Browsing by Author "Zhang, J."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Glycan Biomarkers for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Its Remission Status in Han Chinese Patients.
    (2016-06) Sebastian, A.; Alzain, M. A.; Asweto, Collins O.; Song, H.; Cui, L.; Yu, X.; Ge, S.; Dong, H.; Rao, P.; Wang, H.; Fang, H.; Gao, Q.; Zhang, J.; He, D.; Guo, X.; Song, M.; Wang, Y.; Wang, W.
    Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a systemic, chronic, and progressive inflammatory autoimmune disease, affects up to 1.0% of the world population doubling mortality rate of patients and is a major global health burden. Worrisomely, we lack robust diagnostics of RA and its remission status. Research with the next-generation biomarker technology platforms such as glycomics offers new promises in this context. We report here a clinical case–control study comprising 128 patients suffering from chronic RA (80.22% in remission, 19.78% active clinically) and 195 gender- and age-matched controls, with a view to the putative glycan biomarkers of RA as well as its activity or remission status in Han Chinese RA patients. Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography–ultra-performance liquid chromatography (HILIC-UPLC) was used for the analysis of IgG glycans. The regression model identified the glycans that predict RA status, while a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis validated the sensitivity and prediction power. Among the total 24 glycan peaks (GP1–GP24), ROC analysis showed only GP1 prediction to be highly sensitive with an area under the curve (AUC) = 0.881. Even though GP21 and GP22 could predict active status among the RA cases (p < 0.05), they had lower sensitivity of prediction with an AUC = 0.658. Taken together, these observations suggest that GP1 might have potential as a putative biomarker for RA in the Han Chinese population, while the change in IgG glycosylation shows association with the RA active and remission states. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first glycomics study with respect to disease activity and remission states in RA.
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    Telomere Length and Accelerated Biological Aging in the China Suboptimal Health Cohort: A Case-Control Study
    (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc, 2017-06) Alzain, M. A.; Asweto, Collins O.; Zhang, J.; Fang, H. H.; Zhao, Z.; Guo, X.; Song, M.; Zhou, Y.; Chang, N.; Wang, Y.; Wang, W.
    Suboptimal health status (SHS) has been linked to cardiovascular risk factors, psychosocial stress, and unhealthy lifestyle. These factors also contribute to the shortening of telomere length (TL). A case–control study was conducted to examine the association between subjective health measures of SHS from the behavior perspective and also objective measures of TL at molecular level. SHS (cases = 294) was matched by age, sex, and body mass index with ideal health (controls = 294) using a propensity score matching method. Suboptimal health status questionnaire-25 (SHSQ-25) was used in the community-based health survey. A quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to measure relative telomere length (RTL). Shorter RTL was found among the SHS group compared to the ideal health group ( p < 0.05). SHS was almost four times likely to be in the first quartile (odds ratio [OR] = 3.81; 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.21–6.56), almost thrice in second quartile (OR = 2.84; 95% CI 1.65–4.90), and almost twice likely to be in the third quartile (OR = 1.71; 95% CI 1.00– 2.94) compared to the fourth quartile (the longest) of RTL after adjusting for socioeconomic, dietary intake, anthropometric, blood pressure, and biochemistry variables ( p < 0.05). Notably, SHS score was negatively correlated with RTL (r=-0.218, p < 0.05). Our study confirms an association between SHS and short RTL. Combination of subjective (SHS) and objective (RTL) measures is a novel tool for health aging investigation. Therefore, SHSQ-25 could be used as a screening tool for measuring biological aging in low-income countries at community level where the expensive technique for RTL measurement is not applicable.
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    Theoretical Insight into the Structure, Energetic Property and Thermal Stability of C6N6H12 Cages
    (2016-11) Zhang, J.; Chen, G.; Gong, X.
    Recent theoretical studies have identified carbon-nitrogen cages are potentially stable high energy density materials. Two such C6N6H12 cages were proposed and investigated using the density functional theory comparison with two similar common cage compounds hexaazaisowurtzitane and cubane. The structure and energetic property were researched. Stability is approached in two ways: (1) stability of one isomer versus another based on the relative energy, (2) thermal stability determined by the bond breaking energies. Taking into consideration of the stability and detonation performance, two C6N6H12 cages may be candidate as potential high energy density compounds.