Efficacy and Safety of a Self-Improved Continuous Bladder Irrigation Sensor Device in Patients after Transurethral Resection of the Prostate: A Prospective Study.

Purpose To explore the efficacy and safety of a self-improved continuous bladder irrigation (CBI) sensor device after transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP). Materials and Methods A total of 160 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia who received TURP from June 2021 to May 2022 were selected. According to the envelope randomization method, patients were divided into a control group (80 cases) and study group (80 cases). In the control group, the speed of bladder flushing fluid was adjusted according to the clinical experience of nurses. On the basis of the control group, the self-improved CBI sensor device was used in the study group to observe the postoperative comfort and complication rate in the two groups. Results The comfort of patients in the study group was significantly higher than that of patients in the control group (97.50% vs. 88.75%, P = .023), and the number of postoperative complications in the control group was significantly higher than that in the study group (8.75% vs. 1.25%, P = .021). Meanwhile, the average amount of irrigation fluid in the study group was obviously lower than that in the control group (26.4 L vs. 27.8 L, P = .011). In addition, patients in the study group had a significantly shorter hospital stay than the controls (3.3 days vs. 3.6 days, P = .005). Conclusion Implementation of the new self-improved CBI sensor device for patients after TURP can improve their awareness regarding disease-related knowledge, alleviate their fear and anxiety, improve their compliance and comfort with treatment and nursing, and reduce the incidence of complications.

Preclinical evaluation and phase 1 study of the PI3Kα/δ inhibitor TQ-B3525 in Chinese patients with advanced cancers.

BACKGROUND: Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitors transformed management of various malignancies. This study preclinically characterized TQ-B3525 (dual PI3Kα/δ inhibitor) and assessed the recommended phase 2 dose (RP2D), safety, efficacy, and pharmacokinetics in relapsed or refractory (R/R) lymphoma or advanced solid tumors (STs). METHODS: Oral TQ-B3525 was given at eight dose levels on a 28-day cycle. Primary end points were dose-limiting toxicity (DLT), maximum tolerated dose (MTD), and safety. RESULTS: TQ-B3525 showed high selectivity and suppressed tumor growth. Between June 12, 2018, and November 18, 2020, 80 patients were enrolled (63 in dose-escalation cohort; 17 in dose-expansion cohort). Two DLTs occurred in two (two of 63, 3.2%) DLT-evaluable patients; MTD was not identified. TQ-B3525 at 20 mg once daily was selected as RP2D. Grade 3 or worse treatment-related adverse events mainly included hyperglycemia (16.3%), neutrophil count decreased (15.0%), and diarrhea (10.0%). Two (2.5%) treatment-related deaths were reported. Sixty patients with R/R lymphoma and 11 advanced STs demonstrated objective response rates of 68.3% and 9.1%, disease control rates of 91.7% and 54.6%, median progression-free survivals of 12.1 and 1.1 months; median overall survivals were not reached. CONCLUSION: TQ-B3525 exhibited rapid absorption and a nearly proportional increase in exposure. Acceptable safety and promising efficacy support further investigation of TQ-B3525 (20 mg once daily) for R/R lymphoma.

Incremental regression of localization context for automatic segmentation of ossified ligamentum flavum from CT data.

PURPOSE: Segmentation of ossified ligamentum flavum (OLF) plays a crucial role in developing computer-assisted, image-guided systems for decompressive thoracic laminectomy. Manual segmentation is time-consuming, tedious, and label-intensive. It also suffers from inter- and intra-observer variability. Automatic segmentation is highly desired. METHODS: A two-stage, localization context-aware framework is developed for automatic segmentation of ossified ligamentum flavum. In the first stage, localization heatmaps of OLFs are obtained via incremental regression. In the second stage, the obtained heatmaps are then treated as the localization context for a segmentation U-Net. Our framework can directly map a whole volumetic data to its volume-wise labels. RESULTS: We designed and conducted comprehensive experiments on datasets of 100 patients to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Our method achieved an average Dice similarity coefficient of 61.2 ± 7.6%, an average surface distance of 1.1 ± 0.5 mm, and an average positive predictive value of 62.0 ± 12.8%. CONCLUSION: To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first study aiming for automatic segmentation of ossified ligamentum flavum. Results from the comprehensive experiments demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method over the state-of-the-art methods.

Efficacy and safety of pelvic floor magnetic stimulation combined with mirabegron in female patients with refractory overactive bladder: a prospective study.

Objective: To observe the efficacy and safety of pelvic floor magnetic stimulation (PFMS) combined with mirabegron in female patients with refractory overactive bladder (OAB) symptoms. Patients and methods: A total of 160 female patients with refractory OAB symptoms were prospectively randomized into two groups. Eighty cases in the combination group accepted PFMS and mirabegron therapy and 80 cases as control only accepted mirabegron therapy (The clinical trial registry number: ChiCTR2200070171). The lower urinary tract symptoms, OAB questionnaire (OAB-q) health-related quality of life (HRQol), symptom bother score and OABSS between two groups were compared at the 1st, 2nd and 4th week ends. Results: All of 160 patients were randomly assigned to two groups, of which 80 patients were included in the combination group and 80 in the mirabegron group. The incidences of LUTS, including urgency, frequent urination, and incontinence episodes, in the 2nd week and the 4th week after combination treatment were significantly lower than those in the mirabegron group (p < 0.05). The incidence of drug-related adverse events between two groups was similar, and there was no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05). With respect to secondary variables, the OAB-q HRQol score in the combination group was statistically superior in comparison with that in the mirabegron group between the 2nd week and the 4th week (p < 0.05). This was consistent with the primary outcome. Meanwhile, from the second to fourth week, the OAB-q symptom bother score and OABSS in the combination group were both lower than in the mirabegron group (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Combination therapy of PFMS and mirabegron demonstrated significant improvements over mirabegron monotherapy in reducing refractory OAB symptoms for female patients, and providing a higher quality of life without increasing bothersome adverse effects. Clinical Trial Registration: https://www.chictr.org.cn/, ChiCTR-INR-22013524.

Direct Growth of Low Thermal Conductivity WTe2 Nanocrystalline Films on W Films.

WTe2 has attracted much attention because of its layered structure and special electronic energy band structure. However, due to the difficulty of evaporating the W element itself and the inactivity of the Te element, the obtained large-area WTe2 thin films are usually accompanied by many defects. In this paper, WTe2 nanocrystalline films were successfully prepared on quartz substrates using magnetron sputtering and chemical vapor deposition techniques. Various analytical techniques such as X-ray Diffraction, Raman spectra, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscope, and photoluminescence spectra are employed to analyze the crystal structure, composition, and morphology. The effects of different tellurization temperatures and tellurization times on the properties of WTe2 thin films were investigated. WTe2 nanocrystalline films with good crystallinity were obtained at 600 °C for 30 min. The thermal conductivity of the WTe2 films prepared under this condition was 1.173 Wm-1K-1 at 300 K, which is significantly higher than that of samples prepared using other methods.

RIRS with FV-UAS vs. MPCNL for 2-3-cm upper urinary tract stones: a prospective study.

To observe the efficacy and safety of retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) combined with flexible vacuum-assisted ureteral access sheath (FV-UAS) and minimally invasive percutaneous nephrolithotomy (MPCNL) in patients with 2-3 cm upper urinary tract stones. A total of 160 patients with 2-3 cm upper urinary tract stones were prospectively randomized into 2 groups-80 in the FV-UAS group and 80 cases as control in the MPCNL group. The stone-free rates (SFRs) at different times (postoperative 1st day and 4th week) were considered as the primary outcome of the study. The secondary end points were operative time, hemoglobin decrease, postoperative hospital stay, and operation-related complications. There was no obvious difference between the two groups in patient's demographics and preoperative clinical characteristics (all P > 0.05). Postoperative data showed that mean decrease in hemoglobin level was less in FV-UAS group than that in MPCNL group (5.3 vs. 10.8 g/L, P < 0.001). Postoperative hospital stay in FV-UAS group was more shorten than that in MPCNL group (2.7 vs. 4.9 days, P < 0.001). There was no statistical significance between the two groups in SFRs during postoperative 1st day and 4th week (both P > 0.05). However, in terms of the rates of bleeding and pain, MPCNL group were both significantly higher than FV-UAS group (6.2 vs. 0.0%, P = 0.023; 16.2 vs. 2.5%, P = 0.003; respectively). Our study showed that RIRS with FV-UAS, a new partnership to treat 2-3 cm upper urinary tract stones, was satisfying as it achieved a high SFR rate and a low rate of complications. This method was safe and reproducible in clinical practice.

Selinexor With Anti-PD-1 Antibody as a Potentially Effective Regimen for Patients With Natural Killer/T-Cell Lymphoma Failing Prior L-Asparaginase and PD-1 Blockade.

BACKGROUND: Natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTCL) is a rare and heterogeneous tumor type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) with a poor clinical outcome. There is no standardized salvage treatment failing l-asparaginase-based regimens. Here we report our retrospective results of the combined use of selinexor and PD-1 blockade (tislelizumab) in 5 patients with NKTCL who had exhausted almost all available treatments. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 5 patients with relapsed/refractory(R/R) NK/T-cell lymphomas failing prior l-asparaginase and anti-PD-1 antibody were retrospectively collected. They were treated with at least one cycle of XPO1 inhibitor plus the same anti-PD-1 antibody. Anti-PD-1 antibody (Tislelizumab) was administrated at 200 mg on day 1 every 3 weeks and selinexor doses and schedules ranged from 40 mg weekly for 2 weeks per 21-day cycle to 60 mg weekly per cycle. RESULTS: Five patients with relapsed NKTCL with extensive organ involvement including 4 central nervous system (CNS) infiltration patients were included. Four patients achieved objective responses including 3 complete responses (CR) and 1 partial response (PR). After a median follow-up time of 14.5 (range, 5-22) months, 1 patient was still in remission with CR, and the other 4 patients discontinued due to disease progression with a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 6 months and median overall survival (OS) of 12 months. Four patients with CNS involvement achieved a median OS of 8 months. Our data suggest that selinexor in combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody is a promising small molecule and immunotherapy combination regimen for patients with relapsed or refractory NKTCL.

The facial microbiome and metabolome across different geographic regions.

IMPORTANCE: Characterization of the skin microbiome and metabolome across geography will help uncover the climate factors behind the prevalence of skin disorders and provide suggestions for skincare products for people living in different geographic regions.

Neuroprotective effect of plasmalogens on AlCl3-induced Alzheimer's disease zebrafish via acting on the regulatory network of ferroptosis, apoptosis and synaptic neurotransmission release with oxidative stress as the center.

Plasmalogens (Pls) are considered to play a potential role in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. In the present study, an Alzheimer's disease (AD) model of zebrafish induced by AlCl3 was established to investigate whether the marine-derived Pls could alleviate cognitive impairments of AD zebrafish. Behavioral tests were carried out to assess the athletic ability. The transcriptional profiles of zebrafish in the control, AD model and AD_PLS group were compared and analyzed to determine the potential mechanisms of dietary Pls on AD. The study found that Pls could reverse athletic impairment in the AD zebrafish model, and the expression levels of genes related to ferroptosis, synaptic dysfunction and apoptosis were significantly altered between experimental groups. Further analysis showed that all of these genes were associated with oxidative stress (OS). These data suggest that healthy protective role of marine-derived Pls on AD zebrafish may result from inhibition of ferroptosis and neuronal apoptosis, restoring synaptic neurotransmission release, and reducing neuroinflammation. Among them, Oxidative stress is acted as the center to connect different regulation pathways. This study provides evidence to support the essential roles of OS in pathogenesis of AD, and the application of Pls in relieving AD.

Nonlinear regression of remaining surgery duration from videos via Bayesian LSTM-based deep negative correlation learning.

In this paper, we address the problem of estimating remaining surgery duration (RSD) from surgical video frames. We propose a Bayesian long short-term memory (LSTM) network-based Deep Negative Correlation Learning approach called BD-Net for accurate regression of RSD prediction as well as estimation of prediction uncertainty. Our method aims to extract discriminative visual features from surgical video frames and model the temporal dependencies among frames to improve the RSD prediction accuracy. To this end, we propose to train an ensemble of Bayesian LSTMs on top of a backbone network by the way of deep negative correlation learning (DNCL). More specifically, we deeply learn a pool of decorrelated Bayesian regressors with sound generalization capabilities through managing their intrinsic diversities. BD-Net is simple and efficient. After training, it can produce both RSD prediction and uncertainty estimation in a single inference run. We demonstrate the efficacy of BD-Net on publicly available datasets of two different types of surgeries: one containing 101 cataract microscopic surgeries with short durations and the other containing 80 cholecystectomy laparoscopic surgeries with relatively longer durations. Experimental results on both datasets demonstrate that the proposed BD-Net achieves better results than the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods. A reference implementation of our method can be found at: https://github.com/jywu511/BD-Net.

Targeting Bcl-xL is a potential therapeutic strategy for extranodal NK/T cell lymphoma.

Extranodal natural killer/T cell lymphoma, nasal type (ENKTL) is an aggressive lymphoid malignancy with a poor prognosis and lacks standard treatment. Targeted therapies are urgently needed. Here we systematically investigated the druggable mechanisms through chemogenomic screening and identified that Bcl-xL-specific BH3 mimetics effectively induced ENKTL cell apoptosis. Notably, the specific accumulation of Bcl-xL, but not other Bcl-2 family members, was verified in ENKTL cell lines and patient tissues. Furthermore, Bcl-xL high expression was shown to be closely associated with worse patient survival. The critical role of Bcl-xL in ENKTL cell survival was demonstrated utilizing selective inhibitors, genetic silencing, and a specific degrader. Additionally, the IL2-JAK1/3-STAT5 signaling was implicated in Bcl-xL dysregulation. In vivo, Bcl-xL inhibition reduced tumor burden, increased apoptosis, and prolonged survival in ENKTL cell line xenograft and patient-derived xenograft models. Our study indicates Bcl-xL as a promising therapeutic target for ENKTL, warranting monitoring in ongoing clinical trials by targeting Bcl-xL.

POU2F1/DNMT3a Pathway Participates in Neuropathic Pain by Hypermethylation-Mediated LRFN4 Downregulation Following Oxaliplatin Treatment.

Evidence demonstrates that DNA methylation is associated with the occurrence and development of various neurological diseases. However, the potential target genes undergoing DNA methylation, as well as their involvement in the chemotherapy drug oxaliplatin-induced neuropathic pain, are still unclear. Here, Lrfn4, which showed hypermethylation in the promoter regions, was screened from the SRA methylation database (PRJNA587622) following oxaliplatin treatment. MeDIP and qPCR assays identified that oxaliplatin treatment increased the methylation in Lrfn4 promoter region and decreased the expression of LRFN4 in the spinal dorsal horn. The assays with gain and loss of LRFN4 function demonstrated that LRFN4 downregulation in spinal dorsal horn contributed to the oxaliplatin-induced mechanical allodynia and cold hyperalgesia. Moreover, oxaliplatin treatment increased the DNA methyltransferases DNMT3a expression and the interaction between DNMT3a and Lrfn4 promoter, while inhibition of DNMT3a prevented the downregulation of LRFN4a induced by oxaliplatin. We also observed that the transcriptional factor POU2F1 can bind to the predicted sites in DNMT3a promoter region, oxaliplatin treatment upregulated the expression of transcriptional factor POU2F1 in dorsal horn neurons. Intrathecal injection of POU2F1 siRNA prevented the DNMT3a upregulation and the LRFN4 downregulation induced by oxaliplatin. Additionally, intrathecal injection of DNMT3a siRNA or POU2F1 siRNA alleviated the mechanical allodynia induced by oxaliplatin. These findings suggested that transcription factor POU2F1 upregulated the expression of DNMT3a, which subsequently decreased LRFN4 expression through hypermethylation modification in spinal dorsal horn, thereby mediating neuropathic pain following oxaliplatin treatment.

Interleukin-34-NF-κB signaling aggravates myocardial ischemic/reperfusion injury by facilitating macrophage recruitment and polarization.

BACKGROUND: Macrophage infiltration and polarization are integral to the progression of heart failure and cardiac fibrosis after ischemia/reperfusion (IR). Interleukin 34 (IL-34) is an inflammatory regulator related to a series of autoimmune diseases. Whether IL-34 mediates inflammatory responses and contributes to cardiac remodeling and heart failure post-IR remains unclear. METHODS: IL-34 knock-out mice were used to determine the role of IL-34 on cardiac remodeling after IR surgery. Then, immunofluorescence, flow cytometry assays, and RNA-seq analysis were performed to explore the underlying mechanisms of IL-34-induced macrophage recruitment and polarization, and further heart failure after IR. FINDINGS: By re-analyzing single-cell RNA-seq and single-nucleus RNA-seq data of murine and human ischemic hearts, we showed that IL-34 expression was upregulated after IR. IL-34 knockout mitigated cardiac remodeling, cardiac dysfunction, and fibrosis after IR and vice versa. RNA-seq analysis revealed that IL-34 deletion correlated negatively with immune responses and chemotaxis after IR injury. Consistently, immunofluorescence and flow cytometry assays demonstrated that IL-34 deletion attenuated macrophage recruitment and CCR2+ macrophage polarization. Mechanistically, IL-34 deficiency repressed both the canonical and noncanonical NF-κB signaling pathway, leading to marked reduction of P-IKKß and P-IκBα kinase levels; downregulation of NF-κB p65, RelB, and p52 expression, which drove the decline in chemokine CCL2 expression. Finally, IL-34 and CCL2 levels were increased in the serum of acute coronary syndrome patients, with a positive correlation between circulating IL-34 and CCL2 levels in clinical patients. INTERPRETATION: In conclusion, IL-34 sustains NF-κB pathway activation to elicit increased CCL2 expression, which contributes to macrophage recruitment and polarization, and subsequently exacerbates cardiac remodeling and heart failure post-IR. Strategies targeting IL-34-centered immunomodulation may provide new therapeutic approaches to prevent and reverse cardiac remodeling and heart failure in clinical MI patients after percutaneous coronary intervention. FUNDING: This study was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (81670352 and 81970327 to R T, 82000368 to Q F).

cdh23 affects congenital hearing loss through regulating purine metabolism.

Introduction: The pathogenic gene CDH23 plays a pivotal role in tip links, which is indispensable for mechanoelectrical transduction in the hair cells. However, the underlying molecular mechanism and signal regulatory networks that influence deafness is still largely unknown. Methods: In this study, a congenital deafness family, whole exome sequencing revealed a new mutation in the pathogenic gene CDH23, subsequently; the mutation has been validated using Sanger sequencing method. Then CRISPR/Cas9 technology was employed to knockout zebrafish cdh23 gene. Startle response experiment was used to compare with wide-type, the response to sound stimulation between wide-type and cdh23-/-. To further illustrate the molecular mechanisms underlying congenital deafness, comparative transcriptomic profiling and multiple bioinformatics analyses were performed. Results: The YO-PRO-1 assay result showed that in cdh23 deficient embryos, the YO-PRO-1 signal in inner ear and lateral line neuromast hair cells were completely lost. Startle response experiment showed that compared with wide-type, the response to sound stimulation decreased significantly in cdh23 mutant larvae. Comparative transcriptomic showed that the candidate genes such as atp1b2b and myof could affect hearing by regulating ATP production and purine metabolism in a synergetic way with cdh23. RT-qPCR results further confirmed the transcriptomics results. Further compensatory experiment showed that ATP treated cdh23-/- embryos can partially recover the mutant phenotype. Conclusion: In conclusion, our study may shed light on deciphering the principal mechanism and provide a potential therapeutic method for congenital hearing loss under the condition of CDH23 mutation.

Comparative efficacy between retrograde intrarenal surgery with vacuum-assisted ureteral access sheath and minimally invasive percutaneous nephrolithotomy for 1-2†cm infectious upper ureteral stones: a prospective, randomized controlled study.

Objective: To observe the efficacy and safety of retrograde intrarenal surgery combined with vacuum-assisted ureteral access sheath (V-UAS) and minimally invasive percutaneous nephrolithotomy (MPCNL) in patients with 1-2 cm infectious upper ureteral stone. Patients and methods: A total of 173 patients with 1-2 cm infectious upper ureteral stone were prospectively randomized into two groups. Eighty-six in the V-UAS group and 87 cases as control in the MPCNL group. The SFRs at different times (Postoperative 1 day, 2nd week and 4th week) was considered as the primary outcome of the study. The secondary end points were operative time, postoperative hospital stay and operative complications. Results: There was no obvious difference between two groups in patients' demographics and preoperative clinical characteristics (all P > 0.05). Postoperative data showed that the SFR at postoperative 1 day in the V-UAS group was significantly lower than that in the MPCNL group (73.2% vs. 86.2%, P = 0.034). However, there was no statistical significance between two groups in SFRs during postoperative 2 weeks and 4 weeks (All P > 0.05). The levels of WBC, CRP and PCT were all significant lower in the V-UAS group than those in the MPCNL group at the postoperative 24 h and 48 h (all P < 0.05). Postoperative complications included fever (≥38.5°C), bleeding, pain and urosepsis. In terms of the rates of fever, pain and urosepsis, MPCNL group were all significantly higher than those in the V-UAS group (10.3 vs. 2.4%, P = 0.031; 14.9 vs. 2.4%, P = 0.003; 4.6 vs. 0.0%, P = 0.044; respectively). No significant difference was found between two groups in bleeding. Meanwhile, postoperative hospital stay in the V-UAS group was more shorten than that in the MPCNL group (3.7 vs. 5.9 days, P < 0.001). Conclusions: Our study showed that RIRS with V-UAS, a new partnership to treat 1-2 cm infectious upper ureteral stones, was satisfying as it achieved a high SFR rate and a low rate of infectious complications. This method was safe and reproducible in clinical practice.

PFKFB3 Inhibitor 3PO Reduces Cardiac Remodeling after Myocardial Infarction by Regulating the TGF-ß1/SMAD2/3 Pathway.

Adverse cardiac remodeling, including cardiac fibrosis, after myocardial infarction (MI) is a major cause of long-term heart failure. 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2,6-biphosphatase 3 (PFKFB3), an enzyme that regulates glucose metabolism, also plays an important role in various fibrotic and cardiovascular diseases. However, its effects on MI remain unknown. Here, PFKFB3 inhibitor 3-(3-pyridinyl)-1-(4-pyridinyl)-2-propen-1-one (3PO) and a permanent left anterior descending ligation mouse model were used to explore the functional role of PFKFB3 in MI. We showed that PFKFB3 expression increased significantly in the area of cardiac infarction during the early phase after MI, peaking on day 3. 3PO treatment markedly improved cardiac function, accompanied by decreased infarction size and collagen density in the infarct area. Meanwhile, 3PO attenuated cardiac fibrosis after MI by reducing the expression of collagen and fibronectin in murine hearts. Notably, 3PO reduced PFKFB3 expression and inhibited the transforming growth factor-beta 1/mothers against the decapentaplegic homolog 2/3 (TGF-ß1/SMAD2/3) signaling pathway to inhibit cardiac fibrosis after MI. Moreover, PFKFB3 expression in neonatal rat cardiac fibroblasts (NRCFs) increased significantly after MI and under hypoxia, whereas 3PO alleviated the migratory capacity and activation of NRCFs induced by TGF-ß1. In conclusion, 3PO effectively reduced fibrosis and improved adverse cardiac remodeling after MI, suggesting PFKFB3 inhibition as a novel therapeutic strategy to reduce the incidence of chronic heart failure following MI.

The regulatory role and mechanism of lncTUG1 on cartilage apoptosis and inflammation in osteoarthritis.

BACKGROUND: Long-stranded non-coding RNA TUG1 is lowly expressed in osteoarthritic chondrocytes. This study aimed to elucidate the role of TUG1 in osteoarthritic cartilage damage and the underlying mechanisms. METHODS: Combined database analysis, using primary chondrocytes as well as the C28/I2 cell line, was performed by qRT-PCR, Western blotting, and immunofluorescence to determine the expression of TUG1, miR-144-3p, DUSP1, and other target proteins. Dual luciferase reporter gene and RIP to verify direct interaction of TUG1 with miR-144-3-p and miR-144-3-p with DUSP1, Annexin V-FITC/PI double staining to detect apoptosis. CCK-8 to detect cell proliferation. The biological significance of TUG1, miR-144-3p, and DUSP1 was assessed in vitro experiments using siRNA for TUG1, mimic and repressor for miR-144-3p, and overexpression plasmid for DUSP1. In this study, all data were subjected to a t-test or one-way analysis of variance with a p-value < 0.05 as the cutoff. RESULTS: TUG1 expression was closely associated with osteoarthritic chondrocyte damage, and knockdown of TUG1 significantly promoted chondrocyte apoptosis and inflammation. In the present study, we found that TUG1 inhibited chondrocyte apoptosis and inflammation by competitively binding miR-144-3p, deregulating the negative regulatory effect of miR-144-3p on DUSP1, promoting DUSP1 expression, and inhibiting the p38 MAPK signaling pathway. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, our study clarifies the role of the ceRNA regulatory network of TUG1/miR-144-3p/DUSP1/P38 MAPK in OA cartilage injury and provides an experimental and theoretical basis for genetic engineering tools to promote articular cartilage repair.

LAST: LAtent Space-Constrained Transformers for Automatic Surgical Phase Recognition and Tool Presence Detection.

When developing context-aware systems, automatic surgical phase recognition and tool presence detection are two essential tasks. There exist previous attempts to develop methods for both tasks but majority of the existing methods utilize a frame-level loss function (e.g., cross-entropy) which does not fully leverage the underlying semantic structure of a surgery, leading to sub-optimal results. In this paper, we propose multi-task learning-based, LAtent Space-constrained Transformers, referred as LAST, for automatic surgical phase recognition and tool presence detection. Our design features a two-branch transformer architecture with a novel and generic way to leverage video-level semantic information during network training. This is done by learning a non-linear compact presentation of the underlying semantic structure information of surgical videos through a transformer variational autoencoder (VAE) and by encouraging models to follow the learned statistical distributions. In other words, LAST is of structure-aware and favors predictions that lie on the extracted low dimensional data manifold. Validated on two public datasets of the cholecystectomy surgery, i.e., the Cholec80 dataset and the M2cai16 dataset, our method achieves better results than other state-of-the-art methods. Specifically, on the Cholec80 dataset, our method achieves an average accuracy of 93.12±4.71%, an average precision of 89.25±5.49%, an average recall of 90.10±5.45% and an average Jaccard of 81.11 ±7.62% for phase recognition, and an average mAP of 95.15±3.87% for tool presence detection. Similar superior performance is also observed when LAST is applied to the M2cai16 dataset.

CholecTriplet2021: A benchmark challenge for surgical action triplet recognition.

Context-aware decision support in the operating room can foster surgical safety and efficiency by leveraging real-time feedback from surgical workflow analysis. Most existing works recognize surgical activities at a coarse-grained level, such as phases, steps or events, leaving out fine-grained interaction details about the surgical activity; yet those are needed for more helpful AI assistance in the operating room. Recognizing surgical actions as triplets of combination delivers more comprehensive details about the activities taking place in surgical videos. This paper presents CholecTriplet2021: an endoscopic vision challenge organized at MICCAI 2021 for the recognition of surgical action triplets in laparoscopic videos. The challenge granted private access to the large-scale CholecT50 dataset, which is annotated with action triplet information. In this paper, we present the challenge setup and the assessment of the state-of-the-art deep learning methods proposed by the participants during the challenge. A total of 4 baseline methods from the challenge organizers and 19 new deep learning algorithms from the competing teams are presented to recognize surgical action triplets directly from surgical videos, achieving mean average precision (mAP) ranging from 4.2% to 38.1%. This study also analyzes the significance of the results obtained by the presented approaches, performs a thorough methodological comparison between them, in-depth result analysis, and proposes a novel ensemble method for enhanced recognition. Our analysis shows that surgical workflow analysis is not yet solved, and also highlights interesting directions for future research on fine-grained surgical activity recognition which is of utmost importance for the development of AI in surgery.