Notes

It bushy nanoparticles: a good substance with regard to self-assembling processes.
019; CTLA-4 HR, 1.69; 95% CI, 1.04-2.73; P=0.033; CD8+ HR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.38-0.94; P=0.025] and overall survival (OS) (LAG-3 HR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.24-3.53; P=0.006; CTLA-4 HR, 1.47; 95% CI, 0.86-2.53; P=0.161; CD8+ HR, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.33-0.95; P=0.032). Subgroup analysis revealed that the LAG-3 CTLA-4 CD8+ group had the best RFS (P less then 0.001) and OS (P less then 0.001). Conclusions LAG-3 expression was correlated with CTLA-4 expression on TILs. SU11248 Positive LAG-3 expression was associated with poor prognoses in ESCC. A combination of LAG-3, CTLA-4 expression and CD8+ TILs density could further stratify patients into different subgroups with distinct prognoses. 2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.Background We aimed to assess the prognostic value of the skeletal muscle index (SMI) and monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (MLR) in lymph node-positive breast cancer patients after mastectomy. link2 Methods We enrolled female lymph node-positive breast cancer patients who had undergone mastectomy between January 2011 and December 2013 with lymph node metastasis. Skeletal muscle tissue was measured using computed tomography (CT), and the patients were grouped based on the receiver operating characteristic curves to obtain the cut-off point for SMI; similarly, the optimal cutoff point for the MLR was obtained. Survival analysis was chiefly performed to determine overall survival (OS) among the patients. Results The median age of the 97 included patients was 46 years (range, 27-73 years), whereas the median follow-up duration was 62.5 months. Of these patients, 71 exhibited low SMI and 66 exhibited high MLR. Kaplan-Meier curves indicated that low SMI (5-year OS, 97.2% vs. 84.6%; log-rank P=0.021) and low MLR (5-year OS, 98.5% vs. 83.9%; log-rank P=0.004) were associated with better OS. Moreover, patients with both high SMI and MLR (high SMLR) had significantly worse OS (5-year OS, 66.7% vs. 96.6%; log-rank P less then 0.001), relative to the low SMLR group. Multivariate analysis indicated that patients with low SMI had a lower overall dying risk, relative to those with high SMI [hazard ration (HR), 0.188; P=0.038], whereas patients with high MLR had a higher risk of death as compared to those with low MLR (HR, 7.152; P=0.021). Furthermore, SMLR was an independent prognostic factor of poor OS (HR, 13.272; P=0.001). Conclusions Low SMI and low MLR are both associated with better OS in lymph node-positive breast cancer patients after mastectomy. SMI combined with MLR (SMLR) may be powerful prognosis factor for OS among these patients. 2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.Background Liver resection is a surgical procedure associated with a high risk of hepatic failure that can be fatal. One of the key mechanisms involves ischemia-reperfusion damage. Building on the well-known positive effects of hydrogen at mitigating this damage, the goal of this work was to demonstrate the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic effects of inhaled hydrogen in domestic pigs during major liver resection. Methods The study used a total of 12 domestic pigs, 6 animals underwent resection with inhaled hydrogen during general anesthesia, and 6 animals underwent the same procedure using conventional, unsupplemented, general anesthesia. Intraoperative preparation of the left branch of the hepatic portal vein and the left hepatic artery was performed, and a tourniquet was applied. Warm ischemia was induced for 120 minutes and then followed by liver reperfusion for another 120 minutes. Samples from the ischemic and non-ischemic halves of the liver were then removed for histological and biochemical examinations. Results An evaluation of histological changes was based on a numerical expression of damage based on the Suzuki score. Liver samples in the group with inhaled hydrogen showed a statistically significant reduction in histological changes compared to the control group. Biochemical test scores showed no statistically significant difference in hepatic transaminases, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), lactate dehydrogenase (LD), and lactate. However, a surprising result was a statistically significant difference in gamma-glutamyl-transferase (GMT). Marker levels of oxidative damage varied noticeably in plasma samples. Conclusions In this experimental study, we showed that inhaled hydrogen during major liver resection unquestionably reduced the level of oxidative stress associated with ischemia-reperfusion damage. We confirmed this phenomenon both histologically and by direct measurement of oxidative stress in the organism. 2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.Background Parkinson's disease (PD) is an irreversible neurodegenerative disease. The diagnosis of PD based on neuroimaging is usually with low-level or deep learning features, which results in difficulties in achieving precision classification or interpreting the clinical significance. Herein, we aimed to extract high-order features by using radiomics approach and achieve acceptable diagnosis accuracy in PD. Methods In this retrospective multicohort study, we collected 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) images and clinical scale [the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and Hoehn & Yahr scale (H&Y)] from two cohorts. One cohort from Huashan Hospital had 91 normal controls (NC) and 91 PD patients (UPDRS 22.7±11.7, H&Y 1.8±0.8), and the other cohort from Wuxi 904 Hospital had 26 NC and 22 PD patients (UPDRS 20.9±11.6, H&Y 1.7±0.9). The Huashan cohort was used as the training and test sets by 5-fold cross-validation and the Wuxi cohort was used as another separate test set. After identifying regions of interests (ROIs) based on the atlas-based method, radiomic features were extracted and selected by using autocorrelation and fisher score algorithm. A support vector machine (SVM) was trained to classify PD and NC based on selected radiomic features. In the comparative experiment, we compared our method with the traditional voxel values method. To guarantee the robustness, above processes were repeated in 500 times. Results Twenty-six brain ROIs were identified. Six thousand one hundred and ten radiomic features were extracted in total. Among them 30 features were remained after feature selection. The accuracies of the proposed method achieved 90.97%±4.66% and 88.08%±5.27% in Huashan and Wuxi test sets, respectively. Conclusions This study showed that radiomic features and SVM could be used to distinguish between PD and NC based on 18F-FDG PET images. link3 2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.Background Gastric cancer is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Over one-half of patients have advanced disease at the time of presentation, leading to a significant burden on the healthcare system. Limited epidemiological data exists on national inpatient hospitalization trends. The aim of this study is to determine the inpatient burden of gastric cancer in the United States. Methods We analyzed the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database for all subjects with the diagnosis of malignant neoplasm of the stomach (ICD-9 code 151.x) as primary diagnosis during the period from 2001-2011. NIS is the largest all-payer inpatient care database in the U.S. Statistical significance of variation in the number of hospitalizations, patient demographics, and comorbidity measures was determined using Cochran-Armitage trend test. Results From 2001 to 2011, the number of hospitalizations with the diagnosis of malignant neoplasm of the stomach ranged between 22,430 and 25,371, however, the trend was not significant. Men were always more affected than women with no significant change in overall proportion (P less then 0.0001). Overall, in-hospital mortality decreased from 11.19% in 2001 to 6.47% in 2011 (P less then 0.0001). However, average cost of care per hospitalization increased from $21,710 in 2001 to $24,706 in 2011 (adjusted for inflation, P less then 0.0001). Conclusions The total number of hospitalizations remained relatively stable throughout the study period with higher proportion of men affected every year. Although in-hospital mortality in patients with the diagnosis of gastric cancer decreased over the study period, there was a significant rise in the cost of care. 2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.Background The effects of letrozole plus human menopausal gonadotropin (HMG) on ovarian stimulation (OS) of intrauterine insemination (IUI) cycles were examined. Methods In all, 1,005 IUI cycles were included in this study. Couples underwent natural cycle (NC) IUI (n=150) or IUI after OS with letrozole (n=207) or IUI after OS with letrozole + HMG (n=648). Results The clinical pregnancy rates were 9.0%, 13.0%, and 17.0%, and the live birth rates were 7.0%, 9.0%, and 14.0% in the NC, letrozole, and letrozole + HMG IUI groups, respectively. The twin pregnancy rate of the letrozole + HMG group (11.0%) was higher than that of the NC (7.0%) and letrozole groups (4.0%). To date, the only triplet pregnancies to occur were in the letrozole + HMG group. On the day of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), the number of follicles with an average follicle diameter greater than 18 mm in the letrozole + HMG group (1.21±0.56) and letrozole group (1.14±0.48) was greater than that in the NC group (0.85±0.36). The thickness of the endometrium in the letrozole + HMG group (8.8±2.1 mm) was significantly greater than that in the letrozole group (7.3±1.6 mm). Conclusions The letrozole + HMG protocol of OS in IUI can improve follicular development, increase the thickness of endometrium, significantly increase the live birth rate, but not significantly increase the multiple pregnancy rate. 2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.Background The prevalence and disease burden of bronchiectasis in comparison to those of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have not been well elucidated using a nationally representative database. Methods We compared respiratory symptoms, physical activity, quality of life, and socioeconomic status in subjects with bronchiectasis versus those with COPD or control subjects participating in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2009. Participants were classified as physician-diagnosed bronchiectasis, COPD, and control (those without COPD or bronchiectasis). Results The prevalence of bronchiectasis in subjects aged 40 years or older was 0.8%. Compared to COPD subjects, bronchiectasis subjects were more likely to be younger (mean 59.0 years, P less then 0.001), female (47.6%, P less then 0.001), and never-smoker (50.1%, P less then 0.001) and have had history of pulmonary tuberculosis (40.5%, P less then 0.001) and osteoporosis (19.1%, P=0.025). However, as in COPD subjects, bronchiectasis subjects had low family income (P less then 0.001) and the proportion of subjects working as manager/professional/office workers (6.4%, P less then 0.001) was smaller than that of control subjects. After adjusting for covariables, compared to control, bronchiectasis subjects but not COPD subjects were more likely to have respiratory symptoms [adjusted odds ratio (OR) =7.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.10-30.12], limitation in physical activity (adjusted OR =9.43, 95% CI 1.06-83.79), and low family income (adjusted OR =3.61, 95% CI 1.75-7.47). Conclusions The prevalence of bronchiectasis in subjects at least 40 years of age was 0.8% in Korea. Despite large number of young patients and low prevalence of smoking history, respiratory symptoms, limitation in physical activity, and low family income were significant burden in bronchiectasis subjects. 2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.
Read More: https://www.selleckchem.com/products/Sunitinib-Malate-(Sutent).html