Haihong Chen

The objective of this review was to clarify what health literacy represents. A systematic review with qualitative syntheses was performed (CRD42017065149). Studies concerning health literacy in all settings were included. Studies before 15 March 2017 were identified from PubMed, Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycARTICLES and the Cochrane Library. The included literature either had defined the concept of health literacy or made a detailed explanation of health literacy. A total of 34 original studies met the inclusion criteria, including 13 involved in previous systematic reviews and 21 new studies. Health literacy was commonly conceptualised as a set of knowledge, a set of skills or a hierarchy of functions (functional-interactive-critical). The construct of health literacy covers three broad elements: (1) knowledge of health, healthcare and health systems; (2) processing and using information in various formats in relation to health and healthcare; and (3) ability to maintain health through self-management and working in partnerships with health providers. Health literacy is defined as the ability of an individual to obtain and translate knowledge and information in order to maintain and improve health in a way that is appropriate to the individual and system contexts. This definition highlights the diversity of needs from different individuals and the importance of interactions between individual consumers, healthcare providers and healthcare systems.

Dietary polyphenols are the most abundant antioxidants in daily diet and widely distributed in plants and plant-based foods, including vegetables, fruits, cereals, nuts, and beverages (e.g., tea, coffee, red wine). Over the past decades, there has been rising scientific interest in their diverse benefits to human health, since dietary polyphenols display various bioactivities, such as antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory activity, anti-cancer, anti-microbial activity, neuro-protective activity, among others. Various studies have demonstrated that diet with polyphenols is strongly related to decrease the risk of chronic diseases. In this review, firstly, we systematically summarize classification and sources of dietary polyphenols, and focus on the current evidences defining their function and mechanism on improving chronic diseases, including diabetes, obesity, hypertension, hyperuricemia. Then, future directions of dietary polyphenols are discussed. Noteworthy, despite the physiological effects of dietary polyphenols have been widely convinced in vitro and in vivo, human trials show inconsistent evidence with their beneficial effects in chronic diseases administration, so as to their unclear molecular mechanism. More clinical studies are needed to provide clear evidence on dietary polyphenols against chronic diseases. In general, this paper provides comprehensive review of the sources and compositions of dietary polyphenols from plant materials, and presents an overview of the evidence on dietary polyphenols against chronic diseases, which may offer some constructive inspirations for further research on dietary polyphenols and industrial application in the food and medicine industry.

Autophagy has been recognized as an important element of tumor cell migration, invasion, and chemo-resistance, and our previous results showed that Beclin-1-mediated autophagy contributed to osteosarcoma chemoresistance. However, the regulating mechanism of autophagy is still unclear. In this study, our aim was to clarify microRNA (miRNA)-related mechanisms underlying Beclin-1-mediated autophagy followed by chemotherapy in osteosarcoma. First, miRNA screening using qRT-PCR identified that miR-30a was significantly reduced in Dox-resistant osteosarcoma cells. Second, the autophagy activity in Dox-resistant increased while miR-30a expression reduced after chemotherapy agents as indicated by the enhanced expression of Beclin-1, the increased conversion of microtubule-associated protein LC3-I to LC3-II. Furthermore, overexpression of miR-30a significantly promoted chemotherapy-induced apoptosis and reduced autophagy activity responding to chemotherapy. Moreover, rapamycin, an autophagy promoter was able to partly reverse the effect of miR-30a and Luciferase reporter assay identified that miR-30a directly binds to the 3'-UTR of Beclin-1 gene, which further confirmed that miR-30a reduced chemoresistance via suppressing Beclin-1-mediated autophagy. Collectively these results indicate miR-30a and its downstream target gene Beclin-1 can be used in treatment of osteosarcoma chemo-resistance in the future.