Integrin ß5 is an independent prognostic marker for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma in a Chinese population.

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is the second most common primary liver tumor and a major cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Integrin ß5 (ITGB5) is considered to be involved in the intercellular signal transduction and regulation of tumorigenesis and development. The present study investigated the association between ITGB5 expression levels and the prognosis of ICC, as well as the effects of ITGB5 on the proliferation and invasion of ICC cells. RNA-sequencing transcriptomic profiling data of ICC samples were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. Tissue specimens from patients with ICC treated at Taizhou People's Hospital were collected and the ITGB5 expression levels were evaluated using immunohistochemical staining. The biological function of ITGB5 in ICC was investigated using Gene Ontology (GO), Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and in vitro experiments using HuCCT1 cells. After knocking down ITGB5 expression, cell proliferation was detected using Cell Counting Kit-8 assay, while cell invasion was assessed using Transwell assays. According to TCGA dataset, ITGB5 was highly expressed in ICC; however, there was no significant difference in prognosis between patients with high and low ITGB5 expression levels. High expression of ITGB5 was present in the tissues of patients with ICC from the GEO database, which was associated with poor prognosis. Survival analyses of the clinical data obtained in the present study revealed that high expression levels of ITGB5 in patients with ICC were associated with a reduced overall survival. GO and GSEA indicated that genes associated with ITGB5 were enriched in the extracellular matrix-receptor interaction and focal adhesion signaling pathways. Silencing ITGB5 inhibited the proliferation and invasion of ICC cells. In conclusion, ITGB5 may act as an essential regulator of ICC development and progression by influencing the proliferation and invasion of ICC cells. However, future studies with larger sample sizes are required to validate the role of ITGB5 in the prognosis of patients with ICC.

The association between total bile acid and bone mineral density among patients with type 2 diabetes.

Objective: Bile acids have underlying protective effects on bones structure. Long-term diabetes also causes skeletal disorders including osteoporosis, Charcot arthropathy and renal osteodystrophy. Nevertheless, few studies have reported whether bile acid is associated with bone metabolism in diabetics. This study aimed to explore the relationship between total bile acid (TBA) and bone mineral density (BMD) among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods: We retrospectively included 1,701 T2DM patients who were hospitalized in Taian City Central Hospital (TCCH), Shandong Province, China between January 2017 to December 2019. The participants were classified into the osteopenia (n = 573), osteoporosis (n= 331) and control groups (n= 797) according to BMD in the lumbar spine and femoral. The clinical parameters, including TBA, bilirubin, vitamin D, calcium, phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase were compared between groups. Multiple linear regression was used to analyze the relationship between TBA and BMD in lumbar spine, femoral, trochiter, ward's triangle region. A logistic regression was conducted to develop a TBA-based diagnostic model for differentiating abnormal bone metabolism from those with normal BMD. We evaluated the performance of model using ROC curves. Results: The TBA level was significantly higher in patients with osteoporosis (Median[M]= 3.300 µmol/L, interquartile range [IQR] = 1.725 to 5.250 µmol/L) compared to the osteopenia group (M = 3.200 µmol/L, IQR = 2.100 to 5.400 µmol/L) and control group (M = 2.750 µmol/L, IQR = 1.800 to 4.600 µmol/L) (P <0.05). Overall and subgroup analyses indicated that TBA was negatively associated with BMD after adjusted for the co-variates (i.e., age, gender, diabetes duration, BMI, total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, indirect bilirubin) (P <0.05). Logistic regression revealed that higher TBA level was associated with increased risk for abnormal bone metabolism (OR = 1.044, 95% CI = 1.005 to 1.083). A TBA-based diagnostic model was established to identify individuals with abnormal bone metabolism (T-score ≤ -1.0). The area under ROC curve (AUC) of 0.767 (95% CI = 0.730 to 0.804). Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated the potential role of bile acids in bone metabolism among T2DM patients. The circulating TBA might be employed as an indicator of abnormal bone metabolism.

Research on the Formation Mechanism of MgO and Al2O3 on Composite Calcium Ferrite Based on DA-RBF Neural Network.

Calcium complex ferrate is an ideal binder phase in the sintered ore phase, and a detailed study of the whole process of calcium complex ferrate generation is of great significance to improve the quality of sintered ore. In this paper, we first investigated calcium ferrate containing aluminum (CFA), which is an important precursor compound for the generation of complex calcium ferrate (SFCA), followed by a series of composite calcium ferrate generation process phase XRD detections and data preprocessing of data. Data correlation and data fitting analysis were combined with composite calcium ferrite phase diagram energy spectrum analysis to obtain the effect of MgO and Al2O3 on the formation of composite calcium ferrite. Then a modified RBF neural network model using the resource allocation network algorithm (RAN) was used to predict the generation trend of complex calcium ferrate. The parameters of the neural network are optimized with the Dragonfly algorithm, compared with the traditional RBF neural network. The prediction accuracy of the improved algorithm was found to be higher, with a prediction result of 97.6%. Finally, the predicted results were based on comparative metallurgical experimental results and data analysis. The validity and accuracy of the findings in this paper were verified.