albumin (albumin, Qiombiotec)

Interpretable Small-Sample Hyperspectral Phenotyping of Wheat Protein Fractions via Order-Optimized Derivative Preprocessing and TabPFN.

Li Zihao Z, Chen Zhaoyang Z, Wu Yuxing Y, Fang Meng M et al.

Rapid phenotyping of water- and salt-soluble wheat protein fractions can support grain quality evaluation and breeding. Whole-wheat flour from water-nitrogen and water-fertilizer trials was used to predict measured albumin and globulin contents and their derived sum, termed the metabolic-protein sum (albumin + globulin). After systematically comparing various preprocessing, wavelength selection, and regression approaches, a framework combining order-optimized derivative preprocessing (ODP), a hybrid feature-selection approach based on minimum redundancy maximum relevance (MRMR) and recursive feature elimination (RFE) and a tabular prior-data fitted network (TabPFN) regressor provided consistently strong test-set performance. The optimal derivative orders were 1.0 for albumin and the metabolic-protein sum and 0.8 for globulin. The ODP-MRMR-RFE-TabPFN framework retained 147, 46, and 70 wavelengths for albumin, globulin, and the metabolic-protein sum, yielding test set coefficient of determination (R2) values of 0.847, 0.693, and 0.850; root mean square error (RMSE) values of 3.073, 0.951, and 3.368 mg g-1; and residual prediction deviation (RPD) values of 2.554, 1.804, and 2.586, respectively. Leave-one-cultivar-out validation revealed substantial variation in predictive performance across held-out cultivars, with R2 and RPD ranging from 0.282 to 0.736 and from 1.180 to 1.945, respectively, for albumin, and from 0.416 to 0.750 and from 1.308 to 2.001, respectively, for globulin. Thus, although albumin achieved quantitative-level performance under the random train-test split, this performance was not consistently maintained for unseen cultivars, whereas globulin was generally more suitable for screening. SHapley additive explanations (SHAP) and partial dependence plots (PDPs) revealed that visible wavelengths contributed strongly to all models, with near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths supplying complementary information for globulin and the metabolic-protein sum. Overall, this framework offers rapid, interpretable flour-based estimation of metabolically active wheat protein fractions.

Focused Ultrasound as a Plasma Protein Binding-targeted Strategy to Enhance Brain Uptake of Donepezil.

Lee Songmin S, Kim Kyeonghwan K, Kim Hyungmin H, Oh Min-Seok MS et al.

Donepezil, a reversible acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, is widely used for the symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although higherdose donepezil has been shown to provide additional clinical benefit, dose escalation is often limited by cholinergic adverse effects. Given that approximately 96% of circulating donepezil is bound to plasma proteins, especially albumin, we hypothesized that increasing its unbound fraction from albumin may improve brain delivery without increasing the administered dose. To achieve this goal, herein we examined whether the donepezil-albumin complex can be dissociated by low-intensity focused ultrasound (FUS) in vitro. Then brain uptake of donepezil was evaluated in mice receiving intravenous donepezil followed by targeted brain FUS stimulation. As a result, FUS significantly increased unbound fraction of donepezil at the targeted region in vitro, resulting in a 41.1% increase of donepezil diffusion into dialysis cassettes compared with non-sonicated controls. In mice receiving intravenous donepezil, targeted brain FUS stimulation increased brain donepezil concentrations by 52.7% at 15-min post-administration time. These findings suggest that low-intensity FUS enhances brain uptake of donepezil, potentially through modulation of donepezil-albumin binding, and support further investigation of plasma protein binding-targeted brain drug delivery.

Rethinking albumin after paracentesis: It's not just about the volume.

Houston Kevin K, Arab Juan Pablo JP

Lactate-albumin ratio as an early predictor of mortality in critically ill children: A prospective cohort study.

C Hari Prasath HP, Kumar P Anil PA

Early risk stratification in critically ill children relies on severity scores such as PRISM-III and PELOD-2, requiring multiple variables. The lactate-albumin ratio (LAR), a two-parameter marker, shows prognostic value in adult and paediatric critical illness. This study evaluated serial LAR for predicting PICU mortality and compared its performance at admission against PRISM-III and PELOD-2. This prospective cohort study enrolled 335 of 563 screened children aged 1 month to less than 13 years admitted to a tertiary-care PICU in South India over 12 months. Serum lactate and albumin were measured at 0, 12, 24, and 48 h. Discriminatory performance was assessed using ROC curve analysis with DeLong's test. Firth-penalized multivariable logistic regression identified independent predictors. Of 335 children, 42 (12.5%) were non-survivors. LAR at admission discriminated mortality with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.859 (95% CI 0.806-0.907), exceeding PRISM-III (AUC 0.751) and PELOD-2 (AUC 0.759) at the same timepoint (p < 0.05 for both). LAR remained independently associated with mortality after adjustment for PRISM-III, sepsis, and vasoactive support (adjusted odds ratio 3.77, 95% CI 2.22-6.40, p < 0.001), and outperformed lactate and albumin. LAR remained persistently elevated in non-survivors through 48 h.Conclusions: LAR at admission discriminated PICU mortality better than PRISM-III and PELOD-2 and remained an independent predictor after adjustment. Serial LAR changes may be a useful adjunct in predicting prognosis, though their clinical utility requires further prospective study. Derived from two routine investigations, LAR may serve as a practical addition to severity scoring, pending external validation. What is Known • Mortality risk in critically ill children is estimated with multivariable severity scores such as PRISM-III and PELOD-2. • Lactate and albumin refl ect tissue perfusion and systemic infl ammation, and their ratio has been associated with mortality in critical illness. What is New • We hypothesised that the lactate-albumin ratio, from two routine blood tests, may predict PICU mortality at least as well as multivariable severity scores. • We also hypothesised that serial measurement over the fi rst 48 hours may add prognostic information beyond the admission value.