Resumo Fundamento A síndrome de Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) é uma condição pró-arrítmica que pode exigir restrição de atividades extenuantes e é caracterizada por sinais de ECG, incluindo ondas ...delta. Observamos casos de padrões intermitentes de WPW apresentando-se como QRS alternante (‘WPW alternante’) em uma grande coorte de triagem de ECG pré-participação de homens jovens que se candidataram ao recrutamento militar. Objetivos Nosso objetivo foi determinar o padrão de WPW alternante, as características do caso e a prevalência de outros diagnósticos diferenciais relevantes apresentando-se como alternância de QRS em um ambiente de pré-participação. Métodos Cento e vinte e cinco mil cento e cinquenta e oito recrutas militares do sexo masculino prospectivos foram revisados de janeiro de 2016 a dezembro de 2019. Uma revisão de prontuários médicos eletrônicos identificou casos de WPW alternante e padrões ou síndrome de WPW. A revisão de prontuários médicos eletrônicos identificou casos de diagnósticos diferenciais relevantes que podem causar alternância de QRS. Resultados Quatro indivíduos (2,2%) apresentaram WPW alternante em 184 indivíduos com diagnóstico final de padrão ou síndrome de WPW. Dois desses indivíduos manifestaram sintomas ou achados eletrocardiográficos compatíveis com taquicardia supraventricular. A prevalência geral de WPW alternante foi de 0,003%, e a prevalência de WPW foi de 0,147%. As WPW alternantes representaram 8,7% dos indivíduos com QRS alternantes, e QRS alternantes tiveram prevalência de 0,037% em toda a população. Conclusões A WPW alternante é uma variante da WPW intermitente, que compreendeu 2,2% dos casos de WPW em nossa coorte de triagem pré-participação. Não indica necessariamente um baixo risco de taquicardia supraventricular. Deve ser reconhecido na triagem de ECG e distinguido de outras patologias que também apresentam QRS alternantes.
Background Current practice of adding concurrent–adjuvant chemotherapy to radiotherapy (CRT) for treating advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma is based on the Intergroup-0099 Study published in 1998. ...However, the outcome for the radiotherapy-alone (RT) group in that trial was substantially poorer than those in other trials, and there were no data on late toxicities. Verification of the long-term therapeutic index of this regimen is needed. Methods Patients with nonkeratinizing nasopharyngeal carcinoma staged T1-4N2-3M0 were randomly assigned to RT (176 patients) or to CRT (172 patients) using cisplatin (100 mg/m2) every 3 weeks for three cycles in concurrence with radiotherapy, followed by cisplatin (80 mg/m2) plus fluorouracil (1000 mg per m2 per day for 4 days) every 4 weeks for three cycles. Primary endpoints included overall failure-free rate (FFR) (the time to first failure at any site) and progression-free survival. Secondary endpoints included overall survival, locoregional FFR, distant FFR, and acute and late toxicity rates. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results The two treatment groups were well balanced in all patient characteristics, tumor factors, and radiotherapy parameters. Adding chemotherapy statistically significantly improved the 5-year FFR (CRT vs RT: 67% vs 55%; P = .014) and 5-year progression-free survival (CRT vs RT: 62% vs 53%; P = .035). Cumulative incidence of acute toxicity increased with chemotherapy by 30% (CRT vs RT: 83% vs 53%; P < .001), but the 5-year late toxicity rate did not increase statistically significantly (CRT vs RT: 30% vs 24%; P = .30). Deaths because of disease progression were reduced statistically significantly by 14% (CRT vs RT: 38% vs 24%; P = .008), but 5-year overall survival was similar (CRT vs RT: 68% vs 64%; P = .22; hazard ratio of CRT = 0.81, 95% confidence interval = 0.58 to 1.13) because deaths due to toxicity or incidental causes increased by 7% (CRT vs RT: 1.7% vs 0, and 8.1% vs 3.4%, respectively; P = .015). Conclusions Adding concurrent–adjuvant chemotherapy statistically significantly reduced failure and cancer-specific deaths when compared with radiotherapy alone. Although there was no statistically significant increase in major late toxicity, increase in noncancer deaths narrowed the resultant gain in overall survival.
Purpose The role of adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) or induction chemotherapy (IC) in the treatment of locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma is controversial. The individual patient data from the ...Meta-Analysis of Chemotherapy in Nasopharynx Carcinoma database were used to compare all available treatments. Methods All randomized trials of radiotherapy (RT) with or without chemotherapy in nonmetastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma were considered. Overall, 20 trials and 5,144 patients were included. Treatments were grouped into seven categories: RT alone (RT), IC followed by RT (IC-RT), RT followed by AC (RT-AC), IC followed by RT followed by AC (IC-RT-AC), concomitant chemoradiotherapy (CRT), IC followed by CRT (IC-CRT), and CRT followed by AC (CRT-AC). P-score was used to rank the treatments. Fixed- and random-effects frequentist network meta-analysis models were applied. Results The three treatments with the highest probability of benefit on overall survival (OS) were CRT-AC, followed by CRT and IC-CRT, with respective hazard ratios (HRs 95% CIs) compared with RT alone of 0.65 (0.56 to 0.75), 0.77 (0.64 to 0.92), and 0.81 (0.63 to 1.04). HRs (95% CIs) of CRT-AC compared with CRT for OS, progression-free survival (PFS), locoregional control, and distant control (DC) were, respectively, 0.85 (0.68 to 1.05), 0.81 (0.66 to 0.98), 0.70 (0.48 to 1.02), and 0.87 (0.61 to 1.25). IC-CRT ranked second for PFS and the best for DC. CRT never ranked first. HRs of CRT compared with IC-CRT for OS, PFS, locoregional control, and DC were, respectively, 0.95 (0.72 to 1.25), 1.13 (0.88 to 1.46), 1.05 (0.70 to 1.59), and 1.55 (0.94 to 2.56). Regimens with more chemotherapy were associated with increased risk of acute toxicity. Conclusion The addition of AC to CRT achieved the highest survival benefit and consistent improvement for all end points. The addition of IC to CRT achieved the highest effect on DC.
Ferromagnet/two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenide (FM/2D TMD) interfaces provide attractive opportunities to push magnetic information storage to the atomically thin limit. Existing work ...has focused on FMs contacted with mechanically exfoliated or chemically vapor-deposition-grown TMDs, where clean interfaces cannot be guaranteed. Here, we report a reliable way to achieve contamination-free interfaces between ferromagnetic CoFeB and molecular-beam epitaxial MoSe2. We show a spin reorientation arising from the interface, leading to a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), and reveal the CoFeB/2D MoSe2 interface allowing for the PMA development in a broader CoFeB thickness-range than common systems such as CoFeB/MgO. Using X-ray magnetic circular dichroism analysis, we attribute generation of this PMA to interfacial d–d hybridization and deduce a general rule to enhance its magnitude. We also demonstrate favorable magnetic softness and considerable magnetic moment preserved at the interface and theoretically predict the interfacial band matching for spin filtering. Our work highlights the CoFeB/2D MoSe2 interface as a promising platform for examination of TMD-based spintronic applications and might stimulate further development with other combinations of FM/2D TMD interfaces.
Abstract Background The current standard treatment for locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) was conventional–fractionation radiotherapy plus concurrent–adjuvant chemotherapy as ...recommended by the Intergroup-0099 Study. This combined analysis of the NPC-9901 and the NPC-9902 Trials aims to provide more comprehensive data to evaluate the efficacy of the Intergroup-0099 regimen and the contributing factors. Methods Eligible patients with stage III-IVB non-keratinizing NPC were randomly assigned to radiotherapy-alone (RTi group: 218 patients) or chemoradiotherapy (CRTi group: 223 patients) using cisplatin (100 mg/m2 ) for three cycles in concurrence with radiotherapy, followed by cisplatin (80 mg/m2 ) plus fluorouracil (1000 mg/m2 /day for 4 days) for three cycles. The median follow-up was 6.1 years. Findings Comparison by intention-to-treat showed that the CRTi group achieved significant improvement in overall failure-free rate (FFR), locoregional-FFR and cancer-specific survival ( p ⩽ 0.019); but the improvements for distant-FFR and overall survival (OS) were statistically insignificant ( p ⩾ 0.14). Further exploratory studies based on actual treatment showed that an additional improvement achieved was a significant gain in OS (CRTa versus RTa group: 72% versus 63% at 5-year, p = 0.037). Multivariate analyses showed that the dose of cisplatin during the concurrent phase had significant impact on locoregional-FFR and OS, while that of fluorouracil during the adjuvant phase was significant for distant-FFR. The 5-year locoregional-FFR for patients who received 0–1, 2 and 3 concurrent cycles were 79%, 88% and 88%, respectively; the corresponding distant-FFR by adjuvant cycles were 68%, 78% and 77%, respectively. Interpretation Our results support the current practice of adding concurrent cisplatin plus adjuvant cisplatin-fluorouracil to radiotherapy for treating patients with locoregionally advanced NPC. The concurrent phase is important for locoregional control and survival, cisplatin 200 mg/m2 in two concurrent cycles might be adequate. Additional chemotherapy using fluorouracil-containing combination contributed to improving distant control.
In this study, we report on the deposition of amorphous molybdenum sulfide (MoS x , with x ≈ 3) on a high specific surface area conductive support of Graphene–Carbon Nanotube hybrids (GCNT) as the ...Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER) catalysts. We found that the high surface area GCNT electrode could support the deposition of MoS x at much higher loadings compared with simple porous carbon paper or flat graphite paper. The morphological study showed that MoS x was successfully deposited on and was in good contact with the GCNT support. Other physical characterization techniques suggested the amorphous nature of the deposited MoS x . With a typical catalyst loading of 3 mg cm–2, an overpotential of 141 mV was required to obtain a current density of 10 mA cm–2. A Tafel slope of 41 mV decade–1 was demonstrated. Both measures placed the MoS x -deposited GCNT electrode among the best performing molybdenum sulfide-based HER catalysts reported to date. The electrode showed a good stability with only a 25 mV increase in overpotential required for a current density of 10 mA cm–2, after undergoing 500 potential sweeps with vigorous bubbling present. The current density obtained at −0.5 V vs SHE (Standard Hydrogen Electrode potential) decreased less than 10% after the stability test. The deposition of MoS x on high specific surface area conductive electrodes demonstrated to be an efficient method to maximize the catalytic performance toward HER.
Atomically thin tungsten disulfide (WS2) has attracted much attention in recent years due its indirect-to-direct band gap transition, band gap tunability, and giant spin splitting. However, the ...fabrication of atomically thin WS2 remains largely underdeveloped in comparison to its structural analogue MoS2. Here we report the direct fabrication of highly crystalline few-layer WS2 on silver substrates by pulse laser deposition at the relatively low temperature of 450 °C. The growth takes places by conventional epitaxy, through the in-situ formation of nearly lattice-matching Ag2S on the silver surface. Intriguingly, it was observed that the resulting film was composed of not only the usual semiconducting 2H-WS2 structure but also the less common metallic 1T-WS2. Modifications of the synthesis parameters allow for control over the crystalline quality, film thickness and crystal phase composition of the resulting WS2 film.
EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinomas (LUAD) display diverse clinical trajectories and are characterized by rapid but short-lived responses to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). Through sequencing of ...79 spatially distinct regions from 16 early stage tumors, we show that despite low mutation burdens, EGFR-mutant Asian LUADs unexpectedly exhibit a complex genomic landscape with frequent and early whole-genome doubling, aneuploidy, and high clonal diversity. Multiple truncal alterations, including TP53 mutations and loss of CDKN2A and RB1, converge on cell cycle dysregulation, with late sector-specific high-amplitude amplifications and deletions that potentially beget drug resistant clones. We highlight the association between genomic architecture and clinical phenotypes, such as co-occurring truncal drivers and primary TKI resistance. Through comparative analysis with published smoking-related LUAD, we postulate that the high intra-tumor heterogeneity observed in Asian EGFR-mutant LUAD may be contributed by an early dominant driver, genomic instability, and low background mutation rates.
Summary Background A previous individual patient data meta-analysis by the Meta-Analysis of Chemotherapy in Nasopharynx Carcinoma (MAC-NPC) collaborative group to assess the addition of chemotherapy ...to radiotherapy showed that it improves overall survival in nasopharyngeal carcinoma. This benefit was restricted to patients receiving concomitant chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The aim of this study was to update the meta-analysis, include recent trials, and to analyse separately the benefit of concomitant plus adjuvant chemotherapy. Methods We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Controlled Trials meta-register, ClinicalTrials.gov , and meeting proceedings to identify published or unpublished randomised trials assessing radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy in patients with non-metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma and obtained updated data for previously analysed studies. The primary endpoint of interest was overall survival. All trial results were combined and analysed using a fixed-effects model. The statistical analysis plan was pre-specified in a protocol. All data were analysed on an intention-to-treat basis. Findings We analysed data from 19 trials and 4806 patients. Median follow-up was 7·7 years (IQR 6·2–11·9). We found that the addition of chemotherapy to radiotherapy significantly improved overall survival (hazard ratio HR 0·79, 95% CI 0·73–0·86, p<0·0001; absolute benefit at 5 years 6·3%, 95% CI 3·5–9·1). The interaction between treatment effect (benefit of chemotherapy) on overall survival and the timing of chemotherapy was significant (p=0·01) in favour of concomitant plus adjuvant chemotherapy (HR 0·65, 0·56–0·76) and concomitant without adjuvant chemotherapy (0·80, 0·70–0·93) but not adjuvant chemotherapy alone (0·87, 0·68–1·12) or induction chemotherapy alone (0·96, 0·80–1·16). The benefit of the addition of chemotherapy was consistent for all endpoints analysed (all p<0·0001): progression-free survival (HR 0·75, 95% CI 0·69–0·81), locoregional control (0·73, 0·64–0·83), distant control (0·67, 0·59–0·75), and cancer mortality (0·76, 0·69–0·84). Interpretation Our results confirm that the addition of concomitant chemotherapy to radiotherapy significantly improves survival in patients with locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. To our knowledge, this is the first analysis that examines the effect of concomitant chemotherapy with and without adjuvant chemotherapy as distinct groups. Further studies on the specific benefits of adjuvant chemotherapy after concomitant chemoradiotherapy are needed. Funding French Ministry of Health (Programme d'actions intégrées de recherche VADS), Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer, and Sanofi-Aventis.