Displaying publications 1 - 20 of 74 in total

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  1. Eich A, Urban V, Jutel M, Vlcek J, Shim JJ, Trofimov VI, et al.
    COPD, 2017 Oct;14(5):476-483.
    PMID: 28753067 DOI: 10.1080/15412555.2017.1335697
    Interleukin (IL)-17A may be an underlying factor in the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Anti-IL-17 monoclonal antibodies have been used successfully in treating several immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. This phase 2, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel-group, proof-of-concept study is the first clinical study evaluating the efficacy and safety of the anti-IL-17A monoclonal antibody CNTO 6785 in patients with symptomatic moderate-to-severe COPD. Patients were treated with CNTO 6785 (n = 93) or placebo (n = 94) intravenously at Weeks 0, 2, and 4 (induction), then Weeks 8 and 12, and followed till Week 24. The primary efficacy endpoint was the change from baseline in pre-bronchodilator percent-predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 second at Week 16. Samples were collected at all visits for pharmacokinetic (PK) evaluation, and standard safety assessments were performed. The mean difference in the primary efficacy endpoint between CNTO 6785 and placebo was not statistically significant (-0.49%; p = 0.599). No other efficacy endpoints demonstrated clinically or statistically significant differences with CNTO 6785 compared with placebo. CNTO 6785 was generally well tolerated; no major safety signals were detected. The most frequently reported treatment-emergent adverse events were infections and infestations; however, no notable differences were observed between CNTO 6785 and placebo in terms of rates of infections. PK results suggested that the steady state of serum CNTO 6785 concentration was reached within 16 weeks. These results suggest that IL-17A is unlikely to be a dominant driver in the pathology of, or a viable therapeutic target for, COPD. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01966549; EudraCT Identifier: 2012-003607-36.
  2. Tumasyan A, Adam W, Andrejkovic JW, Bergauer T, Chatterjee S, Damanakis K, et al.
    Eur Phys J C Part Fields, 2023;83(10):933.
    PMID: 37855556 DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11952-7
    A search for decays to invisible particles of Higgs bosons produced in association with a top-antitop quark pair or a vector boson, which both decay to a fully hadronic final state, has been performed using proton-proton collision data collected at s=13TeV by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138fb-1. The 95% confidence level upper limit set on the branching fraction of the 125GeV Higgs boson to invisible particles, B(H→inv), is 0.54 (0.39 expected), assuming standard model production cross sections. The results of this analysis are combined with previous B(H→inv) searches carried out at s=7, 8, and 13TeV in complementary production modes. The combined upper limit at 95% confidence level on B(H→inv) is 0.15 (0.08 expected).
  3. Zahra MH, Salem TAR, El-Aarag B, Yosri N, El-Ghlban S, Zaki K, et al.
    Molecules, 2019 Jul 08;24(13).
    PMID: 31288458 DOI: 10.3390/molecules24132495
    BACKGROUND/AIM: Plants play an important role in anti-cancer drug discovery, therefore, the current study aimed to evaluate the biological activity of Alpinia zerumbet (A. zerumbet) flowers.

    METHODS: The phytochemical and biological criteria of A. zerumbet were in vitro investigated as well as in mouse xenograft model.

    RESULTS: A. zerumbet extracts, specially CH2Cl2 and MeOH extracts, exhibited the highest potent anti-tumor activity against Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (EAC) cells. The most active CH2Cl2 extract was subjected to bioassay-guided fractionation leading to isolatation of the naturally occurring 5,6-dehydrokawain (DK) which was characterized by IR, MS, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR. A. zerumbet extracts, specially MeOH and CH2Cl2 extracts, exhibited significant inhibitory activity towards tumor volume (TV). Furthermore, A. zerumbet extracts declined the high level of malonaldehyde (MDA) as well as elevated the levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) in liver tissue homogenate. Moreover, DK showed anti-proliferative action on different human cancer cell lines. The recorded IC50 values against breast carcinoma (MCF-7), liver carcinoma (Hep-G2) and larynx carcinoma cells (HEP-2) were 3.08, 6.8, and 8.7 µg/mL, respectively.

    CONCLUSION: Taken together, these findings open the door for further investigations in order to explore the potential medicinal properties of A. zerumbet.

  4. Liu K, Wang H, Xiao J, Taha Z
    Comput Intell Neurosci, 2015;2015:158478.
    PMID: 25866500 DOI: 10.1155/2015/158478
    The purpose of this research is to analyse the relationship between nonlinear dynamic character and individuals' standing balance by the largest Lyapunov exponent, which is regarded as a metric for assessing standing balance. According to previous study, the largest Lyapunov exponent from centre of pressure time series could not well quantify the human balance ability. In this research, two improvements were made. Firstly, an external stimulus was applied to feet in the form of continuous horizontal sinusoidal motion by a moving platform. Secondly, a multiaccelerometer subsystem was adopted. Twenty healthy volunteers participated in this experiment. A new metric, coordinated largest Lyapunov exponent was proposed, which reflected the relationship of body segments by integrating multidimensional largest Lyapunov exponent values. By using this metric in actual standing performance under sinusoidal stimulus, an obvious relationship between the new metric and the actual balance ability was found in the majority of the subjects. These results show that the sinusoidal stimulus can make human balance characteristics more obvious, which is beneficial to assess balance, and balance is determined by the ability of coordinating all body segments.
  5. Tumasyan A, Adam W, Bergauer T, Dragicevic M, Del Valle AE, Frühwirth R, et al.
    Phys Rev Lett, 2023 Aug 04;131(5):051901.
    PMID: 37595238 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.051901
    The structure of nucleons is multidimensional and depends on the transverse momenta, spatial geometry, and polarization of the constituent partons. Such a structure can be studied using high-energy photons produced in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions. The first measurement of the azimuthal angular correlations of exclusively produced events with two jets in photon-lead interactions at large momentum transfer is presented, a process that is considered to be sensitive to the underlying nuclear gluon polarization. This study uses a data sample of ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.02  TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.38  nb^{-1}, collected with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The measured second harmonic of the correlation between the sum and difference of the two jet transverse momentum vectors is found to be positive, and rising, as the dijet transverse momentum increases. A well-tuned model that has been successful at describing a wide range of proton scattering data from the HERA experiments fails to describe the observed correlations, suggesting the presence of gluon polarization effects.
  6. Tumasyan A, Adam W, Andrejkovic JW, Bergauer T, Chatterjee S, Damanakis K, et al.
    Eur Phys J C Part Fields, 2023;83(8):722.
    PMID: 37578844 DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11833-z
    The production of Z bosons associated with jets is measured in pp collisions at s=13TeV with data recorded with the CMS experiment at the LHC corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.3fb-1. The multiplicity of jets with transverse momentum pT>30GeV is measured for different regions of the Z boson's pT(Z), from lower than 10GeV to higher than 100GeV. The azimuthal correlation Δϕ between the Z boson and the leading jet, as well as the correlations between the two leading jets are measured in three regions of pT(Z). The measurements are compared with several predictions at leading and next-to-leading orders, interfaced with parton showers. Predictions based on transverse-momentum dependent parton distributions and corresponding parton showers give a good description of the measurement in the regions where multiple parton interactions and higher jet multiplicities are not important. The effects of multiple parton interactions are shown to be important to correctly describe the measured spectra in the low pT(Z) regions.
  7. Ma ZF, Yusof N, Hamid N, Lawenko RM, Mohammad WMZW, Liong MT, et al.
    Benef Microbes, 2019 Mar 13;10(2):111-120.
    PMID: 30525951 DOI: 10.3920/BM2018.0008
    Individuals in a community who developed irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) after major floods have significant mental health impairment. We aimed to determine if Bifidobacterium infantis M-63 was effective in improving symptoms, psychology and quality of life measures in flood-affected individuals with IBS and if the improvement was mediated by gut microbiota changes. Design was non-randomised, open-label, controlled before-and-after. Of 53 participants, 20 with IBS were given B. infantis M-63 (1×109 cfu/sachet/day) for three months and 33 were controls. IBS symptom severity scale, hospital anxiety and depression scale, SF-36 Questionnaire, hydrogen breath testing for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and stools for 16S rRNA metagenomic analysis were performed before and after intervention. 11 of 20 who were given probiotics (M-63) and 20 of 33 controls completed study as per-protocol. Mental well-being was improved with M-63 vs controls for full analysis (P=0.03) and per-protocol (P=0.01) populations. Within-group differences were observed for anxiety and bodily pain (both P=0.04) in the M-63 per-protocol population. Lower ratio of Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes was observed with M-63 vs controls (P=0.01) and the lower ratio was correlated with higher post-intervention mental score (P=0.04). B. infantis M-63 is probably effective in improving mental health of victims who developed IBS after floods and this is maybe due to restoration of microbial balance and the gut-brain axis. However, our conclusion must be interpreted within the context of limited sample size. The study was retrospectively registered on 12 October 2017 and the Trial Registration Number (TRN) was NCT03318614.
  8. Lau AS, Yanagisawa N, Hor YY, Lew LC, Ong JS, Chuah LO, et al.
    Benef Microbes, 2018 Jan 29;9(1):61-70.
    PMID: 29065707 DOI: 10.3920/BM2017.0063
    This 10-months randomised, double-blind, parallel and placebo-controlled study evaluated the effects of Bifidobacterium longum BB536 on diarrhoea and/or upper respiratory illnesses in 520 healthy Malaysian pre-school children aged 2-6 years old. The subjects randomly received a one-gram sachet containing either BB536 (5×109 cfu) or placebo daily. Data analysis was performed on 219 subjects who fully complied over 10-months (placebo n=110, BB536 n=109). While BB536 did not exert significant effects against diarrhoea in children, Poisson regression with generalised estimating equations model indicated significant intergroup difference in the mean number of times of respiratory illnesses over 10 months. The duration of sore throat was reduced by 46% (P=0.018), with marginal reduction for duration of fever (reduced by 27%, P=0.084), runny nose (reduced by 15%, P=0.087) and cough (reduced by 16%, P=0.087) as compared to the placebo. Principal coordinate analysis at genus level of the gut microbiota revealed significant differences between 0 and 10 months in the BB536 group (P<0.01) but not in placebo group (P>0.05). The abundance of the genus Faecalibacterium which is associated with anti-inflammatory and immuno-modulatory properties was significantly higher in the BB536 group (P<0.05) compared to the placebo group. Altogether, our present study illustrated the potential protective effects of BB536 against upper respiratory illnesses in pre-school Malaysian children, with gut microbiota modulating properties.
  9. Tumasyan A, Adam W, Andrejkovic JW, Bergauer T, Chatterjee S, Damanakis K, et al.
    Eur Phys J C Part Fields, 2023;83(7):587.
    PMID: 37440247 DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11630-8
    New sets of parameter tunes for two of the colour reconnection models, quantum chromodynamics-inspired and gluon-move, implemented in the pythia  8 event generator, are obtained based on the default CMS pythia  8 underlying-event tune, CP5. Measurements sensitive to the underlying event performed by the CMS experiment at centre-of-mass energies s=7 and 13TeV, and by the CDF experiment at 1.96TeV are used to constrain the parameters of colour reconnection models and multiple-parton interactions simultaneously. The new colour reconnection tunes are compared with various measurements at 1.96, 7, 8, and 13TeV including measurements of the underlying-event, strange-particle multiplicities, jet substructure observables, jet shapes, and colour flow in top quark pair (tt¯) events. The new tunes are also used to estimate the uncertainty related to colour reconnection modelling in the top quark mass measurement using the decay products of tt¯ events in the semileptonic channel at 13TeV.
  10. El-Seedi HR, Khalifa SAM, Taher EA, Farag MA, Saeed A, Gamal M, et al.
    Pharmacol Res, 2019 03;141:123-175.
    PMID: 30579976 DOI: 10.1016/j.phrs.2018.12.015
    Cardiac glycosides (CGs) are a class of naturally occurring steroid-like compounds, and members of this class have been in clinical use for more than 1500 years. They have been used in folk medicine as arrow poisons, abortifacients, heart tonics, emetics, and diuretics as well as in other applications. The major use of CGs today is based on their ability to inhibit the membrane-bound Na+/K+-ATPase enzyme, and they are regarded as an effective treatment for congestive heart failure (CHF), cardiac arrhythmia and atrial fibrillation. Furthermore, increasing evidence has indicated the potential cytotoxic effects of CGs against various types of cancer. In this review, we highlight some of the structural features of this class of natural products that are crucial for their efficacy, some methods of isolating these compounds from natural resources, and the structural elucidation tools that have been used. We also describe their physicochemical properties and several modern biotechnological approaches for preparing CGs that do not require plant sources.
  11. Tumasyan A, Adam W, Andrejkovic JW, Bergauer T, Chatterjee S, Dragicevic M, et al.
    Eur Phys J C Part Fields, 2021;81(11):970.
    PMID: 34793584 DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09721-5
    A combination of searches for top squark pair production using proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 Te at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb - 1 collected by the CMS experiment, is presented. Signatures with at least 2 jets and large missing transverse momentum are categorized into events with 0, 1, or 2 leptons. New results for regions of parameter space where the kinematical properties of top squark pair production and top quark pair production are very similar are presented. Depending on the model, the combined result excludes a top squark mass up to 1325 Ge for a massless neutralino, and a neutralino mass up to 700 Ge for a top squark mass of 1150 Ge . Top squarks with masses from 145 to 295 Ge , for neutralino masses from 0 to 100 Ge , with a mass difference between the top squark and the neutralino in a window of 30 Ge around the mass of the top quark, are excluded for the first time with CMS data. The results of theses searches are also interpreted in an alternative signal model of dark matter production via a spin-0 mediator in association with a top quark pair. Upper limits are set on the cross section for mediator particle masses of up to 420 Ge .
  12. Sirunyan AM, Tumasyan A, Adam W, Ambrogi F, Bergauer T, Dragicevic M, et al.
    Phys Rev Lett, 2021 Sep 03;127(10):102002.
    PMID: 34533355 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.102002
    The CMS experiment at the LHC has measured the differential cross sections of Z bosons decaying to pairs of leptons, as functions of transverse momentum and rapidity, in lead-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02  TeV. The measured Z boson elliptic azimuthal anisotropy coefficient is compatible with zero, showing that Z bosons do not experience significant final-state interactions in the medium produced in the collision. Yields of Z bosons are compared to Glauber model predictions and are found to deviate from these expectations in peripheral collisions, indicating the presence of initial collision geometry and centrality selection effects. The precision of the measurement allows, for the first time, for a data-driven determination of the nucleon-nucleon integrated luminosity as a function of lead-lead centrality, thereby eliminating the need for its estimation based on a Glauber model.
  13. Zheng Y, Wang Q, Zhuang W, Lu X, Miron A, Chai TT, et al.
    Molecules, 2016 Nov 02;21(11).
    PMID: 27827862
    Lotus is an edible and medicinal plant, and the extracts from its different parts exhibit various bioactivities. In the present study, the hot water-soluble polysaccharides from lotus seeds (LSPS) were evaluated for their cancer cell cytotoxicity, immunomodulatory and antitumor activities. LSPS showed significant inhibitory effects on the mouse gastric cancer MFC cells, human liver cancer HuH-7 cells and mouse hepatocarcinoma H22 cells. The animal studies showed that LSPS inhibited tumor growth in H22 tumor-bearing mice with the highest inhibition rate of 45.36%, which is comparable to that induced by cyclophosphamide (30 mg/kg) treatment (50.79%). The concentrations of white blood cells were significantly reduced in cyclophosphamide-treated groups (p < 0.01), while LSPS showed much fewer side effects according to the hematology analysis. LSPS improved the immune response in H22 tumor-bearing mice by enhancing the spleen and thymus indexes, and increasing the levels of serum cytokines including tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-2. Moreover, LSPS also showed in vivo antioxidant activity by increasing superoxide dismutase activity, thus reducing the malondialdehyde level in the liver tissue. These results suggested that LSPS can be used as an antitumor and immunomodulatory agent.
  14. Yan S, Su Y, Xiao J, Luo X, Ji Y, Ghazali KHB
    Sensors (Basel), 2023 Oct 24;23(21).
    PMID: 37960380 DOI: 10.3390/s23218680
    Indoor location-based services (LBS) have tremendous practical and social value in intelligent life due to the pervasiveness of smartphones. The magnetic field-based localization method has been an interesting research hotspot because of its temporal stability, ubiquitousness, infrastructure-free nature, and good compatibility with smartphones. However, utilizing discrete magnetic signals may result in ambiguous localization features caused by random noise and similar magnetic signals in complex symmetric and large-scale indoor environments. To address this issue, we propose a deep neural network-based fusion indoor localization system that integrates magnetic and pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR). In this system, we first propose a ResNet-GRU-LSTM neural network model to achieve magnetic localization more accurately. Afterward, we put forward a multifeatured-driven step length estimation. A hierarchy GRU (H-GRU) neural network model is proposed, and a multidimensional dataset using acceleration and a gyroscope is constructed to extract more valid characteristics. Finally, more reliable and accurate pedestrian localization can be achieved under the particle filter framework. Experiments were conducted at two trial sites with two pedestrians and four smartphones. Results demonstrate that the proposed system achieves better accuracy and robustness than other traditional localization algorithms. Moreover, the proposed system exhibits good generality and practicality in real-time localization with low cost and low computational complexity.
  15. Sirunyan AM, Tumasyan A, Adam W, Ambrogi F, Bergauer T, Dragicevic M, et al.
    Eur Phys J C Part Fields, 2021;81(4):312.
    PMID: 34727148 DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-08949-5
    This paper presents new sets of parameters ("tunes") for the underlying-event model of the H E R W I G 7 event generator. These parameters control the description of multiple-parton interactions (MPI) and colour reconnection in H E R W I G 7 , and are obtained from a fit to minimum-bias data collected by the CMS experiment at s = 0.9 , 7, and 13 Te . The tunes are based on the NNPDF 3.1 next-to-next-to-leading-order parton distribution function (PDF) set for the parton shower, and either a leading-order or next-to-next-to-leading-order PDF set for the simulation of MPI and the beam remnants. Predictions utilizing the tunes are produced for event shape observables in electron-positron collisions, and for minimum-bias, inclusive jet, top quark pair, and Z and W boson events in proton-proton collisions, and are compared with data. Each of the new tunes describes the data at a reasonable level, and the tunes using a leading-order PDF for the simulation of MPI provide the best description of the data.
  16. Zhao J, Xiao J, Lee ML, Ma Y
    Springerplus, 2016;5(1):1633.
    PMID: 27722051
    Slopes are subjected to stress redistributions during underground mining activities, and this may eventually cause deformation or landslide. This paper takes Madaling landslide in Guizhou Province, China as a case study to investigate the failure mechanism and its run-out behaviours by using discrete element method. Previous qualitative analysis indicated that the slope experienced four stages of failure mechanisms: (1) development of tension cracks, (2) development of stepped-like creep cracks, (3) development of potential rupture surfaces, and (4) occurrence of the landslide. PFC2D program was employed to model the pre-failure deformation characteristics in order to verify the failure mechanisms quantitatively. Subsequently, the run-out behaviours of the landslide were analyzed by PFC3D program. The results indicated that the movement could be summarized into four stages: acceleration stage, constant movement stage, rapid movement stage, and deceleration and deposition stage.
  17. Lim WH, Ng CH, Tan DJH, Xiao J, Fu CE, Ong C, et al.
    Transplantation, 2024 Feb 01;108(2):473-482.
    PMID: 37439778 DOI: 10.1097/TP.0000000000004718
    BACKGROUND: Liver transplantation (LT) offers patients with decompensated cirrhosis the best chance at long-term survival. With the rising prevalence of diabetes, further clarity is needed on the impact of receiving a liver allograft from a donor with diabetes on post-LT outcomes. This study aims to evaluate the impact of donor diabetes on clinical outcomes after LT.

    METHODS: This is a retrospective analysis of the United Network for Organ Sharing registry data of LT recipients from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2021. Outcomes analysis was performed using Cox proportional model for all-cause mortality and graft failure. Confounding was reduced by coarsened exact matching causal inference analysis.

    RESULTS: Of 66 960 donors identified, 7178 (10.7%) had diabetes. Trend analysis revealed a longitudinal increase in the prevalence of donor diabetes ( P  

  18. Sirunyan AM, Tumasyan A, Adam W, Ambrogi F, Bergauer T, Dragicevic M, et al.
    Phys Rev Lett, 2020 Nov 27;125(22):222001.
    PMID: 33315428 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.222001
    Ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions recreate in the laboratory the thermodynamical conditions prevailing in the early universe up to 10^{-6}  sec, thereby allowing the study of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) matter with deconfined partons. The top quark, the heaviest elementary particle known, is accessible in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN LHC, and constitutes a novel probe of the QGP. Here, we report the first evidence for the production of top quarks in nucleus-nucleus collisions, using lead-lead collision data at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV recorded by the CMS experiment. Two methods are used to measure the cross section for top quark pair production (σ_{tt[over ¯]}) via the selection of charged leptons (electrons or muons) and bottom quarks. One method relies on the leptonic information alone, and the second one exploits, in addition, the presence of bottom quarks. The measured cross sections, σ_{tt[over ¯]}=2.54_{-0.74}^{+0.84} and 2.03_{-0.64}^{+0.71}  μb, respectively, are compatible with expectations from scaled proton-proton data and QCD predictions.
  19. Aad G, Abbott B, Abeling K, Abicht NJ, Abidi SH, Aboulhorma A, et al.
    Phys Rev Lett, 2024 Jan 12;132(2):021803.
    PMID: 38277607 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.021803
    The first evidence for the Higgs boson decay to a Z boson and a photon is presented, with a statistical significance of 3.4 standard deviations. The result is derived from a combined analysis of the searches performed by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations with proton-proton collision datasets collected at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from 2015 to 2018. These correspond to integrated luminosities of around 140  fb^{-1} for each experiment, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The measured signal yield is 2.2±0.7 times the standard model prediction, and agrees with the theoretical expectation within 1.9 standard deviations.
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