Based on many cell culture, animal and human studies, it is well known that the most challenge issue for developing polyphenolics as chemoprevention or anti-diabtetic agents is the low oral bioavailability, which may be the major reason relating to its ambiguous therapeutic effects and large inter-individual variations in clinical trials. This review intends to highlight the unscientific evaluation on the basis of the published data regarding in vitro bioactivity of polyphenols, which may sometimes mislead the researchers and to conclude that: first, bio-accessibilities values obtained in the studies for polyphenols should be highly reconsidered in accordance with the abundant newly identified circulating and excreted metabolites, with a particular attention to colonic metabolic products which are obviously contributing much more than expected to their absorptions; second, it is phenolic metabolites, which are formed in the small intestine and hepatic cells,low molecular weight catabolic products of the colonic microflora to travel around the human body in the circulatory system or reach body tissues to elicit bioactive effects. It is concluded that better performed in vivo intervention and in vitro mechanistic studies are needed to fully understand how these molecules interact with human physiological and pathological processes.
In this paper, a Blockchain-driven platform for supply chain finance, BCautoSCF (Zhi-lian-che-rong in Chinese), is introduced. It is successfully established as a reliable and efficient financing platform for the auto retail industry. Due to the Blockchain built-in trust mechanism, participants in the supply chain (SC) networks work extensively and transparently to run a reliable, convenient, and traceable business. Likewise, the traditional supply chain finance (SCF), partial automation of SCF workflows with fewer human errors and disruptions was achieved through smart contract in BCautoSCF. Such open and secure features suggest the feasibility of BCautoSCF in SCF. As the first Blockchain-driven SCF application for the auto retail industry in China, our contribution lies in studying these pain points existing in traditional SCF and proposing a novel Blockchain-driven design to reshape the business logic of SCF to develop an efficient and reliable financing platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the auto retail industry to decrease the cost of financing and speed up the cash flows. Currently, there are over 600 active enterprise users that adopt BCautoSCF to run their financing business. Up to October 2019, the BCautoSCF provides services to 449 online/offline auto retailors, three B2B asset exchange platforms, nine fund providers, and 78 logistic services across 21 provinces in China. There are 3296 financing transactions successfully completed in BCautoSCF, and the amount of financing is ¥566,784,802.18. In the future, we will work towards supporting a full automation of SCF workflow by smart contracts, so that the efficiency of transaction will be further improved.
Objective: This study aimed to provide support for the extensive application of Distress Thermometer (DT) in advanced cancer inpatients with pain and explored factors associated with high DT scores among this population.
Methods: Advanced cancer patients with pain were recruited from Department of Pain Relief in Tianjin Cancer Hospital and Institute, China. They completed the DT with problems list and HADS within 48 h after admission. The cutoff score of DT was evaluated against Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) for its sensitivity and specificity by using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Multiple logistic regression model analysis was performed to investigate correlates of DT scores.Results: Four hundred forty one inpatients with mixed diagnoses were recruited.Referring to the cutoff of 15 on HADS, DT cutoff score of 5 yielded AUC of 0.757, with an optimal sensitivity of 0.861 and specificity of 0.531. Using the cutoff scores of greater than or equal to 5, 70.5% of the patients were distressed. Logistic regression analysis of DT found that the breakthrough pain, poorer KPS, higher pain degree, and emotional problems were the predictive factor for current distress.Conclusion: DT is efficacious in screening for psychological distress in advanced cancer inpatients with pain. Psychological distress is prevalent with a cutoff score of greater than or equal to five. To better identify the distressed cancer patients with pain, pain degree, performance status, and emotional problems should be considered together.
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