Longitudinal patient-reported outcomes after minimally invasive McKeown esophagectomy for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

PURPOSE: Surgery for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is characterized by a poor prognosis and high complication rate, resulting in a heavy symptom burden and poor health-related quality of life (QOL). We evaluated longitudinal patient-reported outcomes (PROs) to analyze the correlations between symptoms and QOL and their changing characteristics during postoperative rehabilitation. METHODS: We investigated patients with ESCC who underwent minimally invasive McKeown esophagectomy at Sichuan Cancer Hospital between April 2019 and December 2019. Longitudinal data of the clinical characteristics and PROs were collected. The MD Anderson Symptom Inventory and European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QOL questionnaires were used to assess symptoms and QOL and compare the trajectories of PROs during the investigation. RESULTS: A total of 244 patients with ESCC were enrolled in this study. Regarding QOL, role and emotional functions returned to baseline at 1 month after surgery, and cognitive and social functions returned to baseline at 3 months after surgery. However, physical function and global QOL did not return to baseline at 1 year after surgery. At 7 days and 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery, the main symptoms of the patients were negatively correlated with physical, role, emotional, cognitive, and social functions and the overall health status (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Patients with ESCC experience reduced health-related QOL and persisting symptoms after minimally invasive McKeown esophagectomy, but a recovery trend was observed within 1 month. The long-term QOL after esophagectomy is acceptable.

Predicting Metabolic Syndrome Using Anthropometric Indices among Chinese Adolescents with Different Nutritional Status: A Multicenter Cross-sectional Study.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the predictive performance of anthropometric indices for metabolic syndrome (MetS) among Chinese adolescents with different nutritional status. METHODS: We recruited 9,513 adolescents aged 10-18 years from seven provinces in China during September 2014. Anthropometric indices and blood pressure were measured at recruitment, and blood samples were collected for determining fasting plasma glucose and lipid profile. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were used to assess the predictive performance of anthropometric indices, including body mass index (BMI) percentile, waist circumference percentile, waist-height ratio, and waist-hip ratio. RESULTS: Overall, the four anthropometric indices showed good accuracy for predicting MetS with areas under ROC curves (AUCs) ranging from 0.86 to 0.94; similar AUCs ranging from 0.73 to 0.99 were observed for participants with normal weight. The performance of all four indices was poor in overweight and obese participants, with AUCs ranging from 0.66 to 0.77 and from 0.60 to 0.67, respectively. Waist circumference showed relatively better performance in all the subgroup analyses. CONCLUSIONS: We suggest using anthropometric indices with the cutoff values presented here for predicting MetS in the overall and normal-weight adolescent population, but not in the overweight and obese adolescent population where more specific screening tests are required.

Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents: A national cross-sectional study in China.

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) rapidly increased over the past decades. However, little evidence exists about the effects of long-term exposure to ambient air pollution on MetS in children and adolescents. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to assess the association between long-term ambient air pollution and the prevalence of MetS in a large population of Chinese children and adolescents. METHODS: In 2013, a total of 9,897 children and adolescents aged 10 to 18 years were recruited from seven provinces/municipalities in China. MetS was defined based on the recommendation by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF). Satellite based spatio-temporal models were used to estimate exposure to ambient air pollution (including particles with diameters ≤1.0 µm (PM1), ≤2.5 µm (PM2.5), and ≤10 µm (PM10), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2)). Individual exposure was calculated according to 94 schools addresses. After adjustment for a range of covariates, generalized linear mixed-effects models were utilized to evaluate the associations between air pollutants and the prevalence of MetS and its components. In addition, several stratified analyses were examined according to sex, weight status, outdoor physical activity time, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake. RESULTS: The prevalence of MetS was 2.8%. The odds ratio of MetS associated with a 10 µg/m3 increase in PM1, PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 was 1.20 (95%CI: 0.99, 1.46), 1.31 (95%CI: 1.05, 1.64), 1.32 (95%CI: 1.08, 1.62), and 1.33 (95%CI: 1.03, 1.72), respectively. Regarding the MetS components, we observed associations between all pollutants and abdominal obesity. In addition, long-term PM1 and NO2 exposures were associated with the prevalence of elevated fasting blood glucose. Stratified analyses detected that the associations between air pollutants and the prevalence of MetS were stronger in boys (Pinteraction < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: We found that long-term exposure to PM2.5, PM10, and NO2 were positively associated with the prevalence of MetS in children and adolescents. Our findings may have certain public health implications for some comprehensive strategy of environment improvement and lifestyles changes in order to reduce the burden of non-communicable disease.

Greenness surrounding schools and adiposity in children and adolescents: Findings from a national population-based study in China.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have indicated that exposure to green space may benefit human health. However, the available evidence concerning the effects of greenness, especially school-based greenness, on pediatric obesity is scarce. OBJECTIVE: To explore the association between school-based greenness and adiposity in children and adolescents in China. METHOD: We conducted a nationwide cross-sectional study of 56,620 children and adolescents (aged 6-18 years) in seven provinces/municipalities across China. School-based greenness was assessed using satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) within 100-, 500-, and 1000-m circular buffers around each school's address. Generalized linear mixed regression models were used to estimate associations of greenness with BMI z-scores (zBMI), waist circumference, and prevalent overweight/obesity. We also explored the potential mediating role of ambient air pollution and physical activity in the greenness-adiposity associations. RESULT: In the adjusted model, an IQR increase in NDVI-1000m was associated with lower zBMI (ß: -0.11, 95% confidence interval[CI]: -0.13,-0.09) and waist circumference (ß: -0.64, 95%CI: -0.78,-0.50). Consistently, an IQR increase in NDVI-100m, NDVI-500m, NDVI-1000m was associated with 7-20% lower odds of overweight/obesity in the adjusted models. Air pollutants mediated 6.5-29.1% of the association between greenness and zBMI. No significant mediation effect was observed for physical activity. CONCLUSION: Higher school-based greenness levels were associated with lower zBMI, waist circumference, and lower odds of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. Ambient air pollutants may partially mediate the greenness-adiposity associations.

Certain new bounds considering the weighted Simpson-like type inequality and applications.

We investigate a weighted Simpson-type identity and obtain new estimation-type results related to the weighted Simpson-like type inequality for the first-order differentiable mappings. We also present some applications to f-divergence measures and to higher moments of continuous random variables.

Relationships of Inflammatory Factors and Risk Factors with Different Target Organ Damage in Essential Hypertension Patients.

BACKGROUND: Atherosclerosis (AS) is an inflammatory disease. Inflammation was considered to play a role in the whole process of AS. This study aimed to analyze the relationships of inflammatory factors and risk factors with different target organ damages (TOD) in essential hypertension (EH) patients and to explore its clinical significance. METHODS: A total of 294 EH patients were selected and divided into four groups according to their conditions of TOD. Forty-eight healthy subjects were selected as control. The clinical biochemical parameters, serum amyloid A, serum tryptase, and lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) in each group were detected, and the related risk factors were also statistically analyzed. RESULTS: Fibrinogen (Fbg) was the most significant independent risk factor in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) group (odds ratio [OR]: 22.242, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 6.458-76.609, P< 0.001) with the largest absolute value of the standardized partial regression coefficient B' (b': 1.079). Lp-PLA2 was the most significant independent risk factor in stroke group (OR: 13.699, 95% CI: 5.236-35.837, P< 0.001) with b' = 0.708. Uric acid (UA) was the most significant independent risk factor in renal damage group (OR: 15.307, 95% CI: 4.022-58.250, P< 0.001) with b' = 1.026. CONCLUSIONS: Fbg, Lp-PLA2, and UA are the strongest independent risk factors toward the occurrence of ACS, ischemic stroke, and renal damage in EH patients, thus exhibiting the greatest impacts on the occurrence of ACS, ischemic stroke, and renal damage in EH patients, respectively.

Functional connectome assessed using graph theory in drug-naive Parkinson's disease.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the topological organization of whole-brain functional network is disrupted in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). We employed resting-state functional MRI (R-fMRI) and graph theory to investigate the topological organization of the functional connectome in 47 early-stage drug-naïve PD patients and 47 healthy control subjects. Correlations between network properties and clinical variables were tested. Both the PD and control groups showed small-world architecture in brain functional networks. However, the PD patients had lower clustering coefficient and local efficiency relative to control subjects, indicating disrupted topologic organization and a shift toward randomization in their functional brain network. At node and connection level, reduced node centralities and connectivity strength were found mainly in temporal-occipital regions and also in sensorimotor regions of PD patients. In PD patients, altered global network properties correlated with cognitive function, while motor impairment was correlated with local connection changes. This study demonstrates a disruption of whole-brain topological organization of the functional brain networks in early-stage drug-naïve PD patients and this disruption might contribute to preclinical changes in cognitive process in these patients.

Prevalence of hypertension in overweight and obese children from a large school-based population in Shanghai, China.

BACKGROUND: The ongoing rise in the prevalence of hypertension in children and adolescents is considered to be accompanied with the epidemic of childhood overweight and obesity. In this study, we established a large scale cross-sectional study in Shanghai, China, which presented a new evidence for the correlation of hypertension prevalence with overweight and obesity stages in Chinese children and adolescents. METHODS: A school-based cross-sectional study was conducted during February to December 2009 in Shanghai, China, including total 78,114 children and adolescents. Body weight, height, waist circumference (WC) and blood pressure (BP) were measured. Overweight and obesity were defined according to sex- and age- specific Chinese reference data. RESULTS: Both SBP and DBP were very significantly increased in overweight (OW) and obese (OB) groups. With age and sex controlled, BMI and WC were independently positively correlated with SBP and DBP. The prevalence of high SBP, DBP and hypertension were markedly higher among OW and OB children than normal weight (NW) group. Odds ratios (ORs) for high SBP, high DBP and high BP were significantly greater in OW and OB children than NW group, and showed a trend increase correlating with obesity stages (all P <0.0001). According to the increasing OR with different combination of obese status of BMI and WC, WC has a stronger influence on hypertension. The combination of BMI and WC obese shows substantially higher ORs compared with those for either BMI or WC obese alone. CONCLUSIONS: In this study on a large school-based population in Shanghai, China, BMI and WC are positively correlated with SBP and DBP. Being overweight or obese greatly increased the risk of hypertension in Chinese children and adolescents, in which WC is considered as a more sensitive indicator than BMI.

Genome-wide association identifies a susceptibility locus for coronary artery disease in the Chinese Han population.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) causes more than 700,000 deaths each year in China. Previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in populations of European ancestry identified several genetic loci for CAD, but no such study has yet been reported in the Chinese population. Here we report a three-stage GWAS in the Chinese Han population. We identified a new association between rs6903956 in a putative gene denoted as C6orf105 on chromosome 6p24.1 and CAD (P = 5.00 × 10⁻³, stage 2 validation; P = 3.00 × 10⁻³, P = 1.19 × 10⁻8 and P = 4.00 × 10⁻³ in three independent stage 3 replication populations; P = 4.87 × 10⁻¹², odds ratio = 1.51 in the combined population). The minor risk allele A of rs6903956 is associated with decreased C6orf105 mRNA expression. We report the first GWAS for CAD in the Chinese Han population and identify a SNP, rs6903956, in C6orf105 associated with susceptibility to CAD in this population.

[Effects of land use change on soil erosion intensity in small watershed of Loess Hilly Region: a quantitative evaluation with 137-Cesium tracer].

Based on the land use change data and by using 137Cs tracer technique, this paper studied the change process of soil erosion intensity in Yangjuangou watershed in Loess Hilly Region. Since the 1980's, the land use intensity in the watershed decreased gradually. In 1980-2006, the slope arable land decreased from 94.9 hm2 to 0.2 hmb2, while the forest land, shrub land, orchard land, and grassland increased from 0 to 51.1 hm2, from 0 to 19.2 hm2, from 0 to 18.0 hm2, and from 76.9 hm2 to 80.1 hmb2, respectively. The soil erosion intensity was in the order of slope arable land > shrub land > orchard land > grass land > forest land. In 1980, 1984, 1996, and 2006, the soil erosion intensity was 6408.9, 5362.4, 4903.9, and 3641.4 t x km(-2) x a(-1), respectively, being changed from intense to moderate. Soil and water conservation and vegetation restoration were the main causes of the decrease of soil erosion intensity in the study area.