Background: Some studies have evaluated the associations between the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) gene polymorphisms and essential hypertension (EH) risk. However, the results remain uncertain. We carried out a meta-analysis to derive a more comprehensive estimation of these associations. Methods: Case-control studies were identified by searching PubMed, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Wangfang databases. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the strength of the associations. Results: Significant associations were found between the ACE2 G8790A polymorphism and EH risk in males (OR = 1.27; 95% CI, 1.11–1.44; p = 0.0004; I2 = 34%) and females (OR = 1.21; 95% CI, 1.09–1.34; p = 0.0003; I2 = 31%), respectively. Significant associations were also observed between the ACE2 rs2106809 polymorphism and EH risk in males (OR = 1.24; 95% CI, 1.10–1.39; p = 0.0004; I2 = 18%) and females (OR = 1.39; 95% CI, 1.27–1.51; p < 0.00001; I2 = 0%), respectively. However, there was no significant association between the ACE2 A1075G polymorphism and EH risk in males (OR = 1.27; 95% CI, 0.77–2.10; p = 0.35; I2 = 69%) and females (OR = 1.02; 95% CI, 0.83–1.26; p = 0.84; I2 = 33%), respectively. Conclusions: These results suggest that the ACE2 G8790A and rs2106809 polymorphisms may be associated with EH risk.

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Background Dental caries and type 1 diabetes are responsible for a large burden of global disease; however, the exact prevalence of dental caries among children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes remains controversial, and no quantitative meta-analysis exists. Thus, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the prevalence of dental caries among children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Methods We performed a systematic search strategy using PubMed, EMBASE and China National Knowledge Infrastructure for relevant studies investigating the prevalence of dental caries in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes from July 1971 until December 2018. The pooled prevalence with 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs) and subgroup analyses were calculated using a random effects model. Results After screening 358 non-duplicated articles, a total of 10 articles involving 538 individuals were included. The overall prevalence of dental caries among children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes was 67% (95% CI: 0.56–0.77%; I2 = 83%). The prevalence was highest in South America (84%) and lowest in diabetic patients with good metabolic control (47%). Conclusions The prevalence of dental caries was high among children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Screening and preventive treatment should be included in dental clinical routines for diabetic children and adolescents, especially in those with poor metabolic control.

BackgroundThis study aimed to cluster newly diagnosed patients and patients with long-term diabetes and to explore the clinical characteristics, risk of diabetes complications, and medication treatment related to each cluster.Research Design and MethodsK-means clustering analysis was performed on 1,060 Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes based on five variables (HbA1c, age at diagnosis, BMI, HOMA2-IR, and HOMA2-B). The clinical features, risk of diabetic complications, and the utilization of elven types of medications agents related to each cluster were evaluated with the chi-square test and the Tukey–Kramer method.ResultsFour replicable clusters were identified, severe insulin-resistant diabetes (SIRD), severe insulin-deficient diabetes (SIDD), mild obesity-related diabetes (MOD), and mild age-related diabetes (MARD). In terms of clinical characteristics, there were significant differences in blood pressure, renal function, and lipids among clusters. Furthermore, individuals in SIRD had the highest prevalence of stages 2 and 3 chronic kidney disease (CKD) (57%) and diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) (67%), while individuals in SIDD had the highest risk of diabetic retinopathy (32%), albuminuria (31%) and lower extremity arterial disease (LEAD) (13%). Additionally, the difference in medication treatment of clusters were observed in metformin (p = 0.012), α-glucosidase inhibitor (AGI) (p = 0.006), dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitor (DPP-4) (p = 0.017), glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) (p &lt;0.001), insulin (p &lt;0.001), and statins (p = 0.006).ConclusionsThe newly diagnosed patients and patients with long-term diabetes can be consistently clustered into featured clusters. Each cluster had significantly different patient characteristics, risk of diabetic complications, and medication treatment.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of basal insulin application on the serum visfatin and adiponectin (APN) levels of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). A total of 200 patients with T2DM, who were diagnosed in The Third People's Hospital of Jinan (glycosylated hemoglobin ≥7%), were randomly divided into treatment and control groups. The patients used only oral hypoglycemic drugs and had never received insulin therapy. In the treatment group, basal insulin was administered in combination with the original application of oral hypoglycemic drugs, whereas the control group maintained the original use of oral hypoglycemic drugs or took other oral hypoglycemic agents. The body mass index and fasting blood glucose, postprandial blood glucose, glycosylated hemoglobin, visfatin, APN and blood lipid levels of the patients were examined prior to the treatment and six months later. The drug and insulin doses in the treatment group were adjusted according to the patients' blood glucose, which allowed the fasting and postprandial blood glucose levels to attain the standards. The fasting and postprandial blood glucose levels in the control group also achieved the standards. It was found that the six-month application of basal insulin could significantly decrease the glycosylated hemoglobin and significantly increase the serum APN levels; the serum visfatin levels, however, remained unchanged. The immediate application of basal insulin could facilitate the attainment of glycosylated hemoglobin standards in T2DM and could increase the plasma APN levels, preventing diabetic vascular complications.

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Many clouds and network testbeds use disk images to initialize local storage on their compute devices. Large facilities must manage thousands or more images, requiring significant amounts of storage. At the same time, to provide a good user experience, they must be able to deploy those images quickly. Driven by our experience in operating the Emulab site at the University of Utah-a long-lived and heavily-used testbed-we have created a new service for efficiently storing and deploying disk images. This service exploits the redundant data found in similar images, using deduplication to greatly reduce the amount of physical storage required. In addition to space savings, our system is also designed for highly efficient image deployment-it integrates with an existing highly-optimized disk image deployment system, Frisbee, without significantly increasing the time required to distribute and install images. In this paper, we explain the design of our system and discuss the trade-offs we made to strike a balance between efficient storage and fast disk image deployment. We also propose a new chunking algorithm, called AFC, which enables fixed-size chunking for deduplicating allocated disk sectors. Experimental results show that our system reduces storage requirements by up to 3× while imposing only a negligible runtime overhead on the end-to-end disk-deployment process.