Unilateral condylar hyperplasia (UCH) of the mandible is a disorder affecting the condyle size, resulting in facial asymmetry. This study was a retrospective review of 27 patients with UCH who ...underwent condylectomy between 2000 and 2017 at Yonsei University Dental Hospital. Patient demographic characteristics were summarized. UCH was divided into three subtypes: hemimandibular elongation (HE, n=15), hemimandibular hyperplasia (HH, n=4), and osteochondroma (OC, n=8). Of the 27 patients, only one with the HE type and five (18.5%) with the OC type complained of joint pain. Bone scans of all patients showed higher uptake on the UCH side. Lip and maxillary canting was prominent in the HH and HE types. Five patients (18.5%) underwent condylectomy alone, 13 (48.1%) underwent condylectomy with orthodontic treatment, and nine (33.3%) underwent adjunctive jaw surgery with orthodontic treatment. The treatment modalities varied according to the subtype. In all OC type patients, removal of the hyperplastic condyle treated the facial asymmetry. Additional post-surgical orthodontic treatment was necessary in only three cases (37.5%). All HH type patients required mandibuloplasty. All patients showed a stable occlusal outcome without relapse and an improvement in subjective symptoms, despite a decrease in mouth opening of 2.2mm. These findings might be useful in treatment planning for UCH patients.
Summary
Background
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease caused by complex interactions of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. For this reason, new approaches are required to clarify ...the pathogenesis of asthma by systemic review.
Objective
We applied a 1H‐NMR metabolomics approach to investigate the altered metabolic pattern in sera from patients with asthma and sought to identify the mechanism underlying asthma and potential biomarkers.
Method
A global profile of sera from patients with asthma (n = 39) and controls (n = 26) was generated using 1H‐NMR spectroscopy coupled with multivariate statistical analysis. Endogenous metabolites in serum were rapidly measured using the target‐profiling procedure.
Results
Multivariate statistical analysis showed a clear distinction between patients with asthma and healthy subjects. Sera of asthma patients were characterized by increased levels of methionine, glutamine, and histidine and by decreased levels of formate, methanol, acetate, choline, O‐phosphocholine, arginine, and glucose. The metabolites detected in the sera of patients with asthma are involved in hypermethylation, response to hypoxia, and immune reaction. Furthermore, the levels of serum metabolites from patients with asthma correlated with asthma severity; in particular, lipid metabolism was altered in patients with lower forced expiratory volume in 1 s percentage (FEV1%) predicted values. In addition, potential biomarkers showed strong predictive power in ROC analysis, and the presence of asthma in external validation models was predicted with high accuracy (90.9% for asthma and 100% for control subjects).
Conclusion & Clinical Relevance
These data showed that 1H‐NMR‐based metabolite profiling of serum may be useful for the effective diagnosis of asthma and a further understanding of its pathogenesis.
Skutterudites CoSb3 with multiple cofillers Ba, La, and Yb were synthesized and very high thermoelectric figure of merit ZT = 1.7 at 850 K was realized. X-ray diffraction of the densified ...multiple-filled bulk samples reveals all samples are phase pure. High-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analysis confirm that multiple guest fillers occupy the nanoscale-cages in the skutterudites. The fillers are further shown to be uniformly distributed and the Co−Sb skutterudite framework is virtually unperturbed from atomic scale to a few micrometers. Our results firmly show that high power factors can be realized by adjusting the total filling fraction of fillers with different charge states to reach the optimum carrier density, at the same time, lattice thermal conductivity can also be significantly reduced, to values near the glass limit of these materials, through combining filler species of different rattling frequencies to achieve broad-frequency phonon scattering. Therefore, partially filled skutterudites with multiple fillers of different chemical nature render unique structural characteristics for optimizing electrical and thermal transports in a relatively independent way, leading to continually enhanced ZT values from single- to double-, and finally to multiple-filled skutterudites. The idea of combining multiple fillers with different charge states and rattling frequencies for performance optimization is also expected to be valid for other caged TE compounds.
Background
In order to increase eradication rates, vonoprazan, a novel potassium‐competitive acid blocker, has been used in Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy.
Aim
To summarise the results of ...the efficacy of vonoprazan‐based triple therapy, helping clinicians to better understand the benefit of vonoprazan in the treatment of H. pylori infection.
Methods
We conducted a systematic literature search on MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library using the primary keywords “vonoprazan,” “takecab”, “TAK‐438,” “potassium,” “competitive,” “potassium‐competitive,” “Helicobacter,” and “pylori.” Studies were included if they evaluated the eradication rate between the vonoprazan‐based and proton pump inhibitor (PPI)‐based triple therapies.
Results
Ten studies and 10 644 patients were evaluated. The crude H. pylori eradication rate determined by intention‐to‐treat analysis was 87.9% and 72.8% in the vonoprazan‐based triple therapy and PPI‐based triple therapy respectively. The eradication rate of the vonoprazan‐based triple therapy was superior to that of the PPI‐based triple therapy (pooled risk ratio RR 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.19 1.15‐1.24) In addition, there was no significant difference in dropout rate due to adverse event between the regimens (pooled RR of the vonoprazan‐based triple therapy 95% CI=0.69 0.23‐2.03). The incidence of any adverse events also did not differ between the regimens (pooled RR 95% CI=1.02 0.78‐1.34).
Conclusions
The vonoprazan‐based triple therapy showed superior efficacy in terms of H. pylori eradication as compared to the PPI‐based triple therapy. In addition, the vonoprazan‐based triple therapy showed comparable tolerability and incidence of adverse events.
Induction of tumor cell death is the therapeutic goal for most anticancer drugs. Yet, a mode of drug-induced cell death, known as immunogenic cell death (ICD), can propagate antitumoral immunity to ...augment therapeutic efficacy. Currently, the molecular hallmark of ICD features the release of damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) by dying cancer cells. Here, we show that gemcitabine, a standard chemotherapy for various solid tumors, triggers hallmark immunostimualtory DAMP release (e.g., calreticulin, HSP70, and HMGB1); however, is unable to induce ICD. Mechanistic studies reveal gemcitabine concurrently triggers prostaglandin E
release as an inhibitory DAMP to counterpoise the adjuvanticity of immunostimulatory DAMPs. Pharmacological blockade of prostaglandin E
biosythesis favors CD103
dendritic cell activation that primes a Tc1-polarized CD8
T cell response to bolster tumor rejection. Herein, we postulate that an intricate balance between immunostimulatory and inhibitory DAMPs could determine the outcome of drug-induced ICD and pose COX-2/prostaglandin E
blockade as a strategy to harness ICD.
Much progress in our understanding of RNA metabolism has been made since the first RNA nucleoside modification was identified in 1957. Many of these modifications are found in noncoding RNAs but ...recent interest has focused on coding RNAs. Here, we summarize current knowledge of cellular consequences of RNA modifications, with a special emphasis on neuropsychiatric disorders. We present evidence for the existence of an “RNA code,” similar to the histone code, that fine‐tunes gene expression in the nervous system by using combinations of different RNA modifications. Unlike the relatively stable genetic code, this combinatorial RNA epigenetic code, or epitranscriptome, may be dynamically reprogrammed as a cause or consequence of psychiatric disorders. We discuss potential mechanisms linking disregulation of the epitranscriptome with brain disorders and identify potential new avenues of research.
The role of RNA modifications in brain and behavior.
Abstract Circadian (24-h) rhythms influence virtually every aspect of mammalian physiology. The main rhythm generation center is located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus, and ...work over the past several years has revealed that rhythmic gene transcription and post-translational processes are central to clock timing. In addition, rhythmic translation control has also been implicated in clock timing; however the precise cell signaling pathways that drive this process are not well known. Here we report that a key translation activation cascade, the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, is under control of the circadian clock in the SCN. Using phosphorylated S6 ribosomal protein (pS6) as a marker of mTOR activity, we show that the mTOR cascade exhibits maximal activity during the subjective day, and minimal activity during the late subjective night. Importantly, expression of S6 was not altered as a function of circadian time. Rhythmic S6 phosphorylation was detected throughout the dorsoventral axis of the SCN, thus suggesting that rhythmic mTOR activity was not restricted to a subset of SCN neurons. Rather, rhythmic pS6 expression appeared to parallel the expression pattern of the clock gene period1 ( per1 ). Using a transgenic per1 reporter gene mouse strain, we found a statistically significant cellular level correlation between pS6 and per1 gene expression over the circadian cycle. Further, photic stimulation triggered a coordinate upregulation of per1 and mTOR activation in a subset of SCN cells. Interestingly, this cellular level correlation between mTOR activity and per1 expression appears to be specific, since a similar expression profile for pS6 and per2 or c-FOS was not detected. Finally, we show that mTOR activity is downstream of the ERK/MAPK signal transduction pathway. Together these data reveal that mTOR pathway activity is under the control of the SCN clock, and suggests that mTOR signaling may contribute to distinct aspects of the molecular clock timing process.
We present microlensing events in the 2015 Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) data and our procedure for identifying these events. In particular, candidates were detected with a novel ..."completed-event" microlensing event-finder algorithm. The algorithm works by making linear fits to a grid of point-lens microlensing models. This approach is rendered computationally efficient by restricting u0 to just two values (0 and 1), which we show is quite adequate. The implementation presented here is specifically tailored to the commission-year character of the 2015 data, but the algorithm is quite general and has already been applied to a completely different (non-KMTNet) data set. We outline expected improvements for 2016 and future KMTNet data. The light curves of the 660 "clear microlensing" and 182 "possible microlensing" events that were found in 2015 are presented along with our policy for their public release.
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