Background: For patients with heart failure (HF), the effect of angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitors (ARNIs, sacubitril/valsartan) on cardiac remodeling has been found to be superior to angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEI). However, little data have described the impact of early-initiation ARNI in patients with acute anterior ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI).Methods: In this prospective, randomized, double-blind, parallel-group trial, we enrolled 131 anterior STEMI patients who were treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) between February 2019 and December 2019. All patients received standard STEMI management and were divided into 2 groups (ARNI/enalapril). Primary efficacy outcomes were the between-group difference in change (from baseline to 4-, 12-, and 24-week) in N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) concentration, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), and left ventricular end-systolic volumes and end-diastolic volumes (LVESV and LVEDV). Secondary outcomes were determined by a composite of death, reinfarction, outpatient HF or HF hospitalization, malignant arrhythmia, and stroke. Safety outcomes included worsening renal function, hypotension, hyperkalemia, angioedema and cough.Results: We found that NT-proBNP concentration decreased more in the ARNI group than in the enalapril group [4 weeks: ratio of ARNI vs.

Dirac–Weyl semimetal is a novel type of topological phase that features the coexistence of Dirac and Weyl points in momentum space. In this study, a photonic Dirac–Weyl semimetal is proposed by introducing screw rotation symmetries into a spatial inversion symmetry-lacking system. A realistic metacrystal structure is designed for experimental consideration. The screw rotation symmetries are crucial for the existence of Dirac points, whose Z2 topology is revealed by the (010) surface states. Meanwhile, two pairs of ideal Weyl points at the same frequency are protected by D2d point group symmetries. The Dirac points and Weyl points reside in a clean frequency interval. The proposed photonic Dirac–Weyl semimetal provides a versatile platform for exploring the interaction between Dirac and Weyl semimetals and exploiting possible photonic topological devices.

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Background The Zig-zag eel (Mastacembelus armatus) is an economically important species in southern China. Its natural resources have declined year by year due to overfishing. Understanding its genetic diversity and population structure is very important for resource conservations.Objective We aimed to develop highly polymorphic microsatellites and further use them to complete the genetic diversity and population structure analysis of M. armatus in southern China.Method A total of 188 individuals of M. armatus were collected from 7 locations in different river systems in south China and further used to performed genetic diversity and population structure analysis based on polymorphic microsatellites.Resuls Here, we first successfully developed 28 polymorphic microsatellite markers for zig-zag eels and ten of them were used to examine the genetic diversity and differentiation of 7 populations collected from the major river systems of south China. In total, 224 alleles were found with the 10 microsatellite loci in 7 populations, ranging from 4.6 (NDJ) to 11.1 (XJ), with an average of 8.871 alleles. The average observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.550 (NDJ) to 0.964 (YJ) and from 0.537 (NDJ) to 0.775 (TJ), respectively. The average polymorphism-information content ranged from 0.472 (NDJ) to 0.757 (TJ). Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium test results revealed the loci showed differing deviation in different populations. In total, low level of genetic diversity was only found in HJ and NDJ populations. Besides, evidence of recent bottleneck was found in the HJ populations. Analysis of molecular variation showed that the percent variation within individuals (75.00%) was higher than that among populations (25%). In addition, population structure and the pairwise FST revealed that there was low differentiation among XJ, TJ and YJ populations.Conclusions These data provide important genetic resources for understanding the population differentiation and facilitating genetic conservation and utilization of this species.

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