Long non-coding RNA MALAT1 targeting STING transcription promotes bronchopulmonary dysplasia through regulation of CREB.

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a severe complication of preterm infants characterized by increased alveolarization and inflammation. Premature exposure to hyperoxia is believed to be a key contributor to the pathogenesis of BPD. No effective preventive or therapeutic agents have been created.

Prognostic Impact of Histologic Grade for Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma.

Background: While numerous factors affect prognosis in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), the comparative impact of histologic grade has not been well described. Moreover, indications for external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) remain imprecise. We evaluate clinicopathologic characteristics and outcomes for PTC stratified by grade.

Role of platelet biomarkers in inflammatory response.

Beyond hemostasis, thrombosis and wound healing, it is becoming increasingly clear that platelets play an integral role in inflammatory response and immune regulation. Platelets recognize pathogenic microorganisms and secrete various immunoregulatory cytokines and chemokines, thus facilitating a variety of immune effects and regulatory functions. In this review, we discuss recent advances in signaling of platelet activation-related biomarkers in inflammatory settings and application prospects to apply for disease diagnosis and treatment.

Fluctuation in residual strain and dissipated energy of saturated sandstone under tiered cyclic loading.

To study the influence of cyclic stress on the nonlinear behavior of saturated sandstone, the residual strain properties and energy dissipation characteristics of the sandstone under tiered cyclic loading were experimentally investigated. The axial/radial residual deformation and energy dissipation characteristics of sandstone at different cyclic stress stages were analyzed in detail. By combining the mathematical statistics, fluctuation coefficients of the residual strain and energy dissipation, and correlation coefficients of axial/radial residual strain and energy dissipation were defined to describe the process.

Pravastatin attenuates atherosclerosis after myocardial infarction by inhibiting inflammatory Ly6C monocytosis in apolipoprotein E knockout mice.

Objective: To evaluate the protective effect of pravastatin on atherosclerotic development and inflammatory monocyte subset in atherosclerotic apolipoprotein E (ApoE) mice after myocardial infarction (MI).

Methods: Male ApoE mice (8 weeks old) were fed a high-fat diet for 14 weeks throughout the experiment. A MI model was produced using 18-week-old ApoE mice.

Thymopentin improves the survival of septic mice by promoting the production of 15-deoxy-prostaglandin J2 and activating the PPARγ signaling pathway.

Sepsis, a systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) caused by infection, is a major public health concern with limited therapeutic options. Infection disturbs the homeostasis of host, resulting in excessive inflammation and immune suppression. This has prompted the clinical use of immunomodulators to balance host response as an alternative therapeutic strategy.

Protective Effects of Salvianolate on Myocardial Injury or Myocardial Infarction after Elective Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in NSTE-ACS Patients: A Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial.

Objective: To evaluate the protective effects of salvianolate on percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) related myocardial injury or myocardial infarction after elective PCI in non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS) patients.

Methods: A total of 149 patients with NSTE-ACS who underwent elective PCI were enrolled. The patients were randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio to the salvianolate group (74 cases) or the control group (75 cases).

Cost-effectiveness of fiberoptic laryngoscopy prior to total thyroidectomy for low-risk thyroid cancer patients.

Background: Flexible fiberoptic laryngoscopy is performed prior to thyroid surgery to evaluate the function of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. We assess the cost-effectiveness of preoperative laryngoscopy prior to total thyroidectomy for a low-risk thyroid cancer patient without dysphonia.

Methods: A decision tree analysis was performed from a third-party payer perspective.

Crowdfunding Campaigns and Thyroid Surgery: Who, What, Where, and How Much?

Background: Crowdfunding has become a unique response to the challenge of health care expenses, yet it has been rarely studied by the medical community. We looked to describe the scope of crowdfunding in thyroid surgery and analyze the factors that contribute toward a successful campaign.

Methods: In November 2018, active campaigns were retrieved from a popular crowdfunding Web site using search terms thyroidectomy and thyroid surgery and filtered to include only campaigns that originated in the United States.

SCM: Spatially Coherent Matching With Gaussian Field Learning for Nonrigid Point Set Registration.

While point set registration has been studied in many areas of computer vision for decades, registering points encountering different degradations remains a challenging problem. In this article, we introduce a robust point pattern matching method, termed spatially coherent matching (SCM). The SCM algorithm consists of recovering correspondences and learning nonrigid transformations between the given model and scene point sets while preserving the local neighborhood structure.

Myocardial damage associated with elective percutaneous coronary intervention in Chinese patients: a retrospective study.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) related myocardial damage (injury or myocardial infarction), investigate several cardiac biomarkers, explore possible risk factors and assess survival in patients undergoing elective PCI.

Methods: Patients >18 years of age who had undergone an elective PCI at Huashan hospital in Shanghai, China from October 2016 to June 2017 and had baseline and post-PCI results available for four cardiac biomarkers (cTnT, CK-MB mass, hs-CRP and NT-ProBNP) were eligible. Patients were separated into two groups according to whether or not they had PCI related myocardial damage.

Opposite Enantioselectivity of Mg(II) Versus Zn(II) in the Fluorescent Recognition of Amino Acids.

The addition of Mg is found to turn on the fluorescence response of a molecular probe, 3,3'-diformyl-1,1'-bi-2-naphthol, toward chiral amino acids with high enantioselectivity. It is further found that the enantioselective fluorescence responses of the molecular probe in the presence of Mg toward certain amino acids are the opposite of those in the presence of Zn, that is, using Mg with an l-amino acid generates much greater fluorescence enhancement than with the corresponding d-amino acid, but using Zn with the d-amino acid gives much greater fluorescence than with the l-enantiomer. Thus, simply changing the metal cation additive allows the chirality sense of the fluorescence-based molecular recognition to be easily regulated.

Incidence and Mortality Risk Spectrum Across Aggressive Variants of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma.

Importance: While well-differentiated papillary thyroid carcinoma (WDPTC) outcomes have been well characterized, the prognostic implications of more aggressive variants are far less defined. The rarity of these subtypes has led to their consolidation as intermediate risk for what are in fact likely heterogeneous diseases.

Objective: To analyze incidence, clinicopathologic characteristics, and outcomes for aggressive variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC).

Deep pancreas segmentation with uncertain regions of shadowed sets.

Pancreas segmentation is a challenging task in medical image analysis especially for the patients with pancreatic cancer. First, the images often have poor contrast and blurred boundaries. Second, there exist large variations in gray scale, texture, location, shape and size among pancreas images.

Physical Characterization of Inclusion Complexes of Triphenyl Phosphate and Cyclodextrins in Solution.

The goal of this work is to provide physical insights into the formation and stability of inclusion complexes (ICs) in aqueous solution between cyclodextrins (CDs) and a common flame retardant, triphenyl phosphate (TPP). Quantum chemistry calculations reveal the possible energetically favorable geometries of TPP in their 1:1 IC form with α-, β-, and γ-CDs as well as their associated complexation, conformational, and interaction energies. High-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem MS were used with electrospray ionization to study the soluble ICs formed between TPP and CDs.

Safety of central compartment neck dissection for transoral endoscopic thyroid surgery in papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Background: Remote access and endoscopic thyroid surgery has been gaining popularity because it allows patients to avoid a visible scar in the neck. There is limited data on transoral endoscopic thyroidectomy when it relates to patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma. We aim to evaluate the safety of ipsilateral central compartment dissection for patients who undergo transoral thyroidectomy (thyroidectomy vestibular approach-compartment lymph node dissection).

Compact silicon-based polarization-independent directional coupler using subwavelength gratings.

A compact and high extinction ratio polarization-independent directional coupler (PIDC) using silicon-based subwavelength gratings (SWGs) is proposed and analyzed in detail, where the SWG structures are located between the two input/output strip waveguides together with input/output SWG-based transitions. The introduced SWG-based structures can effectively enhance the coupling strength for the TE mode, while that for the TM mode is hardly affected. According to the coupled-mode theory, by carefully choosing the structural parameters, the coupling length for both polarizations can be identical; thus a PIDC is realized.

Salidroside prevents tumor necrosis factor-α-induced vascular inflammation by blocking mitogen-activated protein kinase and NF-κB signaling activation.

Vascular inflammation is a key factor in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Salidroside is an important active ingredient extracted from the root of the plant, which has been reported to have antioxidative, anti-cancer, neuroprotective and cardioprotective effects. However, the effects of salidroside on vascular inflammation have not been clarified.

Eco-efficient biphasic enzymatic hydrolysis for the green production of rare baohuoside I.

Baohuoside I, a rare secondary glycoside from Epimedii Folium, has anti-osteoporosis and other pharmacological effects. In addition, it exhibits improved bioactivities compared with its original glycoside icariin. Conventional methods for the production of baohuoside I, such as acid hydrolysis, exhibit very low efficiency with serious pollution and substantial byproducts.

Harnessing multiplex PCR assay targeting specific mitochondrial DNA elements for simultaneous identification of antelope species in .

A multiplex PCR assay was developed to simultaneously differentiate four antelope species and identify adulteration in . Four novel primer sets were designed with high inter-species specificity and intra-species stability. Limit of detection was estimated to be 10 ng of genomes.

Mortality Risk of Nonoperative Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma: A Corollary for Active Surveillance.

Active surveillance is established as an alternative to surgery for papillary thyroid microcarcinomas, but inclusion criteria and mortality risk for pursuing a nonsurgical approach have not been clearly defined. To gauge the feasibility of expanding active surveillance thresholds, we investigated the effects of increasing size and age on disease-specific survival (DSS) in a large nonoperative thyroid cancer cohort, compared against a matched group of surgical patients. Papillary thyroid carcinoma patients staged T1-4N0M0 were identified in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database between 1975 and 2015, stratified by nonsurgical and surgical management.

TFEB Mediates Immune Evasion and Resistance to mTOR Inhibition of Renal Cell Carcinoma via Induction of PD-L1.

Purpose: Despite the FDA approval of mTOR inhibitors (mTORi) for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), the benefits are relatively modest and the few responders usually develop resistance. We investigated whether the resistance to mTORi is due to upregulation of PD-L1 and the underlying molecular mechanism.

Experimental Design: The effects of transcription factor EB (TFEB) on RCC proliferation, apoptosis, and migration were evaluated.

Prevalence of Diabetes and Prediabetes in Adults from a Third-Tier City in Eastern China: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Introduction: The aims of this study were to investigate the prevalence of adult diabetes and prediabetes in Bengbu (eastern China) in 2017, and to identify measures that can be taken to reduce the prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes in this region.

Methods: A stratified cluster random sampling method was used in the study. Two sampling sites were randomly selected from each of the four districts of Bengbu City, and all permanent residents (resident for ≥ 5 years) at all eight sampling sites aged 18 years or above were cluster sampled, which led to the sampling of 3388 adults.

The impact of shift work on glycemic characteristics assessed by CGM and its association with metabolic indices in non-diabetic subjects.

Aim: To explore the glycemic characteristics of non-diabetic shift workers and associations with metabolic indices.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 450 non-diabetic males, including 238 shift workers, aged 23-58 years, were recruited after a screening oral glucose tolerance test. Blood samples and anthropometric data were collected.