Aims
To explore the concerns and experiences of parents of children scheduled to receive allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
Design
A qualitative secondary analysis of interview data ...from an intervention study.
Methods
A total of 28 parents (4 fathers and 24 mothers) were recruited from a children's hospital, which performs approximately one‐third of all paediatric haematopoietic stem cell transplantation cases in Taiwan. Data were collected between September 2015–August 2018 by one researcher with face‐to‐face interviews, which were tape‐recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data were analysed using inductive content analysis to extract the main themes.
Results
Five themes describing parental concerns prior to paediatric haematopoietic stem cell transplantation were identified: the child became their first priority, seeking solutions, an interweaving of hope and uncertainty, grateful for the chance of a cure and the long road to recovery.
Conclusion
Understanding the concerns and experiences of our participants as they navigated the pre‐transplantation period could reduce parents’ uncertainty and improve the care of their child.
Impact
These experiences provide information that could be used by healthcare professionals to develop support interventions and strategies tailored to the individual needs of each parent, which could prepare parents for their child's haematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
目的
探讨计划接受异基因造血干细胞移植的患儿家长的顾虑与经历。
设计
对介入治疗研究中的访谈数据进行定性的二次分析。
方法
从某儿童医院招募28位家长(4位父亲,24位母亲),约占台湾儿童造血干细胞移植病例的1/3。收集于2015年9月至2018年8月期间的数据,由一名研究人员进行面对面访谈,录音并完成文字转录。采用归纳内容分析法对数据进行分析以摘录主旨内容。
结果
确定了儿童造血干细胞移植前家长关心的五个主题:围着孩子的病情转,寻求解决办法,希望与不确定感的交替,感恩获得治愈的机会以及漫长的康复之路。
结论
了解受试者在移植前的顾虑和经历,可以减少家长的不确定感,改进对孩子的照顾。
影响
这些经历提供的信息可供医疗专业人员用于制定针对每个父母个人需求的支持性介入治疗和策略,帮助父母做好为孩子移植造血干细胞的准备。
Microbial communities are key drivers of ecosystem processes, but their behavior in disturbed environments is difficult to measure. How microbial community composition and function respond ...disturbances is a common challenge in biomedical, environmental, agricultural, and bioenergy research. A novel way to solve this problem is to use a systems-level perspective and describe microbial communities as networks. Based on a mesophilic anaerobic digestion system of swine manure as a tool, we propose a simple framework to investigate changes in microbial communities via compositions, metabolic pathways, genomic properties and interspecies relationships in response to a long-term temperature disturbance. After temperature disturbance, microbial communities tend towards a competitive interaction network with higher GC content and larger genome size. Based on microbial interaction networks, communities responded to the disturbance by showing a transition from acetotrophic (Methanotrichaceae and Methanosarcinaceae) to methylotrophic methanogens (Methanomassiliicoccaceae and Methanobacteriaceae) and a fluctuation in rare biosphere taxa. To conclude, this study may be important for exploring the dynamic relationships between disturbance and microbial communities as a whole, as well as for providing researchers with a better understanding of how changes in microbial communities relate to ecological processes.
Over the past decades, one main issue that has emerged in ecological and environmental research is how losses in biodiversity influence ecosystem dynamics and functioning, and consequently human ...society. Although biodiversity is a common indicator of ecosystem functioning, it is difficult to measure biodiversity in microbial communities exposed to subtle or chronic environmental perturbations. Consequently, there is a need for alternative bioindicators to detect, measure, and monitor gradual changes in microbial communities against these slight, chronic, and continuous perturbations. In this study, microbial networks before and after subtle perturbations by adding S. acidaminiphila showed diverse topological niches and 4-node motifs in which microbes with co-occurrence patterns played the central roles in regulating and adjusting the intertwined relationships among microorganisms in response to the subtle environmental changes. This study demonstrates that microbial networks are a good bioindicator for chronic perturbation and should be applied in a variety of ecological investigations.
Purpose
We examined the association between health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of pediatric patients during hospitalization for allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and length of ...hospital stay, and 1-year survival.
Methods
Primary family caregivers were proxy-assessors for the Pediatric Quality of Life (PedsQL) Stem Cell Transplant Module at three time points: 5-days pre-HCT (T0); 14-days post-HCT (engraftment, T1); and 1-week before hospital discharge (T2). Cox regression analyses determined predictors of the overall 1-year survival after allogeneic HCT.
Results
Thirty-nine eligible caregivers completed all assessments. The mean age of the pediatric patients was 9.07 years (SD = 5.2). PedsQL Stem Cell Transplant Module scores decreased from 71.33 (SD = 13.26) at T0 to 55.41(SD = 13.05) at T1 (
p
< 0.001) and increased to 68.46 (SD = 13.97) at T2 (
p
< 0.001). There was no significant difference between scores at T0 and T2. Longer length of hospital stay was associated with children who were younger and had greater relative changes in scores on the caregiver-proxy PedsQL Stem Cell Transplant Module from T0 to T1. PedsQL Stem Cell Transplant Module scores ≥ 58.07 at T2 were associated with higher 1-year survival rates (Hazard Ratio = 0.12, 95% Confidence Interval = 0.02–0.78;
p
= 0.03).
Conclusion
Our findings suggest that assessment of HRQoL during early HCT can add prognostic value beyond demographic and HCT factors. Understanding the HRQoL status during hospitalization for HCT could help identify pediatric patients with low prospects of 1-year survival in order to provide support interventions to improve HRQoL and survival rates.
Anaerobic digestion (AnD) is a microbiological process that converts organic waste materials into biogas. Because of its high methane content, biogas is a combustible energy source and serves as an ...important environmental technology commonly used in the management of animal waste generated on large animal farms. Much work has been done on hardware design and process engineering for the generation of biogas. However, little is known about the complexity of the microbiology in this process. In particular, how microbes interact in the digester and eventually breakdown and convert organic matter into biogas is still regarded as a "black box." We used 16S rRNA sequencing as a tool to study the microbial community in laboratory hog waste digesters under tightly controlled conditions, and systematically unraveled the distinct interaction networks of two microbial communities from mesophilic (MAnD) and thermophilic anaerobic digestion (TAnD). Under thermophilic conditions, the well-known association between hydrogen-producing bacteria, e.g., Ruminococcaceae and Prevotellaceae, and hydrotrophic methanogens, Methanomicrobiaceae, was reverse engineered by their interactive topological niches. The inferred interaction network provides a sketch enabling the determination of microbial interactive relationships that conventional strategy of finding differential taxa was hard to achieve. This research is still in its infancy, but it can help to depict the dynamics of microbial ecosystems and to lay the groundwork for understanding how microorganisms cohabit in the anaerobic digester.
We report the fabrication of amorphous (In x Ga 1-x ) 2 O 3 metal-semiconductor-metal ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors on glass substrate by co-sputtering. It was found that, we could change the ...cutoff wavelength of the fabricated photodetectors by changing the RF sputtering power of the In 2 O 3 target. With 5 V applied bias, it was found that the measured dark currents were 2 × 10 -12 , 1 × 10 -11 , and 2.3 × 10 -11 A for sample A prepared with 40 W In 2 O 3 sputtering power, sample B prepared with 50 W In 2 O 3 sputtering power, and sample C prepared with 60 W In 2 O 3 sputtering power, respectively. It was also found that the UV-to-visible rejection ratios were 3 × 10 3 , 5 × 10 3 , and 1.5 × 10 4 for samples A, B, and C, respectively. Furthermore, it was found that the response speeds of the fabricated devices were good.
Background
Ischemic stroke (IS) represents a major cause of morbidity and mortality across the globe. The aberrant expression of miR-365 has been found to be implicated in a wide array of human ...diseases, including atherosclerosis and cancer. Studies on single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in miRNA genes can help gain insight into the susceptibility to the condition. This study aimed to examine the relationship between miR-365 SNPs and the risk of IS.
Methods
The study recruited 215 IS patients and 220 controls. The SNPscans genotyping was employed to genotype three polymorphic loci (rs121224, rs30230, and rs178553) of miR-365. The relative expression of miR-365 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of the patients and controls was determined by using real-time quantitative PCR.
Results
The miR-365 rs30230 polymorphism exhibited a significant association with the risk of developing IS (TC vs. CC: adjusted OR = 0.55, 95% CI: 0.33-0.92,
P
= 0.022; TT vs. CC: adjusted OR = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.14–0.85,
P
= 0.021; TC +TT vs. CC: adjusted OR = 0.51, 95% CI: 0.31–0.83,
P
= 0.007; T vs. C: adjusted OR = 0.57, 95% CI: 0.39–0.83,
P
= 0.004). Haplotype analysis revealed that the C-T-G haplotype was associated with a decreased risk of IS (OR = 0.68, 95% CI: 0.46–1.00,
P
= 0.047). Furthermore, miR-365 expression was significantly higher in IS patients than in controls (
P
< 0.001). Interestingly, patients with rs30230 TC or TT genotypes had lower miR-365 levels compared to their counterparts with CC genotypes (
P
< 0.001).
Conclusions
The miR-365 rs30230 polymorphism might bear an association with IS susceptibility in the Chinese population, and the rs30230 TC/TT genotype might be a protective factor against IS.
The electrical performance of amorphous indium gallium oxide (a-IGO) thin-film transistors applied as deep-ultraviolet (DUV) phototransistors is investigated. It was found that the bandgap of a-IGO ...can be engineered by altering its chemical composition. The performance of the phototransistors depended strongly on In 2 O 3 content in the IGO film. When the indium content increases from 21% to 31%, the phototransistor cutoff red-shifted from 280 to 320 nm. The DUV-to-visible rejection ratio and photoresponsivity of the fabricated phototransistors were ~10 5 and 0.18 A/W.
Crustacean allergy is a significant health problem around the world, and tropomyosin (TM) represents the major allergen of crustaceans. The aim of this study was to evaluate three processing methods ...(boiling, CUB, HPS) and identify the one method that is most effective in the degradation of TM and reduction of its IgE-binding reactivity, and make it easier to be decomposed during gastrointestinal digestion. SDS–PAGE analysis indicated that boiling had little impact on the digestive stability of TM. In contrast, combined ultrasound and boiling (CUB), and high pressure steaming (HPS) both could accelerate the digestion of TM. Similarly, western blotting and inhibition ELISA also demonstrated that the reactivity of IgG/IgE-binding of TM that was extracted from processed crab was partially decreased after treating with CUB or HPS. Among the three processing methods, HPS was the most effective method to accelerate the digestion of TM in gastrointestinal digestion, and reduce the reactivity of IgG/IgE-binding of TM. These results suggest that proper processing of crab could promote the degradation of TM in simulated gastrointestinal digestion, reduce the reactivity of IgG/IgE-binding of TM, and decrease the incidence of crab hypersensitivity in humans.
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