Midtgaardwalters3727

Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is a common type of chronic liver disease characterized by excessive lipid accumulation in hepatocytes, but the pathogenesis is still unclear. Neutrophils, the most abundant immune cells in the human body, defend against pathogens and regulate the inflammatory response. Recent studies have indicated that excessive liver infiltration of neutrophils is a significant histological hallmark of MAFLD, and neutrophils and their derived granule proteins participate in different stages of MAFLD, including hepatic steatosis, inflammation, fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Hence, in this review, we summarize the role of neutrophils in the occurrence and progression of MAFLD and provide a perspective for the clinical application of neutrophils in MAFLD diagnosis and treatment.Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that causes inflammation and ulcers in the digestive tract. The treatment commonly includes anti-inflammatory agents like 5-aminosalicylic acid or corticosteroids or biologics for people with UC who are no longer responding to corticosteroids. The radices of Paeonia lactiflora Pall. or similar plants of the Paeonia genus have been used in Chinese medicine to treat certain diseases that resemble the symptoms of UC. Paeoniflorin, a terpenoid glycoside, is a major active component for the anti-inflammatory and antitumor activity. In this study, we evaluated the therapeutic effect of paeoniflorin (PF) against dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis in mice and found that PF exhibited protective activity against colitis. PF treatment suppressed NF-κB pathway activation, resulting down regulation of pro-inflammatory factor expression. In addition, we detected reduction in eosinophil-related chemokine gene expression and eosinophil infiltration. The treatment also reversed Treg cell population suppression. Although PF treatment did not block COX2 induction, the compound weakly inhibited COX2 activity in an enzymatic assay. Taken together, PF exerts its therapeutic activity against UC through inhibition of inflammation and eosinophil infiltration.

Population ageing and air pollution have become two major public health concerns in China. Longitudinal evidence on the body weight impacts of air pollution among older adults is rare. This study aims to investigate the impacts of ambient particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters ≤2.5μm (PM

) on weight status of older adults in China and the potential behavioral and metabolic pathways through which PM

influences weight status.

The longitudinal data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (body mass index-BMI, n=9053; waist/height ratio-WHR, n=9064) were linked to the air pollution data at the city-level with a rural-urban distinction. We used mixed-effects linear models to evaluate the impacts of PM

on individual weight status and multiple mediation analysis to examine potential pathways.

After adjusting for relevant socioeconomic and city-level risk factors, significant and robust positive impacts of PM

on BMI (0.025, 95%CI 0.018, 0.031) and WHR*100 (0.058, 95%CI 0.044, 0.072n migrants. PM2.5 may affect weight status of older adults through biomarkers such as HbA1c and CRP. More research is needed to confirm our findings.Previous studies suggested that naturally occurring EGCG primarily acted on the bacterial cell membrane then damaged the membrane and the gallate moiety in EGCG was very important to its anti-bacterial activity. However, the detailed mechanisms were still poorly understood. In this paper, EGCG and EGC were selected to study the great contribution of gallate moiety on the anti-bacterial activities of polyphenols. The results indicated that EGCG could penetrate deeper into the POPG lipid bilayer and possess more potent structure-perturbing potency on the POPG lipid bilayer than EGC. We also found that EGCG had the ability to form hydrogen bonds with the deeper inside oxygen atoms in the POPG lipid bilayer and the gallate moiety was the key functional group for EGCG forming hydrogen bonds with the POPG lipid bilayer. Moreover, results from the binding free energy analysis demonstrated that the gallate moiety made great contribution to the high affinity between EGCG and the POPG lipid bilayer. We believed that these findings could yield useful insights into the influence mechanisms of gallate moiety on the anti-bacterial activities of polyphenols.Recurrent mentions of a forensic science crisis are reported in the literature. Some 15 years ago, the discussion was focused on the backlog problem. Other issues have been regularly debated since then, including the risk of error, need for independence, importance and risk of contextualisation, increasing fragmentation into separate processes and specialisations. Proposed solutions to solve one problem often led to other issues in other parts of the process. This paper attempts to address the apparent crisis using a different perspective, through a comparison with established disciplines, namely material science, medicine and historical science. The comparison with material science shows that, despite the varied organisational and legal models and the interdisciplinary nature of the field, a common element to all forensic science endeavours exists the trace. A greater focus on the trace might thus help the development of a holistic approach in forensic science. The comparison with medicine demonstrates that,ng crimes is presented as an evolving process. A new trace or information can bring an entirely different light on the reconstruction of past events or prevention of future issues. Thus, issues or challenges in the first stages of the process (i.e., crime scene investigation) should be addressed in priority for subsequent stages to function correctly.Commodity plastic is ubiquitous in daily life and commonly disposed of via unregulated burning, particularly in developing regions. We report here the much higher emission factors (13.1 ± 7.5 g/kg) and toxicities of inhalable aerosols emitted from the unregulated burning of plastic waste based on field measurements and cellular experiments, including oxidative stress and cytotoxic tests in A549 cells. Plastic foam burning emitted aerosols possesses the highest EFs (34.8 ± 4.5 g/kg) and toxicities, which are 4.2- to 13.4-fold and 1.1- to 2.7-fold higher than those emitted from the burning of other waste types. These quantified toxicities are mainly attributed to aerosols containing carbonaceous matter, especially persistent organic pollutants, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins, which originate from incomplete combustion processes. The aerosol emission amounts were estimated from the obtained experimental results. Approximately 70.2 million tons (29%) of plastic waste was burned without regulation worldwide in 2016, leading to 0.92 ± 0.53 million tons of toxic aerosols being released into the air, a majority of which occurred in developing regions. The results indicate improved combustion technology and control strategies are urgently needed in developing regions for discarded plastic -waste to mitigate toxic exposure risks and achieve sustainable development.Adverse effects of microplastics (MPs) are exacerbated by plastic additives such as benzophenone-3 (BP-3). The aim of the present study was to evaluate the role of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) of Chlorella vulgaris in leaching BP-3 additive (3.0 ± 0.2% wt/wt) from polyethylene MP fragments (99.8 ± 4.1 µm) and subsequent bioconcentration in Daphnia magna. BP-3 leaching in M4 medium was higher at pH 8 than at pH 6, because of the higher solubility of BP-3 (pKa=7.07) at pH 8. However, EPS reduced BP-3 leaching in M4 medium, possibly because of repulsive interactions between the negatively charged EPS and anionic BP-3. Thus, BP-3 leaching was greater at lower pH (6 >8) and EPS concentration (20 >50 mg L-1 as total organic carbon), which was well related to BP-3 sorption capacity of EPS. Although BP-3 uptake in D. magna was decreased at pH 8 by increasing EPS concentration, the bioconcentration of BP-3 in D. magna was increased, possibly because of reduced BP-3 elimination. These findings suggest the important role of EPS in the bioconcentration of anionic plastic additives, which should be further evaluated to understand the underlying toxicokinetic mechanisms.Communities value water and aquatic environments for a many diverse reasons. Ensuring safe drinking water is prioritized on the political agenda with a dedicated focus on safe and affordable drinking water under the 6th of the UN sustainable development goals. The occurrence of micron sized plastic fragments has been confirmed even in very remote areas. In the present study we analysed drinking water of a medium-sized Norwegian urban area for the presence of microplastics ≥ 1 µm. A modular filtering sampling devices was developed allowing a sequential in-situ enzymatic and mild oxidizing driven sample preparation prior to pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry sample's analysis (pyr-GCMS). Samples were taken at different stages of the drinking water supply chain. The total amount of polymers per sites ranged from 6.1 to 93.1 µg/m3. Higher levels were detected in the raw water, but significant reduction rates ranging from 43% to 100% depending on the polymer type were scored after the water treatment processes. Polyethylene, polyamide, and polyester were the most frequently detected polymer types. Overall, the levels of MPs in the raw water influence the occurrence and polymer type occurrence and distribution is the drinking water supply net. This study contributes to the emerging field of plastics pollution in drinking water supply systems by providing effective methods helping with future routine monitoring of this source of human plastic uptake.Benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P) is a typical carcinogen associated with increased lung cancer risk, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate epigenome-wide DNA methylation associated with B[a]P exposure and their mediation effects on B[a]P-lung cancer association in two lung cancer case-control studies of 462 subjects. P7C3 in vitro Their plasma levels of benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide-albumin (BPDE-Alb) adducts and genome-wide DNA methylations were separately detected in peripheral blood by using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and genome-wide methylation arrays. The epigenome-wide meta-analysis was performed to analyze the associations between BPDE-Alb adducts and DNA methylations. Mediation analysis was applied to assess effect of DNA methylation on the B[a]P-lung cancer association. We identified 15 CpGs associated with BPDE-Alb adducts (P-meta less then 1.0 × 10-5), among which the methylation levels at five loci (cg06245338, cg24256211, cg15107887, cg02211741, and cg04354393 annotated to UBE2O, SAMD4A, ACBD6, DGKZ, and SLFN13, respectively) mediated a separate 38.5%, 29.2%, 41.5%, 47.7%, 56.5%, and a joint 58.2% of the association between BPDE-Alb adducts and lung cancer risk. Compared to the traditional factors [area under the curve (AUC) = 0.788], addition of these CpGs exerted improved discriminations for lung cancer, with AUC ranging 0.828-0.861. Our results highlight DNA methylation alterations as potential mediators in lung tumorigenesis induced by B[a]P exposure.