Pretreatment inflammatory markers predicting treatment outcomes in colorectal cancer

We aimed to review whether pretreatment inflammatory markers reflect the short- and long-term outcomes of patients with colon cancer, rectal cancer, colon and rectal cancers, and metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC). We found that pretreatment complete blood count and blood chemistry tests reflect short-term and long-term oncological outcomes in patients with CRC. Specifically, in patients with colon cancer, hypoalbuminemia was associated with worse postoperative morbidity, mortality, and inferior survival. In patients with rectal cancer, elevated neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and thrombocytosis were associated with postoperative complications, poor overall survival (OS), and disease-free survival (DFS). A high C-reactive protein/albumin ratio (CAR) was associated with poor OS and DFS. In patients with metastatic CRC, increased NLR and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) were associated with poor OS, DFS, and progression-free survival (PFS). In addition, high CAR and a low albumin/globulin ratio on blood chemistry tests were associated with poor OS and PFS. Although universal cut-off values were not available, various types of pretreatment laboratory markers could be utilized as adjuncts to predict prognosis in patients with CRC.

Urinary microbiome profile in men with genitourinary malignancies

Purpose

Recent advances in molecular biology technology have allowed identification of microbial communities in the urinary tract, and urinary microbiome is associated with various urological diseases. In this study, we aimed to characterize the urinary microbiome of genitourinary malignancies.

Materials and Methods

Metagenomic analysis of urinary DNA was performed in 85 patients including 30 with bladder cancer (BC), 27 with prostate cancer (PC), 12 with renal cancer (RC), and 16 with non-cancer (NC). 16S rRNA gene sequencing was conducted after amplification of the V3–V4 region.

Results

PC and RC had significantly lower Shannon index than BC, and beta diversity showed significantly different microbiome composition between four groups. We identified six genera of Cutibacterium, Peptoniphilus, Sphingomonas, Staphylococcus, Micrococcus, and Moraxella, which showed significantly different abundance between the four groups. When each of the malignancies were compared to NC at the species level, Micrococcus sp. was significantly increased in BC. We also identified 12 and five species with increased populations in PC and RC, respectively. Of these, Cutibacterium acnes, Cutibacterium granulosum, Peptoniphilus lacydonensis, and Tessaracoccus were significantly increased in both PC and RC.

Conclusions

Urinary microbiome composition was different depending on the xlink:type of genitourinary malignancies, and we identified bacteria that are significantly associated with each xlink:type of malignancy. Specifically, several bacterial species were associated both PC and RC, suggesting that PC and RC share a similar pathogenesis-related urinary microbiome.

Development of a high-resolution typing method for SLA-3, swine MHC class I antigen 3

We developed a high-resolution and comprehensive typing method for swine leukocyte antigen 3 (SLA-3), an MHC class I gene, employing locus-specific genomic PCR followed by subsequent direct sequencing. A total of 292 individuals from nine pure, one cross-breed and six cell lines were successfully typed. A total of 21 SLA-3 alleles were identified, of which four were found to be novel alleles. However, the allelic diversity of SLA-3 was lower than that of previously reported class I genes, SLA-1 and -2. More SLA-3 alleles were observed in the Landrace and Yorkshire breeds than the other breeds. SLA-3*04:01 was identified in seven out of nine breeds and was the most widely distributed allele across all breeds. Therefore, the typing method reported in this study completes our efforts to develop high-resolution typing methods for major SLA molecules, facilitating the combined analysis of major SLA genes from field samples, which is important to understand the relationship between the adaptive immune responses against pathogens and the immunogenetic makeup of an individual.

Context-aware multi-token concept recognition of biological entities

BACKGROUND

Concept recognition is a term that corresponds to the two sequential steps of named entity recognition and named entity normalization, and plays an essential role in the field of bioinformatics. However, the conventional dictionary-based methods did not sufficiently addressed the variation of the concepts in actual use in literature, resulting in the particularly degraded performances in recognition of multi-token concepts.

RESULTS

In this paper, we propose a concept recognition method of multi-token biological entities using neural models combined with literature contexts. The key aspect of our method is utilizing the contextual information from the biological knowledge-bases for concept normalization, which is followed by named entity recognition procedure. The model showed improved performances over conventional methods, particularly for multi-token concepts with higher variations.

CONCLUSIONS

We expect that our model can be utilized for effective concept recognition and variety of natural language processing tasks on bioinformatics.

A population-based study for difference in contribution of type 2 diabetes mellitus to cardiovascular outcomes in adult cancer survivors and general population without history of cancer

Background/Introduction

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a well-established risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, evidence is scarce on the difference in burden of T2DM as a cardiovascular risk factor in adult cancer survivors compared to the general population without history of cancer. This evidence gap needs to be addressed as increased risk for CVD in adult cancer survivors compared to the general population has been consistently reported from observational studies.

Purpose

To investigate the association of T2DM with CVD in adult cancer survivors and general population without history of cancer and compare the magnitude of associations for each population using propensity score-matched analyses

Methods

For this population-based cohort study, we used the National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort (NHIS-NSC) established in the Republic of Korea (2002–2015) to identity adult cancer survivors who were aged 18 years or older and survived more than 12 months after the first-ever cancer diagnosis and general population without history of cancer matched for age and sex in a 1:1 ratio. In both cohorts, those with history of CVD prior to the index date were excluded. We used Cox proportional hazards model to compute hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for incident CVD in those with T2DM compared to those without T2DM in both adult cancer survivors and the general population after adjusting for shared confounding factors (income status, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, body mass index, blood pressure, lipid abnormalities, family history of CVD, and aspirin use). Furthermore, we used Q statistic to compare the magnitude of association between T2DM and CVD in this matched cohort.

Results

The overall age and sex matched cohort in the NHIS-NSC comprised of 5,163 adult cancer survivors and the equivalent number of participants categorized as general population without history of cancer. The adjusted HR for CVD among adult cancer survivors with T2DM, as compared to without T2DM was 2.27 (95% CI: 1.25–4.11). Similarly, T2DM was associated with an increased risk of CVD in the general population without cancer (HR=1.88; 95% CI: 1.03–3.42). However, no strong statistical evidence was found for difference in contribution of T2DM to CVD risk between adult cancer survivors and general population without history of cancer (Pheterogeneity = 0.662).

Conclusions

In this population-based cohort study, T2DM was associated with an increased risk for CVD in both adult cancer survivors and those without history of cancer. Difference in magnitude of T2DM-CVD associations between adult cancer survivors and the general population without history of cancer was not substantial from a statistical standpoint. However, adult cancer survivor with T2DM may still need additional clinical attention for CVD prevention compared to those without history of cancer.

Funding Acknowledgement

Type of funding sources: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): National Cancer Center (Republic of Korea)

Treatment potential of LPCN 1144 on liver health and metabolic regulation in a non-genomic, high fat diet induced NASH rabbit model

PURPOSE

Low free testosterone (T) level in men is independently associated with presence and severity of Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH). The histological and molecular effects of oral testosterone prodrug LPCN 1144 treatment on hepatic fibrosis and NASH features are unknown. A metabolic syndrome-induced NASH model in rabbits consuming high fat diet (HFD) has been previously used to assess treatment effects of injectable T on hepatic fibrosis and NASH features. Here we present results on LPCN 1144 in this HFD-induced, NASH preclinical model.

METHODS

Male rabbits were randomly assigned to five groups: regular diet (RD), HFD, HFD + 1144 vehicle (HFD + Veh), HFD + 1144 (1144), and HFD + 1144 + α-tocopherol (1144 + ALPHA). Rabbits were sacrificed after 12 weeks for liver histological, biochemical and genetic analyses. Histological scores were obtained through Giemsa (inflammation), Masson's trichrome (steatosis and ballooning), and Picrosirius Red (fibrosis) staining.

RESULTS

Compared to RD, HFD and HFD + Veh significantly worsened NASH features and hepatic fibrosis. Considering HFD and HFD + Veh arms, histological and biomarker features were not significantly different. Both 1144 and 1144 + ALPHA arms improved mean histological scores of NASH as compared to HFD arm. Importantly, percentage of fibrosis was improved in both 1144 (p < 0.05) and 1144 + ALPHA (p = 0.05) treatment arms vs. HFD. Both treatment arms also reduced HFD-induced inflammation and fibrosis mRNA markers. Furthermore, 1144 treatments significantly improved HFD-induced metabolic dysfunctions.

CONCLUSIONS

Histological and biomarker analyses demonstrate that LPCN 1144 improved HFD-induced hepatic fibrosis and NASH biochemical, biomolecular and histochemical features. These preclinical findings support a therapeutic potential of LPCN 1144 in the treatment of NASH and of hepatic fibrosis.

Spontaneous Formation of Star-Shaped Surface Patterns in a Driven Bose-Einstein Condensate

We observe experimentally the spontaneous formation of star-shaped surface patterns in driven Bose-Einstein condensates. Two-dimensional star-shaped patterns with l-fold symmetry, ranging from quadrupole (l=2) to heptagon modes (l=7), are parametrically excited by modulating the scattering length near the Feshbach resonance. An effective Mathieu equation and Floquet analysis are utilized, relating the instability conditions to the dispersion of the surface modes in a trapped superfluid. Identifying the resonant frequencies of the patterns, we precisely measure the dispersion relation of the collective excitations. The oscillation amplitude of the surface excitations increases exponentially during the modulation. We find that only the l=6 mode is unstable due to its emergent coupling with the dipole motion of the cloud. Our experimental results are in excellent agreement with the mean-field framework. Our work opens a new pathway for generating higher-lying collective excitations with applications, such as the probing of exotic properties of quantum fluids and providing a generation mechanism of quantum turbulence.

Change in the Shrinkage Forces of Composite Resins According to Controlled Deflection

The aim of this study was to investigate how the polymerization shrinkage forces of composite resins change with change in deflection. Five composites, SDR (Dentsply Caulk, Milford, DE, USA), EcuSphere-Shape (DMG, Hamburg, Germany), Tetric N-Ceram Bulk Fill (Ivoclar Vivadent, Schaan, Liechtenstein), CLEARFIL AP-X (Kuraray Noritake Dental Inc., Sakazu, Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan), and Filtek Z350 XT (3M Dental Products, St Paul, MN, USA), were tested in this experiment. The polymerization shrinkage forces of the composites were measured using a custom-made tooth-deflection-mimicking device and software (R&B Inc, Daejon, Korea). In all measurements, six modes were tested: maximum-deflection, zero-deflection, and four deflection-controlled modes. For each deflection mode, the shrinkage forces were recorded continuously every 0.1 second for 180 seconds. Polymerization shrinkage and flexural modulus were also measured. Eight specimens of each material were allocated for each test. For each material, six groups of shrinkage force values were compared using one-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc tests at a 95% confidence level. The polymerization shrinkage force of each material in each of the six deflection modes was analyzed with 95% confidence using one-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc tests. The relationship between the force measured in the six deflection modes and the linear polymerization shrinkage and flexural modulus was analysed with 95% confidence using Pearson correlation analysis. For each material, the following held true: the shrinkage force was highest in zero-deflection mode, the force decreased as deflection increased, and the smallest force appeared in maximum-deflection mode (p<0.05). There was a high negative correlation between allowable deflection and shrinkage force in all materials.

Is dual-energy absorptiometry accurate in the assessment of bone status of patients with chronic kidney disease?

Several patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have deteriorated bone status. Estimation of bone status using DXA has limitations especially in patients with CKD accompanying aortic calcifications. Quantitative CT and the trabecular bone score could be more accurate methods to estimate bone status for patients with CKD and vascular calcifications.

INTRODUCTION

It remains unclear whether dual-energy absorptiometry (DXA) is appropriate for the assessment of bone status in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), a disease that impacts bone health. The aims of this study were to compare DXA and central quantitative computed tomography (cQCT) and to evaluate bone status in patients with pre-dialysis CKD.

METHODS

This retrospective study included 363 healthy control subjects whose bone mineral density (BMD) was evaluated with DXA and 117 CKD patients whose BMD was evaluated using both cQCT and DXA. Diagnostic discordance was assessed between the lumbar spine (LS) and femur neck (FN) from DXA or between two modalities. The trabecular bone score (TBS) was extracted from DXA images. The volume of abdominal aortic calcification (AAC) was calculated using CT images from cQCT.

RESULTS

Using LS DXA T-score, osteoporosis was less common in the CKD group than in controls. Patients with normal LS BMD using DXA were reclassified into osteopenia or osteoporosis using cQCT in CKD patients. Among discordant subjects between FN and LS in DXA, a higher BMD of LS was more common in CKD patients than in controls. CKD patients had lower TBS than controls despite having the same diagnosis using DXA. AAC volume negatively correlated with BMD from cQCT and with TBS but not with BMD from DXA.

CONCLUSIONS

TBS and cQCT could accurately assess bone status in CKD patients since DXA may overestimate LS BMD, likely due to an increased AAC volume.

Determination of the radiologic findings for predicting failure of conservative management with observation for blunt renal injury patients: A single-centre experience over 13 years

PURPOSE

Most blunt renal injuries (BRIs) are managed conservatively without complications. Because conservative management with observation (CMO) is widely conducted, failed CMO is frequent. Clarifying the role and indication of CMO is important to manage BRI patients. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyse factors related to failed CMO.

METHODS

BRI patients (aged >13 years) who were admitted via the emergency department in Wonju Severance Christian Hospital were analysed retrospectively between January 2008 and July 2020. Patient characteristics, including clinical data, laboratory findings, transfusion requirements, injury grade, initial CT findings, length of hospital stay, intensive care unit stay, and mortality, were investigated for all enrolled patients.

RESULTS

Kidney injury grade ≥ 4, perinephric haematoma rim distance (PHD), length of main laceration, intravascular contrast extravasation (ICE), Gerota's fascia discontinuity, multiple lacerations, dissociated renal fragment and complexity of laceration were statistically significantly different between the successful CMO and failed CMO groups in the comparative analysis. The multivariate analysis showed that perinephric haematoma rim distance [odds ratio (OR) 1.44 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.09 - 1.90], p = 0.011] and ICE [OR 7.41 (95% CI 2.20 - 24.99), p = 0.001] were mutually independent risk factors associated with failed CMO. When the ROC curve of PHD and ICE was generated to predict the failure of CMO, the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.884 (95% CI, 0.826 - 0.942), p < 0.001), and the optimal cut-off value for PHD was 2.9 cm, and for ICE was presence of ICE on CT [sensitivity: 90.5% (95% CI, 0.70 - 0.99), specificity: 78.0% (95% CI, 0.73 - 0.83)].

CONCLUSION

PHD and ICE may be useful factors to predict failed CMO for BRI patients. PHD > 2.9 cm and the presence of ICE may indicate who will require invasive procedures. Close observation is wise for patients with these risk factors.

Electronic cigarette use and suicidal behaviors among adolescents

BACKGROUND

The aim of this study was to investigate the association of the use of e-cigarettes, which are regarded as alternatives to traditional cigarettes and are easy to purchase, with suicidal behaviors in adolescents.

METHODS

Data for 5405 middle and high school students aged 13-18 years who had used e-cigarettes were extracted from the 2016 Korean Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey and analyzed using multiple logistic regression.

RESULTS

Among those who used e-cigarettes for 1-30 days in the past 30 days, suicidal ideation (odds ratio [OR] = 1.58, 95% CI, 1.31-1.89), suicidal plans (OR = 2.44, 95% CI, 1.94-3.08), suicidal attempts (OR = 2.44, 95% CI, 1.85-3.22) and serious attempts (OR = 3.09, 95% CI, 1.51-6.32) were higher compared to those who did not use an e-cigarette in the past 30 days.

CONCLUSIONS

Suicidal behaviors are significantly higher among current adolescent e-cigarette smokers than adolescents who have not used an e-cigarette in the past 30 days. Therefore, comprehensive intervention is needed to protect adolescents' mental health.