Sarcopenia-related Traits, Body Mass Index and Ovarian Cancer Risk: Investigation of Causal Relationships Through Multivariable Mendelian Randomization Analyses

Objective: This study was aimed at exploring the causal relationships of four sarcopenia-related traits (appendicular lean mass, usual walking pace, right hand grip strength, and levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity) with body mass index (BMI) and ovarian cancer risk, by using univariable and multivariable Mendelian randomization (MR) methods. Materials and Methods: Univariable and multivariable MR was performed to estimate causal relationships among sarcopenia-related traits, BMI, and ovarian cancer risk, in aggregated genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from the UK Biobank. Genetic variants associated with each variable (P < 5 × 10−8) were identified as instrumental variables. Three methods—inverse variance weighted (IVW) analysis, weighted median analysis, and MR-Egger regression—were used. Results: Univariable MR analyses revealed positive causal effects of high appendicular lean mass (P = 0.02) and high BMI (P = 0.001) on ovarian cancer occurrence. In contrast, a genetically predicted faster usual walking pace was associated with lower risk of ovarian cancer (P = 0.03). No evidence was found supporting roles of right hand grip strength and levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity in ovarian cancer development (P = 0.56 and P = 0.22, respectively). In multivariable MR analyses, the association between a genetically predicted faster usual walking pace and lower ovarian cancer risk remained significant (P = 0.047). Conclusions: Our study highlights a role of slower usual walking pace in the development of ovarian cancer. Further studies are required to validate our findings and understand the underlying mechanisms

The Impact of Perioperative Events on Cancer Recurrence and Metastasis in Patients after Radical Gastrectomy: A Review

Radical gastrectomy is a mainstay therapy for patients with locally resectable gastric cancer (GC). GC patients who are candidates for radical gastrectomy will experience at least part of the following perioperative events: surgery, anesthesia, pain, intraoperative blood loss, allogeneic blood transfusion, postoperative complications, and their related anxiety, depression and stress response. Considerable clinical studies have shown that these perioperative events can promote recurrence and decrease the long-term survival of GC patients. The mechanisms include activation of neural signaling and the inflammatory response, suppression of antimetastatic immunity, increased release of cancer cells into circulation, and delayed adjuvant therapy, which are involved in every step of the invasion-metastasis cascade. Having appreciated these perioperative events and their influence on the risk of GC recurrence, we can now use this knowledge to find strategies that might substantially prevent the deleterious recurrence-promoting effects of perioperative events, potentially increasing cancer-free survival in GC patients

The Analysis of Credit Using and Rationing Under Farmer's Risk Attitudes Difference

This paper conducts a survey of 237 rural households in Zhangjiagang City, identifies farmers’ risk attitude through ELCE method and problem design and empirically studies the relationship between risk attitudes and credit rationing by utilizing Probit and Logit model. The results show that farmers’ risk attitude and credit rationing are in a significant positive correlation. The stronger farmers’ risk aversion is, the more serious the demanded credit rationing becomes. Such risk attitude determines the risk cost and risk premium, thus affecting the credit behavior and credit rationing degree. In addition, distance between farmers’ residence far the city and their land amount have a positive significant influence on credit rationing, while farmers’ education level, income, family labor force have a negative significant effect on credit rationing. Based on these findings, the paper further analyzes the relationship between farmers’ credit using and credit rationing as to farmers with different risk attitudes. Measures to relieve the farmer’s credit rationing must be taken from government, financial institutions and farmers, respectively

3D Cardiac Cell Culture on Nanofiber Bundle Substrates for the Investigation of Cell Morphology and Contraction

Cardiac failure is a quite severe condition that can result in life-threatening consequences. Cardiac tissue engineering is thought to be one of the most promising technologies to reconstruct damaged cardiac muscles and facilitate myocardial tissue regeneration. We report a new nanofiber bundle substrate for three-dimensional (3D) cardiac cell culture as a platform to investigate cell morphology and contraction. Polymeric nanofiber bundles with various patterns act as physical cues to align the cardiac cell sheets. Comparing the uniaxial alignment with the randomly distributed pattern, we found that the bundles with the former pattern have more “grooves” for the settlement of cardiomyocytes in a 3D structure than the latter. The cardiomyocytes loaded on the aligned nanofiber bundles tend to grow along the fiber axis. The interfacial structure between a single cardiomyocyte in the cardiac cell sheet and the attached nanofibers was observed using environmental scanning electron microscope. Immunofluorescence imaging showed that the uniaxially aligned nanofibers greatly promoted cell attachment and alignment of the cardiomyocytes because of the matching morphology between the nanofiber pattern and the biological components. Moreover, we concluded that the aligned polymeric nanofibers could be a promising substrate suitable for the anisotropic contraction of cardiac cell sheets

An LMI Approach for Dynamics of Switched Cellular Neural Networks with Mixed Delays

This paper considers the dynamics of switched cellular neural networks (CNNs) with mixed delays. With the help of the Lyapnnov function combined with the average dwell time method and linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) technique, some novel sufficient conditions on the issue of the uniformly ultimate boundedness, the existence of an attractor, and the globally exponential stability for CNN are given. The provided conditions are expressed in terms of LMI, which can be easily checked by the effective LMI toolbox in Matlab in practice

Association between sex and efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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