The association between physical activity and risk of gastric cancer; an umbrella review.

INTRODUCTION: Gastric cancer (GC), as a highly lethal malignancy, is the fourth most common malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. This study is an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses to present an overview of the extent and reliability of the claimed association between physical activity and the likelihood of developing or dying from GC. METHOD: This study was conducted following the Joanna Brigs Institute (JBI)'s methods for conducting umbrella reviews. A systematic search was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases until July, 2024 with predefined keywords. Two independent authors assessed the Risk of Bias in included studies using the JBI critical appraisal tool for the assessment of the quality of systematic reviews and disagreements between the authors were resolved through discussion or the opinion of another author. RESULT: Five systematic reviews were included in this analysis, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the inverse relationship between physical activity and gastric cancer risk. Compared to previous studies, this review provides stronger evidence that moderate-to-high levels of physical activity significantly reduce the overall risk of developing gastric cancer. CONCLUSION: While a link between physical activity and reduced cancer risk is promising, further research is crucial to unravel the specific mechanisms at play and to quantify the impact of increased activity levels on cancer prevention. Based on the findings of this study, physical activity is found to be associated with a decreased risk of GC; however, the limitation of the evidence suggested a need for future studies on this topic.

Long Non-Coding RNAs as Novel Targets for Phytochemicals to Cease Cancer Metastasis.

Metastasis is a multi-step phenomenon during cancer development leading to the propagation of cancer cells to distant organ(s). According to estimations, metastasis results in over 90% of cancer-associated death around the globe. Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) are a group of regulatory RNA molecules more than 200 base pairs in length. The main regulatory activity of these molecules is the modulation of gene expression. They have been reported to affect different stages of cancer development including proliferation, apoptosis, migration, invasion, and metastasis. An increasing number of medical data reports indicate the probable function of LncRNAs in the metastatic spread of different cancers. Phytochemical compounds, as the bioactive agents of plants, show several health benefits with a variety of biological activities. Several phytochemicals have been demonstrated to target LncRNAs to defeat cancer. This review article briefly describes the metastasis steps, summarizes data on some well-established LncRNAs with a role in metastasis, and identifies the phytochemicals with an ability to suppress cancer metastasis by targeting LncRNAs.

Comparing the efficacy of N-acetylcysteine plus carvedilol versus carvedilol in the prevention of atrial fibrillation following coronary artery bypass graft surgery.

BACKGROUND: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia following open-heart surgery. Agents with antioxidant properties may reduce postoperative complications like postoperative AF (POAF) in patients undergoing open-heart surgery. This study was conducted to assess the effect of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) in prevention of AF following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. METHODS: Three hundred patients who underwent CABG surgery were entered in the study. Patients with contraindications for beta-blockers and patients were simultaneously replacing or repairing the valve with open-heart surgery were excluded. The patients were randomly divided into two groups (n = 150) and they were received NAC plus carvedilol or carvedilol. The patients were monitored for 5 days after surgery and the incidence of AF during hospitalization was recorded. RESULTS: AF was detected in 14 patients in the NAC with Carvedilol group (9.33%) and 23 patients in Carvedilol group (15.33%). There was no significant difference in the incidence of POAF between the two groups (p value = 0.112). The result of multivariable regression model represented that although the incidence of POAF was lower in NAC plus carvedilol group, it wasn't statistically significant (p value = 0.10). CONCLUSIONS: NAC was not associated with a decreased incidence of AF following CABG surgery.

Spectrofluorimetric determination of nickel (ΙΙ) with murexide.

A very sensitive and selective spectrofluorimetric method has been developed for nickel (ΙΙ) determination in environmental samples. The method is based on measuring the decrease in fluorescence intensity of murexide after nickel (ΙΙ) binding. The intensity of the fluorescence emission peak was measured at ex/em 345/431 nm in several solutions with pH interval 3.0-7.0. The fluorescence intensity decrease was found to be linear in the concentration range of 0.007 mg.L(-1) to 0.1 mg.L(-1) and 0.1 mg.L(-1) to 20 mg.L(-1) of nickel (ΙΙ) by using 10(-4) M murexide at pH 3. The detection limit was found 0.004 mg.L(-1). Relatively large excesses of over 20 cations and anions do not interfere. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of nickel (ΙΙ) in sea, rain and ground water. This method is very precise and accurate (R.S.D. = 0.42% for the determination of 0.05 mg.L-(1) nickel in 10 replicates).

Nonlinear model-based cardiac arrhythmia diagnosis using the optimization-based inverse problem solution.

This study investigates a nonlinear model-based feature extraction approach for the accurate classification of four types of heartbeats. The features are the morphological parameters of ECG signal derived from the nonlinear ECG model using an optimization-based inverse problem solution. In the model-based methods, high feature extraction time is a crucial issue. In order to reduce the feature extraction time, a new structure was employed in the optimization algorithms. Using the proposed structure has considerably increased the speed of feature extraction. In the following, the effectiveness of two types of optimization methods (genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization) and the McSharry ECG model has been studied and compared in terms of speed and accuracy of diagnosis. In the classification section, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system and fuzzy c-mean clustering methods, along with the principal component analysis data reduction method, have been utilized. The obtained results reveal that using an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system with data obtained from particle swarm optimization will have the shortest process time and the best diagnosis, with a mean accuracy of 99% and a mean sensitivity of 99.11%.

Aesthetics of Numerical Proportions in Human Cosmetic Surgery.

BACKGROUND: Beauty is a universal phenomenon and debate over what constitutes beauty particularly beauty to human body, has raged since philosophy began. The beauty of individual features depends on "ideal" proportions, and it is suggested that expressing beauty in terms of geometry is possible. Assessment of some used parameters in facial surgeries and harmony of various facial features are essential to surgeon, who requires facial analysis. One of these parameters, is nasolabial angle, in patients undergoing rhinoplasty. This study based on theoretical definitions of beauty and proportions performed the search for the application of this numerical proportions in modern cosmetic surgery. METHODS: Twenty-three samples [16 (69.5%) female and 7 (30.5%)] male] were enrolled from patients who underwent rhinoplasty, by a single surgeon. The nasolabial angle was measured in these patients from their lateral profile photographs with adobe Photoshop, before and after surgery. RESULTS: Ideal post-operative angle was 111.54±26.5 degrees from this study and 18.8◦ increase in male and 14.68◦ increase in female were seen. There was no significant difference between men and women. CONCLUSION: Our results showed that an ideal proportion can be very useful and practical to assess patient's preoperative expectations and to evaluate the results after surgery and satisfaction of cosmetic surgery process.