Liver biopsy-the gold standard in assessing liver histology-is recommended before all antiviral treatment. However, this procedure may cause complications, is costly, and is limited by sampling ...errors. Hence, noninvasive tests have been proposed to assess the severity of hepatic fibrosis. We propose a novel noninvasive index for predicting liver fibrosis, named fibro-quotient (FibroQ), and compared the diagnostic accuracies of FibroQ, aspartate aminotransferase (AST)-to-platelet ratio index (APRI), and AST/alanine aminotransferase (ALT) ratio (AAR).
This retrospective cohort study included 140 consecutive patients with chronic viral hepatitis who had undergone percutaneous liver biopsy before treatment at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi from May 2005 through December 2007. The clinical data including sex, age, AST, ALT, platelet count, prothrombin time (PT) international normalized ratio (INR), and the Metavir fibrosis score (F0 to F4) of liver histology were recorded. APRI, AAR, and FibroQ were calculated. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to compare the accuracies of these three noninvasive tests in predicting significant fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis.
FibroQ performed better than APRI, but was equal to AAR, in the prediction of significant fibrosis area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC): 0.783 vs 0.631 (p = 0.02) and 0.783 vs 0.733 (p = 0.26), respectively and cirrhosis (AUC: 0.791 vs 0.634 (p = 0.03), and 0.791 vs 0.782 (p= 0.47), respectively). Using FibroQ below the lower cutoff value (0.6) and above the higher cutoff value (1.6), 108 of 140 (77.1%) patients could be identified correctly to have or not have significant fibrosis.
FibroQ, a novel noninvasive test, is an useful and easy tool to evaluate liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis and has better accuracy than APRI and is equal to AAR. Further prospective studies are warranted to validate its efficacy.
In this paper we use the commercial semiconductor device simulator, Sentaurus, to simulate the electrical characteristics of sub-30nm multiple-gate (MG) SOI MOSFETs. The gate configurations of the ...simulated MG SOI MOSFETs include: single-gate (SG), double-gate (DG), triple-gate (TG), and gate-all-around (GAA). We examine the effects of the dimensions of the gate length, fin height, fin width, and the transport models for each gate configuration. The simulation results indicate that as the gate length scales down to 15 nm below, only certain gate configurations with specific fin cross-section dimensions can meet the device requirements.
Doc number: 59 Abstract Background: Stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1) (CXC chemokine ligand-12)/CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) is involved in the carcinogenesis of human gastric cancer, where ...it stimulates angiogenesis and favors metastasis of tumor cells to distant organs. In addition, resistin is suggested to be an important link between obesity and the development of gastric cancer. Resistin has identified as an important player in inflammatory responses, and emerged as a mediator in inflammation-associated cancer. A limited number of studies have investigated the association of resistin and SDF-1 with gastric cancer. Herein, we investigated the molecular mechanisms by which resistin influences the expression of SDF-1 in gastric carcinoma cells. Results: Human gastric cancer cell lines were exposed to doses of resistin; SDF-1 expression and secretion levels were then determined. Real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blotting analyses were performed to clarify molecular changes. Inhibition of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) by a competitive antagonist inhibited resistin-induced SDF-1 expression. Pharmacological inhibitors and small interfering RNA (siRNA) demonstrated that activation of the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway is critical for resistin-induced SDF-1 expression mediated by TLR4. The promoter activity and transcription factor enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay revealed that resistin induced expression of SDF-1 mediated by NF-κB in gastric cancer cells. Inhibition of p38 MARK activation blocked the SDF-1-induced expression and the SDF-1 promoter activity in the cancer gastric cells. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assay revealed that inhibition of p38 MARK activation also blocked the resistin-increased NF-κB-DNA-binding activity. Conclusions: Resistin-induced SDF-1 upregulation by activation of TLR4, p38 MARK and NF-κB may explain a new role of resistin in the link of obesity and gastric cancer.
Previous reports have indicated that insulin resistance (IR) is associated with chronic hepatits C virus (HCV) infection. However, the correlations between IR, metabolic syndrome (MS), and serum HCV ...RNA levels are still controversial. The aim of this study was to determine the relationships between IR, MS, and HCV RNA in patients with chronic genotype 1 or 2 HCV infection.
One hundred and twenty subjects with chronic genotype 1 or 2 HCV infection with complete clinical data were prospectively enrolled. Baseline and laboratory data were collected and analyzed. IR was defined as a homeostatic model assessment- IR (HOMA-IR) score > 2.5.
Of the 120 patients, 47 (39.2%) had a HOMA-IR > 2.5, and 42 (35%) met the criteria for MS. IR was significantly associated with a high body mass index (p < 0.0001), high waist circumference (p < 0.0001) and high triglyceride level (p = 0.025). IR was an independent predictor of MS. However, in multivariate linear regression analysis, the serum HCV RNA level was not significantly different in chronic hepatitis C patients with or without IR (p = 0.761), and with or without MS (p = 0.292).
IR and MS are not uncommon in patients with chronic hepatitis C. The serum HCV RNA level is not associated with the presence of IR or MS in chronic hepatitis C patients with genotype 1 or 2 infection. The impact of hepatitis C virus on IR is not dose responsive.
A diagnosis of intestinal diverticulosis is difficult to make pre-operatively because the clinical symptoms are usually non-specific. We report the case of a 70-year-old man who had suffered from ...three episodes of intestinal obstruction in 1 year. He experienced dull pain and a sensation of fullness over the whole abdomen. The symptoms did not improve after conservative treatment. The presumptive diagnosis was intestinal obstruction, and an exploratory laparotomy found diverticulosis of the proximal jejunum, with an adhesion band formed from the base of one diverticulum. Strangulation of a segment of the jejunum resulted from the internal herniation caused by the band. The band was removed and the proximal jejunum segmentally resected. His postoperative course was uneventful.
碩士
國立臺北大學
統計學系
106
We are experiencing an explosive growth of information. When we hope to obtain some message from the web, we can either enter a keyword(s) search for the required information ...through search engines. By search engine optimization, banks can use search engine optimization to enable potential customers to search for priority information related to the bank. In this paper, we use Google search engine as an example to explore the heterogeneity in decision-making behaviors for banks using the Google search index (SVI) around the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Investors use the Google search engine to query the status of the bank with the name of banks as a keyword, and the query value is called the Google Search Index (SVI) as a variable of investor attention. Our final study points out that bank with more investor attention have more loans and higher leverage. In addition, after the financial crisis, the performance of these banks gets worse and their probability of default increases more.
碩士
國立臺北大學
統計學系
105
We are experiencing an explosive growth of information. When we hope to obtain some message from the web, we can either enter a keyword(s) search for the required information ...through search engines. By search engine optimization, banks can use search engine optimization to enable potential customers to search for priority information related to the bank. In this paper, we use Google search engine as an example to explore the heterogeneity in decision-making behaviors for banks using the Google search index (SVI) around the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Investors use the Google search engine to query the status of the bank with the name of banks as a keyword, and the query value is called the Google Search Index (SVI) as a variable of investor attention. Our final study points out that bank with more investor attention have more loans and higher leverage. In addition, after the financial crisis, the performance of these banks gets worse and their probability of default increases more.
Cancer stem cells (CSCs) exhibit specific characteristics including decontrolled self‐renewal, tumor‐initiating, promoting, and metastatic potential, abnormal stemness signaling, and chemotherapy ...resistance. Thus, targeting CSC is becoming an emerging cancer treatment. α‐Mangostin has been shown to have potent and multiple anticancer activities. Accordingly, we hypothesized that α‐mangostin may diminish the stemness and proliferation of CSC‐like cervical cancer cells. In our results, comparing to the parent cells, CSC‐like SiHa and HeLa cells highly expressed CSC marker Sox2, Oct4, Nanog, CK‐17, and CD49f. α‐Mangostin significantly reduced the cell viability, sphere‐forming ability, and expression of the CSC stemness makers of CSC‐like cervical cancer cells. Further investigation showed that α‐mangostin induced mitochondrial depolarization and mitochondrial apoptosis signaling, including upregulation of Bax, downregulation of Mcl‐1 and Bcl‐2, and activation of caspase‐9/3. Moreover, α‐mangostin synergically enhanced the cytotoxicity of cisplatin on CSC‐like SiHa cells by promoting mitochondrial apoptosis and inhibiting the expression of CSC markers. Consistent with in vitro findings, in vivo tumor growth assay revealed that α‐mangostin administration significantly inhibited the growth of inoculated CSC‐like SiHa cells and synergically enhanced the antitumor effect of cisplatin. Our findings indicate that α‐mangostin can reduce the stemness and proliferation of CSC‐like SiHa and HeLa cells and promote the cytotoxicity of cisplatin, which may attribute to the mitochondrial apoptosis activation. Thus, it suggests that α‐mangostin may have clinical potential to improve chemotherapy for cervical cancer by targeting cervical CSC.
α‐Mangostin synergistically enhances the cisplatin on cancer stem cell‐like cervical cancer cells via inducing mitochondrial apoptosis.
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