Influence of diabetes on cardiac resynchronization therapy in heart failure patients: a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Diabetes mellitus is an independent risk factor of increased morbidity and mortality in patients with heart failure. Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), a pacemaker-based therapy for dyssynchronous heart failure, improves cardiac performance and quality of life, but its effect on mortality in patients with diabetes is uncertain. METHODS: We performed a meta-analysis of results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of the long-term outcome of cardiac resynchronization therapy for heart failure in diabetic and non-diabetic patients. Literature search of MEDLINE via Pubmed for reports of randomized controlled trials of Cardiac resynchronization for chronic symptomatic left-ventricular dysfunction in patients with and without diabetes mellitus, with death as the outcome. Relevant data were analyzed by use of a random-effects model. Reports published from 1994 to 2011 that described RCTs of CRT for treating chronic symptomatic left ventricular dysfunction in patients with and without diabetes, with all-cause mortality as an outcome. RESULTS: A total of 5 randomized controlled trials met the inclusion criteria, for 2,923 patients. The quality of studies was good to moderate. Cardiac resynchronization significantly reduced the mortality for heart failure patients with or without diabetes mellitus. Mortality was 24.3% for diabetic patients with heart failure and 20.4 % for non-diabetics (odds ratio 1.28, 95% confidence interval 1.06–1.55; P = 0.010). CONCLUSIONS: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) may reduce mortality from progressive heart failure in patients with or without diabetes mellitus, but mortality may be higher for patients with than without diabetes after CRT for heart failure

Fine-grained Text and Image Guided Point Cloud Completion with CLIP Model

This paper focuses on the recently popular task of point cloud completion guided by multimodal information. Although existing methods have achieved excellent performance by fusing auxiliary images, there are still some deficiencies, including the poor generalization ability of the model and insufficient fine-grained semantic information for extracted features. In this work, we propose a novel multimodal fusion network for point cloud completion, which can simultaneously fuse visual and textual information to predict the semantic and geometric characteristics of incomplete shapes effectively. Specifically, to overcome the lack of prior information caused by the small-scale dataset, we employ a pre-trained vision-language model that is trained with a large amount of image-text pairs. Therefore, the textual and visual encoders of this large-scale model have stronger generalization ability. Then, we propose a multi-stage feature fusion strategy to fuse the textual and visual features into the backbone network progressively. Meanwhile, to further explore the effectiveness of fine-grained text descriptions for point cloud completion, we also build a text corpus with fine-grained descriptions, which can provide richer geometric details for 3D shapes. The rich text descriptions can be used for training and evaluating our network. Extensive quantitative and qualitative experiments demonstrate the superior performance of our method compared to state-of-the-art point cloud completion networks

Seroprevalence of Bartonella in Eastern China and analysis of risk factors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Bartonella </it>infections are emerging in the Zhejiang Province of China. However, there has been no effort to date to explore the epidemiology of these infections in this region, nor to identify risk factors associated with exposure to <it>Bartonella</it>. The aim of this study was to investigate the seroprevalence of <it>Bartonella </it>in both patients bitten by dogs and blood donors (for control) in Eastern China, and to identify risk factors associated with exposure to <it>Bartonella</it>. As no previous data for this region have been published, this study will provide baseline data useful for <it>Bartonella </it>infection surveillance, control, and prevention.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Blood samples were collected from industrial rabies clinic attendees and blood donors living in eight areas of the Zhejiang Province of China, between December 2005 and November 2006. An indirect immunofluorescent antibody test was used to determine the presence of <it>Bartonella </it>in these samples. Risk factors associated with <it>Bartonella </it>exposure were explored using Chi-square tests and logistic regression analysis of epidemiological data relating to the study's participants.</p> <p>Results</p> <p><it>Bartonella </it>antibodies were detected in 19.60% (109/556) of blood samples. Seroprevalence varied among the eight areas surveys, ranging from over 32% in Hangzhou to only 2% in Jiangshan (X²= 28.22, P < 0.001). We detected a significantly higher prevalence of <it>Bartonella </it>antibodies in people who had been bitten by dogs than in blood donors (X²= 13.86, P < 0.001). Seroprevalence of <it>Bartonella </it>was similar among males (18.61%, n = 317) and females (20.92%, n = 239).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p><it>Bartonella </it>antibodies were encountered in people living across Zhejiang Province and the seropositivity rate among those exposed to dog bites was significantly higher than that among blood donors, indicating that dog bites may be a risk factor for <it>Bartonella </it>infection.</p

Regulation of Hippo-YAP1/TAZ pathway in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) has become the most prevalent chronic liver disease worldwide, but effective treatments are still lacking. Metabolic disorders such as iron overload, glycolysis, insulin resistance, lipid dysregulation, and glutaminolysis are found to induce liver senescence and ferroptosis, which are hot topics in the research of MASLD. Recent studies have shown that Hippo–YAP1/TAZ pathway is involved in the regulations of metabolism disorders, senescence, ferroptosis, inflammation, and fibrosis in MASLD, but their complex connections and contrast roles are also reported. In addition, therapeutics based on the Hippo–YAP1/TAZ pathway hold promising for MASLD treatment. In this review, we highlight the regulation and molecular mechanism of the Hippo–YAP1/TAZ pathway in MASLD and summarize potential therapeutic strategies for MASLD by regulating Hippo–YAP1/TAZ pathway

Toll-like receptor activation by helminths or helminth products to alleviate inflammatory bowel disease

Helminth infection may modulate the expression of Toll like receptors (TLR) in dendritic cells (DCs) and modify the responsiveness of DCs to TLR ligands. This may regulate aberrant intestinal inflammation in humans with helminthes and may thus help alleviate inflammation associated with human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Epidemiological and experimental data provide further evidence that reducing helminth infections increases the incidence rate of such autoimmune diseases. Fine control of inflammation in the TLR pathway is highly desirable for effective host defense. Thus, the use of antagonists of TLR-signaling and agonists of their negative regulators from helminths or helminth products should be considered for the treatment of IBD

A CT-based radiomics nomogram for the preoperative prediction of perineural invasion in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

PurposeTo develop a nomogram based on CT radiomics features for preoperative prediction of perineural invasion (PNI) in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patients.MethodsA total of 217 patients with histologically confirmed PDAC were enrolled in this retrospective study. Radiomics features were extracted from the whole tumor. Univariate analysis, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and logistic regression were applied for feature selection and radiomics model construction. Finally, a nomogram combining the radiomics score (Rad-score) and clinical characteristics was established. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, calibration curve analysis and decision curve analysis (DCA) were used to evaluate the predictive performance of the nomogram.ResultsAccording to multivariate analysis, CT features, including the radiologists evaluated PNI status based on CECT (CTPNI) (OR=1.971 [95% CI: 1.165, 3.332], P=0.01), the lymph node status determined on CECT (CTLN) (OR=2.506 [95%: 1.416, 4.333], P=0.001) and the Rad-score (OR=3.666 [95% CI: 2.069, 6.494], P&lt;0.001), were significantly associated with PNI. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for the nomogram combined with the Rad-score, CTLN and CTPNI achieved favorable discrimination of PNI status, with AUCs of 0.846 and 0.778 in the training and testing cohorts, respectively, which were superior to those of the Rad-score (AUC of 0.720 in the training cohort and 0.640 in the testing cohort) and CTPNI (AUC of 0.610 in the training cohort and 0.675 in the testing cohort). The calibration plot and decision curve showed good results.ConclusionThe CT-based radiomics nomogram has the potential to accurately predict PNI in patients with PDAC

Systematic Analysis of Survival-Associated Alternative Splicing Signatures in Thyroid Carcinoma

Alternative splicing (AS) is a key mechanism involved in regulating gene expression and is closely related to tumorigenesis. The incidence of thyroid cancer (THCA) has increased during the past decade, and the role of AS in THCA is still unclear. Here, we used TCGA and to generate AS maps in patients with THCA. Univariate analysis revealed 825 AS events related to the survival of THCA. Five prognostic models of AA, AD, AT, ES, and ME events were obtained through lasso and multivariate analyses, and the final prediction model was established by integrating all the AS events in the five prediction models. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis revealed that the overall survival rate of patients in the high-risk group was significantly shorter than that of patients in the low-risk group. The ROC results revealed that the prognostic capabilities of each model at 3, 5, and 8 years were all greater than 0.7, and the final prognostic capabilities of the models were all greater than 0.9. By reviewing other databases and utilizing qPCR, we verified the established THCA gene model. In addition, gene set enrichment analysis showed that abnormal AS events might play key roles in tumor development and progression of THCA by participating in changes in molecular structure, homeostasis of the cell environment and in cell energy. Finally, a splicing correlation network was established to reveal the potential regulatory patterns between the predicted splicing factors and AS event candidates. In summary, AS should be considered an important prognostic indicator of THCA. Our results will help to elucidate the underlying mechanism of AS in the process of THCA tumorigenesis and broaden the prognostic and clinical application of molecular targeted therapy for THCA

Loss of the Urothelial Differentiation Marker FOXA1 Is Associated with High Grade, Late Stage Bladder Cancer and Increased Tumor Proliferation

Approximately 50% of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) develop metastatic disease, which is almost invariably lethal. However, our understanding of pathways that drive aggressive behavior of MIBC is incomplete. Members of the FOXA subfamily of transcription factors are implicated in normal urogenital development and urologic malignancies. FOXA proteins are implicated in normal urothelial differentiation, but their role in bladder cancer is unknown. We examined FOXA expression in commonly used in vitro models of bladder cancer and in human bladder cancer specimens, and used a novel in vivo tissue recombination system to determine the functional significance of FOXA1 expression in bladder cancer. Logistic regression analysis showed decreased FOXA1 expression is associated with increasing tumor stage (p<0.001), and loss of FOXA1 is associated with high histologic grade (p<0.001). Also, we found that bladder urothelium that has undergone keratinizing squamous metaplasia, a precursor to the development of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) exhibited loss of FOXA1 expression. Furthermore, 81% of cases of SCC of the bladder were negative for FOXA1 staining compared to only 40% of urothelial cell carcinomas. In addition, we showed that a subpopulation of FOXA1 negative urothelial tumor cells are highly proliferative. Knockdown of FOXA1 in RT4 bladder cancer cells resulted in increased expression of UPK1B, UPK2, UPK3A, and UPK3B, decreased E-cadherin expression and significantly increased cell proliferation, while overexpression of FOXA1 in T24 cells increased E-cadherin expression and significantly decreased cell growth and invasion. In vivo recombination of bladder cancer cells engineered to exhibit reduced FOXA1 expression with embryonic rat bladder mesenchyme and subsequent renal capsule engraftment resulted in enhanced tumor proliferation. These findings provide the first evidence linking loss of FOXA1 expression with histological subtypes of MIBC and urothelial cell proliferation, and suggest an important role for FOXA1 in the malignant phenotype of MIBC

Co-infection with Bartonella bacilliformis and Mycobacterium spp. in a coastal region of Peru

Abstract Objective This study investigated an outbreak of Bartonellosis in a coastal region in Peru. Results A total of 70 (n = 70) samples with clinical criteria for the acute phase of Bartonellosis and a positive peripheral blood smear were included. 22.85% (n = 16) cases of the samples were positive for Bartonella bacilliformis by PCR and automatic sequencing. Of those positive samples, 62.5% (n = 10) cases were positive only for B. bacilliformis and 37.5% (n = 6) cases were positive to both Mycobacterium spp. and B. bacilliformis. The symptom frequencies were similar in patients diagnosed with Carrion’s disease and those co-infected with Mycobacterium spp. The most common symptoms were headaches, followed by malaise and arthralgia