Jianrong Yang

Background: Until recently, the association between circulating adiponectin (ADPN) levels and the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) remained unclear.Methods: We utilized public data from the IEU GWAS database to conduct a two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis and multiple sensitivity analyses. The MR analysis was performed using the aggregated data, with the genetic risk score (GRS) serving as an instrumental variable.Results: The MR analyses revealed no significant causal association between genetically determined ADPN levels and the risk of AD (OR_IVW = 0.852, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.586–1.117, p = 0.235) or PD (OR_IVW = 0.830, 95% CI: 0.780–1.156, p = 0.606). Conversely, neither AD nor PD demonstrated any causal association with ADPN levels. The GRS approach yielded similar results (p > 0.05). However, it exhibited a negative correlation with interleukin 1β (IL1β, β_IVW = −0.31; 95% CI: −0.55 to −0.07, p = 0.011). The Cochrane’s Q test and MR-PRESSO analysis revealed no evidence of pleiotropy.Conclusion: Our findings provide no evidence to substantiate a causal relationship between ADPN levels and the risk of AD and PD or vice versa. However, elevated levels of ADPN may correlate with lower levels of IL1β.

Breast cancer (BC) has the second highest incidence rate among women worldwide. Although there are various treatment methods, the prognosis is poor once metastasis occurs. However, the extent to which pathogens of infectious diseases influence the risk of BC remains unclear. The goal of this study is to determine if these pathogens are causally related to BC development. A Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis is used to assess the causal relationship between infectious pathogen antibodies and the risk of BC, as well as their potential intermediary factors. Two-sample MR analysis using inverse variance weighting (IVW) is conducted to determine the causal relationship between infectious pathogen antibodies and the risk of BC. Additionally, the mediating role of 1400 metabolites between infectious pathogen antibodies and the risk of BC is analyzed. There were 5 infectious pathogen antibodies and 86 metabolites associated with BC (P < .05). There were 14 metabolites that mediated the pathway between infectious pathogen antibodies and BC. X-07765 levels showed a significant negative mediating effect on the relationship between Anti-human herpes virus 6 IgG seropositivity and BC (beta = −0.0025, 95% CI [−0.0046, −0.0003], P = .0236), accounting for 14.8% of the effect (95% CI: 27.7–1.99). This study provides a thorough evaluation of the causal relationships among infectious pathogen antibodies, plasma metabolites, and BC. Our research has identified 5 infectious pathogen antibodies that exhibit a causal relationship with BC, mediated through 86 distinct metabolites.

Purpose: This study examines the relationship between tumor burden score (TBS) and survival and recurrence following radical resection of hepatocellular carcinoma through a cohort study conducted in the Guangxi population of China.Methods: This cohort study eventually recruited 576 HCC patients undergoing radical resection of HCC in the People’s Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region during 2013–2022. After determining the best threshold TBS, all cases were grouped to evaluate the relationship between TBS versus overall survival (OS) and cumulative recurrence. Using X-Tile software, the best threshold TBS to judge patient prognostic outcome following radical resection of HCC was 10.77.Results: Kaplan–Meier curve analysis revealed that patients with high TBS showed considerably decreased OS relative to the control group, accompanied by an increased recurrence rate. According to multivariate Cox proportional regression, the patients with high TBS were associated with poorer OS (HR = 2.56, 95% CI 1.64–3.99, P < 0.001) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) (HR = 1.55, 95% CI 1.02–2.35, P < 0.001).Conclusion: In patients undergoing radical resection for HCC, higher TBS was significantly related to shorter OS and RFS.

Accurate sleep staging is crucial for wearable sensor-based sleep monitoring and health interventions. Polysomnography (PSG) signals, rich in information from multiple synchronous sensor channels, are frequently utilized in sleep studies due to their high accuracy in sleep staging. However, employing a wearable PSG for sleep monitoring is uncomfortable, complex, expensive, and impractical. The advent of single-channel wearable electroencephalography (EEG) devices enables comfortable sleep monitoring in ubiquitous scenarios (e.g., home). Despite their advantages, such devices lack sufficient information and have severe accuracy limitations. To improve the accuracy of single-channel EEG-based sleep staging, we propose a method called cross-channel association mining (CCAM). Besides the naive feature extraction, CCAM leverages synchronous single-channel EEG and high-density PSG signals to establish pairwise association feature mining models. These association models can transfer information from other auxiliary PSG channels to the target EEG channel. In inference, CCAM exploits association feature mining models to extract effective features from the target EEG channel and improve sleep staging accuracy through directionally multiview information fusion. Experimental results on three public datasets for sleep staging, ISRUC-S1, ISRUC-S3, and sleep heart health study, show that CCAM outperforms state-of-the-art methods, advancing the field of wearable sensor-based sleep monitoring in ubiquitous scenarios.

Manganese ions (Mn2+) combined with adjuvants capable of damaging and lysing tumor cells form an antitumor nano-modulator that enhances the immune efficacy of cancer therapy through the cascade activation of the cyclic GMP-AMP interferon gene synthase-stimulator (cGAS-STING) pathway, which underscores the importance of developing antitumor nano-modulators, which induce DNA damage and augment cGAS-STING activity, as a critical future research direction. We have successfully synthesized an antitumor nano-modulator, which exhibits good dispersibility and biosafety. This nano-modulator is engineered by loading manganese dioxide nanosheets (M-NS) with zebularine (Zeb), known for its immunogenicity-enhancing effects, and conducting targeted surface modification using hyaluronic acid (HA). After systemic circulation to the tumor site, Mn2+, Zeb, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) are catalytically released in the tumor microenvironment by H+ and H2O2. These components can directly or indirectly damage the DNA or mitochondria of tumor cells, thereby inducing programmed cell death. Furthermore, they promote the accumulation of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) in the cytoplasm, enhancing the activation of the cGAS-STING signalling pathway and boosting the production of type I interferon and the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Additionally, Zeb@MH-NS enhances the maturation of dendritic cells, the infiltration of cytotoxic T lymphocytes, and the recruitment of natural killer cells at the tumor site. This HA-modified manganese-based hybrid nano-regulator can enhance antitumor therapy by boosting innate immune activity and may provide new directions for immunotherapy and clinical translation in cancer.

JOURNAL/nrgr/04.03/01300535-202510000-00030/figure1/v/2026-04-25T153616Z/r/image-tiff Sleep disturbances are among the most prevalent neuropsychiatric symptoms in individuals who have recovered from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infections. Previous studies have demonstrated abnormal brain structures in patients with sleep disturbances who have recovered from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, neuroimaging studies on sleep disturbances caused by COVID-19 are scarce, and existing studies have primarily focused on the long-term effects of the virus, with minimal acute phase data. As a result, little is known about the pathophysiology of sleep disturbances in the acute phase of COVID-19. To address this issue, we designed a longitudinal study to investigate whether alterations in brain structure occur during the acute phase of infection, and verified the results using 3-month follow-up data. A total of 26 COVID-19 patients with sleep disturbances (aged 51.5 ± 13.57 years, 8 women and 18 men), 27 COVID-19 patients without sleep disturbances (aged 47.33 ± 15.98 years, 9 women and 18 men), and 31 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (aged 49.19 ± 17.51 years, 9 women and 22 men) were included in this study. Eleven COVID-19 patients with sleep disturbances were included in a longitudinal analysis. We found that COVID-19 patients with sleep disturbances exhibited brain structural changes in almost all brain lobes. The cortical thicknesses of the left pars opercularis and left precuneus were significantly negatively correlated with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores. Additionally, we observed changes in the volume of the hippocampus and its subfield regions in COVID-19 patients compared with the healthy controls. The 3-month follow-up data revealed indices of altered cerebral structure (cortical thickness, cortical grey matter volume, and cortical surface area) in the frontal-parietal cortex compared with the baseline in COVID-19 patients with sleep disturbances. Our findings indicate that the sleep disturbances patients had altered morphology in the cortical and hippocampal structures during the acute phase of infection and persistent changes in cortical regions at 3 months post-infection. These data improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of sleep disturbances caused by COVID-19.

Background and aims: According to previous studies, triglyceride-glucose (TyG) is related to chronic kidney disease (CKD), but no studies have explored the correlation between TyG and CKD among adults with metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD). We aimed to explore the associations of the TyG index with CKD among adults with MAFLD.Methods: In this retrospective observational cohort study, data from 11,860 participants who underwent a minimum of three health assessments between 2008 and 2015 were retrospectively collected. Participants were followed up until the final medical visit or health examination. CKD refers to an eGFR < 60 mL/min per 1·73 m² or the occurrence of two or more incidents of proteinuria.Results: Within a median 10·02-year follow-up period, 2005 (16·9%) participants reported developing CKD. Multivariate Cox regression models indicated a noticeable correlation between the TyG index and CKD incidence (HR per unit increase, 1.19; 95% CI: 1.09–1.29) and between the TyG index and CKD incidence (HR per SD increase, 1.12; 95% CI: 1.06–1.18). The CKD incidence increased by 1.8 times in participants in the highest TyG index quartile relative to patients in the lowest quartile of the TyG index quartile (HR 1·18, 95% CI: 1.01–1.38, P = 0.007). According to subgroup analysis, an elevated TyG index is likely to become more harmful to participants younger than 60 years (P for interaction = 0.035).Conclusion: An elevated TyG index may increase CKD incidence among MAFLD adults, particularly among younger people. Early intervention may help reduce the incidence of CKD.

Objective: For patients with 1–2 positive sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) identified by biopsy, the necessity of axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) remains a matter of debate. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the association between postoperative pathological factors and non-sentinel lymph node (NSLN) metastases in Chinese patients diagnosed with sentinel node-positive breast cancer. Methods: This research involved a total of 280 individuals with SLN-positive breast cancer. The relationship between postoperative pathological variables and non-sentinel lymph node metastases was scrutinized using univariate, multivariate, and stratified analysis. Results: Among the 280 patients with a complete count of SLN positives, 126 (45.0%) exhibited NSLN metastasis. Within this group, 45 cases (35.71%) had 1 SLN positive, while 81 cases (64.29%) demonstrated more than 1 SLN positive. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that HER2 expression status (OR 2.25, 95% CI 1.10–4.60, P = 0.0269), LVI (OR 6.08, 95% CI 3.31–11.14, P < 0.0001), and the number of positive SLNs (OR 4.17, 95% CI 2.35–7.42, P < 0.0001) were positively correlated with NSLNM. Conclusion: In our investigation, the risk variables for NSLN metastasis included LVI, HER2 expression, and the quantity of positive sentinel lymph nodes. However, further validation is imperative, including this institution, distinct institutions, and diverse patient populations.

BACKGROUND: The correlation between the preoperative albuminalkaline phosphatase ratio (AAPR) and the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients after radical resection is still not comprehensive. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to observe the correlation between preoperative AAPR and the prognosis of HCC patients after radical resection. METHODS: We constructed a retrospective cohort study and included 656 HCC patients who underwent radical resection. The patients were grouped after determining an optimum AAPR cut-off value. We used the Cox proportional regression model to assess the correlation between preoperative AAPR and the prognosis of HCC patients after radical resection. RESULTS: The optimal cut-off value of AAPR for assessing the prognosis of HCC patients after radical resection was 0.52 which was acquired by using X-tile software. Kaplan-Meier analysis curves showed that a low AAPR ([ ] 0.52) had a significantly lower rate of overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) ([ ] 0.05). Multiple Cox proportional regression showed that an AAPR [ ] 0.52 was a protective factor for OS (HR [ ] 0.66, 95%CI 0.45-0.97, [ ] 0.036) and RFS (HR [ ] 0.70, 95% CI 0.53–0.92, [ ] 0.011). CONCLUSIONS: The preoperative AAPR level was related to the prognosis of HCC patients after radical resection and can be used as a routine preoperative test, which is important for early detection of high-risk patients and taking personalized adjuvant treatment.