Experience of using bevacizumab in epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube and primary peritoneal cancers in a single centre

Objectives: To review the use of bevacizumab in epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube and primary peritoneal cancers in our centre. Methods: Patients receiving bevacizumab for epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube and primary peritoneal cancer at the Division of Gynaecological Oncology, Queen Mary Hospital, The University of Hong Kong between January 2011 and December 2015 were included. A retrospective chart review was performed. Main outcome measures were adverse events and progression-free survival. Results: Overall, 41 patients received bevacizumab for epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer, of which 24 were for primary treatment and 17 for recurrent disease. Of 24 patients who received bevacizumab as primary treatment, the median age was 52 years, and 12.5% of the patients had early-stage high-risk disease, 87.5% had FIGO stage III or IV disease, 45.8% had a serous adenocarcinoma, and 54.2% had residual disease after debulking surgery. Of 17 patients who received bevacizumab for recurrent disease, the median age was 52 years, and 94.1% of the patients were having their first recurrence, 64.7% had platinum-sensitive disease and 41.2% had a serous adenocarcinoma. Grade 2 or higher hypertension and proteinuria occured in 24.4% and 12.2% of patients, respectively. Bevacizumab was discontinued in 7.3% of patients due to adverse events and 31.7% due to inadequate therapeutic response. The median progression free survival was 18.0 months (95% CI 13.6 to 22.4) for primary treatment and 11.0 months (95% CI 8.4 to 13.6) for recurrent disease. Conclusions: With acceptable toxicity, combination of bevacizumab and chemotherapy may be considered as treatment modality in newly diagnosed suboptimally debulked stage III or stage IV ovarian cancer as well as in recurrent ovarian cancer.postprin

Increasing Risk of Dementia Among Patients with Subsequent Epilepsy Within 2 Years Post-Traumatic Brain Injury: A Population‐Based Case-Control Study

Shu-Fen Chu,1 Kuo-Hsing Liao,2– 5 Li Wei2,6 1College of Nursing and Health Management, Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 2Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan; 3Division of Critical Medicine, Department of Emergency and Critical Medicine, Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Department of Neurotraumatology and Intensive Care, Taipei Neuroscience Institute, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan; 5Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan; 6Graduate Institute of Injury Prevention and Control, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, TaiwanCorrespondence: Li Wei, Graduate Institute of Injury Prevention and Control, Taipei Medical University, 250 Wu-Hsing Street, Taipei City, Taiwan 110, Taiwan, Email [email protected]: Although the association between neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) has long been known, the association between dementia and TBI with epilepsy has been controversial.Aim: This data-driven population-based study is designed to investigate the association between dementia and epilepsy after TBI within a 2-year period.Methods: This case-control cohort study was conducted using the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000 (LHID2000). We included 784 individuals ambulatory or hospitalized for TBI with epilepsy from 2001 to 2011, compared with 2992 patients with TBI without epilepsy who were matched for characteristics including sex, age, and healthcare resource use index date. Every participant was followed up for 5 years to ascertain any dementia development. Data were stratified and analyzed using the Cox proportional hazards regression.Results: Through the 5-year follow-up period, 39 patients (5.21%) with TBI with epilepsy and 55 (1.53%) with TBI without epilepsy developed dementia. TBI with epilepsy was independently associated with a > 3.03 times risk of dementia after correcting for age, sex, and comorbidities.Conclusion: These findings suggest an increased risk of dementia in patients with TBI with epilepsy. Our research recommends that individuals with TBI and epilepsy be monitored more intensively.Keywords: neurodegenerative diseases, dementia, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, data-driven, population-based stud

Turbulent energy motion of fiber suspensions in a rotating frame

Turbulent flows play a major role in many fields of science and industry. Noticeable attention is seen on turbulent flows of suspending fibers because of the sensitivity of the electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties of the connecting fiber composites to the spatial configuration and orientation of fibers. The involvement of fibers in the turbulent flow greatly affects the turbulent energy. It is more influenced when the turbulent flow occurs in a rotating system. The effect of fibers on the turbulent energy in the rotating frame must therefore be investigated. For turbulent energy with fiber suspension, a mathematical model can be built in a rotating system that is very important to enhance the quality of industrial goods. This paper, therefore, develops a mathematical model for turbulent energy motion in a rotating frame with a fiber suspension. The model was formulated using the averaging procedure. The momentum equation for incompressible and viscous fluid turbulent flow was considered to develop the model. The turbulent energy motion of the fiber suspensions was presented in the rotating frame in second-order correlation tensors,, and, where all the tensors are the function of time, distance, and space coordinates

Physical and hybrid modelling techniques for earth-air heat exchangers in reducing building energy consumption: Performance, applications, progress, and challenges

Noteworthy advancements are seen in developing the earth-air heat exchanger (EAHE) models in the past several decades to reduce building energy consumption. However, it is still an ongoing challenge in selecting and implementing the most suitable and appropriate EAHE modelling technique in buildings based on the climates, performance, and limitations of the techniques. Therefore, this paper aims to review the published research related to the physical, and hybrid EAHE modelling techniques used in buildings, and highlight the prospects, benefits, progress, and challenges of these techniques. This is the first study that comprehensively evidences the prospects and technical challenges caused by unmeasured disturbances, assumptions, or the uncertainties generated in experimental and numerical works of all EAHE modelling techniques. Nevertheless, this study found that hybrid modelling is more effective than physical models for accurate prediction. On the contrary, the hybrid models suffer from high complexity if EAHE operating conditions and all key parameters are considered during the model development. Regarding the generalization capability, the physical models offer improved performance followed by the hybrid models. A minimum number of training data is needed for developing physical models, whereas medium training data is required for the hybrid models. The outcome of this study also provides valuable information regarding the physical and hybrid EAHE modelling techniques to the scientists, researchers, and so on in adopting the most appropriate EAHE modelling technique for their climates

Molecular Epidemiology of Hospital Outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2014

We investigated an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) at King Fahad Medical City (KFMC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during March 29–May 21, 2014. This outbreak involved 45 patients: 8 infected outside KFMC, 13 long-term patients at KFMC, 23 health care workers, and 1 who had an indeterminate source of infection. Sequences of full-length MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) from 10 patients and a partial sequence of MERS-CoV from another patient, when compared with other MERS-CoV sequences, demonstrated that this outbreak was part of a larger outbreak that affected multiple health care facilities in Riyadh and possibly arose from a single zoonotic transmission event that occurred in December 2013 (95% highest posterior density interval November 8, 2013–February 10, 2014). This finding suggested continued health care–associated transmission for 5 months. Molecular epidemiology documented multiple external introductions in a seemingly contiguous outbreak and helped support or refute transmission pathways suspected through epidemiologic investigation.link_to_OA_fulltex

Antimetastatic Effects of Norcantharidin on Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Transcriptional Inhibition of MMP-9 through Modulation of NF-kB Activity

The rate of morbidity and mortality of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Taiwan has not lessened because of difficulty in treating tumor metastasis. Norcantharidin (NCTD) is currently used as an anticancer drug for hepatoma, breast cancer, and colorectal adenocarcinoma. NCTD possesses various biological anticancer activities, including apoptosis. However, detailed effects and molecular mechanisms of NCTD on metastasis are unclear. Thus, HCC cells were subjected to treatment with NCTD and then analyzed to determine the effects of NCTD on cell metastasis.Modified Boyden chamber assays revealed that NCTD treatment inhibited cell migration and invasion capacities of HCC cells substantially. Results of zymography and western blotting showed that activities and protein levels of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and urokinase plasminogen activator (u-PA) were inhibited by NCTD. Western blot analysis showed that NCTD inhibits phosphorylation of ERK1/2. Testing of mRNA level, quantitative real-time PCR, and promoter assays evaluated the inhibitory effects of NCTD on MMP-9 and u-PA expression in HCC cells. The chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay for analyzing the genomic DNA sequences bound to these proteins was reactive to the transcription protein nuclear factor (NF)-kappaB, which was inhibited by NCTD. The expression of NF-kappa B was measured by western blot analysis, which revealed decreased nuclear-factor DNA-binding activity after NCTD treatment.NCTD inhibited MMP-9 and u-PA expression through the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and NF-kappaB signaling pathway which serves as a powerful chemopreventive agent in HCC cell metastasis

Prospects of Bioenergy Production From Organic Waste Using Anaerobic Digestion Technology: A Mini Review

naerobic digestion (AD) from organic waste has gained worldwide attention because it offers significant environmental and economic benefits. It can reduce the local waste through recycling which will conserve resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and build economic resilience in the face of an uncertain future for energy production and waste disposal. The productive use of local waste through recycling conserves resources by reducing landfill space, the whole of life impacts of landfilling, and post-closure maintenance of landfills. Turning waste into a renewable energy source will assist the decarbonisation of the economy by reducing harmful emissions and pollutants. Therefore, this mini-review aims to summarise key factors and present valuable evidence for an efficient AD process. It also presents the pros and cons of different AD process to convert organic waste along with the reactor technologies. Besides, this paper highlights the challenges and the future perspective of the AD process. However, it is highlighted that for an effective and efficient AD process, appropriate temperature, pH, a strong inoculum to substrate ratio, good mixing and small particle sizes are important factors. The selection of suitable AD process and reactor is important because not all types of processes and reactors are not effective for processing organic waste. This study is of great importance for ongoing work on renewable energy generation from waste and provides important knowledge of innovative waste processing. Finally, it is recommended that the government should increase their support towards the AD technology and consider the unutilized significant potential of gaseous biofuel production

Fast fluorescence microscopy for imaging the dynamics of embryonic development

Live imaging has gained a pivotal role in developmental biology since it increasingly allows real-time observation of cell behavior in intact organisms. Microscopes that can capture the dynamics of ever-faster biological events, fluorescent markers optimal for in vivo imaging, and, finally, adapted reconstruction and analysis programs to complete data flow all contribute to this success. Focusing on temporal resolution, we discuss how fast imaging can be achieved with minimal prejudice to spatial resolution, photon count, or to reliably and automatically analyze images. In particular, we show how integrated approaches to imaging that combine bright fluorescent probes, fast microscopes, and custom post-processing techniques can address the kinetics of biological systems at multiple scales. Finally, we discuss remaining challenges and opportunities for further advances in this field

Association of an INSIG2 obesity allele with cardiovascular phenotypes is gender and age dependent

Background: The INSIG2 gene has been implicated in cholesterol metabolism and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) near INSIG2 has been shown to be associated with obesity. We sought to determine the relationship of the INSIG2 SNP to cardiovascular disease (CVD) related phenotypes.Methods and Results: Nine hundred forty six patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in wave 5 of the multicenter NHLBI Dynamic Registry were genotyped using RT-PCR/TaqMan/allelic discrimination for the rs7566605 SNP near the INSIG2 gene. Clinical variables analyzed include demographics, medical history, and procedural details. The prevalence of peripheral vascular disease (PVD) was significantly higher in older men (≥65 years) who were either homozygous or carriers of the obesity/lipid risk allele ("C") compared to non-carriers (odds ratio 3.4, p = 0.013) using a logistic regression model incorporating history of hypercholesterolemia, history of hypertension, cerebrovascular disease, history of diabetes, and BMI. A similar relationship with cerebrovascular disease was found in older (>65) women (odds ratio 3.4, p = 0.013). The INSIG2 SNP was not associated with BMI, nor with other clinical variables.Conclusion: Age and gender may influence the association of the INSIG2 obesity SNP with PVD and cerebrovascular disease in patients with pre-existing CVD. © 2010 Skelding et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd