Comparison of efficacy and safety of flexible ureteroscopy and mini-percutaneous nephrolithotomy for 2-3 cm renal calculi in women: a single-center study.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to compare the efficacy and safety of flexible ureteroscopic lithotripsy (FURSL) and mini-percutaneous nephrolithotomy (mPCNL) in the treatment of 2-3 cm renal calculi in women. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Clinical data of 186 patients who underwent mPCNL (n=96) and FURSL (n=90) surgery in our hospital from June 2018 to February 2023 were collected. Several parameters were assessed and compared between the two groups, including operation duration, length of hospital stay, cost of hospitalization, pain intensity measured by the visual analogue scale (VAS), patient comfort assessed using the Bruggrmann Comfort Scale (BCS), decrease in hemoglobin levels, changes in blood urea nitrogen (BUN), fluctuations in serum creatinine (Scr), hypersensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels, complication rates, immediate post-operative stone-free rate (RSFR), and long-term stone-free rate (LSFR). RESULTS: The comparative analysis of patient age, body mass index (BMI), stone size, computed X-ray tomography (CT) value of stones, number of stones, and comorbidities revealed no statistically significant differences between the mPCNL and FURSL groups (p>0.05). The mPCNL cohort exhibited a markedly lower duration of operation (p<0.001) and BCS score (p<0.001) compared to the FURSL cohort. Nonetheless, the mPCNL cohort demonstrated significantly higher hospitalization expenses (p<0.001), length of hospital stay (p<0.001), VAS score for pain (p<0.001), and level of hemoglobin decrease (p<0.001) in comparison to the FURSL cohort. Moreover, the immediate post-operative stone-free rate (RSFR) was significantly higher in the mPCNL group (p=0.007). The long-term stone-free rate (LSFR), however, showed no significant difference between the two groups (p=0.160). Furthermore, the FURSL group exhibited significantly fewer overall complications in contrast to the mPCNL group (p=0.006). CONCLUSIONS: mPCNL and FURSL are both safe and effective surgical methods for treating 2-3 cm renal calculi in women. However, FURSL holds distinct advantages, including minimally invasive procedure, accelerated recovery, reduced cost, and lower incidence of complications.

[The clinical observation of serum specific biomarkers in patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease].

Objective: Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is a major long-term complication after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) . It is important to study the changes of serum biomarkers expression in patients for early diagnosis and treatment. Methods: The expression levels of five serum protein markers (IL-1b, IL-16, CXCL9, CCL19, CCL17) in patients with or without cGVHD after allo-HSCT were detected by liquid suspension microarray. Results: Compared with the control group without cGVHD, the expression levels of CXCL9 and CCL17 in serum of patients with cGVHD were significantly increased (P<0.05) . CCL17 was correlated with the severity of cGVHD (P<0.001) . CXCL9 was significantly increased in the serum of patients with skin lesion (P<0.01) , and CCL17 was significantly expressed in cGVHD patients with liver as the target organ (P<0.01) . Conclusion: The combination of CXCL9 and CCL17 can be used as serum biomarkers of cGVHD, which has certain reference value in assisting the diagnosis and evaluation of cGVHD severity.

Partial least squares based analysis of pathways in recurrent breast cancer.

PURPOSE: Breast cancer remains a major health problem even with all the recent technological advancements. Large-scale gene expression analysis has offered great ease for both biological characterization and therapeutic planning of breast cancer. Previous studies mostly used variance/regression analysis, which becomes fundamentally flawed when there are unaccounted array specific factors. Here we aim to investigate the underlying mechanism of breast cancer through partial least squares (PLS) based gene expression profile analysis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: With a gene expression profile data set downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus database, we performed PLS based analysis. RESULTS: We acquire 932 and 771 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in breast cancer metastasis of estrogen-receptor (ER)-positive and ER-negative patients, respectively. For ER-positive patients, 32 pathways were found to be enriched with DEGs, including immune related pathways, cellular processes and environmental information processing pathways. Survival analysis demonstrated that 18 of them were closely related with non-recurrence rate along time after surgery. For ER negative patients, only three pathways including the folate biosynthesis pathway were enriched with DEGs and none of them overlapped with those of ER positive patients. Only the cholinergic synapse pathway was significantly associated with the non-recurrence rate according to the survival analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings shed light on pathways involved in breast cancer relapse with the hope to give some theoretical supports for further therapeutic study.