Our previous studies have shown that Uncaria has an important role in lowering blood pressure, but its intervention mechanism has not been clarified completely in the metabolic level. Therefore, in this study, a combination method of HPLC-TOF/MS-based metabolomics and multivariate statistical analyses was employed to explore the mechanism and evaluate the antihypertensive effect of Uncaria. Serum samples were analyzed and identified by HPLC-TOF/MS, while the acquired data was further processed by partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) to discover the perturbed metabolites. A clear cluster among the different groups was obtained, and 7 significantly changed potential biomarkers were screened out. These biomarkers were mainly associated with lipid metabolism (dihydroceramide, ceramide, PC, LysoPC, and TXA2) and vitamin and amino acids metabolism (nicotinamide riboside, 5-HTP). The result indicated that Uncaria could decrease the blood pressure effectively, partially by regulating the above biomarkers and metabolic pathways. Analyzing and verifying the specific biomarkers, further understanding of the therapeutic mechanism and antihypertensive effect of Uncaria was acquired. Metabolomics provided a new insight into estimate of the therapeutic effect and dissection of the potential mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in treating hypertension.
Context
Although gonadotropin-releasing hormone stimulation test (GnRHST) is the gold standard in diagnosing central precocious puberty (CPP), it is invasive, expensive, and time-consuming, requiring multiple blood samples to measure gonadotropin levels.
Objective
We evaluated whether urinary hormones could be potential biomarkers for pre- or post- puberty, aiming to simplify the current diagnosis and prognosis procedure.
Design, Setting, and Participants
We performed a cross-sectional study of a total of 355 girls with CPP in National Clinical Research Center for Child Health in China, including 258 girls with positive and 97 girls with negative results from GnRHST. Twenty patients received GnRH analogue (GnRHa) treatment and completed a six-month follow up.
Main Outcome Measures
We measured luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), estradiol, prolactin, progesterone, testosterone, and human chorionic gonadotropin in the first morning voided urine samples.
Results
Their urinary LH levels and the ratios of LH: FSH increased significantly with the advancement in Tanner Stages. uLH levels were positively associated with basal and peak LH levels in the serum after GnRH stimulation. A cut-off value of 1.74 IU/L for uLH reached a sensitivity of 69.4% and a specificity of 75.3% in predicting a positive GnRHST result. For the combined threshold (uLH≥1.74+uLH: uFSH ratio >0.4), the specificity reached 86.6%. After 3 months of GnRHa therapy, the uLH and uFSH levels decreased accordingly.
Conclusions
uLH could be a reliable biomarker for the initial CPP diagnosis and screening; uLH also could be an effective marker for evaluating the efficacy of clinical treatment.
SUMMARYTiming control for delay-constrained data aggregation is critical for improving the performance of a wireless sensor network. In this paper, we propose an adaptive timing control (ATC) mechanism to determine the proper time for data aggregation and forwarding. Given the maximum delay requirements of an application, the ATC mechanism determines the aggregation time for sensor nodes based on both the locations of the nodes and the number of children in the data aggregation tree. The nodes with more children are allocated a longer waiting time. The ATC mechanism maximizes the opportunity for data aggregation and ensures sufficient time to process data from the children. Analytical and simulation results show that the ATC mechanism leads to a higher data delivery rate and lower energy costs compared with existing similar algorithms. Moreover, since a lot of data packets can arrive at the sink earlier, the ATC mechanism is capable of responding more quickly to users.
With the diversity of modern dietary lifestyles, digestive system disorders (DSD) have become a frequently occurring disease in recent years. Astragalus polysaccharide (APS) is a homogeneous polysaccharide extracted from Astragalus, which might ameliorate the digestive and absorptive functions. However, the treatment mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, rats with DSD were fed a high-fat–low-protein diet and subjected to weight-bearing swimming until exhaustion. When body weight and autonomous activities of the rats decreased, they were administered APS. After two weeks, serum metabolomics analysis based on LC-MS was performed to validate the therapeutic effect of APS and explore its mechanism. APS pharmacodynamics was determined in this study, and serum metabolomics analysis discovered and identified 16 significant, differentially produced metabolites involved in energy, amino acid, and lipid metabolism, including citric acid, lactic acid, alanine, phosphatidylcholine, phenylalanine. After treatment with APS, the levels of the above small-molecule metabolites were reversed. Our results show the efficacy of APS in DSD treatment through the regulation of perturbed metabolic pathways related to energy, amino acid, and lipid metabolism.
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