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Background We aimed to clarify the controversial relationship between levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and severity of depression in men and women. Methods Medical records were retrospectively analyzed for 1,236 inpatients at our medical center who were diagnosed with depression at discharge between January 2018 and August 2022. Depression severity was assessed during hospitalization using the 24-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Potential associations between severity scores and hs-CRP levels were explored using multivariate linear regression as well as smooth curve fitting to detect non-linear patterns. Results In male patients, hs-CRP levels between 2.00 mg/L and 10.00 mg/L showed a non-linear association with depression severity overall (fully adjusted β  = 1.69, 95% CI 0.65 to 2.72), as well as with severity of specific symptoms such as hopelessness, sluggishness, and cognitive disturbance. In female patients, hs-CRP levels showed a linear association with severity of cognitive disturbance (fully adjusted β  = 0.07, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.12). These results remained significant after adjusting for age, body mass index, diabetes, hypertension, history of drinking, history of smoking, and estradiol levels. Discussion Levels of hs-CRP show sex-specific associations with depression severity, particularly levels between 2.00 and 10.00 mg/L in men. These findings may help develop personalized anti-inflammatory treatments for depression, particularly for men with hs-CRP levels of 2.00–10.00 mg/L.

Background Recently, many risk prediction models for Cognitive Frailty (CF) in older people in China have been developed. However, there is a shortage of large-scale systematic and comprehensive studies of the methods, quality, and predictors involved in model development. Aims To systematically assess the risk prediction model of CF in older people in China and to conduct a meta-analysis of its predictors. Methods PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMbase, Web of Science, CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, and SinoMed were searched from the inception to April 30, 2024. Two researchers independently screened the literature and extracted data. The quality of studies was assessed using the PROBAST tool. Additionally, Stata 18.0 software and MedCalc software were employed to perform a meta-analysis of the modeled predictors and area under the curve (AUC). Results 17 articles were included, encompassing 22 CF risk prediction models, involving 9,614 participants, of which 2488 (25.9%) were diagnosed with CF. 15 models reported discrimination by AUC (0.710 to 0.991). 8 models conducted internal validation, while 7 models performed external validation. PROBAST evaluation results found that 15 articles (15/17, 88.24%) exhibited a high risk of bias (ROB). The most common predictors were advanced age, irregular exercise, malnutrition, depression, Barthel Index score, female gender, and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) score. Conclusion Due to imprecise modeling methods, incomplete presentation, and lack of external validation, the models’ usefulness still needs to be determined. Seven predictive factors are established predictors for CF among older people, including advanced age and so on, but the roles of educational level and fall incidents warrant further investigation.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization in China have resulted in labor migrants leaving children behind. For left-behind children (LBC), disrupted parental attachment may increase the risk of psychiatric morbidity in adulthood. To investigate psychopathological consequences for university students who were LBC and to estimate the effects of one or both parents being migrants, the duration of left-behind experience, and parental absence during critical periods of growth on psychiatric morbidity. We conducted an annual survey of all freshmen at a Chinese university from 2014 to 2018. The questionnaire collected information on left-behind experiences and psychiatric morbidity using standardized self-report instruments. Regression coefficients derived from logistic regression were used to measure the associations among total time left behind, absence of one parent or both parents, age when left behind and psychopathological consequences. A total of 42,505 students were included. Students who were LBC had more psychopathology, including depression, anxiety, somatoform disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, self-reported suicide attempts and deliberate self-harm, than those who were not. Students for whom one or both parents were migrants showed a greater risk of psychiatric morbidity. The risk of psychiatric morbidity increased with the length of parental absence. Left-behind experience during childhood represents sustained impacts for university students into early adulthood. The higher prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in young adults who experienced the absence of one or both of their parents, especially in their early childhood, suggests that other factors besides attachment, such as protection from other risks, are important and that further research is necessary.

Magnetic coupling is an approach employed to prevent gas leakage by transforming the dynamic seal into a non-contact static seal for the recovery of natural gas pressure energy. The impact of thermal demagnetization necessitates the consideration of the heat dissipation characteristics resulting from eddy current losses in the rotating magnetic field. We performed a numerical study of thermal-magnetic coupling in a magnetic transmission validated by experimental results. The Maxwell software was utilized to simulate the distribution characteristics of induced current, while the Fluent software was employed to analyze the dissipation of heat caused by eddy currents. The obtained simulation results reveal a proportional increase in induced current and eddy current losses with the rotation speed. Also, the eddy current losses increase together with the thickness of the isolation cover, since more volume of the conducting media is affected by the eddy currents. Furthermore, reducing the electrical conductivities of the isolation cover and enhancing the internal flow rates can effectively decrease the temperature of the magnetic coupling and mitigate thermal demagnetization. These research findings offer valuable insights for the design and optimization of non-contact transmission methods, ultimately enhancing the safety of natural gas top-pressure energy recovery equipment.

Background Visual memory impairment is one of the most commonly complained symptoms in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Pattern glare is also a distorted visual phenomenon that puzzles patients with MDD. Nevertheless, how these two phenomena interact in MDD remains unknown. This study investigated the association between pattern glare and visual memory in MDD patients. Methods Sixty-two patients with MDD and forty-nine age-, sex- and education level-matched healthy controls (HCs) were included in this study. The Pattern Recognition Memory (PRM) test and the Brief Visual Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R) were applied to measure visual memory. The pattern glare test including three patterns with different spatial frequencies (SFs) was used to explore pattern glare levels. Results Patients with MDD scored lower on the PRM-PCi, BVMT-R1, BVMT-R2, BVMT-R3, and BVMT-Rt and higher on the PRM-MCLd than HCs (all p  < 0.05). Pattern glare scores for MDD patients were higher with mid-SF ( p  < 0.001), high-SF ( p  = 0.006) and mid-high SF differences ( p  = 0.01) than for HCs. A positive correlation between mid-SF and PRM-MCLd scores in all participants was observed ( p  = 0.01, r  = 0.246). A negative correlation between mid-high difference scores and BVMT-R2 scores ( p  = 0.032, r  = -0.317) was observed in HCs, but no significant correlation was observed in MDD patients. Conclusions The present study showed that visual memory and pattern glare are disrupted in MDD. Visual memory may be associated with pattern glare and needs to be studied in future work.

There is no highly effective chemotherapy for malignant gliomas to date. We found that dimethylaminomicheliolide (DMAMCL), a selective inhibitor of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) stem/progenitor cells, inhibited the growth of glioma cells. The distribution of DMAMCL in brain was analyzed by an ultraperformance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) system. The anti-tumor evaluations of DMAMCL in vitro were performed by MTT, FACS and RT-PCR. In vivo, the mixture of C6 cells and matrigel was injected into caudatum, and the anti-tumor activity of DMAMCL was evaluated by tumor growth and rat survival. The toxicity of DMAMCL was evaluated by body weight, daily food intake, hematological or serum biochemical analyses, and histological appearance of tissues. The IC50 values of DMAMCL against the C6 and U-87MG cell lines in vitro were 27.18 ± 1.89 μM and 20.58 ± 1.61 μM, respectively. DAMMCL down-regulated the anti-apoptosis gene Bcl-2 and increased apoptosis in C6 and U-87MG cells in a dose-dependent manner. In a C6 rat tumor model, daily administration of DMAMCL for 21 days reduced the burden of C6 tumors by 60% to 88% compared to controls, and more than doubled the mean lifespan of tumor-bearing rats. Distribution analysis showed that the DMAMCL concentration was higher in the brain than in plasma. Evaluations for toxicity revealed that oral administration of DMAMCL at 200 or 300 mg/kg once a day for 21 days did not result in toxicity. These results suggest that DMAMCL is highly promising for the treatment of glioma.

Background A body of studies has focused on the olfactory impairment among people with schizophrenia. The effect of sex on this relationship has attracted the attention of researchers. These issues have not been studied much in Chinese schizophrenia patients. Methods We conducted a case-control study of 110 first-episode antipsychotic medicine naïve schizophrenia patients aged 18–35 years and 110 controls, matched by age and sex. Odour threshold, discrimination and identification were assessed by the “Sniffin’ Sticks” test. Psychotic symptoms were assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Results The odour threshold, discrimination and identification scores of patients with schizophrenia were significantly lower than those of the healthy control group. The difference in identification score had statistical significance between male and female patients with schizophrenia ( t  = − 2.45, P  < 0.05). Controlling for confounding factor, in male schizophrenia participants, the negative subscale score was significantly and inversely correlated with the discrimination (γ = − 0.37, p  < 0.008), identification (γ = − 0.45, p  < 0.008) and TDI (γ = − 0.50, p  < 0.008) scores; the general psychopathology subscale score was inversely and significantly correlated with the identification (γ = − 0.47, p  < 0.008) and TDI (γ = − 0.41, p  < 0.008) scores. For female schizophrenia patients, positive and general psychopathology subscale scores had a significant inverse correlation with the identification score (positive: γ = − 0.47, p < 0.008; general psychopathology: γ = − 0.42, p  < 0.008). Conclusions Controlling for confounder, negative symptoms were related to impaired odour discrimination and identification in male schizophrenia patients, while positive symptoms were correlated with impaired odour identification in female schizophrenia patients. This sex dimorphism could provide useful information for future studies aiming to finding biomarkers of schizophrenia.

Background Previous research using whole-brain neuroimaging techniques has revealed structural differences of grey matter (GM) in alcohol use disorder (AUD) patients. However, some of the findings diverge from other neuroimaging studies and require further replication. The quantity of relevant research has, thus far, been limited and the association between GM and abstinence duration of AUD patients has not yet been systematically reviewed. Methods The present research conducted a meta-analysis of voxel-based GM studies in AUD patients published before Jan 2021. The study utilised a whole brain-based d-mapping approach to explore GM changes in AUD patients, and further analysed the relationship between GM deficits, abstinence duration and individual differences. Results The current research included 23 studies with a sample size of 846 AUD patients and 878 controls. The d-mapping approach identified lower GM in brain regions including the right cingulate gyrus, right insula and left middle frontal gyrus in AUD patients compared to controls. Meta-regression analyses found increasing GM atrophy in the right insula associated with the longer mean abstinence duration of the samples in the studies in our analysis. GM atrophy was also found positively correlated with the mean age of the samples in the right insula, and positively correlated with male ratio in the left middle frontal gyrus. Conclusions GM atrophy was found in the cingulate gyrus and insula in AUD patients. These findings align with published meta-analyses, suggesting they are potential deficits for AUD patients. Abstinence duration, age and gender also affect GM atrophy in AUD patients. This research provides some evidence of the underlying neuroanatomical nature of AUD.

Background Identifying the causal genes at the risk loci and elucidating their roles in schizophrenia (SCZ) pathogenesis remain significant challenges. To explore risk variants associated with gene expression in the human brain and to identify genes whose expression change may contribute to the susceptibility of SCZ, here we report a comprehensive integrative study on SCZ. Methods We systematically integrated the genetic associations from a large-scale SCZ GWAS ( N = 56,418) and brain expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) data ( N = 175) using a Bayesian statistical framework (Sherlock) and Summary data-based Mendelian Randomization (SMR). We also measured brain structure of 86 first-episode antipsychotic-naive schizophrenia patients and 152 healthy controls with the structural MRI. Results Both Sherlock ( P = 3. 38 × 10 −6 ) and SMR ( P = 1. 90 × 10 −8 ) analyses showed that TYW5 mRNA expression was significantly associated with risk of SCZ. Brain-based studies also identified a significant association between TYW5 protein abundance and SCZ. The single-nucleotide polymorphism rs203772 showed significant association with SCZ and the risk allele is associated with higher transcriptional level of TYW5 in the prefrontal cortex. We further found that TYW5 was significantly upregulated in the brain tissues of SCZ cases compared with controls. In addition, TYW5 expression was also significantly higher in neurons induced from pluripotent stem cells of schizophrenia cases compared with controls. Finally, combining analysis of genotyping and MRI data showed that rs203772 was significantly associated with gray matter volume of the right middle frontal gyrus and left precuneus. Conclusions We confirmed that TYW5 is a risk gene for SCZ. Our results provide useful information toward a better understanding of the genetic mechanism of TYW5 in risk of SCZ.

This study compared the topological organization of brain function in never-treated and treated long-term schizophrenia patients. In a cross-sectional study, 21 never-treated schizophrenia patients with illness duration over 5 years, 26 illness duration-matched antipsychotic-treated patients and 24 demographically-matched healthy controls underwent a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. The topological properties of brain functional networks were compared across groups, and then we tested for differential age-related effects in regions with significant group differences. Both never-treated and antipsychotic-treated schizophrenia patient groups showed altered nodal centralities in left pre-/postcentral gyri relative to controls. Never-treated patients demonstrated reduced global efficacy, decreased nodal centralities in right amygdala/hippocampus and bilateral putamen/caudate relative to antipsychotic-treated patients and controls. No significant relationships of age and altered functional metrics were seen in either patient group, and no alterations were greater in the treated group. These findings provide insight into brain function deficits over the longer-term course of schizophrenia independent from potential effects of antipsychotic medication. The presence of greater alterations in never-treated than treated patients suggests that long-term antipsychotic treatment may partially protect or enhance brain global and nodal topological function over the course of schizophrenia, notably involving the amygdala, hippocampus, and striatum that have long been associated with the disorder.