Search Our Scientific Publications & Authors

Radiother Oncol 2021 Apr 16. Epub 2021 Apr 16.

Department of Radiation Oncology, Catharina Hospital, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

Purpose: To externally validate previously published Normal Tissue Complication Probability (NTCP) models developed by separate teams for grade 3 oral mucositis (g3OM).

Materials And Methods: Two models were validated: a logistic model, based on 144 head and neck cancer (HNC) patients receiving induction chemotherapy followed by chemo-IMRT; a multivariable logistic model for prediction of g3OM for 253 patients receiving radical treatment for the head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). The EORTC HNCG-ROG 1219 DAHANCA trial dataset, consisting of 169 patients was used as the validation cohort. Read More

Front Genet 2021 1;12:638980. Epub 2021 Apr 1.

Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.

Background: The prognosis of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) varies greatly among different risk groups, and the traditional indicators have limited effect in the identification of risk grade in patients with RCC. The purpose of our study is to explore a glycolysis-based long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) signature and verify its potential clinical significance in prognostic prediction of RCC patients.

Methods: In this study, RNA data and clinical information were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Read More

J Prof Nurs 2021 Mar-Apr;37(2):272-280. Epub 2021 Feb 3.

Institute of Creative Design and Management, National Taipei University of Business, Taoyuan City, Taiwan, R.O.C. Electronic address:

Background: The complexity of healthcare and concurrent advances in technology have promoted Interprofessional Education (IPE) in healthcare schools to prepare students to collaborate on interdisciplinary teams. Since 2016, healthcare curricula in Taiwan have incorporated IPE-based capstone courses to enhance creativity. To better understand the predictors of team creativity could help educators improve IPE and outcomes for nursing students and patients. Read More

J Dairy Sci 2021 Apr 14. Epub 2021 Apr 14.

Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2P5, Canada; Livestock and Crops Research Branch, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, Edmonton T6H 5T6, Canada. Electronic address:

Anogenital distance (AGD), defined as the distance from the center of the anus to the base of the clitoris, in lactating dairy cows of first and second parity, has been reported to be inversely related to fertility and moderately heritable. Thus, AGD may be a useful reproductive phenotype for future genetic selection to improve fertility. The objectives of this study were to (1) characterize AGD in nulliparous dairy heifers; and (2) determine if the inverse relationship between AGD and fertility, found in lactating dairy cows, is also evident in nulliparous heifers. Read More

Mar Pollut Bull 2021 Apr 16;167:112354. Epub 2021 Apr 16.

Iranian National Institute for Oceanography and Atmospheric Science, No. 3, Etemadzadeh St., Fatemi Ave., Tehran 1411813389, Iran.

In this article dissolved oxygen results of research cruises through the Persian Gulf during 2018-2019 are discussed. The results showed that summer to autumn hypoxia occurred mainly at depths ≥ 50 m to the bottom. This seasonal hypoxia started in late summer reaching its greatest severity in mid-autumn with an area of 50,000 km in the Persian Gulf. Read More

J Pediatr 2021 Apr 15. Epub 2021 Apr 15.

Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA. Electronic address:

A novel technique was utilized to calculate pulse pressure variation. The algorithm reliably predicted fluid responsiveness to transfusion, with a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) area under the curve (AUC) of 0.89. Read More

J Vasc Access 2021 Apr 16:11297298211008772. Epub 2021 Apr 16.

Department of Clinical Nutrition, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.

Background: The Michigan Risk Score (MRS) was the only predicted score for peripherally inserted central venous catheters (PICC) associated upper extremity venous thrombosis (UEVT). Age-adjusted D-dimer increased the efficiency for UEVT. There were no external validations in an independent cohort. Read More

Biomed Res Int 2021 29;2021:1658403. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

Department of Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type among primary liver cancers (PLC). With its poor prognosis and survival rate, it is necessary for HCC patients to have a long-term follow-up. We believe that there are currently no relevant reports or literature about nomograms for predicting the cancer-specific mortality of HCC patients. Read More

BMC Cancer 2021 Apr 15;21(1):418. Epub 2021 Apr 15.

Department of Technology Education Training, Luzhou People's Hospital, Section 2 of JiuGu Avenue, Jiangyang District, Luzhou, 646000, Sichuan, People's Republic of China.

Background: The potential correlation between H2AFY (also known as MacroH2A1) and the clinical characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients was analysed through gene expression profiles and clinical data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, and the diagnostic and prognostic value of H2AFY in HCC was discussed.

Methods: The gene expression data of HCC and the corresponding clinical characteristics of HCC patients were downloaded from the TCGA database. The differences in H2AFY in normal liver tissues and HCC were analysed. Read More

Front Oncol 2021 29;11:621690. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

UOC di Radioterapia Oncologica, Dipartimento Diagnostica per Immagini, Radioterapia Oncologica ed Ematologia, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy.

Pediatric patients may experience considerable distress during radiotherapy. Combining psychological interventions with standard therapies can reduce the need for sedation. The RADAR Project aims to use a systematic method of recording data that can reveal patients' difficulties and fragility during treatment. Read More

Support Care Cancer 2021 Apr 14. Epub 2021 Apr 14.

Division of Preventive Medicine, Clinical Research Institute, National Hospital Organization Kyoto Medical Center, Kyoto, Japan.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the association of oral dryness with overall survival and determine the threshold points of moisture degree for predicting 7-day survival in palliative care patients.

Methods: A total of 147 consecutive palliative care patients were included between January 2017 and November 2018. Oral dryness at the lingual and buccal mucosa was measured using an oral moisture-checking device. Read More

Asia Pac J Oncol Nurs 2021 May-Jun;8(3):237-245. Epub 2021 Mar 12.

Department of Nursing, Da-Yeh University, Changhua, Taiwan, ROC.

Objective: Head-and-neck cancer (HNC) and its treatment impact patients' quality of life (QoL) and survival. The symptom burden of HNC survivors severely affects QoL, while hope serves as an impetus for adjustment that enables survivors to sustain basic QoL. This study investigated the change of QoL, symptom burden, and hope and the predictors of QoL change in HNC survivors from diagnosis to 3 months after concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) completing. Read More

Cancer Cell Int 2021 Apr 13;21(1):205. Epub 2021 Apr 13.

Department of General Surgery, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, 100191, China.

Background: Preoperative tumor markers, inflammation, and nutritional status are considered important predictors of prognosis and tumor response in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) patients. This study aims to explore the prognostic and predictive role of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), the Fibrinogen-Albumin Ratio Index (FARI), the Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI) in LARC patients and compared them with a novel combined CEA-FARI-PNI (CFP) scoring system.

Methods: A total of 138 LARC patients undergoing radical surgery following neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT) between January 2012 and March 2019 were enrolled. Read More

J Nephrol 2021 Apr 13. Epub 2021 Apr 13.

IIS-Fundacion Jimenez Diaz, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

Background: Growth Differentiation Factor-15 (GDF15) is a member of the TGF-β superfamily. Increased serum GDF15 has been associated with increased risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression. However, no prior studies have addressed the significance of urinary GDF15 in adult CKD. Read More

Pancreatology 2021 Apr 7. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases, Helsinki University Hospital and University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Department of Oral Diseases, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, Sweden.

Objectives: Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) has high morbidity and mortality but there are no widely accepted predictive biomarkers in clinical use. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are active in tissue destruction and inflammatory responses. We studied whether serum levels of activated MMP-8 (aMMP-8), MMP-9 and their regulators tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinases (TIMP)-1, myeloperoxidase (MPO) and human neutrophil elastase (HNE) could predict the development of SAP. Read More

Am J Emerg Med 2021 Apr 3;48:73-78. Epub 2021 Apr 3.

Department of Pediatrics, Indiana University School of Medicine. 705 Riley Hospital Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA; Department of Emergency Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine. 720 Eskenazi Avenue, Fifth Third Bank Building 3rd Floor, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA.

Background: Emergency Department (ED) patients who leave without being seen (LWBS) are associated with adverse safety and medico-legal consequences. While LWBS risk has been previously tied to demographic and acuity related factors, there is limited research examining crowding-related risk in the pediatric setting. The primary objective of this study was to determine the association between LWBS risk and crowding, using the National Emergency Department Overcrowding Score (NEDOCS) and occupancy rate as crowding metrics. Read More

J Alzheimers Dis 2021 Apr 5. Epub 2021 Apr 5.

University of Kansas Medical Center, Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Kansas City, KS, USA.

Background: Olfactory dysfunction (OD) is an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, olfactory testing is not commonly performed to test OD in the setting of AD.

Objective: This work investigates objective OD as a non-invasive biomarker for accurately classifying subjects as cognitively unimpaired (CU), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and AD. Read More

Front Oncol 2021 25;11:654185. Epub 2021 Mar 25.

Department of Oncology, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.

Purpose: Our research was aimed to identify the expression, clinical value and biological significance of GINS complex subunit 4 (GINS4) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Materials And Methods: GINS4 was initially screened through weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). The TCGA, GEO, and TIMER databases were applied for analyzing the GINS4 mRNA expression in HCC. Read More

BMC Urol 2021 Apr 11;21(1):59. Epub 2021 Apr 11.

Department of Urology, MacKay Memorial Hospital, No. 92, Sec. 2, Zhongshan N. Rd., Zhongshan Dist., Taipei, 104, Taiwan.

Backgrounds: The aim of the present study was to investigate the perioperative parameters associated with bladder neck contracture (BNC) after transurethral surgery of the prostate and to compare the incidence of BNC after transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) or Thulium vaporesection (resection group) versus Thulium vapoenucleation or enucleation of the prostate (enucleation group).

Methods: Between March 2008 and March 2020, 2363 patients received TURP and 1656 patients received transurethral surgery of the prostate with Thulium laser (ThuP) at Mackay Memorial Hospital. A total of 62 patients developed BNC. Read More

Brief Bioinform 2021 Apr 12. Epub 2021 Apr 12.

Bioinformatics & Computational Biology research group at NII, New Delhi 110067, India.

Small molecule modulators of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are being pursued as novel anticancer, antiviral and antimicrobial drug candidates. We have utilized a large data set of experimentally validated PPI modulators and developed machine learning classifiers for prediction of new small molecule modulators of PPI. Our analysis reveals that using random forest (RF) classifier, general PPI Modulators independent of PPI family can be predicted with ROC-AUC higher than 0. Read More

J Infect Dev Ctries 2021 Mar 31;15(3):353-359. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Department of Medical, Surgical and Experimental Sciences, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy.

Introduction: The early identification of factors that predict the length of hospital stay (HS) in patients affected by coronavirus desease (COVID-19) might assist therapeutic decisions and patient flow management.

Methodology: We collected, at the time of admission, routine clinical, laboratory, and imaging parameters of hypoxia, lung damage, inflammation, and organ dysfunction in a consecutive series of 50 COVID-19 patients admitted to the Respiratory Disease and Infectious Disease Units of the University Hospital of Sassari (North-Sardinia, Italy) and alive on discharge.

Results: Prolonged HS (PHS, >21 days) patients had significantly lower PaO2/FiO2 ratio and lymphocytes, and significantly higher Chest CT severity score, C-reactive protein (CRP) and lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) when compared to non-PHS patients. Read More

J Environ Manage 2021 Apr 8;289:112504. Epub 2021 Apr 8.

Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, India.

This work mainly focused on deforestation susceptibility (DS) assessment and its prediction based on statistical models (FR, LR & AHP) in the Saranda forest, India. Also, efforts had been made to quantify the effect of mining on deforestation. We had considered twenty-five (twenty present and five predicted) causative variables of deforestation, including climate, natural or geomorphological, forestry, topographical, environmental, and anthropogenic. Read More

J Endocrinol Invest 2021 Apr 10. Epub 2021 Apr 10.

Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Corso Dogliotti 14, 10126, Turin, Italy.

Purpose: Postoperative assessment of acromegaly activity is typically performed at least 3 months after neurosurgery (NS). Few studies have evaluated the use of early postoperative growth hormone (GH) levels as a test to predict short- and long-term remission of acromegaly. Our objective was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of serum random GH on a postoperative day one (D1-rGH) and two (D2-rGH), particularly in predicting long-term disease persistence. Read More

J Diabetes Investig 2021 Apr 10. Epub 2021 Apr 10.

Department of Medicine, Division of Diabetology, Endocrinology, and Nephrology, Shiga University of Medical Science, Otsu, Japan.

Aims/introduction: Knowing the collective clinical factors that determine patient response to glucose-lowering medication would be beneficial in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. We conducted a retrospective cohort study to explore the combination of clinical factors involved in its therapeutic efficacy.

Materials And Methods: Results of cohort studies retrieved using the CoDiC database across Japan from January 2005 to July 2018 were analyzed based on criterion that using insulin therapy indicates severe type 2 diabetes. Read More

Leuk Res 2021 Mar 29;105:106580. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

Department of Hematology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu Province Hospital, Nanjing 210029, China; Key Laboratory of Hematology of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China; Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Personalized Medicine, Nanjing 210029, China. Electronic address:

The study investigated serum 25-Hydroxy vitamin D (25-(OH)D) deficiency and its prognostic values of patients newly diagnosed Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). With seventy-seven patients enrolled, the median level of 25-(OH)D was 44.5 nmol/L (range, 15. Read More

Zhonghua Wei Zhong Bing Ji Jiu Yi Xue 2021 Mar;33(3):263-268

Department of Pharmacy, the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325000, Zhejiang, China.

Objective: To evaluate the predictive performance of the individualized drug delivery decision-making system including Smart Dose, PharmVan and JPKD on predicting the Vancomycin plasma concentration and to analyze the related factors affecting the predictive performance.

Methods: The clinical data of patients who were treated with Vancomycin and received therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) admitted to the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University from January 2018 to July 2020 were retrospectively collected. Smart Dose and PharmVan were used to predict the plasma concentration of Vancomycin of the initial regimen. Read More

Biomed Res Int 2021 24;2021:1274527. Epub 2021 Mar 24.

Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.

Background: Nomograms were established to predict the survival for gastric signet ring cell carcinoma (GSRC) in young and middle-aged adults. . Eligible patients with GSRC from 2004 to 2015 were collected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database and then divided into a training and a testing cohort in proportion. Read More

Anal Cell Pathol (Amst) 2021 23;2021:6697407. Epub 2021 Mar 23.

General Surgery Department, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510530, China.

Background: Although accumulating evidence suggested that a molecular signature panel may be more effective for the prognosis prediction than routine clinical characteristics, current studies mainly focused on colorectal or colon cancers. No reports specifically focused on the signature panel for rectal cancers (RC). Our present study was aimed at developing a novel prognostic signature panel for RC. Read More

Cureus 2021 Mar 4;13(3):e13684. Epub 2021 Mar 4.

Anesthesiology and Reanimation, Kartal Dr. Lutfi Kirdar Research& Education Hospital, Istanbul, TUR.

Scoring systems have been developed to predict the expected mortality and morbidity in surgical procedures. In this study, our aim was to compare the ASA (American Society of Anesthesiologists), APACHE (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation) II, POSSUM (Physiological and Operative Severity Score for the enUmeration of Mortality and morbidity) scoring systems as predictors of mortality in patients who underwent gastrointestinal oncologic surgery, followed, and were admitted to the intensive care unit during the postoperative period. We examined the files of 82 patients who underwent oncologic gastrointestinal surgery and followed up in the intensive care units (ICUs). Read More

Int J Gen Med 2021 30;14:1133-1139. Epub 2021 Mar 30.

Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Institute of Respiratory Diseases of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.

Purpose: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is common among the elderly; it typically has a poor prognosis and high mortality. This study evaluated the factors predicting CAP-related in-hospital mortality in the elderly to identify a simpler and more accurate predictor.

Patients And Methods: This was a single-center, retrospective study. Read More