Diagnostic performance of elastography on liver fibrosis in antiviral treatment-naive chronic hepatitis B patients: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to assess the performance of transient elastography (TE), two-dimensional shear wave elastography (2D-SWE), and magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) for staging significant fibrosis and cirrhosis in untreated chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients. METHODS: Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library were searched for terms involving CHB, TE, 2D-SWE, and MRE. Other etiologies of chronic liver disease, previous treatment in patients, or articles not published in SCI journals were excluded. Hierarchical non-linear models were used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of TE, 2D-SWE, and MRE. Heterogeneity was explored via analysis of threshold effect and meta-regression. RESULTS: Twenty-eight articles with a total of 4,540 untreated CHB patients were included. The summary areas under the receiver-operating characteristic curves (AUROCs) using TE, 2D-SWE, and MRE for predicting significant fibrosis (SF) were 0.84, 0.89, and 0.99, respectively. The AUROC values of TE, 2D-SWE, and MRE for staging cirrhosis were 0.9, 0.94, and 0.99, respectively. Based on the meta-analysis of studies with head-to-head comparison, 2D-SWE is superior to TE (0.92 vs 0.85, P < 0.01) in staging significant fibrosis. CONCLUSION: TE, 2D-SWE, and MRE express acceptable diagnostic accuracies in staging significant fibrosis and cirrhosis in untreated CHB patients. 2D-SWE outperforms TE in detecting significant fibrosis in treatment-naive people with hepatitis B virus.

Effectiveness and safety of endoscopic treatment for duodenal variceal bleeding: a systematic review.

Duodenal varix is a rare condition that involves massive bleeding, diagnostic difficulties, and a high rate of rebleeding and mortality. The purpose of this study was to systematically review endoscopic treatment for duodenal variceal bleeding to evaluate its effectiveness and safety. We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library up to 21 November 2019. Ninety-two studies containing 156 patients were finally included, and individual data from 101 patients (mean age: 52.67 ± 13.82 years, male: 64.4%) were collected and further analyzed. We used an analysis of variance and χ2 or Fisher's exact tests to analyze individual data from 101 patients. The cause of duodenal variceal bleeding was cirrhosis-related intrahepatic portal hypertension (IPH) in 76.2% of patients. The overall rates of initial hemostasis and treatment success of endoscopic treatment for duodenal variceal bleeding were 89.1 and 81.2%, respectively. The median duration of follow-up was 4.5 (1.0, 12.0) months. The overall rates of rebleeding and mortality were 8.9 and 13.9%, respectively. Among a variety of endoscopic treatments available, only the initial hemostasis rate was significantly different between the endoscopic injection sclerotherapy and endoscopic tissue adhesive (ETA) groups (72.7 vs. 94.7%, P = 0.023); differences in treatment success, rebleeding, mortality, and adverse events were not statistically significant among the four groups. Endoscopic intervention is a feasible, well tolerated, and effective modality for the treatment of duodenal variceal bleeding. Among the variety of endoscopic treatments available, ETA with cyanoacrylate may be preferable for duodenal variceal bleeding.

Association of health literacy and drinking behaviors among middle school students in six provinces of China / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To explore the association between health literacy and drinking behaviors among middle school students in six provinces of China, and to provide scientific basis for the prevention and intervention of drinking behaviors.@*Methods@#From November 2015 to January 2016, 22 628 students were enrolled from Ulanqab, Shenyang, Xinxiang, Bengbu, Chongqing and Yangjiang by multistage stratified cluster sampling method. And a questionnaire survey was conducted among them to collect demographic information, health literacy and drinking behaviors. Rates on drinking behaviors were compared in students with specific characteristics. Multiple Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the association between health literacy and drinking behaviors.@*Results@#The proportion of ever drinking, current drinking, binge drinking, drunkenness was 60.0%(13 580), 16.8%(3 799), 5.9%(1 344) and 9.9%(2 250), respectively. After adjusting for gender, grade, family address, siblings, accommodation type, parental educational level, and self reported family income, compared to the high level health literacy, the low level health literacy was significantly associated with ever drinking (OR=1.76, 95%CI=1.62-1.91), current drinking(OR=1.37, 95%CI=1.23-1.52), binge drinking (OR=1.39, 95%CI=1.18-1.63), and drunkenness(OR=1.68, 95%CI=1.47-1.92), respectively(P<0.01).@*Conclusion@#Health literacy of middle school students was related to drinking behaviors. The occurrence of health risk behaviors such as drinking can be prevented and reduced by improving students health literacy level.