Successful treatment of an early invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma with topical 5-aminolevulinic acid-mediated photodynamic therapy

Our previous studies showed successful treatment of a series of 36 oral verrucous hyperplasia lesions and of an extensive oral verrucous carcinoma with a topical 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA)-mediated photodynamic therapy (topical ALA-PDT) protocol (with a fluence rate of 100 mW/cm2 and a light exposure dose of 100 J/cm2) using a 635-nm light-emitting diode (LED) light source. In this case report, we tested whether an enhanced topical ALA-PDT protocol (with a fluence rate of 200 mW/cm2 and a light exposure dose of 200 J/cm2) could be used to treat an early invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) with a verrucous appearance of the left lower posterior edentulous alveolar mucosa of a 67-year-old male former areca-quid chewer and ex-smoker. The main verrucous lesion showed complete regression after eight treatments with PDT. However, 10 extra treatments were needed to eradicate the multiple residual leukoplakia lesions on the edentulous alveolar mucosa. Moderate to severe post-PDT pain was noted during the initial eight treatments, and the patient needed analgesics (codeine phosphate, 30 mg three times daily) to control the pain. No recurrence of the OSCC lesion was found after a follow-up period of 4 years. We suggest that our enhanced topical ALA-PDT protocol may have good potential to be used as a treatment of choice for a superficially invasive OSCC without regional or distant metastasis before the commencement of other effective therapies

Magnesium-enriched deep-sea water inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome activation and dampens inflammation.

The NLRP3 inflammasome is an essential component of the innate immune system, but excessive activation can lead to inflammatory diseases. Ion fluxes across the plasma membrane or from intracellular stores are known to regulate NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Deep-sea water (DSW) contains high concentrations of many mineral ions, which could potentially influence NLRP3 inflammasome activation. However, the impact of DSW on NLRP3 inflammasome activation has not been investigated. Here, we demonstrated that DSW with water hardness levels up to 500 mg/L did not affect cell viability or the expression of NLRP3 inflammasome components in macrophages derived from THP-1 cells. However, the DSW significantly inhibited IL-1β secretion and caspase-1 activation in response to NLRP3 activators such as nigericin, ATP, or monosodium urate (MSU) crystals. Mechanically, it was discovered that the presence of 5 mM magnesium ions (Mg2+), equivalent to the Mg2+ concentration found in the DSW with a water hardness of 500 mg/L, inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome activation. This indicates that Mg2+ contributes to the mechanism by which DSW mitigates NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Moreover, DSW administration effectively lessens MSU-triggered peritonitis in mice, a commonly used model for examining the impacts of NLRP3 inflammasome activation. These results show that DSW enriched with Mg2+ could potentially be beneficial in modulating NLRP3 inflammasome-associated diseases

ITPKC Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Associated with the Kawasaki Disease in a Taiwanese Population

Kawasaki disease (KD) is characterized by systemic vasculitis with unknown etiology. Previous studies from Japan indicated that a gene polymorphism of ITPKC (rs28493229) is responsible for susceptibility to KD. We collected DNA samples from 1,531 Taiwanese subjects (341 KD patients and 1,190 controls) for genotyping ITPKC. In this study, no significant association was noted for the ITPKC polymorphism (rs28493229) between the controls and KD patients, although the CC genotype was overrepresented. We further combined our data with previously published case/control KD studies in the Taiwanese population and performed a meta-analysis. A significant association between rs28493229 and KD was found (Odds Ratio:1.36, 95% Confidence Interval 1.12–1.66). Importantly, a significant association was obtained between rs28493229 and KD patients with aneurysm formation (P = 0.001, under the recessive model). Taken together, our results indicated that C-allele of ITPKC SNP rs28493229 is associated with the susceptibility and aneurysm formation in KD patients in a Taiwanese population

Changes of Constituents and Activity to Apoptosis and Cell Cycle During Fermentation of Tea

Tea is believed to be beneficial for health, and the effects of the fermentation process on its contributions to apoptosis and cell cycle arrest of gastric cancer cells have not been completely investigated. In this study, the chemical components in green tea, black tea and pu-erh tea aqueous extracts were analyzed and compared. The polysaccharide and caffeine levels were substantially higher in the fermented black tea and pu-erh tea, while the polyphenol level was higher in the unfermented green tea. Hence, a treatment of tea aqueous extract and the components, which are emerging as promising anticancer agents, were pursued to determine whether this treatment could lead to enhance apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. In the human gastric cancer cell line SGC-7901, the cell viability and flow cytometry analysis for apoptotic cells indicated effects in a dose-dependent inhibition manner for the three tea treatment groups. The apoptosis rates were found to be elevated after 48 h of treatment with 31.2, 125, and 500 μg/mL of green tea extract, the higher catechins content may be involved in the mechanism. Cell cycle was arrested in S phase in the fermented black tea and pu-erh tea, and the populations were significantly decreased in G2/M phases, possibly due to the oxidation of tea polyphenols, which causes an increase of theabrownins. CCC-HEL-1 normal cells were not sensitive to tea extract. These findings suggest that the fermentation process causes changes of the compounds which might be involved in the changes of cell proliferation inhibition, apoptosis induction and cell cycle arrest

Computational Analysis of mRNA Expression Profiles Identifies MicroRNA-29a/c as Predictor of Colorectal Cancer Early Recurrence

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading malignant cancers with a rapid increase in incidence and mortality. The recurrences of CRC after curative resection are sometimes unavoidable and often take place within the first year after surgery. MicroRNAs may serve as biomarkers to predict early recurrence of CRC, but identifying them from over 1,400 known human microRNAs is challenging and costly. An alternative approach is to analyze existing expression data of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) because generally speaking the expression levels of microRNAs and their target mRNAs are inversely correlated. In this study, we extracted six mRNA expression data of CRC in four studies (GSE12032, GSE17538, GSE4526 and GSE17181) from the gene expression omnibus (GEO). We inferred microRNA expression profiles and performed computational analysis to identify microRNAs associated with CRC recurrence using the IMRE method based on the MicroCosm database that includes 568,071 microRNA-target connections between 711 microRNAs and 20,884 gene targets. Two microRNAs, miR-29a and miR-29c, were disclosed and further meta-analysis of the six mRNA expression datasets showed that these two microRNAs were highly significant based on the Fisher p-value combination (p = 9.14×10−9 for miR-29a and p = 1.14×10−6 for miR-29c). Furthermore, these two microRNAs were experimentally tested in 78 human CRC samples to validate their effect on early recurrence. Our empirical results showed that the two microRNAs were significantly down-regulated (p = 0.007 for miR-29a and p = 0.007 for miR-29c) in the early-recurrence patients. This study shows the feasibility of using mRNA profiles to indicate microRNAs. We also shows miR-29a/c could be potential biomarkers for CRC early recurrence

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

Spinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signalto- noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far

A 30-Year Worldwide Research Productivity of Scientific Publication in Full-Endoscopic Decompression Spine Surgery: Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

Objective The ever-growing number of articles related to full-endoscopic spine surgery published in the last few decades presents a challenge which is perplexing and time-consuming in identifying the current research status. The study aims to identify and analyze the most cited works related to full-endoscopic decompression spine surgery, compare the articles published by different publishers and area, and show the current publication status of full-endoscopic research. Methods Using Bibliometrix, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer, we analyzed the bibliometric data selected from the Web of Science database between 1992 and 2022. Spine has the highest H-index with the most-cited journal in the field of full-endoscopic decompression spine surgery. China ranked as the most productive country, whereas the most cited with high H-index papers came from South Korea. For the author analysis, Yeung AT, Ruetten S, Hoogland T, Ahn Y, Choi G, and Mayer HM were the most impactful authors in the global and local citations. The most productive organization is Wooridul Spine Hospital. Conclusion The bibliometric study showed a growing trend of research on full-endoscopic decompression spine surgery over the past 30 years. It has demonstrated that there is a significant increase in the number of authors, institutions, and internationally collaborated countries. However, the quality of studies is still low, and the lack of high-quality clinical evidence and the trend of general journal submissions has somewhat affected the quality of endoscopy journals in recent years