Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a new class of noncoding singlestranded RNAs that differ from linear microRNAs (miRNAs), since they form covalently closed loop structures without free 3 0 poly(A) tails or 5 0 caps. circRNAs are the competitive endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) by binding to miRNA through miRNA response elements (MREs) (i.e., "miRNA sponge"), thereby reducing the quantity of miRNA available to target mRNA, subsequently promoting mRNA stability or protein expression, which involves the initiation and progress of human diseases. Owing to these features of abundance, stability, conservative property, and tissue and stage specificity, widely distributing in the extracellular space and in various bodily fluids, circRNAs can be considered as potential biomarkers for various diseases. Here, we reviewed the promising circRNAs being disease biomarkers, focused on their regulatory function by acting as miRNA sponges, and described their roles in cancer, cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and other human aging-related diseases, which provide a new direction for pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of human aging-related diseases.Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a new class of noncoding singlestranded RNA, 1 characterized by covalently closed loop structures without free 3 0 poly(A) tails or 5 0 caps. These features differentiate them from linear RNAs, 2 long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), and mi-croRNAs (miRNAs). 3 Although circRNAs were first discovered in the 1990s in viruses, viroids, and tetrahymena, 4 little attention has been paid to their function. 4,5 At that time, they were considered abnormal products, resulting from splicing errors. 3,6 In addition, circRNAs are often found in low abundance, and the traditional methods used to study linear RNAs are not applicable. With recent developments in biochemical-enrichment methods, especially high-throughput RNA sequencing and circRNAs microarray, more than 30,000 circRNAs have been discovered. 7 They are widely expressed in yeasts, plants, protists, fruit flies, worms, zebrafish, mice, rats, and humans. 8 Compared with the levels of their linear isomers, circRNA expression levels can be increased by 10-fold or more, 9 an indication of their potential abundance. Owing to their distinctive structure, they can resist exonuclease activity and are extremely stable. 1 The average lifetime of a 3 0 / 5 0 -linked circRNA is 2$5 times longer than that of a linear mRNA. 1 In addition, the expression levels of circRNAs are tissue and stage specific, and a number of highly abundant circRNAs have been found to exist in human peripheral blood (PB), 10 indicating that circRNAs can act as biomarkers to screen, diagnose, characterize, and monitor various diseases. circRNAs have many biological functions, including regulating host gene splicing and transcription, 11 acting as miRNA 12 and protein sponges, 8 reacting with proteins, 13 and serving as protein-coding circRNAs. 14 Many studies [15][16][17] have indicated that circRNAs con...

Intravenous acetaminophen reduced pain after cardiac surgery, but not opioid consumption. Intravenous acetaminophen can be an effective analgesic adjunct in patients recovering from median sternotomy.

No abstract

Background:Stanford type-A acute aortic dissection (AAD) is a severe cardiovascular disease demonstrating the characteristics of acute onset and rapid development, with high morbidity and mortality. The available evidence shows that preoperative acute lung injury (ALI) induced by Stanford type-A AAD is a frequent and important cause for a number of untoward consequences. However, there is no study assessing the incidence of preoperative ALI and its independent determinants before Standford type-A AAD surgery in Chinese adult patients.Methods/design:This is a prospective, double-blind, signal-center clinical trial. We will recruit 130 adult patients undergoing Stanford type-A AAD surgery. The incidence of preoperative ALI will be evaluated. Perioperative clinical baselines and serum variables including coagulation, fibrinolysis, inflammatory, reactive oxygen species, and endothelial cell function will be assayed. The independent factors affecting the occurrence of preoperative ALI will be identified by multiple logistic regression analysis.Trial registration:ClinicalTrials.gov (https://register.clinicaltrials.gov/), Registration number NCT01894334.

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) remains a challenging clinical pain condition. Multidisciplinary approaches have been advocated for managing CRPS. Compared with spinal cord stimulation and intrathecal targeted therapy, IV treatments are less invasive and less costly. We aimed to systemically review the literature on IV therapies and determine the level of evidence to guide the management of CRPS. We searched PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and the Cochrane databases for articles published on IV therapies of CRPS up through February 2015. The search yielded 299 articles, of which 101 were deemed relevant by reading the titles and 63 by reading abstracts. All these 63 articles were retrieved for analysis and discussion. We evaluated the relevant studies and provided recommendations according to the level of evidence. We conclude that there is evidence to support the use of IV bisphosphonates, immunoglobulin, ketamine, or lidocaine as valuable interventions in selected patients with CRPS. However, high-quality studies are required to further evaluate the safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of IV therapies for CRPS.

In American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status I and II patients, risk of 30-day morbidity and mortality was not different with blood testing up to 2 months before surgery, suggesting that it is unnecessary to retest patients shortly before surgery.

Pregnancy with pulmonary hypertension (PH) seriously threatens the life and safety of mothers and infants. Here, the long-term effect of maternal PH on the postpartum growth of rat offspring was focused for the first time, as well as explored the role of Myadm in PH rats before pregnancy based upon the previous findings. Patients with PH are prone to hypoxemia, leading to insufficient placental structure and function, which affects the organ function of fetuses, followed by evidence that differently expressed genes (DEGs) existed in the heart of maternal PH newborn rats and enriched in pathways related to cardiac and nerve development on human infants with similar birth outcome: low birth weight (LBW). LBW was one of the possible birth outcomes of pregnancy with PH, especially severe PH, accompanied by evidence that offspring derived from mothers with PH presented lower birth weights and slower growth rates than those derived from normal control mothers in a rat model. Besides, maternal PH rat offspring showed cardiac remodeling and a significant elevation of the expression levels of hypoxia- and inflammation-related markers in the cerebral cortex at both 10 and 14 weeks of age, respectively. What is more, the previous studies found that the overexpression of Myadm could result in the remodeling of the pulmonary artery. And targeting Myadm to intervene PH before pregnancy could alleviate sustained low weight growth in maternal PH rat offspring, and the pathological changes of the cardiac–cerebral system caused by maternal PH, including enlarged right heart cavity, loss of cardiomyocytes, abnormal heart index, as well as cerebral cortex hypoxia and the inflammatory state as they grew up to a certain extent. The findings show the pathological significance of maternal PH on offspring growth and the cardiac–cerebral development in a rat model, as well as point out the potential treatment target, which may provide a further reference for pregnancy outcomes in women with PH and healthy development of offspring to some extent.

A variety of important outcomes were similar in physician patients and matched non-physician patients after non-cardiac surgery.