This is a comparison of potential allergenicity in a mouse model. Balb/C mice were sensitized by intraperitoneal injections (administered in three doses) of skimmed milk, casein, and whey protein ...from cow or yak milk. After 4 weeks, the mice were challenged and killed, sera were collected, and the spleens removed for analysis. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to determine the specific antibodies (IgG and IgE) and cytokine. The number of mice with diarrhea was higher in the cow milk protein-sensitized group than in the yak milk protein-sensitized group. Serum (IgG, IgE) antibodies and histamine levels were also higher in cow milk protein-sensitized mice. Cytokine production by spleen-derived T cells showed high levels of interleukin-4 and interleukin-5 production and low levels of interferon-γ in cow milk protein and yak milk protein-sensitized mice. Lymphocyte proliferation ratio induced by yak milk protein was lower than cow milk protein. All results indicated that Maiwa yak milk protein may less allergenic than cow milk protein in mice.
Abstract
Motivation
Predicting early in treatment whether a tumor is likely to respond to treatment is one of the most difficult yet important tasks in providing personalized cancer care. Most ...oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) patients receive standard cancer therapy. However, the treatment outcomes vary significantly and are difficult to predict. Multiple studies indicate that microRNAs (miRNAs) are promising cancer biomarkers for the prognosis of oropharyngeal cancer. The reliable and efficient use of miRNAs for patient stratification and treatment outcome prognosis is still a very challenging task, mainly due to the relatively high dimensionality of miRNAs compared to the small number of observation sets; the redundancy, irrelevancy and uncertainty in the large amount of miRNAs; and the imbalanced observation patient samples.
Results
In this study, a new machine learning-based prognosis model was proposed to stratify subsets of OPSCC patients with low and high risks for treatment failure. The model cascaded a two-stage prognostic biomarker selection method and an evidential K-nearest neighbors classifier to address the challenges and improve the accuracy of patient stratification. The model has been evaluated on miRNA expression profiling of 150 oropharyngeal tumors by use of overall survival and disease-specific survival as the end points of disease treatment outcomes, respectively. The proposed method showed superior performance compared to other advanced machine-learning methods in terms of common performance quantification metrics. The proposed prognosis model can be employed as a supporting tool to identify patients who are likely to fail standard therapy and potentially benefit from alternative targeted treatments.
Availability and implementation: Code is available in https://github.com/shenghh2015/mRMR-BFT-outcome-prediction.
Treatment options for hospitalized people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) with opportunistic infections and comorbidities are limited in China. Albuvirtide (ABT), a new peptide drug, is a long-acting ...HIV fusion inhibitor with limited drug-drug interactions and fast onset time. This single-center, retrospective cohort study investigated the effectiveness and safety of ABT plus dolutegravir (DTG) therapy in a real-world setting. We performed a chart review on the electronic patient records for hospitalized PLWHA using ABT plus DTG between April and December 2020. The clinical outcomes were retrospectively analyzed. Among 151 PLWHA (mean age 47.6 ± 15.9 years), 140 (93%) had at least 1 episode of bacterial and/or fungal infections and 64 (42%) had other comorbidities including syphilis, hepatitis B, and/or hypertension. ABT plus DTG was given to 87 treatment-naïve (TN) and 64 treatment-experienced (TE) PLWHA. Regardless of treatment history, mean HIV-1 RNA levels significantly decreased from 4.32 log10copies/mL to 2.24 log10copies/mL, 2.10 log10copies/mL and 1.89 log10copies/mL after 2, 4 and 8 weeks of treatment, respectively (P < .0001). Compared with baseline mean CD4 + T-cell counts of 122.72 cells/μL, it increased to 207.87 cells/μL (P = .0067) and 218.69 cells/μL (P = .0812) after 4 and 8 weeks of treatment. Except for limited laboratory abnormalities such as hyperuricemia, increased creatinine level, and hyperglycemia observed after treatment, no other clinical adverse events were considered related to ABT plus DTG. Data suggests that ABT plus DTG is safe and effective for critically-ill hospitalized PLWHA. In view of the rapid viral load suppression and restoration of CD4 + count within 8 weeks of treatment, its clinical application warrants further investigation.
Prospective randomized study from a single center OBJECTIVE.: The purpose of this study was to compare outcomes between a zero-profile (ZP) anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) construct to ...a traditional ACDF with anterior cervical plate (ACP) in the treatment of multilevel cervical spondylotic myelopathy.
Multilevel cervical spondylotic myelopathy can be treated by a variety of techniques, most commonly with corpectomy, ACDF, posterior cervical fusion, or a combination of the three. Examples in the literature of comparative effectiveness of different anterior approach types are few.
A total of 104 patients with multilevel cervical spondylotic myelopathy were randomized in equal proportion between treated with ACDF and ZP or ACDF with ACP. Clinical efficacy of two groups was evaluated preoperatively and at all postoperative time points through 2 years postoperative by the Japanese Orthopedic Association score and the neck disability index. Radiographic changes from baseline, including disc height and cervical lordosis, were evaluated at the same postoperative time points. Complications were assessed perioperatively and through 2 years postoperatively.
The ZP and ACP ACDF groups demonstrated substantially equivalent Japanese Orthopaedic Association, neck disability index, disc height, and lordosis improvements from baseline, which were maintained through 2 years postoperatively. Complications occurred in 4% of ZP and 17% of ACP patients (P = 0.052), and zero (0%) ZP and four (8%) ACP patients reported hoarseness or dysphagia.
ZP used in multilevel ACDF may obtain favorable clinical outcomes and a lower postoperative complication.
2.
Widefield microscopy of optically thick specimens typically features reduced contrast due to "spatial crosstalk", in which the signal at each point in the field of view is the result of a ...superposition from neighbouring points that are simultaneously illuminated. In 1955, Marvin Minsky proposed confocal microscopy as a solution to this problem. Today, laser scanning confocal fluorescence microscopy is broadly used due to its high depth resolution and sensitivity, but comes at the price of photobleaching, chemical, and photo-toxicity. Here, we present artificial confocal microscopy (ACM) to achieve confocal-level depth sectioning, sensitivity, and chemical specificity, on unlabeled specimens, nondestructively. We equipped a commercial laser scanning confocal instrument with a quantitative phase imaging module, which provides optical path-length maps of the specimen in the same field of view as the fluorescence channel. Using pairs of phase and fluorescence images, we trained a convolution neural network to translate the former into the latter. The training to infer a new tag is very practical as the input and ground truth data are intrinsically registered, and the data acquisition is automated. The ACM images present significantly stronger depth sectioning than the input (phase) images, enabling us to recover confocal-like tomographic volumes of microspheres, hippocampal neurons in culture, and 3D liver cancer spheroids. By training on nucleus-specific tags, ACM allows for segmenting individual nuclei within dense spheroids for both cell counting and volume measurements. In summary, ACM can provide quantitative, dynamic data, nondestructively from thick samples, while chemical specificity is recovered computationally.
Purpose
The study aimed to examine the outcomes of posterior approach transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) in the treatment of degenerative lumbar scoliosis (DLS) based on the concept of ...intervertebral correction.
Methods
A retrospective analysis was performed on 76 surgical patients (36 males and 40 females) who underwent posterior TLIF and internal fixation based on the concept of intervertebral correction in Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital from February 2014 to March 2021.The operation duration, intraoperative blood loss, incision length, and complications were recorded. Clinical efficacy was evaluated preoperatively and postoperative time points through the visual analog scale (VAS) and the Oswestry disability index (ODI). The changes in the coronal scoliosis curve (Cobb angle), coronal balance distance (CBD), the sagittal vertical axis (SVA), lumbar lordosis (LL), and pelvic tilt angle (PT) were assessed perioperatively at the last follow-up.
Results
All patients successfully underwent the operation. The average operation duration was 243.81 ± 35.35 (220 − 350) min; the average intraoperative blood loss was 836.27 ± 50.28 (700 − 2500) mL; the average incision length was 8.30 ± 2.33 (8 − 15) cm. The total complication rate was 18.42% (14/76). The VAS score of low back pain, lower extremity pain, and ODI score of patients at the last follow-up was significantly improved compared with those before the operation (
P
< 0.05). At the last follow-up, the Cobb Angle, CBD, SVA, and PT of patients were significantly lower than those before the operation (
P
< 0.05), and LL was higher than those before the operation (
P
< 0.05).
Conclusion
TLIF based on the concept of intervertebral correction for the treatment of DLS may provide favourable clinical outcomes.
Food safety and consumers’ health are paramount; therefore, it is essential to establish a novel method to determine hormone content in milk. Herein, a novel method was developed that can ...simultaneously determine 22 residual steroid hormones in milk. To obtain the maximum detection sensitivity, the preparation method of sample, mass spectrometer parameters and liquid chromatography conditions were optimised. The samples were concentrated using Oasis HLB solid‐phase extraction cartridge, followed by quantification via liquid chromatography (C18 column)–tandem mass spectrometer (LC‐MS). Determination of oestrogens and glucocorticoids was conducted in negative mode, whereas androgens and progesterone were in positive multiple reaction monitoring mode. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of the target compounds were 0.10–1.20 μg/kg and 0.33–3.96 μg/kg, respectively. The average extraction recoveries of 22 steroid hormones were generally high (82.6–95.3%). The proposed method can be an effective alternative to measure hormonal compounds in milk.
The authors retrospectively characterized the clinical outcomes of combining the Yeung endoscopic spine system (YESS) and transforaminal endoscopic surgical system (TESSYS) techniques during ...percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic discectomy (PTED) to treat multilevel lumbar disc herniation.PTED using both YESS and TESSYS was performed on 52 patients with multilevel lumbar disc herniations who had shown no apparent response to previous conservative treatments. Postsurgical follow-ups were conducted at weeks 1, 26, and 48. Patients' preoperative and postoperative performances were assessed by modified MacNab classification, Japanese Orthopedic Association (JOA) scores, Oswestry disability index (ODI), and visual analog scale (VAS), and compared with 34 and 45 patients who were treated only by YESS and TESSYS, respectively.The postsurgery surgeon-performed assessment showed satisfactory results in 98% of the YESS + TESSYS-treated cases. The average operative time was 116 ± 23 minutes, intraoperative bleeding was 19 ± 12 mL, and bed stay was 3 days. No complications occurred, including infection, nerve injury, or spinal canal hematoma. One week after surgery, the modified MacNab classifications of the patients were excellent in 45, good in 6, fair in 1, and poor in 0 (98% were excellent or good). JOA, ODI, and VAS scores for low back pain significantly improved relative to the preoperative assessment (P < .01) and had remained stable at 26 and 48 weeks.PTED that combined YESS and TESSYS techniques, depending on the predominant type of lumbar disc herniation at individual levels, is safe, minimally invasive, and effective.
Abstract
A new ethanol soluble all-furan based copolymer (PFF) was firstly designed and synthesized. PFF exhibits strong absorption in the range of 300-700 nm, and presents a highest occupied ...molecular orbital energy level of – 5.21 eV. The organic photovoltaics based on PFF: PCBO-12 display a low power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 0.49% when fabricated with ethanol. Interestingly, the PCE would be improved to 0.66% along with simultaneous enhancement of all photovoltaic parameters for devices by applying 1.5% p-anisaldehyde additive. The experiment analysis indicates the low PCE of the optimized device is ascribed to severe phase segregation and the large surface roughness of the active layer, which were verified by the TEM and AFM characterization.
Microscopy imaging techniques allow for the creation of detailed images of cells (or nuclei) and have been widely employed for cell studies in biological research and disease diagnosis in clinic ...practices. Microscopy image analysis (MIA), with tasks of cell detection, cell classification, and cell counting, etc., can assist with the quantitative analysis of cells and provide useful information for a cellular-level understanding of biological activities and pathology. Manual MIA is tedious, time-consuming, prone to subject errors, and are not feasible for the high-throughput cell analysis process. Thus, automatic MIA methods can facilitate all kinds of biological studies and clinical tasks. Conventional feature engineering-based methods use handcrafted features to address MIA problems, but their performances are generally limited since the handcrafted features can lack feature diversity as well as relevancy to specific tasks. In recent years, deep learning, especially convolutional neuronal networks (CNNs), have shown promising performances on MIA tasks, due to their strong ability to automatically learn task-specific features directly from images in an end-to-end learning manner. However, there still remains a large gap between deep learning algorithms shown to be successful on retrospective datasets and those translated to clinical and biological practice. The major challenges for the application of deep learning into practical MIA problems include: (1) MIA tasks themselves are challenging due to limited image quality, the ambiguous appearance of inter-class nuclei, occluded cells, low cell specificity, and imaging artifacts; (2) training a learning algorithm is very challenging due to the potential gradient vanishing issue and the limited availability of annotated images. In this thesis, we investigate and propose deep learning methods for three challenging MIA tasks: cell counting, multi-class nuclei segmentation, and 3D phase-to-fluorescent image translation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods by intensively evaluating them on practical MIA problems. The proposed methods show superior performances compared to competitive state-of-the-art methods. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed methods hold great promise to be applied in practical biomedical applications.
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