Abstract Background Fever is a common symptom of Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM). However, the exact correlation between fever and the prognosis of IIM is still unclear. This study aims to clarify if the IIM patients initiated with fever are associated with poorer outcomes. Methods This was a single-center retrospective cohort study. Data were collected from 79 newly diagnosed, treatment-naive IIM patients in the Affiliated Wuxi People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University (Wuxi, Jiangsu, China) from November 2016 to June 2020. According to the presence or absence of fever at the onset, the IIM patients were divided into two groups(fever group n = 28, without fever group n = 51) Clinical characteristics, laboratory data, treatment, and outcomes were recorded. The Kaplan-Meier and log-rank tests were used to compare the all-cause mortality, relapse rate, and acute exacerbation of interstitial lung disease (AE-ILD) incidence. The association of fever with the outcomes was assessed in the unadjusted and adjusted forward logistic regression model. Results Compared with the non-fever group, the age at onset of the fever group was higher, and mechanic's hands (MH) and interstitial lung disease (ILD) were more common. Systemic inflammation (CRP and ESR) was significantly higher in the fever group, while the level of albumin(ALB) and muscle enzymes were lower. The fever group seemed to be received more aggressive treatment, with higher dose glucocorticoids and higher rates of intravenous immunoglobulins(IVIG) use. The all-cause mortality rate and the incidence rate of AE-ILD were higher in the fever group. Even adjusted for the age at onset and treatments, fever was significantly associated with AE-ILD and all-cause mortality. Conclusion Our study has demonstrated that fever at initial diagnosis is associated with AE-ILD and mortality. Fever should serve as an early clinical warning sign for poor outcomes in IIM patients.

Abstract We aimed to study level of cardiac troponin T(cTnT) and its possible influence factorsin maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients. Blood was obtained from 123 MHD patients before undergoing hemodialysis. Patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) had higher cTnT levels than those without CVD (0.062 [0.044 - 0.083] ng/mL vs 0.031[0.020 - 0.046] ng/mL, P = 0.002). Patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) had higher cTnT levels than those non-DM (0.061[0.042 - 0.102] ng/mL vs 0.044[0.025 - 0.064] ng/mL, P = 0.003). We found that in all MHD patients, cTnT correlated positively with age(ρ = 0.309, P = 0.001), glycated albumin (ρ = 0.192, P = 0.040), amino-terminal pro-B-natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) (ρ = 0.448, P < 0.001), high-sensitive C reactive protein(hsCRP) (ρ = 0.335, P < 0.001), carotid artery intima-media thickness (ρ = 0.315, P = 0.004) and left ventricular mass index(ρ = 0.369, P < 0.001); negatively with pre-albumin(ρ = -0.280, P = 0.002), high density lipoprotein cholesterol(ρ = -0.201, P = 0.047). Age (β = 0.204, P = 0.043), NT-proBNP (β = 0.299, P = 0.010) and left ventricular mass index (β = 0.345, P = 0.003) were independently associated cTnT. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves analysis showed the correlation between cTnT and CVD was more closely than NT-proBNP and hsCRP, the correlation between cTnT and left ventricular hypertrophy was lower than NT-proBNP, and higher than hsCRP. In conclusions, serum cTnT is markedly elevated in MHD patients; Serum cTnT is associated with advanced age, fluid overload, malnutrition, microinflammation, left ventricular hypertrophy and CVD in MHD patients.

ABSTRACT This paper aimed to evaluate the quality of hawthorn leaves and Guang hawthorn leaves by an UPLC–MS method from two aspects, fingerprint analysis and multi-ingredient quantification. Chromatographic separation was carried out on an UPLC system, the standardized characteristic fingerprints was established by Similarity Evaluation System for chromatographic fingerprinting of traditional Chinese medicine and cluster analysis. Eight components were simultaneously determined by mass spectrometry in multiple reaction-monitoring mode. The method was validated in terms of linearity (R2 > 0.9971), intraday and interday precision (RSD < 2.0%), repeatability (RSD < 2.3%), stability (RSD < 2.5%) and recovery (96.2–103.8%). The developed method was successfully applied to the quality evaluation between hawthorn leaves and Guang hawthorn leaves, and there were differences in the component and the content, hawthorn leaves and Guang hawthorn leaves cannot substitute each other in clinical medication.

The central carbon metabolic system is the upstream energy source for microbial fermentation. In addition, it is a master switch for increasing the production of metabolites and an important part of the microbial metabolic network. Investigation into the relationship between genes, environmental factors, and metabolic networks is a main focus of systems biology, which significantly impacts research in biochemistry, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology. To this end, the central carbon metabolic flux under a variety of growth conditions or using strains with various genetic modifications was previously measured in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using 13C tracer technology. However, the measured values were not integrated and investigated further. In this study, we collected and analyzed the metabolic flux rates of the central carbon metabolic system in S. cerevisiae measured in recent studies. We carried out preliminary analyses of flux values of each pathway, performed regression analyses on relationship between different fluxes, and extracted principal component factors of the flux variables. Based on the results, the general characteristics of pathway flux distribution were clustered and explored, and the effects of environmental and genetic factors on the flux distribution were analyzed. Furthermore, this study explored the relationship between similarity in the enzyme's transcriptional regulation and the correlations in the enzyme's reaction flux. Our results provide a foundation for further studies on the control of the central carbon metabolic flux and facilitate the search for targets in metabolic engineering research.

Neste artigo fornecemos uma demonstração elementar do resultado de que os volumes minimais de R³ e R4 são ambos iguais a zero. A abordagem consiste na construção de uma seqüência de métricas completas explícitas nesses espaços cujas curvaturas seccionais são limitadas em valor absoluto por 1 e os volumes tendem a zero. Como conseqüência direta, estabelecemos que MinVol(Rn) = 0 para n > 3.

In this paper, we give an elementary proof of the result that the minimal volumes of R³ and R4 are zero. The approach is to construct a sequence of explicit complete metrics on them such that the sectional curvatures are bounded in absolute value by 1 and the volumes tend to zero. As a direct consequence, we get that MinVol (Rn) = 0 for n > 3.