Background
Previous cross‐sectional studies have suggested an association between asthma and attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but the temporal relationship was not determined. Using a ...nationwide population‐based prospective case–control cohort study (1:4, age‐/gender‐matched), we hypothesized that asthma in infanthood or early childhood would increase the risk of ADHD in later life.
Methods
In all, 2,294 children with asthma and 9,176 controls aged between 0 and 3 years in 2000 were included in our study. Cases of ADHD that occurred to the end of follow‐up (31 December 2010) were identified.
Results
Children with asthma had a higher incidence of developing ADHD (7% vs. 4.6%, p < .001) than control cohort during the follow‐up period. After adjusting for age at enrollment, gender, level of urbanization, and comorbid allergic diseases (allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis), children with asthma had an elevated risk (HR: 1.31, 95% CI: 1.07–1.59) of developing ADHD compared with control group.
Discussion
Our prospective study supported a temporal relationship between asthma and ADHD. Asthma in very early life increased the risk of developing ADHD during the school years. Further studies are required to investigate whether the prompt treatment of asthma and comorbid allergic diseases could prevent the development of ADHD or decrease ADHD symptoms.
Treatment options for recurrent glioblastoma are rare, with their response uncertain. This study aimed to determine the response of chemotherapy including bevacizumab in combination with vincristine ...and carboplatin for glioblastoma at first recurrence in a single-institution cohort.Clinical data of patients who received chemotherapy including bevacizumab, vincristine, and low-dose carboplatin for recurrent glioblastoma between 2008 and 2014 were analyzed. Differences between those who received combination chemotherapy (chemotherapy-positive) and those who did not (chemotherapy-negative) were estimated by Fisher exact test or Wilcoxon rank-sum test, as appropriate. Survival curves were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method, and differences between survival curves were estimated by the log-rank test. Univariate analysis of treatment response for all recurrent glioblastoma patients and secondary recurrence patients under different conditions were evaluated using Wilcoxon rank-sum test or the Kruskal-Wallis test.Although mortality rates were similar between the chemotherapy-negative and chemotherapy-positive groups (26.7% vs 28.6%), median overall survival was significantly longer in the chemotherapy-positive group than the chemotherapy-negative group (P = .006). There were no chemotherapy-related serious complications such as gastrointestinal perforation, serious bleeding, or new-onset seizure during chemotherapy, whereas others side effects including proteinuria and hypertension were more common albeit well controlled by medication.This study revealed combination regimen of bevacizumab, vincristine, and low-dose carboplatin as a potentially effective therapeutic approach in recurrent glioblastoma. More in-depth understanding of the mechanism underlying this combination treatment and potential contribution of alternative genetic therapeutic in recurrent glioblastoma is necessary.
We have prepared a new class of polybenzoxazine/POSS nanocomposites through the reactions of a multifunctional vinyl‐terminated VBa‐POSS with a VBa monomer at various compositional ratios. The ...incorporation of the silsesquioxane core units into the polybenzoxazine matrix significantly hindered the mobility of the polymer chains and enhanced the thermal stability of these hybrid materials. Increasing the POSS content in these hybrids improved their thermal and mechanical properties, relative to those of the neat polybenzoxazine, because of hydrogen bonding between the siloxane groups of the POSS core units and the OH groups of the polybenzoxazine moieties, as adjudged using FTIR spectroscopy.
A new class of polybenzoxazine/POSS nanocomposites with network structures has been synthesized by reaction of a multifunctional vinyl‐terminated benzoxazine POSS derivative. The incorporation of the silsesquioxane core units into the polybenzoxazine matrix significantly hindered the mobility of the polymer chains and, enhanced the thermal stability of these hybrid materials.
To improve the safety capabilities of expressway service stations, this study proposes a method for detecting dangerous goods vehicles based on surveillance videos. The information collection devices ...used in this method are the surveillance cameras that already exist in service stations, which allows for the automatic detection and position recognition of dangerous goods vehicles without changing the installation of the monitoring equipment. The process of this method is as follows. First, we draw an aerial view image of the service station to use as the background model. Then, we use inverse perspective mapping to process each surveillance video and stitch these videos with the background model to build an aerial view surveillance model of the service station. Next, we use a convolutional neural network to detect dangerous goods vehicles from the original images. Finally, we mark the detection result in the aerial view surveillance model and then use that model to monitor the service station in real time. Experiments show that our aerial view surveillance model can achieve the real-time detection of dangerous goods vehicles in the main areas of the service station, thereby effectively reducing the workload of the monitoring personnel.
The analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) at the molecular level holds great promise for several clinical applications. For this goal, the harvest of high-purity, size-sorted CTCs with different ...subtypes from a blood sample are important. For this purpose, a two-step CTC isolation protocol was proposed, by which the immunomagnetic beads-based cell separation was first utilized to remove the majority of blood cells. After that, an optically induced dielectrophoresis (ODEP) microfluidic system was developed to (1) purify the CTCs from the remaining magnetic microbeads-bound blood cells and to (2) sort and separate the CTCs with different sizes. In this study, the ODEP microfluidic system was designed and fabricated. Moreover, its optimum operation conditions and performance were explored. The results exhibited that the presented technique was able to purify and sort the cancer cells with two different sizes from a tested cell suspension in a high-purity (93.5% and 90.1% for the OECM 1 and HA22T cancer cells, respectively) manner. Overall, this study presented a technique for the purification and sorting of cancer cells with different sizes. Apart from this application, the technique is also useful for other applications in which the high-purity and label-free purification and sorting of cells with different sizes is required.
As the need for medical services has grown in recent years, medical image critical point detection has emerged as a new subject of research for academics. In this paper, a search decision network ...method is proposed for medical image landmark detection. Unlike the conventional coarse-to-fine methods which generate bias prediction due to poor initialization, our method is to use the neural network structure search strategy to find a suitable network structure and then make reasonable decisions for robust prediction. To achieve this, we formulate medical landmark detection as a Markov decision process and design a shooting reward function to interact with the task. The task aims to maximize the discount of the received value and search for the optimal network architecture over the entire search space. Furthermore, we embed the central difference convolution, which typically extracts the data invariant feature representation, into the architectural search space. In experiments using standard accessible datasets, our approach achieves a detection accuracy of 98.59% in the 4 mm detection range. Our results demonstrate that, on standard datasets, our proposed approach consistently outperforms the majority of methods.
Chinese chives is a popular herb vegetable and medicine in Asian countries. Southwest China is one of the centers of origin, and the mountainous areas in this region are rich in wild germplasm. In ...this study, we collected four samples of germplasm from different altitudes: a land race of cultivated Chinese chives (Allium tuberosum), wide-leaf chives and extra-wide-leaf chives (Allium hookeri), and ovoid-leaf chives (Allium funckiaefolium). Leaf metabolites were detected and compared between A. tuberosum and A. hookeri. A total of 158 differentially accumulated metabolites (DAM) were identified by Gas Chromatography—Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and Liquid Chromatography—Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS), among which there was a wide range of garlic odor compounds, free amino acids, and sugars. A. hookeri contains a higher content of fructose, garlic odor compounds, and amino acids than A. tuberosum, which is supported by the higher expression level of biosynthetic genes revealed by transcriptome analysis. A. hookeri accumulates the same garlic odor compound precursors that A. tuberosum does (mainly methiin and alliin). We isolated full-length gene sequences of phytochelatin synthase (PCS), γ-glutamyltranspeptidases (GGT), flavin-containing monooxygenase (FMO), and alliinase (ALN). These sequences showed closer relations in phylogenetic analysis between A. hookeri and A. tuberosum (with sequence identities ranging from 86% to 90%) than with Allium cepa or Allium sativum (which had a lower sequence identity ranging from 76% to 88%). Among these assayed genes, ALN, the critical gene controlling the conversion of odorless precursors into odor compounds, was undetected in leaves, bulbs, and roots of A. tuberosum, which could account for its weaker garlic smell. Moreover, we identified a distinct FMO1 gene in extra-wide-leaf A. hookeri that is due to a CDS-deletion and frameshift mutation. These results above reveal the molecular and metabolomic basis of impressive strong odor in wild Chinese chives.
Serious blunt chest trauma usually induces hemothorax, pneumothorax, and rib fractures. More studies have claimed that early video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery with surgical stabilization of rib ...fractures (SSRF) results in a good prognosis in patients with major trauma. This study aimed to verify the outcomes in patients with chest trauma whether SSRF was performed. Consecutive patients who were treated in a medical center in Taiwan, for traumatic events between January 2015 and June 2020, were retrospectively reviewed. This study focused on patients with major trauma and thoracic injuries, and they were divided into groups based on whether they received SSRF. We used electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to evaluate the change of ventilation conditions. Different scores used for the evaluation of trauma severity were also compared in this study. Among the 8396 patients who were included, 1529 (18.21%) had major trauma with injury severity score > 16 and were admitted to the intensive care unit initially. A total of 596 patients with chest trauma were admitted, of whom 519 (87%) survived. Younger age and a lower trauma score (including injury severity scale, new injury severity score, trauma and injury severity score, and revised trauma score) account for better survival rates. Moreover, 74 patients received SSRF. They had a shorter intensive care unit (ICU) stay (5.24, p = 0.045) and better performance in electrical impedance tomography (23.46, p < 0.001). In patients with major thoracic injury, older age and higher injury survival scale account for higher mortality rate. Effective surgical stabilization of rib fractures shortened the ICU stay and helped achieve better performance in EIT. Thoracoscope-assisted rib fixation is suggested in severe trauma cases.
Density-wave fronts in a vibrofluidized wet granular layer undergoing a gas-liquid-like transition are investigated experimentally. The threshold of the instability is governed by the amplitude of ...the vertical vibrations. Fronts, which are curved into a spiral shape, propagate coherently along the circular rim of the container with leading edges. They are stable beyond a critical distance from the container center. Based on an analysis of the emerging time and length scales, we propose a model for the pattern formation by considering the competition between the time scale for the condensation of wet granular particles from a gas-like state and that of the energy injection resisting this process.
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