The whole course of the chorda tympani nerve, nerve of pterygoid canal, and facial nerves and their relationships with surrounding structures are complex. After reviewing the literature, it was found that details of the whole course of these deep nerves are rarely reported and specimens displaying these nerves are rarely seen in the dissecting room, anatomical museum, or atlases. Dissections were performed on 16 decalcified human head specimens, exposing the chorda tympani and the nerve connection between the geniculate and pterygopalatine ganglia. Measurements of nerve lengths, branching distances, and ganglia size were taken. The chorda tympani is a very fine nerve (0.44 mm in diameter within the tympanic cavity) and approximately 54 mm in length. The mean length of the facial nerve from opening of internal acoustic meatus to stylomastoid foramen was 52.5 mm. The mean length of the greater petrosal nerve was 26.1 mm and nerve of the pterygoid canal was 15.1 mm.
Background: For children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), methotrexate (MTX) treatment carries the risk of leukoencephalopathy and other treatment-related brain damage. However, earlier and more sensitive evaluation is needed to elucidate the specific effects of MTX treatment in this group. This study aimed to evaluate changes in brain metabolites, diffusion and anisotropy features, and cognitive performance in children with ALL after MTX treatment. Methods:In this observational study conducted from December 2013 to December 2015, 30 children with ALL and 30 healthy children were recruited and evaluated using baseline magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and neurocognitive tests. After MTX treatment and ALL remission, the children with ALL underwent MR examination and neurocognitive tests again. Quantitative alterations of MR and cognitive test results from the baseline data were calculated.Results: At baseline, the ALL group (age 6.9±3.3 years; 14 boys) and the healthy controls (age 6.0±3.1 years, 14 boys) had comparable neurocognitive performance and MR results. After MTX treatment, 6.7%(2/30) of children with ALL showed abnormalities on diffusion-and T1-and T2-weighted images. The N-acetylaspartate/creatine and N-acetylaspartate/choline values of children with ALL decreased, whereas their choline/creatine values increased significantly. The fractional anisotropy (FA) values decreased in the frontal lobe (P=0.03) and the genu of the corpus callosum (P=0.01). The FA values in the genu of the internal capsule (P=0.08), the occipital lobe (P=0.20) and the splenium of the corpus callosum (P=0.30) did not change from baseline. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values decreased in the frontal lobe (P=0.03).The ADC values in the genu of the corpus callosum (P=0.11), the genu of the internal capsule (P=0.93), and the occipital lobe (P=0.65) did not change from baseline. Due to the presence of outliers and the small sample, the ADC values in the splenium of the corpus callosum were discarded. Neurocognitive performance decreased slightly after MTX treatment, with noticeable declines in working memory and processing speed.Changes in FA values were positively correlated with the reduction in the N-acetylaspartate/creatine ratio at the genu of the corpus callosum of children with ALL aged above 6 years.Conclusions: MTX treatment causes subtle cognitive decline in children with ALL in remission and dramatically affects their brain metabolites, but changes in white matter diffusion features are limited to the ^ ORCID: 0000-0002-1356-3705. Methods Methods and materialsThis study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013). The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Shenzhen Children's Hospital, and informed consent for each of the patients was acquired from their parents or legal guardians. frontal lobe and corpus callosum.
In recent years, several studies have shown that neuropeptide-Y (NPY) is involved in the control of LH secretion. We determined the effects of estrogen on NPY-induced LH and FSH release in the absence or presence of LH-releasing hormone (LHRH) at the level of the anterior pituitary gland (APG). Adult female rats were ovariectomized. Fifteen to 20 days later, they were given a blank or estrogen-filled capsule subdermally and killed 17-19 h later. APG cells were isolated and cultured for 3 days in medium containing 12.5% rat serum collected at death from the same rats used to make the respective APG cell pools. The cells were then challenged for 3 h with vehicle, NPY (10(-12)-10(-6) M), LHRH (10(-9)-10(-6) M), or combinations of NPY (10(-9)-10(-7) M) and LHRH (10(-9) M). LHRH stimulated LH and FSH release from nonestrogen and estrogen-primed cells. NPY at 6.7 x 10(-8)-10(-6) M increased (P < 0.05) LH release and at 10(-6) M increased (P < 0.05) FSH release from estrogen-primed cells, but was without effect on nonestrogen-primed cells. In contrast, NPY at 10(-9)-10(-7) M potentiated the action of LHRH (10(-9) M) to increase the release of LH and FSH from nonestrogen-primed cells, but was without potentiating effects in cultures of estrogen-primed cells. The results demonstrate that 1) NPY can release LH and FSH by a direct action on estrogen-primed APG cells; and 2) NPY can potentiate the action of LHRH to increase the release of LH and FSH by a direct action on nonestrogen-primed APG cells.
A model of giant magneto-impedance (GMI) effect in sandwich-structured film has been proposed based on the superposition principle of electromagnetic field. The e~r~ion of impedance is derived in the frames of electrodynamics and ferromagnetism. Electromagnetic interaction between the inner layer and outer layer is discussed. Numerical simulation is conducted and the results show that the conductivity of the inner layer is much larger than that of the outer ferromagnetic layer. The skin effect and the maximum GMI effect of the sandwich film may appear at a much lower frequency compared to that of monofilm. The computational results agree with experimental data.
Sertoli cells are essential nurse cells in the testis that regulate the process of spermatogenesis and establish the immune-privileged environment of the blood-testis-barrier (BTB). The induction of human Sertoli cells from fibroblasts could provide cellular sources for fertility and transplantation treatments. Here, we report the in vitro reprogramming of human fibroblasts to Sertoli cells and characterize these human induced Sertoli cells (hiSCs).Initially, five transcriptional factors (NR5A1, GATA4, WT1, SOX9 and DMRT1) and a gene reporter carrying the AMH promoter were utilized to obtain the hiSCs. We further reduce the number of reprogramming factors to two, i.e., NR5A1 and GATA4, and show that these hiSCs have transcriptome profiles that are similar to those of primary human Sertoli cells. Consistent with the known cellular properties of Sertoli cells, hiSCs attract endothelial cells and exhibit high number of lipid droplets in the cytoplasm. More importantly, hiSCs can sustain the viability of spermatogonia cells harvested from mouse seminiferous tubules. In addition, hiSCs suppress the production of IL-2 and proliferation of human T lymphocytes. When hiSCs were cotransplanted with human embryonic kidney cells, these xenotransplanted human cells survived longer in mice with normal immune systems. hiSCs also allow us to determine a gene associated with Sertoli-only syndrome (SCO), CX43, is indeed important in regulating the maturation of Sertoli cells.To determine whether hiSCs reprogrammed with the 5TFs (5F-hiSCs) are similar to human Sertoli cells, we compared the transcriptomes of the AMH:EGFP+ 5F-hiSCs, dH1 cells infected with p2k7 empty virus (dH1-2K7) as negative controls, and primary adult Sertoli cells (aSCs) from human biopsy samples. We focused our analysis on the differentially expressed genes (DEGs, > 2-fold change, p-value < 0.05) between 5F-hiSCs and dH1-2K7 and between aSCs and dH1-2K7. In total, 7533 genes were differentially expressed between 5F-hiSCs and dH1-2K7, including 4528 upregulated genes and 3005 down-regulated genes (Fig. 2a,b). Additionally, 5377 genes were differentially expressed between aSCs and dH1-2K7, including 3343 upregulated genes and 2034 down-regulated genes (Fig. 2a, b).The Venn analysis showed that 3626 genes were shared among the DEGs in both hiSCs and aSCs, accounting for approximately 67% of the DEGs in aSCs. Among this shared group of DEGs (CO-DEGs), 1973 genes were upregulated, while 1314 genes were down-regulated in both the hiSCs and aSCs (Fig. 2c), indicating that the trends in transcriptional expression between the hiSCs and aSCs were the same in these genes. The cluster analysis of dH1-2K7, hiSCs and aSCs also showed that the CO-DEGs had a similar expression pattern between the hiSCs and aSCs, and consistency was observed between duplicate samples (Fig. 2d). The Gene Ontology (GO) analysis of the CO-DEGs showed that among the 1973 upregulated genes, many genes were involved in the regulation of cell communication, regulation of immune response processes, re...
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