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Objective-To study whether passive smoking at work is a risk factor for coronary heart disease.Design-Case-control study. Setting-Xi'an, China. Subjects-59 patients with coronary heart disease and 126 controls, all Chinese women with full time jobs, who had never smoked cigarettes.Results-The crude odds ratio for passive smoking from husband was 2*12 (95% confidence interval 1P06 to 4 25) and at work was 2 45 (1.23 to 4.88). The final logistic regression model, with passive smoking from husband and at work as the base, included age, history ofhypertension, type A personality, and total cholesterol and high density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations; the adjusted odds ratios for passive smoking from husband and at work were 1P24 (056 to 2*72) and 1*85 (086 to 4 00) respectively. For passive smoking at work, statistically significant linear trends of increasing risks (for both crude and adjusted odds ratios) with increasing exposures (amount exposed daily, number ofsmokers, number of hours exposed daily, and cumulative exposure) were observed. When these exposure variables were analysed as continuous variables, the crude and adjusted odds ratios were also significant.

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This study investigates containment control of multi-agent systems with input saturation and multiple leaders on directed networks. Both state feedback and output feedback containment control protocols are designed via low-gain feedback approach. Under the assumption that the system is asymptotically null controllable with bounded controls and there exists at least one leader that has a directed path to each follower, semi-global state feedback and output feedback containment control of the multi-agent system can be attained. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) induces detrimental processes such as oxidative stress, inflammation, and apoptosis. All parts of the neurovascular unit are involved in these pathological processes. Fibulin-5 is a 66-kD glycoprotein secreted by various vascular cells, including vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs), fibroblasts, and endothelial cells. As an extracellular matrix protein involved in cell adhesion, fibulin-5 has been widely studied in tumor growth and invasion. However, the effects of fibulin-5 on brain injury following ischemia/reperfusion have not been reported. In this study, we examined the effect of overexpressed fibulin-5 on reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Fibulin-5 overexpression attenuated ROS expression, which in turn decreased apoptosis and blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability following MCAO and reperfusion. Fibulin-5 also improved neurological deficits but had no effect on infarction volume. T2-weighted MRI and electron microscopy further confirmed brain edema reduction and decreased BBB disruption in fibulin-5 overexpression recombinant adenovirus (Ad-FBLN) treated rats. In addition, tight junction protein occludin was significantly degraded and matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) immunoreactivity was significantly increased. Fibulin-5-mediated ROS decrease was not due to increased total superoxide dismutase levels but was instead correlated with the activation of Rac-1 pathway. The findings highlight the importance of antioxidant mechanism underlying cerebral ischemia/reperfusion.

Human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) originate from hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow, which mainly includes lymphocytes (T cells, B cells, and natural killer cells) and monocytes. Cryopreserved PBMCs providing biobank resources are crucial for clinical application or scientific research. Here, we used flow cytometry to explore the influence of long-term cryopreservation on the quality of PBMCs with the aim of providing important evidence for the effective utilization of biobank resources. The PBMCs were isolated from the peripheral blood, which was collected from volunteers in the hospital. After long-term cryopreservation in liquid nitrogen, we analyzed the changes in cell numbers, viability, and multiple subtypes of PBMCs and studied the apoptosis, proliferation, activation, function, and status of T cells in comparison with freshly isolated PBMCs by flow cytometry, and then further tracked the effects of long-term cryopreservation on the same sample. Although the different cell types in the PBMCs dynamically changed compared with those in the freshly isolated samples, PBMC recovery and viability remained stable after long-term cryopreservation, and the number of most innate immune cells (e.g., monocytes and B cells) was significantly reduced compared to that of the freshly isolated PBMCs or long-term cryopreserved PBMCs; more importantly, the proportion of T cell subtypes, apoptosis, proliferation, and functional T cells, except for Tregs, were not affected by long-term cryopreservation. However, the proportions of activated T, naïve T, central memory T, effector T, and effector memory T cells dynamically changed after long-term cryopreservation. This article provides important evidence for the effective utilization of biobank resources. Long-term cryopreserved PBMCs can be partly used as biological resources for clinical research or basic studies, but the effect of cryopreservation on PBMCs should be considered when selecting cell samples, especially in research relating to activating or inhibiting function.

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