20 research outputs found
Ki-67 expression and patients survival in lung cancer: systematic review of the literature with meta-analysis
Among new biological markers that could become useful prognostic factors for lung carcinoma, Ki-67 is a nuclear protein involved in cell proliferation regulation. Some studies have suggested an association between Ki-67 and poor survival in lung cancer patients. In order to clarify this point, we have performed a systematic review of the literature, using the methodology already described by our Group, the European Lung Cancer Working Party. In total, 37 studies, including 3983 patients, were found to be eligible. In total, 49% of the patients were considered as having a tumour positive for the expression of Ki-67 according to the authors cutoff. In all, 29 of the studies dealt with non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC), one with small-cell carcinoma (SCLC), two with carcinoid tumours and five with any histology. In terms of survival results, Ki-67 was a bad prognosis factor for survival in 15 studies while it was not in 22. As there was no statistical difference in quality scores between the significant and nonsignificant studies evaluable for the meta-analysis, we were allowed to aggregate the survival results. The combined hazard ratio for NSCLC, calculated using a random-effects model was 1.56 (95% CI: 1.30-1.87), showing a worse survival when Ki-67 expression is increased. In conclusion, our meta-analysis shows that the expression of Ki-67 is a factor of poor prognosis for survival in NSCLC.Journal ArticleMeta-AnalysisResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tSCOPUS: re.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
Measurement of indirect CP asymmetries in D-0 -> K-K+ and D-0 -> pi(-)pi(+) decays using semileptonic B decays
Time-dependent asymmetries in the decay rates of the singly
Cabibbo-suppressed decays and are measured in collision data corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of 3.0 fb collected by the LHCb experiment. The mesons
are produced in semileptonic -hadron decays, where the charge of the
accompanying muon is used to determine the initial state as or
. The asymmetries in effective lifetimes between and
decays, which are sensitive to indirect violation, are
determined to be \begin{align*}
A_{\Gamma}(K^-K^+) = (-0.134 \pm 0.077 \; {}^{+0.026}_{-0.034})\% \,
A_{\Gamma}(\pi^-\pi^+) = (-0.092\pm 0.145 \; {}^{+0.025}_{-0.033})\% \,
\end{align*} where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second
systematic. This result is in agreement with previous measurements and with the
hypothesis of no indirect violation in decays.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure
Precise measurements of the properties of the B-1(5721)(0,+) and B-2*(5747)(0,+) states and observation of B-+,B-0 pi(-,+) mass structures
Invariant mass distributions of B+pi- and B0pi+ combinations are investigated
in order to study excited B mesons. The analysis is based on a data sample
corresponding to 3.0 fb-1 of pp collision data, recorded by the LHCb detector
at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. Precise measurements of the masses
and widths of the B_1(5721)^(0,+) and B_2*(5747)^(0,+) states are reported.
Clear enhancements, particularly prominent at high pion transverse momentum,
are seen over background in the mass range 5850--6000 MeV in both B+pi- and
B0pi+ combinations. The structures are consistent with the presence of four
excited B mesons, labelled B_J(5840)^(0,+) and B_J(5960)^(0,+), whose masses
and widths are obtained under different hypotheses for their quantum numbers.Comment: 29 pages, 5 Figures, 8 Table
A semantically flexible feature fusion network for retinal vessel segmentation
The automatic detection of retinal blood vessels by computer aided techniques plays an important role in the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and macular degeneration. In this paper we present a semantically flexible feature fusion network that employs residual skip connections between adjacent neurons to improve retinal vessel detection. This yields a method that can be trained employing residual learning. To illustrate the utility of our method for retinal blood vessel detection, we show results on two publicly available data sets, i.e. DRIVE and STARE. In our experimental evaluation we include widely used evaluation metrics and compare our results with those yielded by alternatives elsewhere in the literature. In our experiments, our method is quite competitive, delivering a margin of sensitivity and accuracy improvement as compared to the alternatives under consideration