Natural products possess pleiotropic cardiovascular protective effects owing to their anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation and anti-thrombotic properties. Kaempferol, (3,5,7-trihydroxy-2-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one), is a kind of naturally occurring flavonoid existing in many common fruits and vegetables (e.g., onions, broccoli, strawberries and grapes) and particularly in traditional Chinese medicine as exemplified by <i>Ginkgo biloba</i>. Epidemiological, preclinical and clinical studies have revealed an inverse association between the consumption of kaempferol-containing foods and medicines and the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. Numerous translational studies in experimental animal models and cultured cells have demonstrated a wide range of pharmacological activities of kaempferol. In this article, we reviewed the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cardio-protective activities of kaempferol and elucidated the potential molecular basis of the therapeutic capacity of kaempferol by focusing on its anti-atherosclerotic effects. Overall, the review presents the health benefits of kaempferol-containing plants and medicines and reflects on the potential of kaempferol as a possible drug candidate to prevent and treat atherosclerosis, the underlying pathology of most cardiovascular diseases.
The specific purpose of this communication is to summarize the relevant details of the methods utilized to conduct, analyze, and interpret the ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring (ABPM)-obtained patient data in both MAPEC and Hygia Chronotherapy Trial, including details of the sampling requirements in terms of duration and frequency, proper calculation of ABPM-derived mean values, prognostic and therapeutic implications of BP dipping, and limitations of the 24 h BP mean as diagnostic/prognostic parameter still mistakenly recommended by some hypertension guidelines.
Abstract The evidence for universal common ancestry (UCA) is vast and persuasive, and a phylogenetic test was proposed for quantifying its odds against independently originated sequences based on the comparison between one and several trees [1]. This test was successfully applied to a well-supported homologous sequence alignment, being however criticized once simulations showed that even alignments without any phylogenetic structure could mislead its conclusions [2]. Despite claims to the contrary [3], we believe that the counterexample successfully showed a drawback of the test, of relying on good alignments. Here we present a simplified version of this counterexample, which can be interpreted as a tree with arbitrarily long branches, and where the test again fails. We also present another simulation showing circumstances whereby any sufficiently similar alignment will favor UCA irrespective of the true independent origins for the sequences. We therefore conclude that the test should not be trusted unless convergence has already been ruled out a priori. Finally, we present a class of frequentist tests that perform better than the purportedly formal UCA test.
Janus surfaces present technological opportunities both for research and industry in which different chemical, physical and/or structural components need to coexist for a single purpose such as chemistry, textile and material science. Varying inorganic and organic (polymer‐based) materials are conventionally used however, utilizing nature‐derived polymers to fabricate Janus structures is a recent and attractive trend which makes them more applicable for bio‐based treatments with environmental concerns. Particularly, promising applications of Janus structures as being surfactants, drug delivery and micro/nano encapsulation vehicles for biomedical purposes successfully forward the interest on Janus concept to the food related practices. Producing Janus structures from nature‐derived and food grade polymers such as alginate, cellulose, chitosan, lipid nanocrystals, zein and some plant‐proteins and their usage stronger emulsions with higher stabilities, biosensing or antimicrobial practices as well as bioactive delivery and release control might be considered as a new era for food processing industry.
It has frequently been assumed that the persistence of a deleterious mutation (the average number of generations before its loss) and its pervasiveness (the average number of individuals carrying the gene before its loss) are equal. This is true for a particular simple, widely used infinite model, but this agreement is not general. If hs >> 1/(4N(e)), where hs is the selective disadvantage of mutant heterozygotes and N(e) is the effective population number, the contribution of homozygous mutants can be neglected and the simple approximate formula 1/hs gives the mean pervasiveness. But the expected persistence is usually much smaller, 2(log(e)(1/2hs) + 1 - gamma) where gamma = 0.5772. For neutral mutations, the total number of heterozygotes until fixation or loss is often the quantity of interest, and its expected value is 2N(e), with remarkable generality for various population structures. In contrast, the number of generations until fixation or loss, 2(N(e)/N)(1 + log(e)2N), is much smaller than the total number of heterozygotes. In general the number of generations is less than the number of individuals.
Abstract Aims The Hygia Chronotherapy Trial, conducted within the clinical primary care setting, was designed to test whether bedtime in comparison to usual upon awakening hypertension therapy exerts better cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk reduction. Methods and results In this multicentre, controlled, prospective endpoint trial, 19 084 hypertensive patients (10 614 men/8470 women, 60.5 ± 13.7 years of age) were assigned (1:1) to ingest the entire daily dose of ≥1 hypertension medications at bedtime (n = 9552) or all of them upon awakening (n = 9532). At inclusion and at every scheduled clinic visit (at least annually) throughout follow-up, ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) monitoring was performed for 48 h. During the 6.3-year median patient follow-up, 1752 participants experienced the primary CVD outcome (CVD death, myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization, heart failure, or stroke). Patients of the bedtime, compared with the upon-waking, treatment-time regimen showed significantly lower hazard ratio—adjusted for significant influential characteristics of age, sex, type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, smoking, HDL cholesterol, asleep systolic blood pressure (BP) mean, sleep-time relative systolic BP decline, and previous CVD event—of the primary CVD outcome [0.55 (95% CI 0.50–0.61), P &lt; 0.001] and each of its single components (P &lt; 0.001 in all cases), i.e. CVD death [0.44 (0.34–0.56)], myocardial infarction [0.66 (0.52–0.84)], coronary revascularization [0.60 (0.47–0.75)], heart failure [0.58 (0.49–0.70)], and stroke [0.51 (0.41–0.63)]. Conclusion Routine ingestion by hypertensive patients of ≥1 prescribed BP-lowering medications at bedtime, as opposed to upon waking, results in improved ABP control (significantly enhanced decrease in asleep BP and increased sleep-time relative BP decline, i.e. BP dipping) and, most importantly, markedly diminished occurrence of major CVD events. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00741585.
The inherent properties of silica, such as optical transparency, high biocompatibility, chemical and colloidal stability, controllable porosity, and easy surface modification, provide silica materials with a tremendous potential in biomedicine. Therefore, the coating of Au nanoparticles with silica largely contributes to enhance the important applications of metal nanoparticles in biomedicine. We describe in this chapter a number of reliable strategies that have been reported for silica coating of different types of Au nanoparticles. All descriptions are based on tested protocols and are expected to provide a reference for scientists with an interest in this field.
Abstract ModelTest-NG is a reimplementation from scratch of jModelTest and ProtTest, two popular tools for selecting the best-fit nucleotide and amino acid substitution models, respectively. ModelTest-NG is one to two orders of magnitude faster than jModelTest and ProtTest but equally accurate and introduces several new features, such as ascertainment bias correction, mixture, and free-rate models, or the automatic processing of single partitions. ModelTest-NG is available under a GNU GPL3 license at https://github.com/ddarriba/modeltest , last accessed September 2, 2019.
