Thyroid V40 is a good predictor for subclinical hypothyroidism in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma after intensity modulated radiation therapy: a randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Hypothyroidism (HT) and subclinical HT after radiotherapy is frequent in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients, results in negative impact on patients' quality of life. The percentage of thyroid volume receiving more than 40 Gy (V40) ≤ 85% was reported to be a useful dose constraint to adopt during intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) planning. This study aims to verify whether V40 ≤ 85% can be used as an effective dose constraint in IMRT planning in a randomized clinical trial. METHODS: This single-center 1:1 randomized clinical trial was conducted in Fujian province hospital between March 2018 and September 2022. All patients were treated with IMRT and randomized to induction chemo followed by concurrent chemo-IMRT or concurrent chemo-IMRT alone. Ninety-two clinically NPC patients were included in this study. The thyroid function tests were performed for all patients before and after radiation at regular intervals. Thyroid dose-constraint was defined as V40 ≤ 85%. The primary outcome in this study was subclinical HT. RESULTS: Median follow up was 34 months. Significant difference in the incidence of subclinical HT between the thyroid dose-constraint group and unrestricted group was observed (P = 0.023). The risk of subclinical HT in the thyroid dose-constraint group was lower than that in the unrestricted group (P = 0.022). Univariate and multivariate cox regression analysis indicated that thyroid dose-constraint was a protective effect of subclinical HT (HR = 0.408, 95% CI 0.184-0.904; HRadjusted = 0.361, 95% CI 0.155-0.841). CONCLUSION: V40 ≤ 85% can be used as an effective dose constraint in IMRT planning to prevent radiation-induced subclinical HT.

Serum iron is closely associated with metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease in type 2 diabetes: A real-world study.

Aims: There is still a debate about the relationship between serum iron and metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD). Furthermore, few relevant studies were conducted in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Therefore, this study aimed to explore the association of serum iron levels with MAFLD in Chinese patients with T2DM. Methods: This cross-sectional, real-world study consisted of 1,467 Chinese T2DM patients. MAFLD was diagnosed by abdominal ultrasonography. Based on serum iron quartiles, the patients were classified into four groups. Clinical characteristics were compared among the four groups, and binary logistic analyses were used to assess the associations of serum iron levels and quartiles with the presence of MAFLD in T2DM. Results: After adjusting for gender, age, and diabetes duration, significantly higher prevalence of MAFLD was found in the second (45.7%), third (45.2%), and fourth (47.0%) serum iron quartiles than in the first quartiles (26.8%), with the highest MAFLD prevalence in the fourth quartile (p < 0.001 for trend). Moreover, increased HOMA2-IR (p = 0.003 for trend) and decreased HOMA2-S (p = 0.003 for trend) were observed across the serum iron quartiles. Fully adjusted binary logistic regression analyses indicated that both increased serum iron levels (OR: 1.725, 95% CI: 1.427 to 2.085, p < 0.001) and quartiles (p < 0.001 for trend) were still closely associated with the presence of MAFLD in T2DM patients even after controlling for multiple confounding factors. Conclusions: There is a positive correlation between the presence of MAFLD and serum iron levels in T2DM patients, which may be attributed to the close association between serum iron and insulin resistance. Serum iron levels may act as one of the indicators for evaluating the risk of MAFLD in T2DM individuals.

Waist-to-height ratio has a stronger association with cardiovascular risks than waist circumference, waist-hip ratio and body mass index in type 2 diabetes.

AIMS: To compare the associations between four anthropometric indices including waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), waist circumference (WC), waist-hip-ratio (WHR) and body mass index (BMI) and cardio-cerebrovascular events (CCBVEs) in Chinese T2DM patients. METHODS: The associations of four anthropometric measures with CCBVEs and metabolic syndrome (MetS) were compared by multiple regression model in 3108 T2DM patients. CCBVEs was defined as a history of myocardial infarction, angina, angioplasty, coronary artery bypass surgery, transient ischemic attack, ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke. RESULTS: After controlling for age, sex and diabetes duration, the prevalence of CCBVEs and MetS significantly increased across the WHtR, WC, WHR and BMI quartiles in T2DM patients, respectively. However, when controlling for these four anthropometric measurements together, although four anthropometric measures were closely associated with MetS prevalence, only WHtR quartile was significantly associated with CCBVEs prevalence (6.5%, 13.8%, 16.9% and 21.3%, p < 0.001 for trend). After adjusting for multiple confounders including four anthropometric parameters, a regression analysis revealed that only WHtR was independently and positively associated with the presence of CCBVEs (p = 0.029). CONCLUSIONS: Compared with WC, WHR and BMI, WHtR have a stronger association with CCBVEs in T2DM subjects. WHtR maybe a better indicator than other anthropometric measurements for evaluating cardiovascular risks in T2DM.