Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering - Volume 26, issue s1
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Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering is to promote the welfare of humans and to help them keep healthy. This international journal is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes original research papers, review articles and brief notes on materials and engineering for biological and medical systems.
Articles in this peer-reviewed journal cover a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to: Engineering as applied to improving diagnosis, therapy, and prevention of disease and injury, and better substitutes for damaged or disabled human organs; Studies of biomaterial interactions with the human body, bio-compatibility, interfacial and interaction problems; Biomechanical behavior under biological and/or medical conditions; Mechanical and biological properties of membrane biomaterials; Cellular and tissue engineering, physiological, biophysical, biochemical bioengineering aspects; Implant failure fields and degradation of implants. Biomimetics engineering and materials including system analysis as supporter for aged people and as rehabilitation; Bioengineering and materials technology as applied to the decontamination against environmental problems; Biosensors, bioreactors, bioprocess instrumentation and control system; Application to food engineering; Standardization problems on biomaterials and related products; Assessment of reliability and safety of biomedical materials and man-machine systems; and Product liability of biomaterials and related products.
Abstract: As the worldwide elderly population has grown, the incidence and prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has steadily increased. The differential lifelong exposure of populations to dietary fatty acids has raised concerns about the potential links between cognitive impairments and nutrition. However, few studies have addressed the levels of free fatty acids (FFAs) in AD patient serum. In this study, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was used to determine the levels of 15 serum FFAs in 31 AD patients and 33 healthy controls. The optimized methodology entailed the formation of methyl esters using 10% v/v H2 SO4 /CH3OH at 62°C for 2…hours. The linear range was 0.55–300 μ g/mL, the range of recovery was 85.1–104.3%, and the detection limit was 0.03–0.08 μ g/mL. Several FFAs in the AD patient significantly decreased when compared to the control, including three saturated fatty acids (C14:0, C16:0, and C18:0) and six unsaturated fatty acids (C16:1, C18:1, C18:2, γ -C18:3, C20:2, and C22:6). The serum level of C18:3 was significantly higher in the AD patients. The FFA profiles of the AD patients differed significantly from those of controls. The method effectively determined the FFA levels and could facilitate future studies regarding the relationship between AD and the metabolism of FFAs.
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Abstract: Injury to the nervous system can lead to irreversible problems as nervous tissues have limited regenerative capability. Therefore it is imperative to find an objective, reliable, cheap, and easy-to-apply method that separates nervous fibers from muscles and blood vessels. The aim of this study is to determine structural differences that can aid in easy and reliable identification of nervous fibers. We analyzed light reflectance from these tissues from 230 nm to 1000 nm and found that in the range of 400 nm-600 nm nervous fibers have higher reflectance in comparison to others. Therefore, we generated distinct features in this range…and utilized support vector machine to automatically classify samples. Classification performance demonstrated that light reflectance is a good candidate feature that can help to classify nervous tissue.
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Keywords: Nervous tissue, light reflectance, surgery, support vector machines
Abstract: In 1996 Nowak and his colleagues proposed a differential equation virus infection model, which has been widely applied in the study for the dynamics of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Biological dynamics may be described more practically by discrete events rather than continuous ones. Using discrete systems to describe biological dynamics should be reasonable. Based on one revised Nowak et al’s virus infection model, this study introduces a discrete virus infection model (DVIM). Two equilibriums of this model, E 1 and…E 2 , represents infection free and infection persistent, respectively. Similar to the case of the basic virus infection model, this study deduces a basic virus reproductive number R0 independing on the number of total cells of an infected target organ. A proposed theorem proves that if the basic virus reproductive number R 0 < 1 then the virus free equilibrium E 1 is locally stable. The DVIM is more reasonable than an abstract discrete susceptible-infected-recovered model (SIRS) whose basic virus reproductive number R 0 is relevant to the number of total cells of the infected target organ. As an application, this study models the clinic HBV DNA data of a patient who was accepted via anti-HBV infection therapy with drug lamivudine. The results show that the numerical simulation is good in agreement with the clinic data.
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Abstract: One medical challenge in studying the amyloid-β (Aβ ) peptide mechanism for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is exploring the law of beta toxic oligomers’ diffusion in human brains in vivo . One beneficial means of solving this problem is brain network analysis based on graph theory. In this study, the characteristics of Aβ functional brain networks of Healthy Control (HC), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and AD groups were compared by applying graph theoretical analyses to Carbon 11-labeled Pittsburgh compound B positron emission tomography (11C PiB-PET) data. 120 groups of PiB-PET images from the ADNI database were analyzed. The results…showed that the small-world property of MCI and AD were lost as compared to HC. Furthermore, the local clustering of networks was higher in both MCI and AD as compared to HC, whereas the path length was similar among the three groups. The results also showed that there could be four potential Aβ toxic oligomer seeds: Frontal_Sup_Medial_L, Parietal_Inf_L, Frontal_Med_Orb_R, and Parietal_Inf_R. These four seeds are corresponding to Regions of Interests referred by physicians to clinically diagnose AD.
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Abstract: A surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based biosensor was developed for specific detection of nine common respiratory virus, including influenza A and influenza B, H1N1, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), parainfluenza virus 1-3 (PIV1, 2, 3), adenovirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS). The SPR biosensor was developed by immobilizing nine respiratory virus-specific oligonucleotides in an SPR chip. To increase the biosensor sensitivity, biotin was used to label the PCR primer and further amplify the signal by introducing streptavidin after hybridization. Throat swab specimens representing nine common respiratory viruses were tested by the innovative SPR-based biosensor to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity and…reproducibility of this method. Results suggest that this biosensor has the potential to simultaneously identify common respiratory viruses.
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Keywords: SPR, respiratory virus, high throughput, label-free, gene chip
Abstract: The development of carcinoma has been found to be associated with epigenetic modifications. The aim of this study was to estimate the methylation levels of FHIT and BRCA1 promoters using the bisulphite sequencing method (BSP) and high-resolution melting curve analysis (HRM) in the serum of patients with ductal breast carcinoma as a biomarker for the possible application of early diagnosis of breast cancer. The results showed that the methylation levels of both BRCA1 and FHIT promoters were higher in the serum of the breast ductal carcinoma group (BDC group) than those of the breast fibroadenoma group…(BFA group), and the healthy individuals group (HI group). However, the methylation levels of the BRCA1 promoters were very low in all three groups compared to the levels of FHIT . The advanced quantitative detection of the samples with HRM showed that the FHIT promoter methylation level of the cfDNA in each serum was also very high in the BDC group compared to the HI group. The methylation level of FHIT was found to be significantly associated with breast cancer (p < 0.05). In conclusion, the methylation quantitative detection of FHIT promoter in serum may be useful for the early diagnosis of ductal breast carcinoma.
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Keywords: FHIT, BRCA1, methylation, breast cancer, cfDNA
Abstract: To discuss the differences in protein expression among tuberculosis pleural effusion (TBPE), malignant pleural effusion (MPE) and transudative pleural effusion (TSPE). We recruited 50 patients with pleural effusion, including 20 TBPEs, 17 MPEs and 13 TSPEs. Using the two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight-mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS), we acquired the peptide mass finger printings (PMFs) of featured proteins. Then, we identified characteristic proteins by searching in the protein databank of the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and assessed their diagnostic significance. We found five characteristic proteins: C1-inhibitor (C1-INH), transthyretin (TTR), human complement fragment 3b (C3b), human…ceruloplasmin (CP), and Z34c protein fragment Fc (Z34c-Fc). C1-INH shows a high expression in TBPE and a low expression in MPE while TTR and C3 show low expression in TBPE and high expressions in MPE. Z34c-Fc and CP have a higher expression in TBPE than in TSPE. No common characteristic protein was found between MPE and TSPE. Statistic analysis consisted of paired t-tests and the difference between them is significance ( P < 0.05 ). C1-inhibitor (C1-INH), transthyretin (TTR), human Complement fragment 3b (C3b), human Ceruloplasmin (CP) and Z34c protein fragment Fc (Z34c-Fc) may provide an additional perspective in the differential diagnosis of PE.
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Abstract: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are most adopted therapeutics marketed for major depression, and the efficacy of which are greatly reduced by their delayed onset of action and undesirable side effects. 5-HT1A receptor partial agonist and SERT inhibitor (SPARI) was proposed as a novel strategy to overcome the shortage of efficacy by a negative feedback control of 5-HT1A receptor. However, only one SPARI (vilazodone) has been approved for clinical use, and none is currently in clinical trial, which demonstrates a strong need for searching more novel SPARIs to facilitate antidepressants discovery. This work applied a combinatorial virtual screening method (CVSM)…by integrating multiple tools. Statistic analysis reveals that CVSM surpasses single virtual screening methods in terms of hit rates and enrichment factors. By adopting optimized CVSM, 91 promising dual target leads form 15 scaffolds were identified, and 40% of these scaffolds have already been reported to show antidepressant related therapeutic effects. In sum, CVSM is capable in identifying novel SPARIs from large chemical libraries with extremely low false hit rate.
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Keywords: Virtual screening, support vector machines, molecular docking, 5-HT1A receptor agonist, SERT inhibitor
Abstract: An increasing number of peroxynitrite-mediated fibrinogen nitrifications have been associated with thrombotic diseases. However, few reports related to priority nitrified fibrinogen injury sites exist. In this paper, an improved method, which simulated the environment in vivo, was used to inspect the structural changes of fibrinogen treated with peroxynitrite and LC-MS/MS in order to investigate the fibrinogen injury sites. The SDS-PAGE results indicated that γ subunits of Fg were vulnerable to oxidative/nitrative modifications induced by peroxynitrite. An in-depth analysis of fibrinogen γ chain (Fg I) nitration site identification and susceptibility to peroxynitrite-utilizing LC-MS/MS strategy was performed. Based on a…large dataset, the results indicated the priority injury sites during database searching were Y96, Y262, Y274, Y348, and Y363; these results could be applied to biomedical studies.
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Abstract: The aim of this study was to develop regression models for the quantification of parkinsonian bradykinesia. Forty patients with Parkinson’s disease participated in this study. Angular velocity was measured using gyro sensor during finger tapping, forearm-rotation, and toe tapping tasks and the severity of bradykinesia was rated by two independent neurologists. Various characteristic variables were derived from the sensor signal. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was performed to develop models predicting the bradykinesia score with the characteristic variables as input. To evaluate the ability of the regression models to discriminate different bradykinesia scores, ANOVA and post hoc test were performed.…Major determinants of the bradykinesia score differed among clinical tasks and between raters. The regression models were better than any single characteristic variable in terms of the ability to differentiate bradykinesia scores. Specifically, the regression models could differentiate all pairs of the bradykinesia scores (p<0.05) except for one pair in the finger tapping task and one pair in the toe tapping task. In contrast, any single characteristic variable was found not sensitive enough to discriminate many of the pairs, especially in case of the toe tapping task. The results suggest that the multiple regression models reflecting these differences would be beneficial for the quantification of bradykinesia because the cardinal features included in the determination of bradykinesia score differ among tasks as well as among the raters.
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