Angiotensin II (AngII) facilitates angiogenesis that is associated with the continuous progression of atherosclerotic plaques, but the underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. Several microRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to promote angiogenesis; however, whether miRNAs play a crucial role in AngII‐induced angiogenesis remains unclear. This study evaluated the functional involvement of miRNA‐21 (miR‐21) in the AngII‐mediated proangiogenic response in human microvascular endothelial cells (HMECs). We found that AngII exerted a proangiogenic role, indicated by the promotion of proliferation, migration, and tube formation in HMECs. Next, miR‐21 was found to be upregulated in AngII‐treated HMECs, and its specific inhibitor potently blocked the proangiogenic effects of AngII. Subsequently, we focused on the constitutive activation of STAT3 in the AngII‐mediated proangiogenic process. Bioinformatic analysis indicated that STAT3 acted as a transcription factor initiating miR‐21 expression, which was verified by ChIP‐PCR. A reporter assay further identified three functional binding sites of STAT3 in the miR‐21 promoter region. Moreover, phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) was recognized as a target of miR‐21, and STAT3 inhibition restored AngII‐induced reduction in PTEN. Similarly, the STAT3/miR‐21 axis was shown to mediate AngII‐provoked angiogenesis in vivo, which was demonstrated by using the appropriate inhibitors. Our data suggest that AngII was involved in proangiogenic responses through miR‐21 upregulation and reduced PTEN expression, which was, at least in part, linked to STAT3 signaling. The present study provides novel insights into AngII‐induced angiogenesis and suggests potential treatment strategies for attenuating the progression of atherosclerotic lesions and preventing atherosclerosis complications.
Total number of plaques, area of maximum soft, hard and mixed plaques showed significantly incremental prediction ability over CRF. A nomogram based on these factors provided an intuitive and practical method in detecting CAD.
Objective: To assess the safety and clinical efficacy of leflunomide (LEF) and prednisone on refractory nephrotic syndrome (RNS). Methods: A total of 52 patients with RNS were treated for 24 weeks between 2010 and 2014 in our hospital. In the treated group, 26 patients were treated with LEF and prednisone, and, in the control group, 26 patients were treated with cyclophosphamide (CTX) and prednisone. During the treatment, 24 h urinary protein excretion and the serum levels of albumin and cholesterol, and kidney function were assayed before and after the therapy. Adverse reactions during treatment were recorded. Results: In the LEF group, the medication was markedly effective in eight cases and effective in nine cases; the total efficacy rate was 65.30%. In the CTX group, the treatment was markedly effective in six cases and effective in nine cases; the total efficacy rate was 57%. There were no significant differences between the results of the total efficacy rate (p > .05). The 24 h urinary protein excretion and serum cholesterol levels in both groups decreased after therapy and the serum levels of albumin in both groups increased after therapy. There were significant differences between the results for the 24 h urinary protein excretion, serum levels of albumin and cholesterol in the two groups (p < .05). The treatments were well tolerated in both groups. Conclusion: LEF combined with prednisone has a certain efficacy on the RNS and displays few adverse reactions. A large-sample, randomized double-blind controlled study and long-term follow-up are needed to verify the efficacy of LEF combined with prednisone.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Objectives
Recently, the prognostic role of N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-pro BNP) in heart failure and coronary diseases has been demonstrated in many studies. SYNTAX score was pioneered as an anatomical-based risk score that aided in this decision-making process in appropriately informing patients electing to undergo coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However is not known if there is a relation between NT-pro BNP levels and SYNTAX score (SS). A present study came to investigate the relationship between plasma NT-pro BNP level and extent and complexity of coronary lesions assessed using SS in patients with stable angina pectoris candidate for coronary angiography.
Methods
The study population included 203 consecutive patients with stable angina and intend for selective coronary angiography. SS was calculated in all participants, According to SS value,all subjects were divided into three groups: low risk (< 22), intermediate risk (23-32), and high risk (≥ 33).blood samples were drawn from femoral or radial artery for NT-pro BNP measurement just before the catheterisation of left coronary.
Results
Regarding the role of N terminal pro BNP for assessing severity of coronary lesions based on SS, The NT pro BNP level increased significantly as risk classification of SS upgraded (P < 0.05). Linear regression analysis showed that plasma NT-pro BNP level was significantly associated with SS (r = 0.314, P < 0.01).
Conclusions
NT-pro BNP can be a good parameter for predicting severity of coronary lesions. NT-pro BNP level was significantly associated with the extent and complexity of coronary artery disease.
With the emergence of online music platforms, music recommender systems are becoming increasingly crucial in music information retrieval. Knowledge graphs (KGs) are a rich source of semantic information for entities and relations, allowing for improved modeling and analysis of entity relations to enhance recommendations. Existing research has primarily focused on the modeling and analysis of structural triples, while largely ignoring the representation and information processing capabilities of multi-modal data such as music videos and lyrics, which has hindered the improvement and user experience of music recommender systems. To address these issues, we propose a Multi-modal Knowledge Graph Convolutional Network (MKGCN) to enhance music recommendation by leveraging the multi-modal knowledge of music items and their high-order structural and semantic information. Specifically, there are three aggregators in MKGCN: the multi-modal aggregator aggregates the text, image, audio, and sentiment features of each music item in a multi-modal knowledge graph (MMKG); the user aggregator and item aggregator use graph convolutional networks to aggregate multi-hop neighboring nodes on MMKGs to model high-order representations of user preferences and music items, respectively. Finally, we utilize the aggregated embedding representations for recommendation. In training MKGCN, we adopt the ratio negative sampling strategy to generate high-quality negative samples. We construct four different-sized music MMKGs using the public dataset Last-FM and conduct extensive experiments on them. The experimental results demonstrate that MKGCN achieves significant improvements and outperforms several state-of-the-art baselines.
Background: Although statins are the cornerstone of lipid management, hardly any of the existing studies on statin treatment of dyslipidemia in nephrotic syndrome (NS) addressed patient-centered outcomes of cardiovascular events.Objective: To evaluate whether statin treatment impacts the outcomes of cardiovascular events in patients with NS.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.