The Overactive Bladder Symptom Score, International Prostate Symptom Score–Storage Subscore, and Urgency Severity Score in Patients With Overactive Bladder and Hypersensitive Bladder: Which Scoring System is Best?

Purpose To evaluate the correlations among the Overactive Bladder Symptom Score (OABSS), International Prostate Symptom Score–Storage Subscore (IPSS-S), and the modified Urgency Severity Scale (USS) in patients with overactive bladder (OAB) and hypersensitive bladder (HSB) and to identify the most useful diagnostic tool for classifying the severity of OAB. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the charts of consecutive patients with OAB who visited our urologic clinics for treatment. All patients underwent a detailed history, physical examination, urinalysis, uroflowmetry, and postvoid residual volume measurement, and completed a 3-day voiding diary. All patients answered the Chinese versions of the IPSS, OABSS, and USS, according to which they were classified as having wet or dry OAB based on whether their chief complaint was urgency urinary incontinence or urgency without incontinence. HSB was defined as a functional bladder capacity OABSS>IPSS-S. The simplest survey, the USS, with a single item scored from 0 to 4, had the strongest correlation with the OAB severity subgroups

Laboratory observation of ion acceleration via reflection off laser-produced magnetized collisionless shocks

Fermi acceleration by collisionless shocks is believed to be the primary mechanism to produce high energy charged particles in the Universe,where charged particles gain energy successively from multiple reflections off the shock front.Here,we present the first direct experimental evidence of ion energization from reflection off a supercritical quasi perpendicular collisionless shock,an essential component of Fermi acceleration in a laser produced magnetized plasma. We observed a quasi monoenergetic ion beam with 2,4 times the shock velocity in the upstream flow using time of flight method. Our related kinetic simulations reproduced the energy gain and showed that these ions were first reflected and then accelerated mainly by the motional electric field associated with the shock. This mechanism can also explain the quasi monoenergetic fast ion component observed in the Earth's bow shock

Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

Increased urothelial cell apoptosis and chronic inflammation are associated with recurrent urinary tract infection in women.

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to investigate whether increased urothelial cell apoptosis and chronic inflammation might contribute to recurrent urinary tract infection (UTI) in women. METHODS: The bladder biopsy specimens were collected from thirty women with recurrent UTI and ten controls. The bladder biopsies were performed at one to two months after UTI episode had been completely resolved and urine analysis and urine culture all showed negative. Immunofluorescence staining of the adhesive protein E-cadherin, mast cell and TUNEL were performed in all the bladder specimens. In addition, western blots were also performed to analyze the inflammatory proteins (phospho-p38, tryptase) and apoptotic protein (Bax) in the bladder mucosa specimens between patients with recurrent UTI and controls. RESULTS: Immunofluorescence staining showed significantly lower E-cadherin in the recurrent UTI bladder tissue compared with the controls (25.4±8.9 v 42.4±16.7, p<0.0001). The mast cell expression was significantly stronger in the recurrent UTI bladder tissue compared with the controls (2.5±1.8 v 1.3±1.2, p = 0.046). TUNEL staining revealed a significantly higher numbers of apoptotic cells in the recurrent UTI bladder tissue compared with the control bladder tissue (1.5±1.8 v 0.08±0.3, p<0.0001). Western blot analysis also showed that the expressions of tryptase and Bax increased in five recurrent UTI specimens compared with two normal control specimens. CONCLUSION: Chronic inflammation, urothelial cell apoptosis and impairment of barrier function of urothelial cells might contribute to recurrent UTI in women

Management of Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction After Radical Hysterectomy With or Without Radiotherapy for Uterine Cervical Cancer

Urinary dysfunction is a common long-term sequela after radical hysterectomy (RH). The aims of this study were to investigate the characteristics and treatment response of lower urinary tract dysfunction (LUTD) after RH with or without adjuvant radiotherapy (RT) for uterine cervical cancer. Methods: We analyzed retrospectively 49 patients who developed LUTD after RH with (n = 16) or without (n = 33) RT for stage IB or IIA uterine cervical cancer. Results: The mean interval between RH and first visit for urological management of LUTD was significantly shorter in the RH+RT (5.9 ± 4.5 years) than the RH (11.3 ± 9.5; p < 0.05) group. Combined therapy also resulted in a smaller bladder capacity and poorer bladder compliance. Further urological management was given to 29 patients, including a pubovaginal sling procedure in seven, urethral injection of botulinum toxin A in 13, transurethral incision of the bladder neck in three, and augmentation enterocystoplasty in six. Among the patients who received active urological management, 88.9% were satisfied with the outcome. Conclusion: Patients treated with RH+RT are likely to have a worse bladder condition and require urological intervention sooner than those who receive RH alone. Active urological management of LUTD in these patients leads to satisfactory improvements in symptoms of difficult urination and urinary incontinence

Prevalence of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms in Indigenous and Non-indigenous Women in Eastern Taiwan

To investigate the prevalence of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), their impact on quality of life, and their association with socioeconomic and lifestyle factors among indigenous and non-indigenous women in Eastern Taiwan. Methods: A total of 376 indigenous women and 509 non-indigenous women aged over 18 years were interviewed concerning LUTS in the recent 6 months using International Prostate Symptom Score questionnaires. Results: Indigenous women had a higher prevalence of one or more LUTS than non-indigenous women (44.9% vs. 31.2%). Indigenous women had a significantly higher prevalence of urgency (7.7% vs. 4.3%, p = 0.024), straining to void (6.1% vs. 3.3%, p = 0.036), and nocturia (37.2% vs. 24.8%, p < 0.001) than non-indigenous women. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of impaired quality of life between indigenous and non-indigenous women (33.8% vs. 31.2%). Lower educational level, alcohol consumption, betel quid chewing, and cigarette smoking, and not difference in race, had significant effect on a higher prevalence of bothersome LUTS in indigenous women than non-indigenous women. Conclusion: Indigenous women with lower educational level and specific lifestyle risk factors have a higher prevalence of LUTS than non-indigenous women in Taiwan