Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder, significantly affecting individuals’ well-being and imposing a substantial societal health burden.Its diagnosis primarily relies on subjective assessments of clinical symptomatology. However, this approach is prone to misdiagnosis due to symptom overlap with other severe mental disorders. Meanwhile, there is high heterogeneity of response to antipsychotic drugs among patients. These clinical issues lead to delayed or inappropriate treatment for schizophrenia. Consequently, reliable and objective biomarkers that can guide clinicians towards precise diagnoses and treatment is urgently needed. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are bilayer membr......2023-11-23

The introduction of antibiotics into clinical use was arguably the greatest medical breakthrough of the 20th century. In addition to treating infectious diseases, antibiotics made many modern medical procedures possible, including surgery and organ transplantation. However, misuse of these valuable compounds has resulted in the rapid rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) with some infections now effectively untreatable.Most antibiotics used in the clinic originate from natural product scaffolds that were discovered by screening soil dwelling bacteria. However, to date, traditional screening sources seem overmined because they tend to yield previously known compounds. Because the drug ......2023-11-17

Fertility and reproductive lifespan in humans decrease dramatically with age. Prospective female parents of advanced age may experience increased risk of infertility, spontaneous miscarriages, perinatal mortality and congenital anomaly. Although assisted reproductive technologies can compensate for human suboptimal reproductive outcome to some extent, the success rate of assisted reproductive technology cycles declines with advanced age as well. This tendency is mainly associated with age-related deterioration of ovarian reserve and oocyte quality, along with a higher aneuploidy rate.On October 16, 2023,Bo Xiong, College of Animal Science and Technology, Nanjing Agricultural University......2023-11-17

Acute lung injury (ALI) and its more severe form, the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), are life threatening, inflammatory disease syndromes of the lung in which its function is critically compromised. ALI is characterized by an acute onset of respiratory distress, edema formation and severe hypoxemia associated with high mortality despite improved treatment regimen, and is normally caused by direct or indirect injury to the lung (i.e., infections, trauma, pneumonia, hemorrhagic shock, among others).Once the lung is injured, there is significant upregulation of proinflammatory pathways, with marked recruitment of neutrophils, and significant secretion of proinflammatory cytok......2023-11-13

Atherosclerosis is characterized by lipid accumulation, inflammatory response, cell death and fibrosis in the arterial wall, which is the pathological basis for ischemic coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. Major risk factors for atherosclerosis include high plasma levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and low plasma concentrations of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. Intervention studies with statins have shown to reduce plasma LDL cholesterol concentrations and subsequently the risk of developing CHD. However, not all the aggressive statin therapy could decrease the risk of developing CHD. Therefore, additional therapeutic interventions beyond statins are ......2023-11-06

The liver is a complex, functionally heterogeneous organ, which performs hundreds of functions including detoxification, nutrient metabolism, and secretion of serum proteins. Though the liver has an excellent ability to alleviate the effects of ongoing damage and regenerate, the healing mechanism is impaired during chronic injuries. Mainly, the prolonged activation of otherwise quiescent, retinoid-storing hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) during chronic liver diseases (CLDs) causes an excessive deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) components in the liver. This dynamic condition is called hepatic fibrosis. If unchecked, liver fibrosis can lead to portal hypertension, cirrhosis, hepatoce......2023-11-02