Pretreating female Balb/c mice with schisandrin B (Sch B) at increasing daily doses (1-4 mmol/kg) for 3 days caused dose-dependent increases in hepatic glutathione S-transferase (GST) and glutathione reductase (GRD) activities. However, the activities of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), Se-glutathione peroxidase (GPX), and gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase (GCS) were down-regulated to varying degrees in a dose-dependent manner. While there were biphasic changes in hepatic reduced glutathione (GSH) level as well as susceptibility of hepatic tissue homogenates to in vitro peroxide-induced GSH depletion, a gradual decrease in hepatic malondialdehyde content was observed. The beneficial effect of Sch B on the hepatic GSH anti-oxidant system became more evident after CCl4 challenge. The same Sch B pretreatment regimen caused a dose-dependent protection against carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-induced hepatotoxicity. The hepatoprotection was associated with significant enhancement in hepatic GSH status, as indicated by the substantial increase in tissue GSH levels and the corresponding decrease in susceptibility of tissue homogenates to GSH depletion. Where the activities of GST and GRD were increased linearly over non-CCl4 control values, there was also a gradual elevation in G6PDH activity upon administration of increasing doses of Sch B. In contrast, GPX activity was moderately down-regulated. The ensemble of results suggests that the hepatoprotection afforded by Sch B pretreatment may mainly be attributed to the enhancement in the functioning of the hepatic GSH anti-oxidant system, possibly through stimulating the activities of GSH related enzymes.

The effect of a lignan-enriched extract of the fruits of Schisandra chinensis (FS) on hepatic glutathione (GSH) status was examined in both control and carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-treated rats. FS treatment caused a dose-dependent enhancement in hepatic GSH status, as evidenced by significant increases in hepatic GSH level and activities of hepatic glucose-6-phosphate and glutathione reductase (GRD), as well as a decreased susceptibility of hepatic tissue homogenates to in vitro peroxide-induced GSH depletion. The beneficial effect of FS treatment on hepatic GSH status became more evident after CCl4 challenge. Pretreating rats with FS extract at increasing daily doses ranged from 0.2 to 3.2 g/kg for 3 days caused a dose-dependent protection against the CCl4-induced impairment in hepatic GSH status. The enhancement in hepatic GSH status was associated with corresponding decreases in tissue malondialdehyde levels and plasma alanine aminotransferases activities, indicating a significant reduction in the extent of oxidative hepatocellular damage. Our results indicate that the molecular mechanism of hepatoprotection afforded by FS pretreatment may involve the facilitation of GSH regeneration via the GRD-catalyzed and NADPH-mediated reaction.

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Abstract:Objective: To compare postoperative outcomes of full-bed deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK) with penetrating keratoplasty (PK) in treating keratoconus. Methods: Seventy-five eyes of 64 patients who received full-bed DALK and 52 eyes of 51 patients who received PK between June 2000 and August 2010 were included in this retrospective study. Full-bed DALK was performed using Yao's hooking-detaching technique. PK was performed using a standard technique. Intraoperative and postoperative complications, visual acuity, rejection, graft survival, endothelial cell density, corneal sensation recovery, and re-innervation were compared between the two groups. Results: A best correct visual acuity of 0.5 or better was achieved in 90.7% of eyes after full-bed DALK and in 92.3% of eyes after PK (P=0.75). By the fifth postoperative year, graft endothelial cell loss reached 34.6% in the PK group vs. 13.9% in the full-bed DALK group (P<0.001). There were no statistical differences in corneal sensitivity recovery or corneal re-innervation between the groups (P>0.05). Intraoperative microperforation occurred in seven out of 75 (9.3%) eyes with a temporally postoperative double anterior chamber in two eyes in the full-bed DALK group. Postoperative complications in the PK vs. the full-bed DALK groups respectively were: rejection (7.7% vs. 0%, P=0.015), high intraocular pressure (IOP) (46.2% vs. 1.3%, P<0.001), secondary glaucoma (9.6% vs. 0%, P=0.006), complicated cataract (19.2% vs. 0%, P<0.001), and wound dehiscence (9.6% vs. 0%, P=0.006). Conclusions: Both full-bed DALK and PK can offer long-term satisfactory visual outcomes for keratoconus. Graft rejection, secondary glaucoma, complicated cataracts, and constant endothelial cell loss were observed in eyes only after PK.

The goal was to determine the variability of the quantitative measurement of the bulbar conjunctival microvascular morphology and hemodynamics by testing the repeatability and variation during office hours. Functional slit-lamp biomicroscopy (FSLB) was used to image the bulbar conjunctival microvasculature, including the vessel diameter, blood flow velocity/rate and fractal dimensions of the microvascular network. The temporal side of the bulbar conjunctiva in 20 healthy subjects was imaged. The subject was imaged at 9AM to test the measurement repeatability by two independent graders. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and coefficient of repeatability (CoR) were calculated. These same subjects were then imaged every two hours from 9AM to 5PM to test the variation during office hours. Custom software was used to semi-automatically process all measurements. The CoR% and ICC values between two graders for measuring the vessel diameter were 4.87% and 0.989, respectively. For the axial blood flow velocity, the CoR% and ICC were 11.49% and 0.997, respectively. From 9AM to 5PM, There were no significant variations in the vessel diameter and hemodynamics (P > 0.05). Whereas, the fractal dimensions of the non-invasive microvascular perfusion maps (nMPMs) were significantly increased at 3PM and 5PM compared with the baseline obtained at 9AM (P < 0.05). FSLB appears to be capable of measuring vessel diameter, blood flow velocity and fractal dimension of the microvascular network in the bulbar conjunctiva. Slight variations over office hours were observed in the microvascular network, while the blood flow velocity remained stable.

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Common spatial pattern (CSP) has been proved to be one of the most efficient feature-extracting methods for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), especially for motor imagery BCI. However, CSP is a supervised method and performs poorly when there are not enough labeled data. This paper aims to construct a minimum-training BCI, which means there are only a few labeled data, even none labeled data for target subjects. Under this condition, conventional CSP cannot work well. Therefore, source data (related labeled data from other subjects) are exploited and common filters across subjects are obtained using a clustering method. After that, features are extracted and a semi-supervised support vector machine which transfers knowledge across subjects is proposed. The experiments illustrate the effectiveness of our algorithm. When there are none labeled data for target subjects, our algorithm outperforms two state-of-the-art algorithms in semi-supervised learning field, and as the amount of unlabeled data for target subjects becomes larger, the performance of our algorithm grows better and better, which is suitable for online use. When the amount of labeled data for target subjects (denoted as M in this paper) is small, our algorithm also shows its strength compared with corresponding outstanding algorithms. For dataset IVa of BCI competition III, our algorithm performs the best for all the subjects excluding ''aw'' when M = 20. Compared with counterparts, our method outperforms 6.6% for ''aa,'' 19.3% for ''al,'' 11.8% for ''av,'' and 9.7% for ''ay'' on average, respectively. When M = 40, our method performs the best for ''al'' and ''av''. It averagely outperforms 8.0% for ''al'' and 15.3% for ''av,'' respectively. For GigaDataset, averagely our method outperforms 4.4% for ''sbj2,'' 5.0% for ''sbj4,'' and 7.1% for ''sbj5'' when M = 20, respectively. When M = 40, our algorithm performs the best only for ''sbj5.'' It averagely outperforms 8.6% compared with counterparts. Although the performances of our method are not the best for all the conditions, its performances are very robust and competitive.

BackgroundEpidemiological studies suggest that antidepressants use may increase the risk of cataract, but the results are inconclusive. We aimed to examine this association by performing a systematic review and meta-analysis.MethodsRelevant studies were identified by searching PubMed and Web of Science databases through June 2017. We included studies that reported risk estimates for the association between antidepressants use and cataract risk. A random-effects model was used to calculate the summary odds ratio (OR) with its 95% confidence interval (CI).ResultsWe identified seven studies of antidepressants use and risk of cataract involving 447,672 cases and 1,510,391 controls. Overall, the combined ORs (95% CIs) of cataract for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin noradrenalin reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), and tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) were 1.12 (1.06–1.19), 1.13 (1.04–1.24), and 1.19 (1.11–1.28), respectively. A certain degree of heterogeneity was observed across studies (P < 0.001, I2 = 92.2% for SSRIs, P = 0.026, I2 = 67.5% for SNRIs, and P = 0.092, I2 = 58.0% for TCAs).ConclusionThis meta-analysis provides evidence of a significant positive association between antidepressants use and risk of cataract. Because of the heterogeneity and limited eligible studies, further prospective studies are warranted to confirm the preliminary findings of our study.