Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

The Association between Nonalcoholic Fatty Pancreas Disease and Diabetes

Background: Fatty infiltration of the pancreas has been shown to interfere with insulin secretion. Both insulin sensitivity and secretion are important in the pathogenesis of diabetes and prediabetes. However, the relationship between diabetes, prediabetes, and fatty pancreas remains unknown. We aim to investigate the relationships that fatty pancreas and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) have with prediabetes and diabetes in a Chinese population. Patients and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study. A total of 7,464 subjects were recruited. NAFLD and fatty pancreas were assessed by sonography. Clinico-metabolic parameters were compared among subjects with normoglycemia, prediabetes, and diabetes. Multinomial logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationship between fatty pancreas and NAFLD and diabetes or prediabetes with adjustment for cardiometabolic risk factors. Results: With an increase in glycemia, a significantly greater proportion of subjects had NAFLD and fatty pancreas (test for trend p<0.05). Similar trends were also found for hypertension, general and central obesity, low-HDL cholesterol, and hypertriglyceridemia. In the logistic regression analysis, age, hypertension, male gender, hypertriglyceridemia, and central obesity were significantly associated with prediabetes and diabetes. Furthermore, the ORs of prediabetes and diabetes for NAFLD were 1.798 (95% CI 1.544-2.094) and 2.578 (95% CI 2.024-3.284), respectively. In addition, fatty pancreas was independently related to diabetes (OR, 1.379; 95% CI, 1.047-1.816) and prediabetes (OR, 1.222; 95% CI, 1.002-1.491) in male subjects. Conclusions: Both NAFLD and fatty pancreas were associated with diabetes independent of age, gender, adiposity, and other cardiometabolic risk factors. Fatty pancreas was also related to prediabetes in males

Development of Hyperthyroidism Following Primary Hypothyroidism: A Case Report

Development of hyperthyroidism following primary hypothyroidism is uncommon, and only a few documented cases have been reported. Alterations in thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor antibodies in serum are currently considered to play the main role in the pathophysiology, but the exact mechanism is still unknown. Here, we report the case of a 60-year-old man with disturbed consciousness due to hyponatremia. Thyroid function tests showed primary hypothyroidism with a high anti-microsomal antibody titer (1:6,400). The patient experienced weight loss and exophthalmos 6 years later. Serum thyroid hormone levels were increased and thyroxine treatment was discontinued, but the patient remained thyrotoxic 2 months later. 131I thyroid uptake was 40.9% at 24 hours, and bilateral thyroid lobes were not enlarged with diffuse radioactivity. Six months later, the patient was still thyrotoxic and therapy with methimazole 10 mg/day was started. He is now taking methimazole and is euthyroid

Coral Hydrate, a Novel Antioxidant, Improves Alcohol Intoxication in Mice

Alcohol-drinking culture may cause individuals to periodically experience unpleasant hangovers. In addition, ethanol catabolism stimulates the production of free radicals that may cause liver injury and further lead to the development of chronic alcoholic fatty liver disease. Although a number of studies have suggested that hydrogenated water may be consumed to act as free radical scavenger, its instability limits its application. In this study, we used coral hydrate (i.e., hydrogenated coral materials) as a more stable hydrogen source and evaluated its effects in a murine model of alcohol intoxication. In solution, coral hydrate exhibited much more stable redox potential than did hydrogenated water. Furthermore, administration of coral hydrate by oral gavage significantly prolonged the time to fall asleep and decreased the total sleep time in mice that received intraperitoneal injection of ethanol. The mice receiving coral hydrate also had lower plasma ethanol and acetaldehyde levels than controls. In line with this observation, hepatic expression of alcohol dehydrogenase, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, catalase and glutathione peroxidase were all significantly increased by the treatment. Meanwhile, alcohol-induced upregulation of pro-inflammatory factors was attenuated by the administration of coral hydrate. Taken together, our data suggest that coral hydrate might be an effective novel treatment for alcohol intoxication

Comparison of the Current Diagnostic Criterion of HbA1c with Fasting and 2-Hour Plasma Glucose Concentration

To determine the effectiveness of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) ≥ 6.5% in diagnosing diabetes compared to fasting plasma glucose (FPG) ≥ 126 mg/dL and 2-hour plasma glucose (2hPG) ≥ 200 mg/dL in a previously undiagnosed diabetic cohort, we included 5,764 adult subjects without established diabetes for whom HbA1c, FPG, 2hPG, and BMI measurements were collected. Compared to the FPG criterion, the sensitivity of HbA1c ≥ 6.5% was only 43.3% (106 subjects). Compared to the 2hPG criterion, the sensitivity of HbA1c ≥ 6.5% was only 28.1% (110 subjects). Patients who were diabetic using 2hPG criterion but had HbA1c < 6.5% were more likely to be older (64±15 versus 60±15 years old, P=0.01, mean ± STD), female (53.2% versus 38.2%, P=0.008), leaner (29.7±6.1 versus 33.0±6.6 kg/m2, P=0.000005), and less likely to be current smokers (18.1% versus 29.1%, P=0.02) as compared to those with HbA1c ≥ 6.5%. The diagnostic agreement in the clinical setting revealed the current HbA1c ≥ 6.5% is less likely to detect diabetes than those defined by FPG and 2hPG. HbA1c ≥ 6.5% detects less than 50% of diabetic patients defined by FPG and less than 30% of diabetic patients defined by 2hPG. When the diagnosis of diabetes is in doubt by HbA1c, FPG and/or 2hPG should be obtained

The Impact of Hepatitis B Vaccination Status on the Risk of Diabetes, Implicating Diabetes Risk Reduction by Successful Vaccination.

The liver plays a key role in fuel metabolism. It is well established that liver disease is associated with an increased risk for diabetes mellitus. Hepatitis C virus infection has been known to increase the risk of diabetes. However, much less is known about the role of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in diabetes. We examined the association of diabetes based on the vaccination status for HBV.In this cross-sectional study, we included adult subjects (≥20 y/o) with HBV serology available from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005-2010. Diabetes was defined as established diabetes or fasting plasma glucose concentration ≥7.0 mmol/L, 2-hour plasma glucose concentration ≥11.1 mmol/L, or HbA1c ≥ 47.5 mmol/mol (6.5%). Vaccination was based on the reported history and immunization was determined by HBV serology. The odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated with consideration of the following covariates: age, gender, BMI, ethnic/racial group, current smoker, current alcohol consumption, family history of diabetes, poverty index, and education.This study included 15,316 subjects. Among them, 2,320 subjects was immunized based the HBV serology. Among 4,063 subjects who received HBV vaccination, successful vaccination was only noted in 39% of subjects. The HBV vaccination was not associated with diabetes (OR: 1.08, 95%CI: 0.96-1.23). Serology evidence of HBV immunization was associated with a reduced OR of diabetes (0.75, 95%CI: 0.62-0.90). Successful HBV vaccination was also associated with a reduced OR of diabetes (0.67, 95%CI: 0.52-0.84).Although our study shows the association of HBV vaccination with the reduced odds of diabetes by 33%, a prospective study is warranted to confirm and examine the impact of HBV vaccination in prevention of diabetes