BackgroundTo describe the prevalence and associations of posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) in a rural adult Chinese population.MethodsAll eligible subjects were requested to carry out a comprehensive eye examination; PVD was a pre-specified outcome variable and was determined via biomicroscopical examination (slit-lamp biomicroscopy) with a +90-D preset lens after mydriasis. Prevalence was standardized to China population census (2000).Results5890 (86.2%) subjects completed the examination of slit-lamp biomicroscopy with a +90-D lens. PVD was present in 160 participants (2.7%); the standardized prevalence was 2.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.6-2.3%). PVD developed increasingly with age (P for trend < 0.001) for both men and women. Using a multivariate regression model, older people were found to run a higher risk of developing PVD than younger people, and women were found to have a higher risk than men (OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.5-5.9). Diabetes, hypertension, smoking, drinking, and intraocular pressure (IOP) were not significantly associated with PVD.ConclusionsAbout one in fifty people is found to have PVD in this population-based study. Age and female are independently associated with PVD occurrence.

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) inhibitor Cay10603 (Cay) on high glucose (HG)-stimulated human retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells and its underlying mechanisms. ARPE-19 cells were cultured under normal glucose (NG) or high glucose (HG) conditions. The results revealed that HDAC6 was upregulated in HG-stimulated ARPE-19 cells. Cay treatment caused a decrease in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). The levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) were reduced accompanied by increase in the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) after treatment with Cay. Besides, Cay decreased the levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-6 and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) in supernatant. Meanwhile, the apoptotic rate in Cay-treated ARPE-19 cells notably reduced, coupled with an upregulation in Bcl-2 expression and a downregulation in cleaved caspase-3 and cleaved caspase-9 expression. Cay decreased the expression of phospho (p)-NF-κB p65, p-IκB-α, NLRP3, cleaved caspase-1 and ASC while increased the expression of NF-κB p65 (cytoplasm). Taken together, these findings demonstrated that Cay suppressed HG-induced oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis via regulating NF-κB and NLRP3 inflammasome pathway in HG-induced ARPE-19 cells, suggesting that Cay might be a therapeutic agent for the treatment of diabetic retinopathy.

Background There is accumulating evidence to suggest that microRNAs (miRNAs) are associated with the progressive optic neuropathy including glaucoma. Apoptosis of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) is a hallmark of glaucoma. The present study focused on the effects of miR‐145‐5p on RGC apoptosis in glaucoma. Methods We established a glaucoma rat model by intraocular injection of N‐methyl‐d‐aspartic acid (NMDA). RGCs were isolated from newborn rats and treated with NMDA. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was performed to detect morphological changes in the retinas of rats. The expression of miR‐145‐5p and tripartite motif‐containing 2 (TRIM2) in RGCs was measured by RT‐qPCR. The viability of RGCs was measured by MTT assay. Flow cytometry analysis and TUNEL assays were conducted to assess the apoptosis of RGCs. The interaction between miR‐145‐5p and TRIM2 was investigated using a luciferase reporter assay. Results Rats injected with NMDA showed a thinner ganglion cell layer (GCL) and inner plexiform layer (IPL) as well as increased expression of miR‐145‐5p. Silencing of miR‐145‐5p significantly increased the GCL and IPL in the glaucoma rat model. Moreover, miR‐145‐5p expression was upregulated in RGCs ex vivo in response to NMDA. Silencing of miR‐145‐5p promoted cell viability and suppressed apoptosis in NMDA‐treated RGCs. Mechanistically, miR‐145‐5p targeted the TRIM2 3′ untranslated region to suppress its expression. TRIM2 was upregulated in NMDA‐treated RGCs and protected RGCs against NMDA‐induced apoptosis. Furthermore, miR‐145‐5p suppressed the PI3K/AKT pathway by downregulating TRIM2 in NMDA‐treated RGCs. Conclusions Suppression of miR‐145‐5p inhibited the apoptosis of RGCs via TRIM2‐mediated activation of the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway in NMDA‐induced glaucoma.

Changes in anterior chamber angle following LPI were inversely correlated with presence of PAS. Quadrants unaffected by PAS can be expected to widen as much as in eyes with only appositional closure. In quadrants with PAS the ultrasound biomicroscopy parameters did not change following LPI.

ObjectiveTo develop a new non-invasive risk score for predicting incident diabetes in a rural Chinese population.MethodsData from the Handan Eye Study conducted from 2006–2013 were utilized as part of this analysis. The present study utilized data generated from 4132 participants who were ≥30 years of age. A non-invasive risk model was derived using two-thirds of the sample cohort (selected randomly) using stepwise logistic regression. The model was subsequently validated using data from individuals from the final third of the sample cohort. In addition, a simple point system for incident diabetes was generated according to the procedures described in the Framingham Study. Incident diabetes was defined as follows: (1) fasting plasma glucose (FPG) ≥ 7.0 mmol/L; or (2) hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) ≥ 6.5%; or (3) self-reported diagnosis of diabetes or use of anti-diabetic medications during the follow-up period.ResultsThe simple non-invasive risk score included age (8 points), Body mass index (BMI) (3 points), waist circumference (WC) (7 points), and family history of diabetes (9 points). The score ranged from 0 to 27 and the area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) of the score was 0.686 in the validation sample. At the optimal cutoff value (which was 9), the sensitivity and specificity were 74.32% and 58.82%, respectively.ConclusionsUsing information based upon age, BMI, WC, and family history of diabetes, we developed a simple new non-invasive risk score for predicting diabetes onset in a rural Chinese population, using information from individuals aged 30 years of age and older. The new risk score proved to be more optimal in the prediction of incident diabetes than most of the existing risk scores developed in Western and Asian countries. This score system will aid in the identification of individuals who are at risk of developing incident diabetes in rural China.

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With huge amount of information generated every day on the web, fact checking is an important and challenging task which can help people identify the authenticity of most claims as well as providing evidences selected from knowledge source like Wikipedia. Here we decompose this problem into two parts: an entity linking task (retrieving relative Wikipedia pages) and recognizing textual entailment between the claim and selected pages. In this paper, we present an end-to-end multi-task learning with bi-direction attention (EMBA) model to classify the claim as "supports", "refutes" or "not enough info" with respect to the pages retrieved and detect sentences as evidence at the same time. We conduct experiments on the FEVER (Fact Extraction and VERification) paper test dataset and shared task test dataset, a new public dataset for verification against textual sources. Experimental results show that our method achieves comparable performance compared with the baseline system.

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