Individuals with essential tremor (ET) have postural and active movement abnormalities. Disturbances in the cerebello-thalamo-cortical circuit may contribute to the several motor symptoms of ET. Resting state fMRI provides a valuable, noninvasive tool to study intrinsic activation in the human brain, particularly in the brains of individuals with neuropsychiatric diseases. To investigate the low frequency oscillation features of intrinsic activation in ET in this study, we performed a resting state fMRI analysis in 24 patients with ET and 23 healthy controls. The amplitudes of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) were analyzed. When compared with healthy controls, patients showed significantly enhanced ALFF in the bilateral cerebral cortex, which is related to motor function, including the pre- and post-central gyrus, supplementary motor area and paracentral lobule. The larger ALFF value in the right precentral gyrus is related to a longer duration of tremor. The decreased ALFF in the bilateral cerebellum was also observed in patients. In addition, aberrant ALFF in the right cerebellar tonsil was negatively associated with the duration of tremor. Our findings suggest that abnormalities exist in the intrinsic activation of brain regions in patients with ET. These findings provide noninvasive evidence that supports the hypothesis that the abnormality of intrinsic activity in the cerebello-cerebral cortex pathway could be associated with the motor-related symptoms of ET. Furthermore, the duration of a tremor might relate to the severity of the alterations to the motor system of ET.

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BackgroundAbnormal expression of serum TGF-β1 was found in patients with diabetic nephropathy. However, the association of TGF-β1 with the risk of diabetic nephropathy remains unknown. The present study was undertaken to investigate whether such an association exists.MethodsWe searched the Chinese VIP, Wangfang, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, PubMed, Embase, and Google Scholar databases for relevant studies and extracted all eligible data. Stata12 software was used for statistical analysis.ResultsNine reports met our criteria and were used for data extraction. There were 264 patients and 227 healthy controls from qualified reports in this meta-analysis. The results suggested that serum TGF-β1 levels were significantly up-regulated in patients with diabetic nephropathy; the instrumental variable was 3.94 (95% confidence interval 3.20–4.68, p<0.01).ConclusionsMeta-analysis suggested that elevated serum TGF-β level in patients with diabetes is associated with a high risk of nephropathy. Further studies are required to validate these observations.

circular rnas (circrnas) have crucial roles in various diseases; however, the mechanisms of action underlying circrnas in the occurrence and development of diabetic nephropathy (dn) remains largely unknown. The present study investigated the differentially expressed circrnas in the dn mice kidney cortex using circrna sequencing and elucidated the role of circrnas in mesangial cells. it was revealed that 40 circrnas were unconventionally expressed, including 18 upregulated circrnas and 22 downregulated circRNAs. Furthermore, circ_0000491 levels were significantly augmented in both dn mice and high glucose (HG, 30 mM)-induced mouse mesangial cells (MeS13 cells). Knockdown of circ_0000491 significantly suppressed the increase of vimentin, fibronectin and α-smooth muscle actin, as well as collagen type i, iii and iV, whilst reversing the decrease of e-cadherin in HG-induced MeS13 cells. it was further revealed that circrna_0000491 sponged mir-101b and that mir-101b directly targets TGFβri. in addition, the expression levels of mir-101b were negatively associated with the transcriptional level of circrna_0000491 and mir-101b inhibitors reversed the suppression of extracellular matrix (ecM)-associated protein synthesis mediated by knocking-down circrna_0000491. in conclusion, the present study investigated the circrna_0000491/mir-101b/TGFβri axis in ecM accumulation and fibrosis-associated protein expression levels of mesangial cells, which suggested that circRNA_0000491 may be beneficial for the development of an effective therapeutic target for dn.

Identification of anatomical vessel branches is a prerequisite task for diagnosis, treatment and inter-subject comparison. We propose a novel graph labeling approach to anatomically label vascular structures of interest. Our method first extracts bifurcations of interest from the centerlines of vessels, where a set of geometric features are also calculated from. Then the probability distribution of every bifurcation is learned using a XGBoost classifier. Finally a Hidden Markov Model with a restricted transition strategy is constructed in order to find the most likely labeling configuration of the whole structure, while also enforcing topological consistency. In this paper, the proposed approach has been evaluated through leave-one-out cross validation on 50 subjects of centerlines obtained from MRA images of healthy volunteers' Circle of Willis. Results demonstrate that our method can achieve higher accuracy and specificity, while obtaining similar precision and recall, when comparing to the best performing state-of-the-art methods. Our algorithm can handle different topologies, like circle, chain and tree. By using coordinate independent geometrical features, it does not require prior global alignment. Source code and data are available under

Background: Currently, active ingredients of herbal extracts that can suppress lipid accumulation in the liver have been considered a potential treatment option for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Methods: Steatosis rat model was created by high fat and high sucrose diet feeding and treated with oxymatrine (OMT). Serum biochemical parameters, liver histology and lipid profiles were examined. Hepatic differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) which were significantly changed by OMT treatment were identified by iTRAQ analysis. The expressions of representative DEPs, Sirt1 and AMPKα were evaluated by western blotting. Results: OMT significantly reduced the body weight and liver weight of steatosis animals, decreased the serum levels of triglyceride and total cholesterol as well as the hepatic triglyceride and free fatty acid levels, and effectively alleviated fatty degeneration in the liver. A list of OMT-related DEPs have been screened and evaluated by bioinformatics analysis. OMT significantly decreased the expressions of L-FABP, Plin2, FASN and SCD1 and increased Sirt1 expression and AMPKα phosphorylation in the liver of rats with steatosis. Conclusion: The present study has confirmed the significant efficacy of OMT for improving steatosis and revealed hepatic proteomic changes and Sirt1/AMPK signaling activation by OMT treatment in rats with steatosis.

The aim of the present study was to optimize flavonoid extraction from Chrysanthemum morifolium and to study the antitumor effects of flavonoids on human gastric cancer MKN45 cells in vitro. A single factor experiment was designed and the extraction process was optimized using an orthogonal test. MKN45 cells were treated with different concentrations of flavonoid from Chrysanthemum morifolium for 24 and 48 h and the inhibitory effect on the MKN45 cells was evaluated using an MTT assay. Following staining with Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide, flow cytometry was performed. The optimized flavonoid extraction conditions were as follows: Duration of ultrasonic treatment: 35 min; ethanol concentration: 75%; extraction temperature: 80°Cand liquid-to-solid ratio 25: 1. Under the above conditions, the extraction rate of flavonoids was 5.24%. When compared with a blank control group, flavonoids extracted from Chrysanthemum morifolium inhibited the proliferation of MKN45 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Furthermore, in cell groups treated with low, moderate and high concentrations of flavonoid, it was observed that the proportion of apoptotic cells increased in a dose-dependent manner. The extraction process optimized by the orthogonal test achieved a high yield and satisfactory extraction efficiency. Additionally, the experiment demonstrated that flavonoids from Chrysanthemum morifolium inhibited the growth of MKN45 cells and induced their apoptosis. Thus, flavonoids from Chrysanthemum morifolium exerted antitumor effects on MKN45 cells, which may be exploited as a potential antitumor therapeutic for gastric cancer.

Chinese medicine constitutions were associated with TGF-β1 (T869C) gene polymorphism, a potential predictor of susceptibility to DN in T2DM patients.