Liver

BACKGROUND: In dogs with a congenital extrahepatic portosystemic shunt (EHPSS), outcome after surgical attenuation is difficult to predict. OBJECTIVES: Develop a minimally invasive test to predict outcome after surgical EHPSS attenuation and establish risk factors for postattenuation seizures (PAS). ANIMALS: Eighty-five client-owned dogs referred for surgical attenuation of a single EHPSS. METHODS: mRNA expression of 8 genes was measured in preoperatively collected venous blood samples...

AIM: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have proven to be effective treatments for various cancers, but can also elicit immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Given that severe irAEs can be life-threatening, biomarkers that can predict the occurrence of irAEs are of paramount importance. ICIs affect the dynamics of lymphocytes, and alterations in these dynamics may play a role in the development and severity of irAEs. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between irAEs and changes in lymphocyte counts...

Obesity is a major contributing factor for metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD). Fibroblast growth factor (FGF) 1 is the first paracrine FGF family member identified to exhibit promising metabolic regulatory properties capable of conferring glucose-lowering and insulin-sensitizing effect. This study explores the role and molecular underpinnings of FGF1 in obesity-associated hepatic steatosis. In a mouse high-fat diet (HFD)-induced MAFLD model, chronic treatment with recombinant FGF1(rFGF1) was found to effectively reduce the severity of insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia, and inflammation...

High-fat diets (HFD) adversely affect organ systems. Several studies have examined HFD-related disorders in animals but only in a few organs and time points. Herein, we evaluated disease development with time-dependent HFD-induced pathological, cardiovascular, and morphological changes in rabbits with lipid metabolism similar to that in humans for 9 weeks. The body weights and waist ratio of the HFD group were higher than those in the control group. HFD significantly increased the total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein, high-density lipoprotein, and phospholipid levels after 3 weeks...

BACKGROUND: Numerous studies have linked visceral adipose tissue (VAT) to gastrointestinal diseases. However, it remains unclear whether these associations reflect causal relationships. METHODS: We used a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) approach to elucidate the causal effect of VAT on nine non-tumour gastrointestinal diseases. The inverse-variance weighted method was used to perform the MR analyses. Complementary and multivariable MR analyses were performed to confirm the results...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the image quality and lesion conspicuity of a deep-learning-based contrast-boosting (DL-CB) algorithm on double-low-dose (DLD) CT of simultaneous reduction of radiation and contrast doses in participants at high-risk for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS: Participants were recruited and underwent four-phase dynamic CT (NCT04722120). They were randomly assigned to either standard-dose (SD) or DLD protocol. All CT images were initially reconstructed using iterative reconstruction, and the images of the DLD protocol were further processed using the DL-CB algorithm (DLD-DL)...

Collagen has been postulated to be the most abundant protein in our body, making up one-third of the total protein content in mammals. However, a direct assessment of the total collagen levels of an entire mammal to confirm this estimate is missing. Here we measured hydroxyproline levels as a proxy for collagen content together with total protein levels of entire mice or of individual tissues. Collagen content normalized to the total protein is approximately 0.1% in the brain and liver, 1% in the heart and kidney, 4% in the muscle and lung, 6% in the colon, 20-40% in the skin, 25-35% in bones, and 40-50% in tendons of wild-type (CD1 and CB57BL/6) mice, consistent with previous reports...

Long non-coding RNA-myocardial infarction-associated transcript (lncRNA-MIAT) has been reported to play an important role in the development of multiple cancers. However, the biological roles of MIAT in liver fibrosis are still unknown. In this study, the expression of MIAT is up-regulated during liver fibrosis. Silencing MIAT leads to the suppression of hepatic stellate cell (HSC) proliferation and collagen expression. Double immunofluorescence analysis additionally demonstrates that MIAT inhibition leads to the suppression of type I collagen and α-SMA in vitro...

Spatially resolved transcriptomics of tissue sections enables advances in fundamental and applied biomedical research. Here, we present Multiplexed Deterministic Barcoding in Tissue (xDBiT) to acquire spatially resolved transcriptomes of nine tissue sections in parallel. New microfluidic chips were developed to spatially encode mRNAs over a total tissue area of 1.17 cm2 with a 50 µm resolution. Optimization of the biochemical protocol increased read and gene counts per spot by one order of magnitude compared to previous reports...

The early phase lipid accumulation is essential for liver regeneration. However, whether this acute lipid accumulation can serve as signals to direct liver regeneration rather than simply providing building blocks for cell proliferation remains unclear. Through in vivo CRISPR screening, we identify MIER1 (mesoderm induction early response 1) as a key epigenetic regulator that bridges the acute lipid accumulation and cell cycle gene expression during liver regeneration in male animals. Physiologically, liver acute lipid accumulation induces the phosphorylation of EIF2S1(eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2), which consequently attenuated Mier1 translation...

BACKGROUND: The diagnosis of postoperative or post-pancreatectomy acute pancreatitis (PPAP) is controversial. In 2021, the International Study Group of Pancreatic Surgery (ISGPS) published the first unifying definition and grading system for PPAP. This study sought to validate recent consensus criteria, using a cohort of patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) in a high-volume pancreaticobiliary specialty unit. METHODS: All consecutive patients undergoing PD at a tertiary referral centre between January 2016 and December 2021 were retrospectively reviewed...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Psychosocial stressors related to the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic increased alcohol consumption. The effect on patients with alcohol-related liver diseases remains unclear. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Hospitalizations at a tertiary care center due to alcohol-related liver disease from March 1 through August 31 in 2019 (pre-pandemic cohort) and 2020 (pandemic cohort) were reviewed retrospectively. Differences in patient demographics, disease features, and outcomes were estimated in patients with alcoholic hepatitis utilizing T-tests, Mann-Whitney tests, Chi-square and Fisher Exact Tests and Anova models and logistic regression models in patients with alcoholic cirrhosis...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Plantaginis Semen-Coptidis Rhizoma Compound(CQC) was first recorded in Shengji Zonglu. Clinical and experimental studies have reported that both of Plantaginis Semen and Coptidis Rhizoma exerted the effects of lowering blood glocose and lipid. However, the potential mechanism of CQC on type 2 diabetes (T2DM) remain unclear. AIM OF THE STUDY: The main objective of our investigation was to explore the mechanisms of CQC on T2DM based on network pharmacology and experimental research...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Pien Tze Huang is a classic traditional Chinese medicinal product, used for inflammatory diseases as stated in China Pharmacopoeia. In particular, it is effective in treating liver diseases and pro-inflammatory conditions. Acetaminophen (APAP) is a widely used analgesic drug, but its over-dose is associated with acute liver failure where the clinical approved antidote treatment is limited. Inflammation has been considered as one of the therapeutic targets against APAP-induced liver injury...

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) and portopulmonary hypertension (POPH) can be limitations towards listing for liver transplantation (LT). Our study evaluates the correlation of right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) and mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) on transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) compared to mPAP on right heart catheterization (RHC). METHODS: We performed a retrospective review of 723 patients who underwent LT evaluation at our institution between 2012 and 2020...

Cellular senescence is a cellular state with a broad spectrum of age-related physiological conditions that can be affected by various infectious diseases and treatments. Therapy of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection with nucleos(t)ide analogs (NAs) is well established and benefits many HBV-infected patients, but requires long-term, perhaps lifelong, medication. In addition to the effects of HBV infection, the effects of NAs administration on hepatocellular senescence are still unclear. This study investigated how HBV infection and NAs treatment influence cellular senescence in human hepatocytes and humanized-liver chimeric mice chronically infected with live HBV...

Data on the potential benefits and risks of induction therapy in pediatric liver transplantation (LT) are limited. This was a retrospective cohort study of 2,748 pediatric LT recipients at 26 children's hospitals between 1/1/2006-5/31/2017 using data from the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) linked to the United Network for Organ Sharing database. Induction regimen was obtained from PHIS day-by-day pharmacy resource utilization. Cox proportional hazards evaluated the association of induction regimen (none/corticosteroid-only, non-depleting, depleting) on patient and graft survival...

The rapid developments in nanotechnology have brought increased attention to the safety of Quantum Dots (QDs). Exploring their mechanisms of toxicity and characterizing their toxic effects in different cell lines will help us better understand and apply QDs appropriately. This study aims to elucidate the importance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-induced autophagy for CdTe QDs toxicity, that is, the importance of the nanoparticles in mediating cellular uptake and consequent intracellular stress effects inside the cell...

BACKGROUND: The monocarboxylate transporter 1 (MCT1) is a member of the MCT family and is implicated in the transport of lactate and a few other monocarboxylates across the cell membrane. How hepatic MCT1 regulates the metabolic functions of the body is currently unknown. METHODS: The functions of hepatic MCT1 on metabolism were analyzed using a mouse model with liver-specific deletion of Slc16a1 that encodes MCT1. Obesity and hepatosteatosis of the mice were induced by high fat diet (HFD)...

Although gastrointestinal (GI) cancers pose a great challenge to public health, data are scant for understanding the burden of GI cancers in China. We aimed to provide an updated estimate of the burden of major GI cancers in China over three decades. According to the GLOBOCAN 2020 database, 1,922,362 GI cancer cases were newly diagnosed and 1,497,388 deaths occurred in China in 2020, with the highest incidence in colorectal cancer (555,480 new cases; 23.90/100,000 age-standardized incidence rate [ASIR]) and the highest mortality in liver cancer (391,150 deaths; 17...