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ObjectiveThis study is aimed at examining the potential roles of circulating memory T follicular helper (Tfh) cells in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).MethodsThe numbers of different subsets of circulating memory Tfh cells in 25 patients with relapsed MS before and after treatment as well as 14 healthy controls (HC) were examined by flow cytometry. The levels of plasma IL-21 in all patients and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) IL-21 in some MS patients and controls with non-inflammatory neuronal diseases (NND) were measured by ELISA.ResultsIn comparison with that in the HC, the numbers of circulating CD3+CD4+CXCR5+CD45RA-, ICOS+, CCR7+ and CCR7+ICOS+ memory Tfh cells and the levels of plasma IL-21 significantly increased in MS patients, but significantly decreased in the patients with complete remission (CR). The levels of CSF IL-21 were significantly higher in the MS patients than that in the NND patients. The numbers of CCR7+ICOS+ memory Tfh cells were positively correlated with the EDSS scores, the levels of plasma and CSF IL-21, IgG, MBP-Ab or MOG-Ab.ConclusionsOur findings indicated that circulating memory Tfh cells, especially CCR7+ICOS+ memory Tfh cells, may be associated with the relapse of MS and may serve as a new therapeutic target.

Carbon dots (CDs) have great application potential due to superior chemical and optical properties. In this work, a class of biomass-based carbon dots (BD-CDs) with multifunctionalities were synthesized by solvothermal treatment of the leaves of Cinnamomum plants. The BD-CDs can respond to Al 3+ and H 2 O by distinctive emission wavelength at 470 and 670 nm under a single excitation. The emission at 470 nm is significantly enhanced by Al 3+ , and the fluorescence at 670 nm is quenched in the presence of H 2 O. A smartphone-based portable detection platform was developed for online analysis of Al 3+ and H 2 O content. The BD-CDs based fluorescence sensing system and the detection platform showed excellent performance in the analysis of tap water and alcoholic drink samples, demonstrating great potential for application in food safety and environmental monitoring.

Rapid state control of quantum systems is significant in reducing the influence of relaxation or decoherence caused by the environment and enhancing the capability in dealing with uncertainties in the model and control process. Bang-bang Lyapunov control can speed up the control process, but cannot guarantee convergence to a target state. This paper proposes two classes of new Lyapunov control methods that can achieve rapidly convergent control for quantum states. One class is switching Lyapunov control where the control law is designed by switching between bang-bang Lyapunov control and standard Lyapunov control. The other class is approximate bang-bang Lyapunov control where we propose two special control functions which are continuously differentiable and yet have a bang-bang type property. Related stability results are given and a construction method for the degrees of freedom in the Lyapunov function is presented to guarantee rapid convergence to a target eigenstate being isolated in the invariant set. Several numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed methods can achieve improved performance for rapid state control of quantum systems.