To study the efficacy and safety of mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) versus cyclophosphamide (CTX) in the treatment of children with Henoch-Schönlein purpura nephritis (HSPN) and nephrotic-range ...proteinuria.
A prospective clinical trial was conducted in 68 pediatric patients who were admitted to the Department of Nephrology, Children's Hospital Affiliated to Capital Institute of Pediatrics and who were diagnosed with HSPN and nephrotic-range proteinuria from August 2016 to November 2019. The patients were randomly divided into two groups:MMF treatment (
=33) and CTX treatment (
=35). The two groups were compared in terms of complete remission rate, response rate (complete remission + partial remission), urinary protein clearance time, and adverse events.
At months 3, 6, and 12 of treatment, there was no significant difference in the complete remission rate and the response rate between the MMF treament and CTX treatment groups (
> 0.05). There was also no significant difference between the two groups in the urinar
Purpose
This paper aimed to establish and verify a radiomics model based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for predicting the progression-free survival of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) after ...induction chemotherapy (IC).
Materials and Methods
This cohort consists of 288 patients with clinical pathologically confirmed NPC, which was collected from January 2015 to December 2018. All NPC patients were randomly divided into two cohorts: training (n=202) and validation (n=86). Radiomics features from the MRI images of NPC patients were extracted and selected before IC. The patients were classified into high- and low-risk groups according to the median of Radscores. The significant imaging features and clinical variables in the univariate analysis were constructed for progression-free survival (PFS) using the multivariate Cox regression model. A survival analysis was performed using Kaplan–Meier with log-rank test and then each model’s stratification ability was evaluated.
Results
Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) DNA before treatment was an independent predictor for PFS (p < 0.05). Based on the pyradiomic platform, we extracted 1,316 texture parameters in total. Finally, 16 texture features were used to build the model. The clinical radiomics-based model had good prediction capability for PFS, with a C-index of 0.827. The survival curve revealed that the PFS of the high-risk group was poorer than that of the low-risk group.
Conclusion
This research presents a nomogram that merges the radiomics signature and the clinical feature of the plasma EBV DNA load, which may improve the ability of preoperative prediction of progression-free survival and facilitate individualization of treatment in NPC patients before IC.
Background
We previously developed a robust prognostic model (GS model) to predict the survival outcome of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer (APC) receiving palliative chemotherapy with ...gemcitabine plus S‐1 (GS). This study aimed to validate the application of the GS model in APC patients receiving chemotherapy other than the GS regimen.
Patients and methods
We retrospectively analyzed 727 APC patients who received first‐line palliative chemotherapy other than the GS regimen between 2010 and 2016 at four institutions in Taiwan. The patients were categorized into three prognostic groups based on the GS model for comparisons of survival outcome, best tumor response, and in‐group survival differences with monotherapy or combination therapy.
Results
The median survival times for the good, intermediate, and poor prognostic groups were 13.4, 8.4, and 4.6 months, respectively. The hazard ratios for the comparisons of intermediate and poor to good prognostic groups were 1.51 (95% confidence interval CI), 1.22‐1.88, P < .001) and 2.84 (95% CI, 2.34‐3.45, P < .001). The best tumor responses with either partial response or stable disease were 57.5%, 40.4%, and 17.2% of patients in the good, intermediate, and poor prognostic groups (P < .001), respectively. For patients in the good prognostic group, first‐line chemotherapy with monotherapy and combination therapy had similar median survival times (13.8 vs 12.9 months, P = .26), while combination therapy showed a better median survival time than monotherapy in patients in the intermediate and poor prognostic groups (8.5 vs 8.0 months, P = .038 and 5.7 vs 3.7 months, P = .001, respectively).
Conclusion
The results of our study supported the application of the GS model as a general prognostic tool for patients with pancreatic cancer receiving first‐line palliative chemotherapy with gemcitabine‐based regimens.
This study provided validation of the previously developed gemcitabine + S‐1 model in predicting the survival outcome of advanced pancreatic cancer patients receiving first‐line palliative chemotherapy.
This paper reports a novel micro/nanostructure co-hot embossing technique. Gold-capped nanostructures were used as localized surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors and were integrated into a ...microfluidic channel. The advantage of the co-hot embossing technique is that the SPR sensors do not need to be aligned with the microfluidic channel while bonding to it. The integrated SPR sensor and microfluidic channel were first characterized, and the sensitivity of the SPR sensor to the refractive index was found using different concentrations of glycerol solutions. The SPR sensor was also used to quantify latent membrane protein (LMP-1) when modifying anti-LMP-1 at the surface of the SPR sensor. Different concentrations of LMP-1 samples were used to build a calibration curve.
Video has become one of the dominant data resources with the development of the Internet. As a result, the structured sorting of videos, which can be used for storage and extraction, represents a ...growing concern in the community. In particular, the text within videos can carry rich semantic information, leading to many novel studies wherein text tracking and recognition are performed. One essential step in text tracking involves template matching. In general, the adjacent matrices are modeled to represent the extracted tracking object features. Then, often, the Hungarian algorithm is applied to find the correspondence pairs between consecutive frames. In many works, text features are extracted based on morphological features such as color histograms and aspect ratios. However, under those features, similar text objects are not sufficiently distinguishable to make a distinction between them. To address this issue, we regard the template matching task as a graph matching problem. The main novelty involves a graph matching approach that utilizes the relationship between two trajectories or two objects, whereby a graph matching solver can be readily used in our tracking system. By utilizing the content information, the mismatch between the same object among different frames is effectively reduced. The experimental results demonstrate that the tracker with the graph matching method tends to increase the valid correspondence of trajectories and candidate objects.
The distributed integrated energy system can optimize the energy structure of the user side by using natural gas and realize the cascade utilization and low energy consumption of energy. This paper ...takes the integrated energy system as the research object, establishes the electric power ”source-network-load” model, the combined hydrothermal model and the steam network model, and proposes alternate iterative power flow solution method. On the basis of power flow solution, the integrated energy system optimization model is established with economy and system energy efficiency as the objective function, and the genetic algorithm toolbox is used to optimize the solution. The results show that the proposed operation optimization method is effective and feasible, which can effectively improve the integrated energy efficiency and realize the optimized operation of the integrated energy system.
The velocity and temperature of the in-flight particles were reached maximum at the spraying distance of 80–100mm. Particles were melted and broken into small child particles by plasma jet. The small ...child particles were accelerated to higher in-flight velocity by gas flow. Particles were completely melted when the spraying distance about of 95mm at the time of 0.35ms. Display omitted
•We model the particle breaking process in supersonic atmosphere plasma spraying.•Particles were accelerated by drag force of plasma jet was calculated.•The Taylor analogy breakup model is used to calculating droplet breakup.•The optimal spraying distance of 100mm was achieved.•Particles were completely melted at the flight time of 0.35ms.
To understand the effect of in-flight particle behavior so as to improve the coating quality, an accurate description of transport phenomena of particles is essential. For supersonic plasma spraying (SAPS), a three-dimensional computational model is developed to describe the plasma jet coupled with the injection of carrier gas and particles. The heating and melting processes of single particle were also studied by a numerical method. The model treats the particles in the flow as discrete Lagrangian entities that exchange mass, momentum, and energy with the gas. The governing equations for the Reynolds averaged flow parameters were solved using FVM method and the continuity and momentum equations are coupled using the PISO algorithm. The velocity and temperature of the in-flight particles were measured by SprayWatch-2i, and the morphology of particles was observed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Numerical and experimental results showed that, the velocity and temperature of the in-flight particles were reached maximum at the spraying distance of 80–100mm. Particles were melted and broken into small child particles by plasma jet. The small child particles were accelerated to higher in-flight velocity by gas flow. Particles were completely melted when the spraying distance about of 95mm at the time of 0.35ms. Numerical results were compared with the experimental measurements and a good agreement has been achieved.
Dendrobium officinale Kimu et Migo has increased many researchers' interest for its high medical and horticultural values and the molecular mechanism of its protocorm development remains unclear. In ...this study, 19 genes from 26 most stably expressed genes in whole transcriptome of protocorms and 5 housekeeping genes were used as candidate reference genes and screened with 4 application softwares (geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper and RefFinder). The results showed that a few reference genes could effectively normalize expression level of specific genes in protocorm development and the optimal top 2 reference genes were ASS and APH1L. Meanwhile, validation of GNOM, AP2 and temperature induced gene (TIL) for normalization demonstrates the usefulness of the validated candidate reference genes. The expression profiles of these genes varied under protocorms and temperature stress according to the stablest and unstablest reference genes, which proved the importance of the choice of appropriate reference genes. The first systematic evaluation of stably expressed genes will be very useful in the future analysis of specific genes expression in D. officinale.
A novel protocol allowing convenient and highly selective visual recognition of melamine in raw milk via selective metallo-hydrogel formation at a concentration as low as 10 ppm without any tedious ...pretreatment has been developed.
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A series of novel six-coordinated terpyridine zinc complexes, containing ammonium salts and thymine fragment at the two terminals, have been designed and synthesized, which can function as highly sensitive visualized sensors for melamine detection via selective metallo-hydrogel formation. After fully characterization by various techniques, the complementary triple-hydrogen-bonding between the thymine fragment and melamine, as well as π-π stacking interactions may be responsible for the selective metallo-hydrogel formation. In light of the possible interference aroused by milk ingredients (proteins, peptides and amino acids) and legal/illegal additives (urine, sugars and vitamins), a series of control experiments are therefore involved. To our delight, this visual recognition is highly selective, no gelation was observed with the selected milk ingredients or additives. Remarkably, this new developed protocol enables convenient and highly selective visual recognition of melamine at a concentration as low as 10 ppm in raw milk without any tedious pretreatment.
Huntington’s disease (HD) belongs to protein misfolding disorders associated with polyglutamine (polyQ)-rich mutant huntingtin (mHtt) protein inclusions. Currently, it is indicated that the ...aggregation of polyQ-rich mHtt participates in neuronal toxicity and dysfunction. Here, we designed and synthesized a polyglutamine-specific gold nanoparticle (AuNP) complex, which specifically targeted mHtt and alleviated its toxicity. The polyglutamine-specific AuNPs were prepared by decorating the surface of AuNPs with an amphiphilic peptide (JLD1) consisting of both polyglutamine-binding sequences and negatively charged sequences. By applying the polyQ aggregation model system, we demonstrated that AuNPs–JLD1 dissociated the fibrillary aggregates from the polyQ peptide and reduced its β-sheet content in a concentration-dependent manner. By further integrating polyethyleneimine (PEI) onto AuNPs–JLD1, we generated a complex (AuNPs–JLD1–PEI). We showed that this complex could penetrate cells, bind to cytosolic mHtt proteins, dissociate mHtt inclusions, reduce mHtt oligomers, and ameliorate mHtt-induced toxicity. AuNPs–JLD1–PEI was also able to be transported to the brain and improved the functional deterioration in the HD Drosophila larva model. Our results revealed the feasibility of combining AuNPs, JLD1s, and cell-penetrating polymers against mHtt protein aggregation and oligomerization, which hinted on the early therapeutic strategies against HD.
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