Establishment of a prognostic model related to tregs and natural killer cells infiltration in bladder cancer.

BACKGROUND: Regulatory T cells (Tregs) and natural killer (NK) cells play an essential role in the development of bladder urothelial carcinoma (BUC). AIM: To construct a prognosis-related model to judge the prognosis of patients with bladder cancer, meanwhile, predict the sensitivity of patients to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. METHODS: Bladder cancer information data was obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas and GSE32894. The CIBERSORT was used to calculate the immune score of each sample. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis was used to find genes that will have the same or similar expression patterns. Subsequently, multivariate cox regression and lasso regression was used to further screen prognosis-related genes. The prrophetic package was used to predict phenotype from gene expression data, drug sensitivity of external cell line and predict clinical data. RESULTS: The stage and risk scores are independent prognostic factors in patients with BUC. Mutations in FGFR3 lead to an increase in Tregs percolation and affect the prognosis of the tumor, and additionally, EMP1, TCHH and CNTNAP3B in the model are mainly positively correlated with the expression of immune checkpoints, while CMTM8, SORT1 and IQSEC1 are negatively correlated with immune checkpoints and the high-risk group had higher sensitivity to chemotherapy drugs. CONCLUSION: Prognosis-related models of bladder tumor patients, based on Treg and NK cell percolation in tumor tissue. In addition to judging the prognosis of patients with bladder cancer, it can also predict the sensitivity of patients to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. At the same time, patients were divided into high and low risk groups based on this model, and differences in genetic mutations were found between the high and low risk groups.

Association between sleep duration and chest pain in US adults: A cross-sectional study.

Objective: Herein, we purposed to explore the association of sleep duration with chest pain among adults in US. Methods: This research work enrolled 13,274 subjects in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2011 to 2018. The association of sleep duration with chest pain among adults in US was evaluated by Multivariable logistic regression. Results: To elucidate the association, we made adjustments for gender, BMI, diabetes, smoking status, drinking status, race, marital status, annual family income, hyperlipoidemia, Hypertension. Chest pain incidence decreased by 5% [OR = 0.95 (0.93, 0.98), p = 0.0004] for an increase in sleep duration by 1 h. A generalized additive model (GAM) was used to reseal a U-shaped relationship of sleep duration with incident chest pain. When duration of sleep was <6.5 h, chest pain incidence negatively correlated to sleep duration [OR = 0.77 (0.72, 0.82) P < 0.0001]. However, when sleep duration was ≥6.5 h, chest pain incidence rose with escalating sleep duration [OR = 1.07 (1.03, 1.11) p = 0.0014]. Conclusions: Duration of sleep was established to be independently linked with an increase in the occurrence of chest pain. Excessive sleep, as much as insufficient sleep, increases the risk of chest pain. Both excessive sleep and insufficient sleep are associated with an increased risk of chest pain.

Visual differences in topography-guided versus wavefront-optimized LASIK in the treatment of myopia: a Meta-analysis.

AIM: To investigate the potential differences between topography-guided (TG) and wavefront-optimized (WFO) laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) for the treatment of myopia. METHODS: A systematic literature search was performed to determine relevant trials comparing LASIK with TG and WFO from the time of library construction to August 2020, and The PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, EMBASE and Chinese databases (i.e. CNKI, CBM, WAN FANG and VIP) were accessed. The data on visual acuity, refractive status and wavefront aberration were retrieved and evaluated from three to six months after surgery. STATA (version 14.0) software was used for statistical analysis. A cumulative Meta-analysis was simultaneously performed. RESULTS: Eleven studies with a total of 1425 eyes were incorporated. No statistically significant differences were evident between TG and WFO ablation in the proportion of eyes achieving an uncorrected distance visual acuity (UCVA) of 20/20 or better (P=0.377), gaining one line or more (P=0.05), postoperative cylinder (P=0.40), vertical coma (P=0.593) and horizontal coma (P=0.957). After TG ablation, the proportion of the patients' eyes of which postoperative refraction is within ±0.5 diopter of the target refraction was significantly higher than that undergoes WFO (P=0.003). As opposed to the WFO group, manifest refraction spherical equivalent (MRSE; P=0.000) was lower, and UCVA (P=0.005) was better in the TG group. The higher-order aberrations (HOAs; P=0.000), spherical aberration (P=0.000) and coma (P=0.000) were significantly lower in TG group. The cumulative Meta-analysis illustrated that the proportion of eyes achieving UCVA of 20/20 or better, postoperative refraction within ±0.5 diopter, and MRSE has steady between the two groups. CONCLUSION: Both TG-LASIK and WFO-LASIK are safe, effective, and predictable for correcting myopia. TG-LASIK may produce fewer aberration and is more precise than WFO-LASIK.

The image quality, lesion detectability, and acquisition time of 18F-FDG total-body PET/CT in oncological patients.

PURPOSE: The purpose was to investigate the effects of short acquisition time on the image quality and the lesion detectability of oncological 18F-FDG total-body PET/CT. METHODS: Nineteen oncological patients (6/13 women/men, age 65.6 ± 9.4 years) underwent total-body PET/CT on uEXPLORER scanner using 3D list mode. The administration of 18F-FDG was weight-based (4.4 MBq/kg). The acquisition time was 900 s, and PET data were reconstructed into 900-, 180-, 120-, 60-, 30-, and 18-s duration groups. The subjective PET image quality was scored using a 5-point scale (5, excellent; 1, poor) in 3 perspectives: overall quality, noise, and lesion conspicuity. The objective image quality was evaluated by SUVmax and standard deviation (SD) of the liver, SUVmax of the tumor, and tumor-to-background ratio (TBR). The lesion detectability was the percentage of identifiable lesions in the groups of 180 to 18 s using the group 900 s as reference. RESULTS: Our results showed that sufficient and acceptable subjective image quality could be achieved with 60- and 30-s groups, and good image quality scores were given to 180- and 120-s groups without significant difference. For shortened acquisition time, SD was increased, while SUVmax of tumor and TBR remained unchanged. The lesion detectability was decreased with shorter acquisition time, but the detection performance could be maintained until the 60-s group compared with the 900-s group, although the image quality degraded. CONCLUSION: The total-body PET/CT can significantly shorten the acquisition time with maintained lesion detectability and image quality.

Comb-shaped cardo poly(arylene ether nitrile sulfone) anion exchange membranes: significant impact of nitrile group content on morphology and properties.

A series of comb-shaped cardo poly(arylene ether nitrile sulfone) (CCPENS-x) materials were synthesized by varying the content of nitrile groups as anion exchange membranes (AEMs). The well-designed architecture of cardo-based main chains and comb-shaped C10 long alkyl side chains bearing imidazolium groups was responsible for the clear microphase-separated morphologies, as confirmed by atomic force microscopy. The ion exchange capacity (IEC) of the AEMs ranged from 1.56 to 1.65 meq. g-1. With strong dipole interchain interactions, the effects of nitrile groups on the membrane morphology and properties were investigated. With the nitrile group content increasing from CCPENS-0.2 to CCPENS-0.8, CCPENS-x revealed larger and more interconnected ionic domains to form more efficient ion-transport channels, thus increasing the corresponding ionic conductivity from 25.8 to 39.5 mS cm-1 at 30 °C and 58.6 to 83 mS cm-1 at 80 °C. Furthermore, CCPENS-x with a higher content of nitrile groups also exhibited lower water uptake (WU) and swelling ratio (SR), and better mechanical properties and thermal stability. This work presents a promising strategy for enhancing the performance of AEMs.

[The changes of the expression of 2-type small conductance-Ca2+- activating-K+ (SK2) channel protein in hypertensive rat myocardium].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expression of 2-type small conductance-Ca2+-activating-K+ (SK2) channel protein in hypertensive rat myocardial cells. METHODS: Twelve healthy adult male SD rats were randomly divided into control group (n=5) and experimental group (n=7). The rats of experimental group were injected intraperitoneally with N'-nitro-L-arginine (L-NNA 15 mg/(kg·d))while the rats of control group were injected intraperitoneally with isometrical normal saline(15 ml/(kg·d )). The body weight, blood pressure and electrocardiogram of the rats were measured every week. After 4 weeks, the rats were sacrificed to obtain hearts, and the expression of SK2 channel protein in myocardium was detected by Western blot. RESULTS: After 4 weeks of administration, compared with the control group, the blood pressure in the experimental group was significantly elevated (P＜0.05), QRS duration and R-R interval were prolonged, and the expressions of SK2 channel in the atrial and ventricular tissue of the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group (1.12±0.18,1.64±0.26, P ＜ 0.05). CONCLUSION: The expressions of atrial and ventricular SK2 pathway are increased in hypertensive model rats. It may be one of the mechanism leading to arrhythmias in hypertensive model rats and can provide new ideas and strategies for the treatment and prognosis of hypertensive diseases.

Experimental Array for Generating Dual Circularly-Polarized Dual-Mode OAM Radio Beams.

Recently, vortex beam carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) for radio communications has attracted much attention for its potential of transmitting multiple signals simultaneously at the same frequency, which can be used to increase the channel capacity. However, most of the methods for getting multi-mode OAM radio beams are of complicated structure and very high cost. This paper provides an effective solution of generating dual circularly-polarized (CP) dual-mode OAM beams. The antenna consists of four dual-CP elements which are sequentially rotated 90 degrees in the clockwise direction. Different from all previous published research relating to OAM generation by phased arrays, the four elements are fed with the same phase for both left-hand circular polarization (LHCP) and right-hand circular polarization (RHCP). The dual-mode operation for OAM is achieved through the opposite phase differences generated for LHCP and RHCP, when the dual-CP elements are sequentially rotated in the clockwise direction. The measured results coincide well with the simulated ones, which verified the effectiveness of the proposed design.

A fiber-coupled displacement measuring interferometer for determination of the posture of a reflective surface.

A fiber-coupled displacement measuring interferometer capable of determining of the posture of a reflective surface of a measuring mirror is proposed. The newly constructed instrument combines fiber-coupled displacement and angular measurement technologies. The proposed interferometer has advantages of both the fiber-coupled and the spatially beam-separated interferometer. A portable dual-position sensitive detector (PSD)-based unit within this proposed interferometer measures the parallelism of the two source beams to guide the fiber-coupling adjustment. The portable dual PSD-based unit measures not only the pitch and yaw of the retro-reflector but also measures the posture of the reflective surface. The experimental results of displacement calibration show that the deviations between the proposed interferometer and a reference one, Agilent 5530, at two different common beam directions are both less than ±35 nm, thus verifying the effectiveness of the beam parallelism measurement. The experimental results of angular calibration show that deviations of pitch and yaw with the auto-collimator (as a reference) are less than ±2 arc sec, thus proving the proposed interferometer's effectiveness for determination of the posture of a reflective surface.

Balanced plane-mirror heterodyne interferometer with subnanometer periodic nonlinearity.

A balanced plane-mirror heterodyne interferometer with a polarizing beam splitter used to recombine the reference and measurement beams is proposed to reduce periodic nonlinearity and to eliminate thermal error. Experimental results indicated that the periodic error due to ghost reflection was kept within ±36 pm, and the interferometer proposed was immune from thermal error.