Gender differences in survival and the use of primary care prior to diagnosis of three cancers:an analysis of routinely collected UK general practice data

Objective To explore whether there are gender differences in the number of GP recorded cases, the probability of survival and consulting pattern prior to diagnosis amongst patients with three non-sex-specific cancers. Design Cross sectional study. Setting UK primary care. Subjects 12,189 patients aged 16 years or over diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC), 11,081 patients with lung cancer and 4,352 patients with malignant melanoma, with first record of cancer diagnosis during 1997–2006. Main outcome measures Cancer cases recorded in primary care; probability of survival following diagnosis; and number of GP contacts within the 24 months preceding diagnosis. Results From 1997–2006, overall rates of GP recorded CRC and lung cancer cases recorded were higher in men than in women, but rates of malignant melanoma were higher in women than in men. Gender differences in survival were small; 49% of men and 53% of women survived at least 5 years following CRC diagnosis; 9% of men and 12% of women with lung cancer, and 77% of men and 86% of women with malignant melanoma. The adjusted male to female relative hazard ratio of death in all patients was 1.20 (95%CI 1.13–1.30), 1.24 (95%CI 1.16–1.33) and 1.73 (95%CI 1.51–2.00) for CRC, lung cancer and malignant melanoma respectively. However, gender differences in the relative risk were much smaller amongst those who died during follow-up. For each cancer, there was little evidence of gender difference in the percentage who consulted and the number of GP contacts made within 24 months prior to diagnosis. Conclusions This study found that patterns of consulting prior to cancer diagnosis differed little between two genders, providing no support for the hypothesis that gender differences in survival are explained by gender differences in consultation for more serious illness, and suggests the need for a more critical view of gender and consultation

Neural Innervation of the Immune Response Could Lead to Treatments for Severe Asthma: The Screening of Neurotransmitters on T Helper 17 Cell Differentiation

T Helper 17 (Th17) cell-driven neutrophilic asthma is a rare, yet severe phenotype that accounts for over 75% of all asthma related medical costs. Neural innervation has been known play a role in the immune response and we investigated whether the addition of neurotransmitters to would affect Th17 cell differentiation. Results indicated that neural innervation upregulated Th17 cell differentiation and expression of its cytokine IL-17 that is responsible for the severe symptoms seen in neutrophilic asthma

Thrombospondin1 Deficiency Reduces Obesity-Associated Inflammation and Improves Insulin Sensitivity in a Diet-Induced Obese Mouse Model

Obesity is prevalent worldwide and is associated with insulin resistance. Advanced studies suggest that obesity-associated low-grade chronic inflammation contributes to the development of insulin resistance and other metabolic complications. Thrombospondin 1 (TSP1) is a multifunctional extracellular matrix protein that is up-regulated in inflamed adipose tissue. A recent study suggests a positive correlation of TSP1 with obesity, adipose inflammation, and insulin resistance. However, the direct effect of TSP1 on obesity and insulin resistance is not known. Therefore, we investigated the role of TSP1 in mediating obesity-associated inflammation and insulin resistance by using TSP1 knockout mice.Male TSP1-/- mice and wild type littermate controls were fed a low-fat (LF) or a high-fat (HF) diet for 16 weeks. Throughout the study, body weight and fat mass increased similarly between the TSP1-/- mice and WT mice under HF feeding conditions, suggesting that TSP1 deficiency does not affect the development of obesity. However, obese TSP1-/- mice had improved glucose tolerance and increased insulin sensitivity compared to the obese wild type mice. Macrophage accumulation and inflammatory cytokine expression in adipose tissue were reduced in obese TSP1-/- mice. Consistent with the local decrease in pro-inflammatory cytokine levels, systemic inflammation was also decreased in the obese TSP1-/- mice. Furthermore, in vitro data demonstrated that TSP1 deficient macrophages had decreased mobility and a reduced inflammatory phenotype.TSP1 deficiency did not affect the development of high-fat diet induced obesity. However, TSP1 deficiency reduced macrophage accumulation in adipose tissue and protected against obesity related inflammation and insulin resistance. Our data demonstrate that TSP1 may play an important role in regulating macrophage function and mediating obesity-induced inflammation and insulin resistance. These data suggest that TSP1 may serve as a potential therapeutic target to improve the inflammatory and metabolic complications of obesity

Image preprocessing in classification and identification of diabetic eye diseases

Diabetic eye disease (DED) is a cluster of eye problem that affects diabetic patients. Identifying DED is a crucial activity in retinal fundus images because early diagnosis and treatment can eventually minimize the risk of visual impairment. The retinal fundus image plays a significant role in early DED classification and identification. An accurate diagnostic model’s development using a retinal fundus image depends highly on image quality and quantity. This paper presents a methodical study on the significance of image processing for DED classification. The proposed automated classification framework for DED was achieved in several steps: image quality enhancement, image segmentation (region of interest), image augmentation (geometric transformation), and classification. The optimal results were obtained using traditional image processing methods with a new build convolution neural network (CNN) architecture. The new built CNN combined with the traditional image processing approach presented the best performance with accuracy for DED classification problems. The results of the experiments conducted showed adequate accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity. © 2021, The Author(s)