriome diversity and a shift from genera favoring degradation of complex carbohydrates (e.g., Prevotella) to taxa previously shown to be associated with bile acid metabolism and CRC. Urban Xhosa individuals had higher fecal levels of deoxycholic acid, shown to be associated with higher CRC risk, but similar short-chain fatty acid concentrations compared with rural individuals. Fecal virome composition was associated with distinct gut bacterial communities across urbanization, characterized by different dominant host bacteria (urban: Bacteriodota; rural: unassigned taxa) and variable correlation with fecal metabolites and dietary nutrients. Food and skin microbiota samples showed compositional differences along the urbanization gradient. Rural-urban dietary transition in South Africa is linked to major changes in the gut microbiome and metabolome. Further studies are needed to prove cause and identify whether restoration of specific components of the traditional diet will arrest the accelerating rise in NCDs in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Common and unique testosterone and 17 beta-estradiol degradation mechanisms in Comamonas testosteroni JLU460ET by transcriptome analysis

Strain C. testosteroni JLU460ET was isolated for testosterone and 17 beta-estradiol degradation by our group. In this study, strain C. testosteroni JLU460ET was induced by testosterone and 17 beta-estradiol and then subjected to transcriptome analysis. There were 2,047 upregulated genes after 3 h of testosterone induction, 2,040 upregulated genes after 13 h of testosterone induction, 2,078 upregulated genes after 3 h of 17 beta-estradiol induction, and 2,095 upregulated genes after 13 h of 17 beta-estradiol induction. Significantly upregulated genes were mainly involved in steroid and aromatic compound degradation. A 100 kb steroid-degrading gene cluster was found by transcriptome analysis, which included 92 annotated genes and 58 novel genes. Among them, MucB/RseB and Fiu are secretory proteins for sensing substrates in the environment. MFS-1 and TonB are transporters of testosterone and 17 beta-estradiol. Ring-cleavage enzymes and beta-oxidation enzymes are important for degradation. The genes upregulated by both substrates were almost the same, but the degree of induction by testosterone was higher than that by 17 beta-estradiol. Nine upregulated genes were selected for verification by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The qRT-PCR results were consistent with the transcriptome sequencing results. In this study, the common and unique metabolic mechanisms of testosterone and 17 beta-estradiol were compared by transcriptome analysis in C. testosteroni JLU460ET for the first time.

Attention guided neural ODE network for breast tumor segmentation in medical images

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Ultrasound is a widely used screening tool for its portability and easy operation, and DCE-MRI can highlight the lesions more clearly and reveal the characteristics of tumors. They are both noninvasive and nonradiative for assessment of breast cancer. Doctors make diagnoses and further instructions through the sizes, shapes and textures of the breast masses showed on medical images, so automatic tumor segmentation via deep neural networks can to some extent assist doctors. Compared to some challenges which the popular deep neural networks have faced, such as large amounts of parameters, lack of interpretability, overfitting problem, etc., we propose a segmentation network named Att-U-Node which uses attention modules to guide a neural ODE-based framework, trying to alleviate the problems mentioned above. Specifically, the network uses ODE blocks to make up an encoder-decoder structure, feature modeling by neural ODE is completed at each level. Besides, we propose to use an attention module to calculate the coefficient and generate a much refined attention feature for skip connection. Three public available breast ultrasound image datasets (i.e. BUSI, BUS and OASBUD) and a private breast DCE-MRI dataset are used to assess the efficiency of the proposed model, besides, we upgrade the model to 3D for tumor segmentation with the data selected from Public QIN Breast DCE-MRI. The experiments show that the proposed model achieves competitive results compared with the related methods while mitigates the common problems of deep neural networks.

Augmentative compression plating versus exchanging reamed nailing for nonunion of femoral shaft fracture after intramedullary nailing : A retrospective cohort study

Aim of the present study was to compare the outcomes between exchanging reamed nailing (ERN) and augmentative compression plating (ACP) in treatment of femoral shaft nonunion after intra-medullary nailing (IMN) retrospectively. A retrospective, multicentre study was performed with 188 patients (190 cases)with femoral shaft nonunion after IMN, who received therapy with either ERN (n = 92) for 44/92 (47.8%) cases of nonisthmal nonunions and 48/92 (52.2%) cases of isthmal nonunions or ACP (n = 98) for 48/98 (49%) cases of nonisthmal nonunions and 50/98 (51%) cases of isthmal nonunions. Operation time, intraoperative blood loss, time to union, union rate, postoperative draining volume and complication rate were compared between ERN and ACP group. After a mean follow-up of 4.6 years (range 1-8.1 years), the bone union occurred in 98/98 (100%) cases in -total ACP group versus 80/92 (87%) cases in total ERN group [odds ratio (OR) = 3.34, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.8-1.6]. Twelve cases with re-nonunion in the total ERN group included 10/12 (83.3%) cases of nonisthmal nonunions and 2/12 (16.7%) cases of isthmal nonunion with cortical bone defect > 3 cm. The average time to union, the intraoperative blood loss and the complication rate in total ERN group were also both significantly more than that in total ACP group (p = 0.031, p = 0.042, p = 0.028). No -significant difference was found in the average operation time between the two total groups (p = 0.213). However, for nonisthmal nonunions, the mean operation time for ERN group was 126.8 ± 19.6 min in -comparison to ACP group (88.6 ± 15.2 min), significant difference was found between ERN group and ACP group (p = 0.021). ACP could obtain the higher bone union rate and shorter time to union than ERN in the treatment of femoral shaft nonunion after failed IMN. Especially for nonisthmal femoral shaft nonunions or isthmal.

Selective removal of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) from aqueous solution by triolein-embedded composite adsorbent

A novel composite adsorbent (CA-T) was used for the selective removal of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) from aqueous solution. The adsorbent was composed of the supporting activated carbon and the surrounding triolein-embedded cellulose acetate membrane. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), N2 adsorption isotherms and fluorescence methods were used to characterize the physicochemical properties of CA-T. Triolein was perfectly embedded in the cellulose acetate membrane and deposited on the surface of activated carbon. The adsorbent was stable in water and no triolein leakage was detected during the test periods. Some organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), such as dieldrin, endrin, aldrin, and heptachlor epoxide, were used as model contaminants and removed by CA-T in laboratory batch experiments. The adsorption isotherm followed the Freundlich equation and the kinetic data fitted well to the pseudo-second-order reaction model. Results also indicated that CA-T appeared to be a promising adsorbent with good selectivity and satisfactory removal rate for lipophilic OCPs from aqueous solutions when present in trace amounts. The adsorption rate and removal efficiency for lipophilic OCPs were positively related to their octanol-water partition coefficients (log K(ow)). Lower residual concentrations of OCPs were achieved when compared to granular activated carbon (GAC).