Background: Adverse drug outcomes in the elderly have led to the development of lists of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs), such as the Beers criteria, and these PIMs have been studied widely; however, it is still unclear whether PIM use is predictive of adverse outcomes in older people. Objective: To qualitatively examine the associations between exposure to PIMs from the general Beers criteria and the Screening Tool of Older Persons’ Prescriptions list and adverse outcomes, such as adverse drug reactions (ADRs)/adverse drug events (ADEs), hospitalization, and mortality. Methods: Specified databases were searched from inception to February 1, 2018. Two reviewers independently selected studies that met the inclusion criteria, assessed study quality, and extracted data. Data were pooled using Stata 12.0. The outcomes were ADRs/ADEs, hospitalization, and mortality. Results: A total of 33 studies met the inclusion criteria. The combined analysis revealed a statistically significant association between ADRs/hospitalizations and PIMs (odds ratio [OR] = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.33-1.56; OR = 1.27, 95% CI = 1.20-1.35), but no statistically significant association was found between mortality and PIMs (OR = 1.04; 95% CI = 0.75-1.45). It is interesting to note that the results changed when different continents/criteria were used for the analysis. Compared with the elderly individuals exposed to 1 PIM, the risk of adverse health outcomes was much higher for those who took ≥2 PIMs. Conclusion and Relevance: We recommend that clinicians avoid prescribing PIMs for older adults whenever feasible. In addition, the observed associations should be generalized to other countries with different PIM criteria with caution.

The discovery of large numbers of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) has been driven by genome-wide transcriptional analyses. Compared to small ncRNAs, lncRNAs have been shown to harbor biological activities, but the functions of the great majority of lncRNAs are not known. There is growing evidence that lncRNAs can regulate gene expression at epigenetic, transcription, and post-transcription levels and widely take part in various physiological and pathological processes, such as participating in cell development, immunity, oncogenesis, clinical disease processes, etc. Here, the current research efforts on the function of lncRNA in recent years were summarized.

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In the present study, the effect of dietary procyanidin (PCA, from pine needles) supplementation on the innate immunity of broilers were investigated. The experiment was designed as a 2 × 4 factorial arrangement (eight cages / treatment; six birds (one-day-old) / cage) with dietary PCA concentrations (0, 0.05, 0.075 and 0.1%) and two immune treatments (injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (0.5 mg/kg body weight) or saline). LPS was dissolved in sterile 9 g/L (w/v) NaCl solution at 16, 18, 20 days of age to mimic immune stress. The remaining birds were injected with saline as a placebo. The results indicated that, prior to LPS challenge, the PCA diet had no significant effect on bird growth performance. The injection of LPS was also not associated with any significant changes in poultry performance. LPS injection increased the activity of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and the concentrations of inflammatory cytokines (interferon-γ (IFN-γ), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-2, IL-4, IL-6 and IL-10) in serum; dietary PCA decreased these concentrations (P < 0.05) in the PCA 0.1% group, further illustrating the immune effect of PCA. In conclusion, PCA supplementation has a beneficial effect on LPS challenge, which may be associated with the inhibition of the secretion of cytokines and decrease in the proinflammatory marker NOx.

In this study, six microsatellite markers were adopted to detect the genetic diversity and analyze the genetic distance of three Chinese indigenous sheep breeds. The results showed that 161 alleles were detected in the three breeds of sheep populations, and the average effective number of alleles, the average polymorphism information content (PIC) of six microsatellite markers in fat-tailed sheep, small tailed han-sheep, Yuxi fat-tailed sheep were 5.8844, 6.3103, 4.8017 and 0.7463, 0.7790, 0.7140 respectively. Five markers were highly polymorphic except marker ILSTS011 which gave moderate polymorphic. Except markers OarFCB48, OarFCB304 and BL1038, the other three microsatellite markers deviated significantly from the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (P<0.01) in the three breeds of sheep populations. The genetic differentiation coefficient of each locus ranged from 0.0059 to 0.1159, with an average of 0.0482, indicating a 4.82% gene variation among different populations. So the degree of differentiation among populations was low. The small tailed han-sheep and fat-tailed sheep with minimum genetic distance (0.2163) were first clustered as a group, then they clustered with Yuxi fat-tailed sheep.

BackgroundA 2 × 4 factorial arrangement of treatments was used to investigate the protective effect of procyanidin (PCA) against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced acute gut injury by the regulations of oxidative state for a 21-days feeding trial.MethodsA total of 384 1-days-old broiler chicks were assigned to 8 treatments with 8 replicate of 6 broiler chickens per pen. Broiler chickens fed diets based on 4 levels of dietary PCA (0, 0.05, 0.075 and 0.1 % of the requirements). Half of the birds from each treatment group were challenged with 0.9 % NaCl solution or LPS (250 μg/kg body weight, injection administered) at 16, 18 and 21 days of age.ResultsThe results indicated that, prior to LPS challenge, there was no dietary effect on bird growth performance (P > 0.05). The injection of LPS were also not associated with any significant changes in poultry performance (P > 0.05). But LPS injection increased serum diamine oxidase (DAO) level and the malondialdehyde (MDA) content of intestinal mucosa (P < 0.05), cause adverse effects to the morphology of the small intestine (P < 0.05), decreased the glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity of intestinal mucosa (P < 0.05). When LPS-challenged birds were pretreated with PCA, serum DAO concentration and MDA activity in jejunal and ileal mucosa were dramatically attenuated, and improved the morphology of the small intestine as well (P < 0.05).ConclusionIn conclusion, PCA is able to prevent LPS-induced oxidative stress response in vivo, improved the morphology of the small intestine. The beneficial effect of PCA may depend on increasing the activity of body’s antioxidant enzymes and scavenging free radical activity.

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