The study aimed to evaluate the therapeutic effect of nilotinib-loaded biocompatible gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) microneedles patch on cardiac dysfunction after myocardial infarction(MI), and provide a new clinical perspective of myocardial fibrosis therapies. The GelMA microneedles patches were attached to the epicardial surface of the infarct and peri-infarct zone in order to deliver the anti-fibrosis drug nilotinib on the 10th day after MI, when the scar had matured. Cardiac function and left ventricular remodeling were assessed by such as echocardiography, BNP (brain natriuretic peptide) and the heart weight/body weight ratio (HW/BW). Myocardial hypertrophy and fibrosis were examined by WGA (wheat germ agglutinin) staining, HE (hematoxylin-eosin staining) staining and Sirius Red staining. The results showed that the nilotinib-loaded microneedles patch could effectively attenuate fibrosis expansion in the peri-infarct zone and myocardial hypertrophy, prevent adverse ventricular remodeling and finally improve cardiac function. This treatment strategy is a beneficial attempt to correct the cardiac dysfunction after myocardial infarction, which is expected to become a new strategy to correct the cardiac dysfunction after MI. This is of great clinical significance for improving the long-term prognosis of MI patients.
In order to quantitatively evaluate the performance of dry electrode for fabric surface bioelectricity, a set of active measuring devices that can simulate electrocardiosignal has been developed on the basis of passive system by our group. Five Ag/AgCl fabric dry electrodes were selected to test and evaluate the devices. The results show that the deviation ratios of peak time interval of the five electrodes are all less than 1%. The maximum voltage amplitude decay rate is 7.2%, and the noise amplitudes are lower than 0.004 mV. The variable coefficient of peak time offset is less than 8%. The variable coefficient of voltage amplitude is less than 2%. The variable coefficient of noise amplitude is less than 10%. Research shows the devices has good repeatability and stability in measuring the simulated electrocardiosignal. The active measuring devices proposed in this paper can provide a new method for performance evaluation and standard formulation of surface bioelectricity dry electrode.
Glaucoma is one of blind causing diseases. The cup-to-disc ratio is the main basis for glaucoma screening. Therefore, it is of great significance to precisely segment the optic cup and disc. In this article, an optic cup and disc segmentation model based on the linear attention and dual attention is proposed. Firstly, the region of interest is located and cropped according to the characteristics of the optic disc. Secondly, linear attention residual network-34 (ResNet-34) is introduced as a feature extraction network. Finally, channel and spatial dual attention weights are generated by the linear attention output features, which are used to calibrate feature map in the decoder to obtain the optic cup and disc segmentation image. Experimental results show that the intersection over union of the optic disc and cup in Retinal Image Dataset for Optic Nerve Head Segmentation (DRISHTI-GS) dataset are 0.962 3 and 0.856 4, respectively, and the intersection over union of the optic disc and cup in retinal image database for optic nerve evaluation (RIM-ONE-V3) are 0.956 3 and 0.784 4, respectively. The proposed model is better than the comparison algorithm and has certain medical value in the early screening of glaucoma. In addition, this article uses knowledge distillation technology to generate two smaller models, which is beneficial to apply the models to embedded device.
Objective To evaluate the effects of knowledge about malaria after the implementation of Global Fund Malaria Project in Chongqing for future prevention and treatment of malaria. Methods Four counties were selected from the counties of Global Fund Malaria Project of Chongqing. Three towns were randomly selected in each selected county; one primary school and one high school were investigated in each selected town; one class was randomly selected in each selected school; and 30 students in each selected class were randomly selected. Then, three villages were randomly selected in each selected county; one group of villagers were randomly selected in each selected village; and 200 local residents were randomly investigated in each selected villager group. Before and after implementation of Global Fund Malaria Project, their awareness of malaria was investigated using a questionnaire. Results After implementation of the project, the pupils’ average awareness rate of knowledge about malaria rose from 58.94% to 89.96% (χ2=179.48, Plt;0.01) with average increase of 31.02%; the middle school students’ average awareness rate of rose from 52.83% to 86.06% (χ2=196.64, Plt;0.01) with average increase of 33.23%; the local residents’ average awareness rate of knowledge about malaria rose from 56.74% to 83.89% (χ2=1 281.70, Plt;0.01) with average increase of 27.15%. The accuracies of all respondents after project implement was higher than before. After the implementation, the accuracies of malaria transmission route, main clinical symptoms, and seeing doctor while malaria occurring were all above 80%, but the accuracy of the index of best preventive methods was less than 50%. Conclusion The implementation of Global Fund Malaria Project in Chongqing increase the awareness rate of malaria knowledge but the relevant education should be strengthened, so as to promote general population’s awareness of malaria prevention.
Objective To explore predictive value of radiological indexes for hemorrhage in patients with portal hypertension. Methods The clinical data and radiological data of patients with portal hypertension accompanied with hepatitis B from June 2008 to June 2014 in the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital were analyzed retrospectively. Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, portal vein thrombosis, or portal hypertension due to other causes, such as autoimmune hepatitis, pancreatitis, or hematological diseases were excluded. Results Ninety-eight patients were studied and subsequently divided into a hemorrhage group (n=57) and a non-hemorrhage group (n=41). There were no statistical differences in the clinical indexes such as the age, prothrombin time, serum albumin, serum creatinine, serum sodium, white blood cell count, and blood platelet count (P>0.05). However, the differences were statistically significant in the serum total bilirubin, hemoglobin, and liver function with theP values of 0.023, 0.000, and 0.039, respectively. For the radiological indexes, the hemorrhage was correlated with the diameter of posterior gastric vein (P=0.028 3) or grading of esophageal varices (P=0.022 1). Logistic procedure was used to construct the model with stepwise selection and finally the diameter of inferior mesenteric vein, diameter of posterior gastric vein, grading of esophageal varices, and diameter of short gastric vein were enrolled into this model. These indexes were scored, the risk of bleeding increased with increasing the points. Then the model was validated with 26 patients with portal hypertension from July 2014 to December 2014, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.884 9 by this radiological model. Conclusions A radiological scoring model is constructed including diameter of inferior mesenteric vein, grading of esophageal varices, diameter of posterior gastric vein, and diameter of short gastric vein, which might predict risk of hemorrhage in patients with portal hypertension. However, further protective study of large sample is needed to validate this model.