The large volume of adult living donor liver transplantations (ALDLTs) at our center affords a unique opportunity to examine the impact of acute‐on‐chronic liver failure (ACLF) among high–Model for ...End‐Stage Liver Disease MELD score patients. From February 1998 to March 2010, 1958 cirrhotic recipients were analyzed to study the relationship between MELD scores and ALDLT outcomes. A total of 327 high‐MELD score recipients were categorized into ACLF and non‐ACLF groups, and their outcomes were compared. The 5‐year graft and patient survival in the high‐MELD group were 75.2% and 76.4%, respectively, which were significantly worse than the low and intermediate MELD groups. The presence of ACLF associated with higher MELD scores appeared to be the dominant factor responsible for the inferior results of patients with MELD score of 30–34 points. The 5‐year graft survivals in the ACLF group was 70.5% and in the non‐ACLF group it was 81.0% (p = 0.035). Therefore, ALDLT should be performed as soon as possible in high‐MELD score patients prior to ACLF development. Moreover, ACLF patients should be separately categorized when analyzing the outcomes of ALDLT. ALDLT for ACLF patients should not be discouraged because favorable outcomes can be expected through timely ALDLT and comprehensive management.
While adult living donor liver transplantation should be performed as soon as possible before acute‐on‐chronic liver failure develops, it should not be discouraged for patients with acute‐on‐chronic liver failure since timely transplantation and comprehensive management can bring a favorable outcome.
ABO incompatibility is no longer considered a contraindication for adult living donor liver transplantation (ALDLT) due to various strategies to overcome the ABO blood group barrier. We report the ...largest single‐center experience of ABO‐incompatible (ABOi) ALDLT in 235 adult patients. The desensitization protocol included a single dose of rituximab and total plasma exchange. In addition, local graft infusion therapy, cyclophosphamide, or splenectomy was used for a certain time period, but these treatments were eventually discontinued due to adverse events. There were three cases (1.3%) of in‐hospital mortality. The cumulative 3‐year graft and patient survival rates were 89.2% and 92.3%, respectively, and were comparable to those of the ABO‐compatible group (n = 1301). Despite promising survival outcomes, 17 patients (7.2%) experienced antibody‐mediated rejection that manifested as diffuse intrahepatic biliary stricture; six cases required retransplantation, and three patients died. ABOi ALDLT is a feasible method for expanding a living liver donor pool, but the efficacy of the desensitization protocol in targeting B cell immunity should be optimized.
This article presents the clinical results of ABO‐incompatible adult living donor liver transplantation in a single institution.
Cancer cells survive cellular crisis through telomere maintenance mechanisms. We report telomere lengths in 18,430 samples, including tumors and non-neoplastic samples, across 31 cancer types. ...Telomeres were shorter in tumors than in normal tissues and longer in sarcomas and gliomas than in other cancers. Among 6,835 cancers, 73% expressed telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), which was associated with TERT point mutations, rearrangements, DNA amplifications and transcript fusions and predictive of telomerase activity. TERT promoter methylation provided an additional deregulatory TERT expression mechanism. Five percent of cases, characterized by undetectable TERT expression and alterations in ATRX or DAXX, demonstrated elongated telomeres and increased telomeric repeat-containing RNA (TERRA). The remaining 22% of tumors neither expressed TERT nor harbored alterations in ATRX or DAXX. In this group, telomere length positively correlated with TP53 and RB1 mutations. Our analysis integrates TERT abnormalities, telomerase activity and genomic alterations with telomere length in cancer.
In our post-genomic world, where we are deluged with genetic information, the bottleneck to scientific progress is often phenotyping, i.e. measuring the observable characteristics of living ...organisms, such as counting the number of fruits on a plant. Image analysis is one route to automation. In this paper we present a method for recognising and counting fruits from images in cluttered greenhouses. The plants are 3-m high peppers with fruits of complex shapes and varying colours similar to the plant canopy. Our calibration and validation datasets each consist of over 28,000 colour images of over 1000 experimental plants. We describe a new two-step method to locate and count pepper fruits: the first step is to find fruits in a single image using a bag-of-words model, and the second is to aggregate estimates from multiple images using a novel statistical approach to cluster repeated, incomplete observations. We demonstrate that image analysis can potentially yield a good correlation with manual measurement (94.6%) and our proposed method achieves a correlation of 74.2% without any linear adjustment for a large dataset.
•Image analysis automatically counted fruits of complex shape and varying colour.•Datasets each consisted of 28,000 colour images of 1000 3 m high pepper plants.•Correlation between manual and automatic fruit counts was 74%.
The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) are prognostic factors for various types of cancer. In this study, we assessed the association of NLR and PLR with the ...prognosis of small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) in patients who received the standard treatment.
We retrospectively reviewed patients who were diagnosed with SCLC and treated with platinum-based chemotherapy between July 2006 and October 2013 in Gyeongsang National University Hospital Regional Cancer Center and Changwon Samsung Hospital.
In total, 187 patients were evaluated. Compared with low NLR (<4), high NLR (⩾4) at diagnosis was associated with poor performance status, advanced stage, and lower response rate. Median overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were worse in the high-NLR group (high vs low, 11.17 vs 9.20 months, P=0.019 and 6.90 vs 5.49 months, P=0.005, respectively). In contrast, PLR at diagnosis was not associated with OS or PFS (P=0.467 and P=0.205, respectively). In multivariate analysis, stage, lactate dehydrogenase, and NLR at diagnosis were independent prognostic factors for OS and PFS.
NLR is easily measurable and reflects the SCLC prognosis. A future prospective study is warranted to confirm our results.
Summary
Background
Drugs that are currently used in the treatment of psoriasis are associated with drawbacks such as rapid recrudescence, high costs and unwanted side‐effects. Oxymatrine has a long ...history of clinical use in the treatment of hepatitis and cancer in China.
Objectives
To explore the efficacy and safety of intravenous oxymatrine in patients with severe plaque psoriasis.
Methods
A total of 67 patients were randomly allocated to receive oxymatrine injections (0.6 g per day for 8 weeks) or acitretin capsules (0.75 mg kg−1 per day from week 0 to week 2 and 20–30 mg per day from week 3 to week 8) and followed up for another 24 weeks. The primary end point was the percentage of patients with ≥ 50% reduction of Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI 50) at week 32. The secondary end points included the skin classification grade and the Dermatology Quality of Life Index (DLQI) score. Side‐effects were recorded throughout the whole study to assess the safety profile.
Results
Treatment with oxymatrine or acitretin for 8 weeks significantly decreased PASI score, skin classification grade and DLQI score (P < 0.001), with no significant differences between the oxymatrine and acitretin groups in terms of PASI 50. However, at week 32, the relapse rate in the oxymatrine group was significantly lower than that of the acitretin group (P < 0.001). Moreover, while there was an increase in the number of patients with metabolic abnormalities in the acitretin group, a significant reduction was observed in the oxymatrine group. Furthermore, rates of adverse reactions were significantly decreased in the oxymatrine group compared with that of the acitretin group (P < 0.001).
Conclusions
Treatment with oxymatrine effectively ameliorated severe plaque psoriasis, and was accompanied by only minor adverse effects.
What's already known about this topic?
Psoriasis is a chronic disease that can be difficult to treat and current treatments can be restricted by toxicity profile, associated diseases and high costs.
Oxymatrine is a major active component of the traditional Chinese medicine Sophora alopecuroides, which possesses anti‐inflammatory, immunoregulatory, antioxidant and antiproliferative properties.
What does this study add?
This is the first clinical study to use oxymatrine for the treatment of severe plaque psoriasis.
This study observed the efficacy of oxymatrine during both drug treatment and withdrawal.
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The High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) experiment has observed the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin suppression (called the GZK cutoff) with a statistical significance of five standard deviations. HiRes' ...measurement of the flux of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays shows a sharp suppression at an energy of 6 x 10(19) eV, consistent with the expected cutoff energy. We observe the ankle of the cosmic-ray energy spectrum as well, at an energy of 4 x 10(18) eV. We describe the experiment, data collection, and analysis and estimate the systematic uncertainties. The results are presented and the calculation of the statistical significance of our observation is described.
ParB spreading requires DNA bridging Graham, Thomas G W; Wang, Xindan; Song, Dan ...
Genes & development,
06/2014, Letnik:
28, Številka:
11
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The parABS system is a widely employed mechanism for plasmid partitioning and chromosome segregation in bacteria. ParB binds to parS sites on plasmids and chromosomes and associates with broad ...regions of adjacent DNA, a phenomenon known as spreading. Although essential for ParB function, the mechanism of spreading remains poorly understood. Using single-molecule approaches, we discovered that Bacillus subtilis ParB (Spo0J) is able to trap DNA loops. Point mutants in Spo0J that disrupt DNA bridging are defective in spreading and recruitment of structural maintenance of chromosomes (SMC) condensin complexes in vivo. DNA bridging helps to explain how a limited number of Spo0J molecules per parS site (~20) can spread over many kilobases and suggests a mechanism by which ParB proteins could facilitate the loading of SMC complexes. We show that DNA bridging is a property of diverse ParB homologs, suggesting broad evolutionary conservation.
An ethylene‐glycol‐mediated self‐assembly process is adopted to synthesize 3D flowerlike nanostructures of iron oxide (see figure) using inexpensive and nontoxic ferric chloride. A two‐stage growth ...process is identified during the morphological evolution of the iron oxide precursor. α‐Fe2O3, γ‐Fe2O3, and Fe3O4 with the same flowerlike structure are readily obtained from the same precursor but by different calcination procedures. The as‐obtained iron oxides show excellent ability to remove various pollutants from water.
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