Abeta(1-40) promotes RPE gene expression changes in pathways associated with immune response, inflammation, and cytokine and interferon signaling pathways. Results may relate to in vivo mechanisms associated with the pathogenesis of AMD.

The ear is emblematic in the biofabrication of tissues and organs. Current regenerative medicine strategies, with matrix from donor tissues or 3D-printed, didn't reach any application for reconstruction, because critically missing a vascular tree for perfusion and transplantation. We previously described the production of vascularized and cell-compatible scaffolds, from porcine ear grafts. In this study, we ---- applied findings directly to human auricles harvested from postmortem donors, providing a perfusable matrix that retains the ear's original complexity and hosts new viable cells after seeding. This approach unlocks the ability to achieve an auricular tissue engineering approach, associated with possible clinical translation.

The present study identified significant care gaps in the treatment of patients admitted with AECOPD and on their discharge.

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Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects more than 10% of population around the world and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. In most cases, this disease is developed silently, and it can progress to the end stage renal failure, therefore, early diagnosis becomes critical for initiating effective interventions. Routine diagnosis of CKD requires both blood tests and urinalyses in a clinical laboratory, which are time-consuming with low sensitivity and specificity. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is an emerging method for rapidly assessing kidney function or injury. This study was designed to compare the differences between the SERS properties of serum and urine for easy-and-simple detection of CKD. There were 126 CKD patients (stage 2-5) and 97 healthy individuals enrolled in this study. SERS spectra of both serum and urine samples were acquired by a Raman spectrometer (785 nm excitation). The correlation of chemical parameters of kidney function with the spectra was examined using principal component analysis (PCA) combined with linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and partial least squares (PLS) analysis. CKD was discriminated from non-CKD controls by PCA-LDA with a sensitivity of 74.6% and a specificity of 93.8% by serum spectra, and 78.0% and 86.0 % by urine spectra, respectively. The integration area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.937 ± 0.015 (p < 0.0001) for the serum and 0.886 ± 0.025 (p < 0.0001) for the urine. The different stages of CKD were separated with the accuracy of 78.0% and 75.4% by serum and urine spectra, respectively. PLS prediction (R2) of serum spectra was 0.8540 for the serum urea (p < 0.001), 0.8536 for the serum creatinine (p < 0.001), and 0.7500 for the eGFR (p < 0.001), whereas the prediction (R2) of urine spectra was 0.7335 for the urine urea (p < 0.001), 0.7901 for the urine creatinine (p < 0.001), 0.4644 for the eGFR (p < 0.001) and 0.6579 for the urine microalbumin (p < 0.001). In conclusion, the accuracy of SERS evaluation of serum and urine samples compared to clinical biochemical variables of CKD diagnosis in this limited number of patients is similar, suggesting that SERS may be used as a rapid and easy-to-use method for early screening of CKD. This finding requires further evaluation in a large cohort study.