Serum folate status among blood donors in south-central China

Folate deficiency has been confirmed to be related to various diseases. Unfortunately, there are few reports on the folate status of Chinese adults. This study aims to evaluate the serum folate status of blood donors in south-central China. In this study, 248 blood donors were included. The information on subjects was collected by a brief questionnaire concerning alcohol consumption habits, smoking habits, fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity. The serum folate concentration was measured by electrochemiluminescence immunoassay. The geometric mean serum folate concentration was 13.4[Formula: see text]nmol[Formula: see text]l[Formula: see text] (95% CI, 12.7–14.1). The prevalence of serum folate concentrations below 6.8[Formula: see text]nmol[Formula: see text]l[Formula: see text] was 5.2% (95% CI, 2.5–8.0). There were significant differences in serum folate concentrations with respect to sex ([Formula: see text]-values [Formula: see text] 0.05), age ([Formula: see text]-values [Formula: see text] 0.05), fruit and vegetable consumption ([Formula: see text]-values [Formula: see text] 0.05), and alcohol consumption habits ([Formula: see text]-values [Formula: see text] 0.05). The concentration of serum folate increased with age ([Formula: see text]-values [Formula: see text] 0.05) and fruit and vegetable consumption ([Formula: see text]-values [Formula: see text] 0.05). Individuals with an age of 30 years or younger were nearly 3.5 times as likely as those aged over 30 years to have an insufficient level of serum folate (OR = 3.48; 95% CI: 1.01–11.99). An age of 30 years or younger was a risk factor for folate deficiency. Most blood donors had sufficient serum folate concentrations in south-central China. National surveys of folate status should be implemented in China.

Development of a poly(arylene sulfide sulfone) antibacterial electrospun film as a skin wound dressing application

Tissue engineering has become a hot issue for skin wound healing because it can be used as an alternative treatment to traditional grafts. Nanofibrous films have been widely used due to their excellent properties. In this work, an organic/inorganic composite poly(arylene sulfide sulfone)/ZnO/graphene oxide (PASS/ZnO/GO) nanofibrous film was fabricated with the ZnO nanoparticles blending in an electrospun solution and post-treated with the GO deposition. The optimal PASS/ZnO/GO nanofibrous film was prepared by 2% ZnO nanoparticles, 3.0[Formula: see text]g/mL PASS electrospun solution, and 1% GO dispersion solution. The morphology, hydrophilicity, mechanical property, and cytotoxicity of the PASS/ZnO/GO nanofibrous film were characterized by using scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscope, water contact angle, tensile testing, and a Live/Dead cell staining kit. It is founded that the PASS/ZnO/GO nanofibrous film has outstanding mechanical properties and no cytotoxicity. Furthermore, the PASS/ZnO/GO nanofibrous film exhibits excellent antibacterial activity to both Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Above all, this high mechanical property in the non-toxic and antibacterial nanofibrous film will have excellent application prospects in skin wound dressing.

Optical angiography for diabetes-induced pathological changes in microvascular structure and function: An overview

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a kind of metabolic disorder characterized by chronic hyperglycemia and glucose intolerance due to absolute or relative lack of insulin, leading to chronic damage of vasculature within various organ systems. These detrimental effects on the vascular networks will result in the development of various diseases associated with microvascular injury. Modern optical imaging techniques provide essential tools for accurate evaluation of the structural and functional changes of blood vessels down to capillaries level, which can offer valuable insight on understanding the development of DM-associated complications and design of targeted therapy. This review will briefly introduce the DM-induced structural and functional alterations of vasculature within different organs such as skin, cerebrum and kidneys, as well as how novel optical imaging techniques facilitate the studies focusing on exploration of these pathological changes of vasculature caused by DM both in-vivo and ex-vivo.

Automatic segmentation of foveal avascular zone based on adaptive watershed algorithm in retinal optical coherence tomography angiography images

The size and shape of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) have a strong positive correlation with several vision-threatening retinovascular diseases. The identification, segmentation and analysis of FAZ are of great significance to clinical diagnosis and treatment. We presented an adaptive watershed algorithm to automatically extract FAZ from retinal optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) images. For the traditional watershed algorithm, “over-segmentation” is the most common problem. FAZ is often incorrectly divided into multiple regions by redundant “dams”. This paper analyzed the relationship between the “dams” length and the maximum inscribed circle radius of FAZ, and proposed an adaptive watershed algorithm to solve the problem of “over-segmentation”. Here, 132 healthy retinal images and 50 diabetic retinopathy (DR) images were used to verify the accuracy and stability of the algorithm. Three ophthalmologists were invited to make quantitative and qualitative evaluations on the segmentation results of this algorithm. The quantitative evaluation results show that the correlation coefficients between the automatic and manual segmentation results are 0.945 (in healthy subjects) and 0.927 (in DR patients), respectively. For qualitative evaluation, the percentages of “perfect segmentation” (score of 3) and “good segmentation” (score of 2) are 99.4% (in healthy subjects) and 98.7% (in DR patients), respectively. This work promotes the application of watershed algorithm in FAZ segmentation, making it a useful tool for analyzing and diagnosing eye diseases.

Cerebrospinal fluid and blood biomarkers in the diagnostic assays of Alzheimer’s disease

The anti-amyloid-[Formula: see text] (anti-A[Formula: see text]) fibrils and soluble oligomers antibody aducanumab were approved to effectively slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at higher doses in 2019, reaffirming the therapeutic effects of targeting the core pathology of AD. A timely and accurate diagnosis in the prodromal or pre-dementia stage of AD is essential for patient recruitment, stratification, and monitoring of treatment effects. AD core biomarkers amyloid-[Formula: see text] (A[Formula: see text]), total tau (t-tau), and phosphorylated tau (p-tau) have been clinically validated to reflect AD-type pathological changes through cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) measurement or positron-emission tomography (PET) and found to have high diagnostic performance for AD identification in the stage of mild cognitive impairment. The development of ultrasensitive immunoassay technology enables AD pathological proteins such as tau and neurofilament light (NFL) to be measured in blood samples. However, combined biomarker detection or targeting multiple biomarkers in immunoassays will increase detection sensitivity and specificity and improve diagnostic accuracy. This review summarizes and analyzes the performance of current detection methods for early diagnosis of AD, and provides a concept of detection method based on multiple biomarkers instead of a single target, which may become a potential tool for early diagnosis of AD in the future.

Research on the relationship between reduced scattering coefficient and intracranial pressure in brain edema model

Intracranial hypertension is a serious threat to the health of neurosurgical patients. At present, there is a lack of a safe and effective technology to monitor intracranial pressure (ICP) accurately and nondestructively. In this paper, based on near infrared technology, the continuous nondestructive monitoring of ICP change caused by brain edema was studied. The rat brain edema models were constructed by lipopolysaccharide. The ICP monitor and the self-made near infrared tissue parameter measuring instrument were used to monitor the invasive intracranial pressure and the reduced scattering coefficient of brain tissue during the brain edema development. The results showed that there was a negative correlation between the reduced scattering coefficient (690[Formula: see text]nm and 834[Formula: see text]nm) and ICP, and then the mathematical model was established. The experimental results promoted the development of nondestructive ICP monitoring based on near infrared technology.