The underlying regulatory mechanisms of colorectal carcinoma by combining Vitexin and Aspirin: based on systems biology, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation, and in vitro study.

Introduction: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a highly prevalent digestive system malignancy. Aspirin is currently one of the most promising chemopreventive agents for CRC, and the combination of aspirin and natural compounds helps to enhance the anticancer activity of aspirin. Natural flavonoids like vitexin have an anticancer activity focusing on colorectal carcinoma. Methods: This study investigated the potential mechanism of action of the novel combination of vitexin and aspirin against colorectal cancer through network pharmacology, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation, and in vitro experiments. Results: The results of network pharmacology suggested that vitexin and aspirin regulate multiple signaling pathways through various target proteins such as NFKB1, PTGS2 (COX-2), MAPK1, MAPK3, and TP53. Cellular experiments revealed that the combined effect of vitexin and aspirin significantly inhibited HT-29 cell growth. Vitexin dose-dependently inhibited COX-2 expression in cells and enhanced the down-regulation of COX-2 and NF-κB expression in colorectal cancer cells by aspirin. Discussion: This study provides a pharmacodynamic material and theoretical basis for applying agents against colorectal cancer to delay the development of drug resistance and improve the prognosis of cancer patients.

The study of otoendoscopic tympanoplasty (type I).

BACKGROUND: With the development of otoendoscopic surgery technology and the update of equipment, more and more otoendoscopic tympanoplasty are carried out. OBJECTIVES: To investigate application of otoendoscopic tympanoplasty. METHODS: Seventy-six patients with tympanic membrane perforation were randomly enrolled into otoendoscopic group (OP, n = 38) and microscope group (MP, n = 38). We compared two-group patients using operative time, intraoperative blood loss, healing of postoperative perforations, and degree of postoperative hearing improvement. RESULTS: Average operation time was statistically significant shorter in the OP than the MP (p < .05); the intraoperative blood loss in the OP was significant less than MP (p < .05); after postoperative follow-up, the healing rate of tympanic membrane perforation was 92.11% in the OP compared to 89.47% in the MP. However, there was no statistically significant difference in the two groups (p > .05). There were no statistically significant differences between the preoperative and postoperative air and bone conduction thresholds in the two groups (p > .05). CONCLUSIONS: Otoendoscopic tympanoplasty is a minimally invasive operation but with similar effects as compared to microscopic one. But the operation time and intraoperative blood loss in the OP were significantly better than those in the MP, thus it is a safe, effective and easy to be operated in clinical practice.

Clinical effect of CO2 laser resection of the epiglottic cyst under micro-laryngoscope suspension.

BACKGROUND: Epiglottic cysts are common diseases and have multiple morbidity, and traditional surgery causes intraoperative bleeding and postoperative recurrence. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the therapeutic effect of CO2 laser resection on epiglottic cyst when compared with traditional surgery. METHOD: Eighty patients with epiglottic cysts were randomly enrolled into the CO2 laser group (44 patients) and the high-frequency electrocautery group (36 patients). RESULTS: The CO2 laser group had a shorter operation time, less blood loss and fewer intraoperative ruptured cysts (p < .05). The duration of sore throat and the time before wound redness and swelling subsidence in the CO2 laser group were significantly shorter than those in the high-frequency electrocautery group (p < .05). Within one year after the operation, the incidence of epiglottic scar contracture in the CO2 laser group was significantly lower than that in the high-frequency electrocautery group (p < .05). CONCLUSION: The CO2 laser group has the advantages of minimally invasive, less bleeding, short operation time and less postoperative complications, and it is worthy of applying as clinical routine to treat epiglottic cysts.

Comparative efficacy and adverse reactions of apatinib-chemotherapy combinations versus chemotherapy alone for treatment of advanced colorectal cancer: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

OBJECTIVE: Apatinib mesylate is the first small-molecule anti-angiogenic agent that has been shown to be effective and well-tolerated for treatment of advanced gastric cancer, and has shown encouraging efficacy for treatment of advanced colorectal cancer (CRC). However, previous studies reported diverse efficacy and safety results of apatinib for treatment of advanced CRC. This meta-analysis aimed to compare the efficacy and safety of apatinib plus chemotherapy (trial group) versus chemotherapy alone (control group) for treatment of advanced CRC. METHODS: A joint search was performed in electronic databases to retrieve randomized clinical trials (RCTs) reporting the efficacy and adverse reactions of apatinib in the treatment of advanced CRC. The pooled survival, treatment responses, and safety were estimated and compared between the trial and control groups. RESULTS: A total of 7 eligible RCTs involving 539 colorectal cancer patients were enrolled. Meta-analysis showed significantly higher overall response rate (risk ratio (RR) = 1.46, P < 0.00001), disease control rate (RR = 1.24, P < 0.00001), complete response (RR = 1.72, P = 0.01), PR (RR = 1.43, P = 0.001), overall survival (mean difference (MD) = 3.89, P = 0.0006), and progression-free survival (MD = 2.94, P < 0.00001) and lower progressive disease (RR = 0.37, P < 0.00001) in the trial group than in the control group; however, there were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of stable disease (RR = 0.89, P = 0.38) or incidence of adverse reactions (RR = 1.01, P = 0.92). CONCLUSION: Apatinib plus chemotherapy shows a higher efficacy and comparable safety for treatment of advanced CRC in relative to chemotherapy alone.

Deformable Object Tracking With Gated Fusion.

The tracking-by-detection framework receives growing attention through the integration with the convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Existing tracking-by-detection-based methods, however, fail to track objects with severe appearance variations. This is because the traditional convolutional operation is performed on fixed grids, and thus may not be able to find the correct response while the object is changing pose or under varying environmental conditions. In this paper, we propose a deformable convolution layer to enrich the target appearance representations in the tracking-by-detection framework. We aim to capture the target appearance variations via deformable convolution, which adaptively enhances its original features. In addition, we also propose a gated fusion scheme to control how the variations captured by the deformable convolution affect the original appearance. The enriched feature representation through deformable convolution facilitates the discrimination of the CNN classifier on the target object and background. The extensive experiments on the standard benchmarks show that the proposed tracker performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods.