Background Severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been increasing with greater incidence of injuries from traffic or sporting accidents. Although there are a number of animal models of TBI using progesterone for head injury, the effects of progesterone on neurologic outcome of acute TBI patients remain unclear. The aim of the present clinical study was to assess the longer-term efficacy of progesterone on the improvement in neurologic outcome of patients with acute severe TBI.

No abstract

No abstract

PTSD occurs in a significant percentage of subjects who recover from SARS, and the occurrence of PTSD predicts persistent psychological distress and diminished social functioning in the 4 years after SARS treatment.

Osteoporosis is an age-related disease that affects millions of people. Growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11) is a secreted member of the transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) superfamily. Deletion of Gdf11 has been shown to result in a skeletal anterior–posterior patterning disorder. Here we show a role for GDF11 in bone remodelling. GDF11 treatment leads to bone loss in both young and aged mice. GDF11 inhibits osteoblast differentiation and also stimulates RANKL-induced osteoclastogenesis through Smad2/3 and c-Fos-dependent induction of Nfatc1. Injection of GDF11 impairs bone regeneration in mice and blocking GDF11 function prevents oestrogen-deficiency-induced bone loss and ameliorates age-related osteoporosis. Our data demonstrate that GDF11 is a previously unrecognized regulator of bone remodelling and suggest that GDF11 is a potential target for treatment of osteoporosis.

Background: Cuff-based blood pressure measurement lacks comfort and convenience. Here, we examined whether blood pressure can be determined in a contactless manner using a novel smartphone-based technology called transdermal optical imaging. This technology processes imperceptible facial blood flow changes from videos captured with a smartphone camera and uses advanced machine learning to determine blood pressure from the captured signal. Methods: We enrolled 1328 normotensive adults in our study. We used an advanced machine learning algorithm to create computational models that predict reference systolic, diastolic, and pulse pressure from facial blood flow data. We used 70% of our data set to train these models and 15% of our data set to test them. The remaining 15% of the sample was used to validate model performance. Results: We found that our models predicted blood pressure with a measurement bias±SD of 0.39±7.30 mm Hg for systolic pressure, −0.20±6.00 mm Hg for diastolic pressure, and 0.52±6.42 mm Hg for pulse pressure, respectively. Conclusions: Our results in normotensive adults fall within 5±8 mm Hg of reference measurements. Future work will determine whether these models meet the clinically accepted accuracy threshold of 5±8 mm Hg when tested on a full range of blood pressures according to international accuracy standards.

Protein/antibody therapeutics have exhibited the advantages of high specificity and activity even at an extremely low concentration compared to small molecule drugs. However, they are accompanied by unfavorable physicochemical properties such as fragile tertiary structure, large molecular size, and poor penetration of the membrane, and thus the clinical use of protein drugs is hindered by inefficient delivery of proteins into the host cells. To overcome the challenges associated with protein therapeutics and enhance their biopharmaceutical applications, various protein‐loaded nanocarriers with desired functions, such as lipid nanocapsules, polymeric nanoparticles, inorganic nanoparticles, and peptides, are developed. In this review, the different strategies for intracellular delivery of proteins are comprehensively summarized. Their designed routes, mechanisms of action, and potential therapeutics in live cells or in vivo are discussed in detail. Furthermore, the perspective on the new generation of delivery systems toward the emerging area of protein‐based therapeutics is presented as well.

Background COVID-19 is a highly infectious respiratory disease. No effective therapeutics have yet been proved for treating of severe COVID-19. Objectives To determine whether human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells infusion may be effectiveness and safety in the treatment of severe COVID-19. Methods The severe COVID-19 randomly divided into 2 groups, standard treatment group and standard treatment plus hUC-MSCs infusion group. The incidence of severe patients aggravated to critically illness, 28-day mortality, clinical symptoms improvement, time to clinical symptoms improvement, hematologic indicators including C-reaction protein, lymphocyte number, interleukin 6 and imaging changes were observed and compared between two groups. Measurements and Main Results The incidence of severe patients aggravated to critically illness and 28-day mortality were 0 in hUC-MSCs treatment group, while 4 patients in control group were deteriorated to critical illness and been used invasive ventilation, 3 of them died, and 28-day mortality was 10.34%. In hUC-MSCs treatment group, the time to clinical improvement was shorter, clinical symptoms of weakness and fatigue, shortness of breath, and low oxygen saturation had improved obviously began the third day of stem cells infusion, and reached the significant difference on the day 7, CRP and IL-6 were significantly decreased from day 3 of infusion, the time for lymphocyte count returned to normal range was significant faster, and lung inflammation absorption was significantly shorter from CT imaging. Conclusions Intravenous transplantation of hUC-MSCs is a safe and effective way that can be considered as salvage and priority choice in the treatment of severe COVID-19.