Effect of cesarean section on the risk of autism spectrum disorders/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in offspring: a meta-analysis.

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between cesarean section (CS) offspring and autism spectrum disorders (ASD)/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHODS: Searching of the databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library) for studies on the relationship between mode of delivery and ASD/ADHD until August 2022. The primary outcome was the incidence of ASD/ADHD in the offspring. RESULTS: This meta-analysis included 35 studies (12 cohort studies and 23 case-control studies). Statistical results showed a higher risk of ASD (odds ratio (OR) = 1.25, P < 0.001) and ADHD (OR = 1.11, P < 0.001) in CS offspring compared to the VD group. Partial subgroup analysis showed no difference in ASD risk between CS and VD offspring in sibling-matched groups (OR = 0.98, P = 0.625). The risk of ASD was higher in females (OR = 1.66, P = 0.003) than in males (OR = 1.17, P = 0.004) in the CS offspring compared with the VD group. There was no difference in the risk of ASD between CS under regional anesthesia group and VD group (OR = 1.07, P = 0.173). However, the risk of ASD was higher in the CS offspring under general anesthesia than in the VD offspring (OR = 1.62, P < 0.001). CS offspring developed autism (OR = 1.38, P = 0.011) and pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (OR = 1.46, P = 0.004) had a higher risk than VD offspring, but there was no difference in Asperger syndrome (OR = 1.19, P = 0.115). Offspring born via CS had a higher incidence of ADHD in different subgroup analyses (sibling-matched, type of CS, and study design). CONCLUSIONS: In this meta-analysis, CS was a risk factor for ASD/ADHD in offspring compared with VD.

Association of cesarean section with risk of childhood leukemia: A meta-analysis from an observational study.

Recent studies suggest that children born via cesarean section (CS) are predisposed to immune-mediated diseases later in life. The association between CS and childhood leukemia was investigated in this meta-analysis of observational studies. Two researchers independently searched PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library for literature on the association between CS and childhood leukemia before February 2022. And pooled odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to determine the link between CS and childhood leukemia. The preliminary search resulted in 1321 articles and 16 articles were finally included after screening. The primary outcome was the risk of leukemia in children born via CS versus those born vaginally. The results revealed that having a CS was associated with an increased risk of childhood leukemia compared to having vaginal section (VS) (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.02-1.13, p = 0.01), especially for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (OR = 1.09, 95% CI: 1.03-1.16, p = 0.004). Children delivered via elective CS had a higher risk of ALL (OR = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.07-1.31, p = 0.001), but emergency CS did not. It is worth noting that neither emergency CS nor elective CS were found to be associated with acute myeloid leukemia. Compared to VS, CS increased the risk of leukemia in children, with elective CS significantly increasing ALL risk.

Association of cesarean section with asthma in children/adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analysis based on cohort studies.

BACKGROUND: Whether cesarean section (CS) is a risk factor for asthma in offspring is controversial. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between CS and asthma in children/adolescents. METHODS: Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library electronic databases were searched for cohort studies on the relationship between mode of delivery and asthma in children/adolescents up to February 2023. Birth via CS was considered an exposure factor. Asthma incidence was taken as a result. RESULTS: Thirty-five cohort studies (thirteen prospective and twenty-two retrospective cohort studies) were included. The results showed that the incidence of asthma was higher in CS offspring (odds ratio (OR) = 1.18, P < 0.001) than in the vaginal delivery (VD) group. Partial subgroup analyses showed a higher incidence of asthma in female offspring born via CS (OR = 1.26, P < 0.001) compared with the VD group, while there was no difference in males (OR = 1.07, P = 0.325). Asthma incidence was higher in CS offspring than in the VD group in Europe (OR = 1.20, P < 0.001), North America (OR = 1.15, P < 0.001), and Oceania (OR = 1.06, P = 0.008). This trend was not found in the Asian population (OR = 1.17, P = 0.102). The incidence of atopic asthma was higher in offspring born via CS (OR = 1.14, P < 0.001) compared to the VD group. The CS group had a higher incidence of persistent asthma, but the difference did not reach statistical significance (OR = 1.15, P = 0.063). CONCLUSION: In this meta-analysis, CS may be a risk factor for asthma in offspring children/adolescents compared with VD. The relationship between CS and asthma was influenced by sex and region.

De novo motif discovery facilitates identification of interactions between transcription factors in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

MOTIVATION: Gene regulation involves complicated mechanisms such as cooperativity between a set of transcription factors (TFs). Previous studies have used target genes shared by two TFs as a clue to infer TF-TF interactions. However, this task remains challenging because the target genes with low binding affinity are frequently omitted by experimental data, especially when a single strict threshold is employed. This article aims at improving the accuracy of inferring TF-TF interactions by incorporating motif discovery as a fundamental step when detecting overlapping targets of TFs based on ChIP-chip data. RESULTS: The proposed method, simTFBS, outperforms three naïve methods that adopt fixed thresholds when inferring TF-TF interactions based on ChIP-chip data. In addition, simTFBS is compared with two advanced methods and demonstrates its advantages in predicting TF-TF interactions. By comparing simTFBS with predictions based on the set of available annotated yeast TF binding motifs, we demonstrate that the good performance of simTFBS is indeed coming from the additional motifs found by the proposed procedures. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The effect and safety of CDK4/6 inhibitors combined endocrine therapy on HR+, HER2-breast cancer: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of cyclin-dependent kinase4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) combined with endocrine therapy (ET) on hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) breast cancer (BC). MATERIAL AND METHODS: A search was conducted in the PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library databases before July 2022. RESULTS: A total of 19 studies comprising 19,004 patients were eligible for this meta-analysis. This meta-analysis found that for unresectable locally advanced or metastatic HR+, HER2- BC, CDK4/6i combined with ET can significantly improve the progression-free survival (PFS) (hazard ratio = 0.59, p < 0.001), overall survival (OS) (hazard ratio = 0.77, p < 0.001), objective response rate (ORR) [risk ratio (RR) = 1.32, p = 0.001)], disease control rate (DCR) (RR = 1.10, p < 0.001), and clinical benefit response (CBR) (RR = 1.15, p = 0.001). For early HR+, HER2- BC, CDK4/6i combined with ET improved ORR (RR = 1.14, p = 0.05) and invasive disease free survival (iDFS) (hazard ratio = 0.87, p = 0.045) but had no effect on pathologic complete response (pCR) (RR = 1.75, p = 0.33), distant recurrence free survival (DRFS) (hazard ratio = 0.83, p = 0.311), and OS (hazard ratio = 1.08, p = 0.705). CONCLUSION: CDK4/6i combined with ET can improve the prognosis of patients with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic HR+, HER2- BC, but it has no obvious effect on patients with early HR+, HER2- BC. It is generally safe and manageable.

A meta-analysis of application of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor-based immunotherapy in unresectable locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to explore the efficacy of immunotherapy for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Materials & methods: Randomized clinical trials comparing immunotherapy with chemotherapy for advanced TNBC patients were included. Results: A total of six articles (3183 patients) were eligible for this meta-analysis. PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor-based immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy can significantly increase the progression-free survival (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.82; 95% CI = 0.76-1.14; p < 0.001) of unresectable locally advanced or metastatic TNBC patients without effect on overall survival, compared with chemotherapy. Conclusion: PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors-based immunotherapy can safely improve progression-free survival in patients with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic TNBC, but has no effect on overall survival.

Breast cancer is a malignant tumor. It is most common in females. Triple-negative breast cancer is one type of malignant tumor that is not sensitive to treatment and is prone to recurrence. It can easily lead to death. Treatment mainly relies on chemotherapy. Immunotherapy is a new treatment method ad includes PD-1/L1 inhibitors. This research was conducted to assess its effects. Immunotherapy has good effects and can alleviate symptoms. It can improve prognosis and extend life. It has some side effects, mainly in the lungs and thyroid, but these side effects are controllable.

The relationship between tobacco and breast cancer incidence: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies.

Background: The effect of tobacco on breast cancer (BC) is controversial. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between tobacco and BC. Methods: A search was conducted in PubMed, EBSCO, Web of Science and Cochrane Library databases before February 2022. The adjusted odd ratio (OR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to examine the relationship between active or passive smoking and BC risk. Results: A total of 77 articles composed of 2,326,987 participants were included for this meta-analysis. Active (OR=1.15, 95% CI=1.11-1.20, p<0.001) and passive (OR=1.17, 95% CI=1.09-1.24, p<0.001) smoking increased the risk of BC in the female population, especially premenopausal BC (active smoking: OR=1.24, p<0.001; passive smoking: OR=1.29, p<0.001), but had no effect on postmenopausal BC (active smoking: OR=1.03, p=0.314; passive smoking: OR=1.13, p=0.218). Active smoking increased the risk of estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) BC risk (OR=1.13, p<0.001), but had no effect on estrogen receptor-negative (ER-) BC (OR=1.08, p=0.155). The risk of BC was positively associated with the duration and intensity of smoking, negatively associated with the duration of smoking cessation. Active smoking increased the risk of BC in the multiparous population (OR=1.13, p<0.001), but had no effect on the nulliparous population (OR=1.05, p=0.432), and smoking before the first birth (OR=1.22, 95% CI=1.17-1.27) had a greater impact on the risk of BC than smoking after the first birth (OR=1.08, 95% CI=1.04-1.12). Conclusion: Smoking (active and passive) increased the risk of BC in women. The effect of smoking on BC was influenced by smoking-related factors (duration, intensity, years of quitting), population-related factors (fertility status), and BC subtypes. Systematic Review Registration: identifier CRD42022322699.

Predicting protein-protein interactions in unbalanced data using the primary structure of proteins.

BACKGROUND: Elucidating protein-protein interactions (PPIs) is essential to constructing protein interaction networks and facilitating our understanding of the general principles of biological systems. Previous studies have revealed that interacting protein pairs can be predicted by their primary structure. Most of these approaches have achieved satisfactory performance on datasets comprising equal number of interacting and non-interacting protein pairs. However, this ratio is highly unbalanced in nature, and these techniques have not been comprehensively evaluated with respect to the effect of the large number of non-interacting pairs in realistic datasets. Moreover, since highly unbalanced distributions usually lead to large datasets, more efficient predictors are desired when handling such challenging tasks. RESULTS: This study presents a method for PPI prediction based only on sequence information, which contributes in three aspects. First, we propose a probability-based mechanism for transforming protein sequences into feature vectors. Second, the proposed predictor is designed with an efficient classification algorithm, where the efficiency is essential for handling highly unbalanced datasets. Third, the proposed PPI predictor is assessed with several unbalanced datasets with different positive-to-negative ratios (from 1:1 to 1:15). This analysis provides solid evidence that the degree of dataset imbalance is important to PPI predictors. CONCLUSIONS: Dealing with data imbalance is a key issue in PPI prediction since there are far fewer interacting protein pairs than non-interacting ones. This article provides a comprehensive study on this issue and develops a practical tool that achieves both good prediction performance and efficiency using only protein sequence information.

The 3D scanner for measuring body surface area: a simplified calculation in the Chinese adult.

Three-dimensional (3D) surface anthropometry enables us to extend the study to 3D geometry and morphology of mainly external human body tissues. A model is presented for estimation of human body surface area (BSA), which is identical in form to the one proposed in 1916 by DuBois and DuBois is presented. The purpose of this study is to measure BSA, using 3D scanner, and to derive a simple BSA estimation formula for the Chinese adults. In as little as 12s, the Chang Gung Whole-Body Scanner (CGWBS) allows you to capture the shape of the entire human body. The total error in BSA measurement due to scanning measurement and software computational error is less than 1%. The 3D anthropometric measures in a healthy population (n=3951) were investigated, and the results were used to derive a BSA estimation formula. The results seem to be comparable to previous data that measured BSA using traditional methods. The BSA estimation model of this study also validated using 300 new measurements along with the formulae proposed in previous researches. The result suggests that our formula better fits our adults.