Acupuncture for Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Patient-Reported Outcomes

AbstractThe present systematic review and meta-analysis was undertaken to evaluate the effects of acupuncture in women with breast cancer (BC), focusing on patient-reported outcomes (PROs).MethodsA comprehensive literature search was carried out for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) reporting PROs in BC patients with treatment-related symptoms after undergoing acupuncture for at least four weeks. Literature screening, data extraction, and risk bias assessment were independently carried out by two researchers.ResultsOut of the 2, 524 identified studies, 29 studies representing 33 articles were included in this meta-analysis. At the end of treatment (EOT), the acupuncture patients’ quality of life (QoL) was measured by the QLQ-C30 QoL subscale, the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Endocrine Symptoms (FACT-ES), the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–General/Breast (FACT-G/B), and the Menopause-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire (MENQOL), which depicted a significant improvement. The use of acupuncture in BC patients lead to a considerable reduction in the scores of all subscales of the Brief Pain Inventory-Short Form (BPI-SF) and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) measuring pain. Moreover, patients treated with acupuncture were more likely to experience improvements in hot flashes scores, fatigue, sleep disturbance, and anxiety compared to those in the control group, while the improvements in depression were comparable across both groups. Long-term follow-up results were similar to the EOT results.ConclusionsCurrent evidence suggests that acupuncture might improve BC treatment-related symptoms measured with PROs including QoL, pain, fatigue, hot flashes, sleep disturbance and anxiety. However, a number of included studies report limited amounts of certain subgroup settings, thus more rigorous, well-designed and larger RCTs are needed to confirm our results

Optimal design and performance metric of broadband full-Stokes polarimeters with immunity to Poisson and Gaussian noise

In this paper, the design, optimization and analysis of broadband full-Stokes polarimeters with immunity to both Poisson and Gaussian noise are presented. Different from the commonly-used optimization metrics such as, the condition number (CN), the equally weighted variance (EWV), or the polarimetric modulation efficiency (PME) for Gaussian noise, the optimally balanced condition for Poisson noise (BCPN) is, for the first time, proposed and used as a metric for the optimization of polarimeters. The numerical results show that the polarimeters optimized with the BCPN have immunity to both Poisson and Gaussian noise. The broadband polarimeters optimized from the BCPN are achromatic and have similar polarimetric modulation properties over the waveband, in contrast to the polychromatic polarimeters optimized from the CN, EWV and PME, whose polarimetric modulation properties vary with wavelength. (C) 2016 Optical Society of AmericaChina Scholarship [201406285048]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [xjj2013044]; Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China [20130201120047]; Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China [2014JQ8362]; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [41530422, 61275184, 61405153, 61540018]; National Major Project [32-Y30B08-9001-13/15]Open Access Journal.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Snapshot linear-Stokes imaging spectropolarimeter using division-of-focal-plane polarimetry and integral field spectroscopy

In this paper, the design and experimental demonstration of a snapshot linear-Stokes imaging spectropolarimeter (SLSIS) is presented. The SLSIS, which is based on division-of-focal-plane polarimetry with four parallel linear polarization channels and integral field spectroscopy with numerous slit dispersive paths, has no moving parts and provides video-rate Stokes-vector hyperspectral datacubes. It does not need any scanning in the spectral, spatial or polarization dimension and offers significant advantages of rapid reconstruction without heavy computation during post-processing. The principle and the experimental setup of the SLSIS are described in detail. The image registration, Stokes spectral reconstruction and calibration procedures are included, and the system is validated using measurements of tungsten light and a static scene. The SLSIS's snapshot ability to resolve polarization spectral signatures is demonstrated using measurements of a dynamic scene.China Scholarship [201406285048]; National Major Project [32-Y30B08-9001-13/15]; Program 863 of China [2012AA121101]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [xjj2013044]This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

The complete mitochondrial genome of Anthomyza sp. (Diptera: Anthomyzidae)

Anthomyza sp. belongs to family Anthomyzidae of superfamily Opomyzoidea. The mitogenome of Anthomyza sp. was sequenced as the first representative of the family. The mitogenome is 16,308 bp totally, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNAs and 22 transfer RNAs and control region. Anthomyza sp. has the similar gene structures with other published species of Acalyptratae. The nucleotide composition biases toward A and T is 78.7% of the entirety. IQ-TREE analysis recovered the monophyly of Opomyzoidea, which is inferred from 12 species. It indicated that Opomyzoidea is assigned to be the sister of the clade of (Ephydroidea + (Tephritoidea + Lauxanioidea))