Advanced hepatitis B virus (HBV)‐related hepatocellular carcinoma HCC with poor prognosis is often associated with chronic inflammation, immune tolerance, and marked heterogeneity. The interleukin‐6 ...(IL‐6)/JAK/STAT3 signal pathways play multiple regulatory roles in modulating inflammation and immunity in cancers. Polarization of myeloid‐derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) is involved in HBV‐related immunosuppression and CD8+ T‐cell activation through ERK/IL‐6/STAT3. Icaritin is a small molecule that has displayed anticancer activities through IL‐6/JAK/STAT3 pathways in tumor cells and immune cells including CD8+ T cells, MDSCs, neutrophils, and macrophages. This study aimed to confirm icaritin immunomodulation in advanced HBV‐related HCC patients with poor prognosis. Immunomodulation of MDSCs was evaluated in BALB/c mice in vivo. Immunomodulation of serum cytokines and a panel of immune checkpoint proteins were assessed in HBV‐related, histologically confirmed HCC patients. Poor prognostic characteristics included HBV infection, bulky tumors, Child‐Pugh B classification, and metastasis. Clinical end‐points included safety, tumor response, and overall survival (OS). Icaritin treatment‐induced dynamics of serum cytokines IL‐6, IL‐8, IL‐10, and tumor necrosis factor‐α, and soluble immune checkpoint proteins TIM3, LAG3, CD28, CD80, and CTLA‐4 were assessed. No grade III/IV treatment‐related adverse events were observed. Time‐to‐progression was significantly associated with the prognostic factors. Improved survival was observed in the advanced HCC patients with dynamic changes of cytokines, immune checkpoint proteins, and immune cells. Median OS (329‐565 days) was significantly correlated with baseline hepatitis B surface antigen positivity, cytokines, tumor neoantigens, and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia infection. Composite biomarker scores of high‐level α‐fetoprotein and T helper type I (Th1)/Th2 cytokines associated with favorable survival warrant further clinical development of icaritin as an alternative immune‐modulatory regimen to treat advanced HCC patients with poor prognosis.
Advanced hepatitis B virus (HBV)‐related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is often associated with chronic inflammation, liver injury, immune tolerance, and poor clinical outcomes. Due to drug toxicity and side‐effects, current targeted drugs including sorafenib are unfortunately not favorable treatment options, particularly for those advanced HCC patients with poor prognosis. Herbal‐derived natural small molecule icaritin showed anticancer immunomodulatory efficacy with superior safety and improved survival associated with coordinated immune dynamics. Composite biomarkers associated with favorable survival would warrant further clinical development of icaritin as an alternative “natural compound” immune therapy in advanced HBV‐related HCC patients with poor prognosis.
ObjectiveThe COVID-19 outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China, and has been acknowledged as a pandemic due to its rapid spread worldwide. Predicting the trend of COVID-19 is of great significance ...for its prevention. A comparison between the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model was conducted to determine which was more accurate for anticipating the occurrence of COVID-19 in the USA.DesignTime-series study.SettingThe USA was the setting for this study.Main outcome measuresThree accuracy metrics, mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), were applied to evaluate the performance of the two models.ResultsIn our study, for the training set and the validation set, the MAE, RMSE and MAPE of the XGBoost model were less than those of the ARIMA model.ConclusionsThe XGBoost model can help improve prediction of COVID-19 cases in the USA over the ARIMA model.
The existing methods estimating utility harmonic impedance usually require some assumptions such as the utility side is the dominant harmonic source and the harmonic impedance of customer side is ...much larger than that of the utility side, etc. However, these assumptions may not always hold in modern power grid. This paper proposes a novel method without any assumption, the estimation process only uses the correlation of the harmonic data measured at a point of common coupling (PCC). Through analysis of various field harmonic data, we find that measured data have short correlation characteristics, and there always exists a common weak correlation interval for the self-correlation and cross-correlation of the measured data. According to Norton equivalent circuit modal, it is easy to deduce that the utility harmonic current source is weak self-correlated in this interval. By selecting the self-correlation of the utility harmonic current source less than a small threshold, the utility harmonic impedance can be estimated accurately, whether the traditional assumptions are valid or not. In addition, the proposed method only requires a small sample size. Performance and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified through the simulation and field cases.
Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (about 85–90% of primary liver cancer) is particularly prevalent in China because of the high prevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection. HCC is the fourth ...most common malignancy and the third leading cause of tumor-related deaths in China. It poses a significant threat to the life and health of Chinese people. Summary: This guideline presents official recommendations of the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China on the surveillance, diagnosis, staging, and treatment of HCC occurring in China. The guideline was written by more than 50 experts in the field of HCC in China (including liver surgeons, medical oncologists, hepatologists, interventional radiologists, and diagnostic radiologists) on the basis of recent evidence and expert opinions, balance of benefits and harms, cost-benefit strategies, and other clinical considerations. Key Messages: The guideline presents the Chinese staging system, and recommendations regarding patients with HCC in China to ensure optimum patient outcomes.
Maillard reaction products (MRPs) were prepared from a casein–glucose reaction and ultrafiltrated to provide six fractions. The high molecular weight glycated proteins (melanoprotein) were further ...purified with a Sephadex G-75 column. Two fractions were obtained and analysed for their reducing power and Fe
2+ chelating activity. Results obtained from the first fraction, analysed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) indicated that the amide I, II and III bands of casein were changed by the Maillard reaction. The obtained samples were also hydrolysed with pepsin and trypsin
in vitro, and the proteolytic hydrolysates were evaluated for their antioxidant activities. Non-hydrolysed melanoproteins exhibited the highest reducing power, but peptic hydrolysates of different MRPs were more efficient in radical-scavenging activity.
The evaluation of mothers' breastfeeding behaviour within 6 weeks postpartum could help health workers comprehensively identify maternal breastfeeding shortcomings, clarify nursing problems, and ...provide targeted interventions. However, no prior study was found, therefore this study aimed to develop and validate the reliability and validity of the mothers' breastfeeding behaviour scale within 6 weeks postpartum.
A main two-step approach was used: (1) a qualitative pilot study using the purposive sampling method was adopted to test the fitness, simplicity, and clarity of items with 30 mothers; (2) a cross-sectional survey using the convenient sampling method was conducted for item analysis and psychometric validation with 600 mothers.
The final version of the scale consisted of 36 items with seven dimensions, explaining 68.852% of the total variance. The Cronbach's α, split-half, and retest coefficients were 0.958, 0.843, and 0.753, respectively. The validity of the scale: (1) Content validity: content validity index (CVI) range of items was between 0.882 and 1.000. The scale-level-CVI was 0.990. (2) Structure validity: The fitting indices were as follows: χ
/ⅆf =2.239, RMR = 0.049, RMSEA = 0.069, TLI = 0.893, CFI = 0.903, IFI = 0.904, PGFI = 0.674, and PNFI = 0.763. (3) Convergent validity: The composite reliability and average variance extracted (AVE) of the seven dimensions were between 0.876 and 0.920 and between 0.594 and 0.696. (4) Distinguish validity: The correlation coefficients were less than the square root of the AVE, except for self-decision behaviour, self-coping behaviour, and self-control behaviour. However, the fit index of the original three-factor model was better than that of the other new models, with significant differences (P < 0.001). (5) Calibration validity: The area under the curve was 0.860 or 0.898 when the scale was used to predict exclusive or any breastfeeding at 42 days. The correlation coefficients of the maternal breasting feeding evaluation scale, breastfeeding self-efficacy short-form scale, and the scale were 0.569 and 0.674, respectively.
The newly developed mothers' breastfeeding behaviour scale within 6 weeks postpartum consists of 36 items belonging to seven dimensions with good reliability and validity and is a reliable and valid instrument to be used in future maternal breastfeeding behaviour assessments and interventions.
The existing methods for evaluating harmonic impacts of multiple harmonic-producing loads (HLs) usually assume that all the network impedances are constant in the concerned whole-time interval. While ...considering the actual situations in power grids, the network impedances may have continuous or sudden variations due to grid operation changes, such as power line maintenance, filter switching, and capacitor switching, which causes the unreliable estimation of harmonic impacts by the existing methods. In view of this shortcoming, a novel multi-point model considering the variations of multiple network impedances is proposed. Furthermore, two weight matrices are formulated to fit the abrupt changes in network impedances. Based on the model and the matrices, the continuous and sudden variations of multiple network impedances can be tracked simultaneously according to the proposed minimum weighted variation constraint. Finally, more realistic and accurate harmonic impacts can be obtained. The performed simulation and experiment have demonstrated the validity of this method.
Estimation of harmonic impedances and harmonic contributions is beneficial to harmonic control, and harmonic phasors data is necessary for the existing estimation methods. However, the phase angles ...of harmonic phasors are not recorded in some of current power quality measuring instruments (such as Fluke 1760 etc.), which makes the existing methods unavailable. To solve this problem, the Norton equivalent circuit model under harmonic frequency is improved and a new model composed of harmonic complex power sources and harmonic impedances is proposed. Based on the model, the harmonic impedance and harmonic contribution can be estimated by using independent component analysis algorithm, and the harmonic phasor data is no longer required. The superiority of the proposed model is verified through simulation and field cases.
This paper proposes a new model for estimating harmonic impedances and harmonic contributions by using the harmonic complex power. Therefore, based on the model, harmonic impedance and harmonic contribution can be estimated when the phase angles of harmonic phasors, which is necessary for existing estimation methods, are not recorded in some of power quality measuring instruments (such as Fluke 1760, etc.)
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