Research on osteoporosis diagnosis has always been a critical isuue in the field of international academia and medicine. Recent progress in quantitative ultrasound (QUS) has suggested that ultrasound, due to its obvious advantages, be considered as an effective and noninvasive tool for assessment of bone status and diagnosis of osteoporosis. This paper presents the principle and recent development in the ultrasonic assessment of bone status and osteoporosis including assessment with through-transmission and backscattering measurement, and also introduces the latest progress in ultrasonic axial transmission technique.Limitations of current research are discussed and suggestions are proposed for future research.

Objective To investigate the pathological features and prognostic analysis in endoscopic strip-ping microflap excision of vocal cords leukoplakia.Methods A total of 186 cases with vocal cord leukoplakia and treated by endoscopic stripping microflap excision were retrospectively analyzed,calculated the ratios of recurrence and malignant transformation on keratosis without dysplasia,mild dysplasia,moderate dysplasia and severe dysplasia and carcinoma in situ.Then,the association of histopathological classification with recurrence and malignant transformation in vocal cord leukoplakia were evaluated.Results 87 cases of all 186 patients with vocal cord leukoplakia were kera-tosis without dysplasia,17 cases were recurrenced and 3 cases were developed to carcinoma;64 cases were mild dysplasia,15 cases were recurrenced and 7 cases were developed to carcinoma;29 cases were moderate dysplasia, 13 cases were recurrenced and 10 cases were developed to carcinoma;6 cases were severe dysplasia and carcinoma in situ,all 6 cases were recurrenced and 5 cases were developed to carcinoma.Conclusion The histopathological classi-fication is predictive factor for the risk of recurrence and malignant transformation in vocal cord leukoplakia.

Objective: To investigate the dietary lead exposure level among children aged 3 to 4 years in Jiading District, Shanghai Municipality, and assess the health risk caused by lead exposure, so as to provide the basis for the management of children's food safety. Methods: Based on the 2023 Dietary and Health Status Surveillance Project in Jiading District, children aged 3 to 4 years from 12 streets (townships) in Jiading District were selected as the subjects using a multi-stage stratified random sampling method. The consumption frequency and daily intake of seven subcategories of four major food groups (beans, tofu), cereals (wheat, rice), meat (animal viscera), and aquatic products (mantis shrimps, bivalves) consumed by children over the past three months were collected using a food frequency questionnaire. Food samples were collected according to the food safety risk monitoring plan in Jiading District, and the lead content was detected. The health risks of dietary lead exposure among 3-4-year-old children were quantitatively assessed using the single-factor pollution index method, the Nemerow comprehensive pollution index method, and the margin of safety (MOS) method. Results: A total of 143 3-4-year-old children were surveyed, including 69 boys (48.25%) and 74 girls (51.75%). A total of 317 food samples were tested, and lead was detected in all seven subcategories of food samples, with an overall detection rate of 77.29%. The detection rates of lead in bivalves and mantis shrimps of aquatic products were relatively high (98.75% and 100.00%, respectively). The mean lead content of various foods ranged from 0.003 4 to 0.090 7, with the highest level found in bivalves. The lead content of all food samples did not exceed the standard. The single-factor pollution index of seven subcategories ranged from 0.017 2 to 0.148 0, and the Nemerow comprehensive pollution index ranged from 0.116 5 to 0.424 4, both of which were less than 0.7. The MOS (mean) ranged from 0.000 3 to 0.003 9, with an overall MOS (mean) of 0.012 2. The MOS (P95) ranged from 0.005 7 to 0.055 9, with an overall MOS (P95) of 0.112 4, both of which were less than 1. Conclusions The lead pollution level in the diet among children aged 3 to 4 years in Jiading District is safe and clean, with an acceptable impact on food safety. However, the detection rate of lead is relatively high, and the main source of dietary lead exposure is aquatic products.

Objective To investigate the clinical application of a new thermosensitive embolic agent in interventional arterial embolization treatment, and to evaluate its effectiveness and safety in treating inoperable advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods Prospective, open and single center clinical study of a new thermosensitive embolic agent was conducted. A total of 10 patients with clinically confirmed inoperable advanced HCC were treated with percutaneous arterial embolization using thermosensitive embolic agent; a maximum of 4 therapeutic cycles were performed until the disease progressed. Objective effect was evaluated at (30 ±7) days after the treatment according to mRECIST standard; the progression free survival (PFS) time and the survival period (OS) were recorded. The adverse reactions and adverse events were determined by NCI-CTC 3.0 version standard. Results Ten patients (23 target lesions in total) were enrolled in this study. After the treatment, complete remission (CR) was obtained in one patient, partial remission (PR) in 3 patients, stable disease (SD) in 5 patients, and progress disease (PD) in one patient. The objective response rate (CR+PR) was 40%, and the disease control rate (CR+PR+SD) was 90%. The PFS of hepatic lesions was 18.4 weeks (95%CI:14.15-22.65), the cumulated median survival period was 46.2 weeks (95%CI:38.18-54.22). The most common adverse reactions included pain, fever, hepatic function damage, small amount of ascites, diarrhea, etc. Conclusion The new thermosensitive embolic agent is not sticky to vessel and is visible under X-ray; it has reliable embolization effect, and the therapeutic results can be easily evaluated. This embolic agent is not perfect, and it has some limitations in clinical use. The adverse reactions are mild, which can be easily tolerated by the patients. It is worth trying to carry out large sample and randomized controlled studies in order to open up more areas for arterial chemoembolization therapy of tumors.

Objective To analyze the concept of Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-Fine Motor (PDMS-FM). Methods Concept con-tained in each item of PDMS-FM was discussed and determined by 3 rehabilitation physicians or therapists. They were linked to the catego-ries of International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY) by 2 rehabilitation physi-cians according to the linking rules after discussion. Third party intervened informally if there was a disagreement. Results Ninety-eight items from the PDMS-FM linked to 21 categories of the 3rd level within 13 categories of the 2nd level, belong to b1 Mental Functions, b7 Neuromusculoskeletal and Movement-related Functions, d1 Learning and Applying Knowledge, d4 Activities and d5 Self-care, a total of 5 categories of the 1st level. Eighty items linked to d4, and 40 items linked to d1. Conclusion PDMS-FM mainly focuses on the activities, es-pecially Carrying, Moving and Handling Objects and Basic Learning of Learning and Applying Knowledge.

PURPOSE: Long noncoding RNA 00703 (LINC00703) was found originating from a region downstream of Kruppel-like factor 6 (KLF6) gene, having 2 binding sites for miR-181a. Since KLF6 has been reported as a target of miR-181a in gastric cancer (GC), this study aims to investigate whether LINC00703 regulates the miR-181a/KLF6 axis and plays a functional role in GC pathogenesis.MATERIALS AND METHODS: GC tissues, cell lines, and nude mice were included in this study. RNA binding protein immunoprecipitation (RIP) and pull-down assays were used to evaluate interaction between LINC00703 and miR-181a. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blot were applied for analysis of gene expression at the transcriptional and protein levels. A nude xenograft mouse model was used to determine LINC00703 function in vivo.RESULTS: We revealed that LINC00703 competitively interacts with miR-181a to regulate KLF6. Overexpression of LINC00703 inhibited cell proliferation, migration/invasion, but promoted apoptosis in vitro, and arrested tumor growth in vivo. LINC00703 expression was found to be decreased in GC tissues, which was positively correlated with KLF6, but negatively with the miR-181a levels.CONCLUSIONS: LINC00703 may have an anti-cancer function via modulation of the miR-181a/KLF6 axis. This study also provides a new potential diagnostic marker and therapeutic target for GC treatment.
Animals ; Apoptosis ; Binding Sites ; Blotting, Western ; Cell Line ; Cell Proliferation ; Gene Expression ; Heterografts ; Immunoprecipitation ; In Vitro Techniques ; Mice ; Mice, Nude ; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction ; RNA, Long Noncoding ; RNA-Binding Proteins ; Stomach Neoplasms

Objective:To analyze the brain function of patients with delirium in intensive care unit (ICU) using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), further analyze the structural changes in the brain using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and explore the correlations of brain function with structural changes in patients with delirium in ICU from a new perspective of functional imaging, provide visual evidence for the diagnosis of delirium.Methods:Patients with delirium admitted to ICU of the Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University from January 1st to December 31st in 2017 were enrolled as subjects. During the same period, the healthy volunteers who matched the gender, age and education level of the patients with delirium were enrolled as control group. The intensive care delirium screening checklist (ICDSC) scores within 24 hours after ICU admission were recorded. All the subjects were scanned by fMRI and DTI. The abnormal changes in resting-state brain function of the patients with delirium were evaluated by cerebral regional homogeneity (ReHo) data analysis. The DTI data were processed by the FSL software, and the fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) of the brain were extracted, respectively, to evaluate the damage to brain structure. The values of ReHo, FA and MD were compared between the two groups. The ReHo value of brain region with reduced ReHo value of patients with delirium as compared with the healthy volunteers was extracted for Pearson correlation analysis with ICDSC scores.Results:A total of 22 patients with delirium were included. Seven patients who did not cooperate in the examination, used sedatives or had false images in scanning, were excluded. Finally, 15 patients were enrolled in the delirium group, and 15 healthy volunteers in the healthy control group. ① No statistically significant difference was found in gender, age or education time between the two groups. ICDSC score of the delirium group was significantly higher than that of the healthy control group (6.07±1.28 vs. 1.07±0.88, P < 0.01). ② fMRI scanning and analysis results: compared with the healthy control group, the ReHo values of the cerebellum, right hippocampus, striatum, midbrain and pons in the delirium group were significantly increased (all P < 0.05, AlphaSim correction), while the ReHo values of bilateral superior frontal gyrus, bilateral median frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, temporal lobe and parietal lobe were significantly lowered (all P < 0.05, AlphaSim correction). Correlation analysis showed that the ReHo value of the left superior frontal gyrus was negatively correlated with ICDSC score in the patients with delirium ( r = -0.794, P < 0.05), indicating that the changes in the functional area of the medial frontal gyrus was most closely related to delirium. ③ DTI scanning and analysis results: compared with the healthy control group, the FA values of the left cerebellum, bilateral frontal lobes, left temporal lobe, corpus callosum and left hippocampus in the delirium group were decreased significantly (all P < 0.05, AlphaSim correction), while the MD values of the medial frontal gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus, anterior cingulate gyrus, bilateral insular lobes and left caudate nucleus were enhanced significantly (all P < 0.05, AlphaSim correction), suggesting that the structural and functional damage was found in multiple brain regions in patients with delirium. Conclusions:Multiple brain regions of patients with delirium present abnormal resting-state brain function. The abnormal resting-state brain function of the left superior frontal gyrus is closely related to the occurrence of delirium. Structural damage is found in multiple brain regions of patients with delirium. The structural changes in the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, corpus callosum, hippocampus and cerebellum and their abnormal functions can be used as preliminary imaging indexes for the diagnosis of delirium.

Objective:To investigate the repair effect of electrospun gelatin polycaprolactone (GT/PCL) nanofiber aerogels (NFA) combined with cartilage extracellular matrix (ECM) for treatment of cartilage injuries in rabbits.Methods:Firstly, the GT/PCL electrospun membrane was prepared by electrospinning and was ground into the short fiber at high speed. ECM was extracted and separated from fresh bovine articular cartilage, which mixed with the short fiber solution (10 ∶1). Subsequently, it was used to prepared GT/PCL/ECM (NFA) three-dimensional scaffold. Finally, the physical characteristics of the three different scaffolds (GT/PCL, ECM and GT/PCL/ECM) were detected by scanning electron microscope and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, including the composition, microstructure, swelling rate, porosity, compressive strength and degradation rates. And the biocompatibility research was getting on by co-culturing the scaffold with chondrocytes. Fifteen male New Zealand white rabbits were divided into blank control group (Group A, n=5), ECM group (group B, n=5) and composite scaffold(GT/PCL/ECM)group (Group C, n=5) according to the random number table. An injury model was established and three types of bio-scaffold materials were implanted into different groups. At 3 weeks, the cartilage repair was evaluated among groups by semi quantitative global MRI scoring system (WORMS). After the animals were killed, the knee joints of each group were scored by the international society for cartilage repair histological score (ICRs); the ICRs histological score was performedby HE staining and safranine green staining. Results:Three scaffolds showed a porous three-dimensional structure under the scanning electron microscope. FIRT showed that GT and PCL were introduced into the scaffolds successfully. The GT/PCL NAF was loose and unable to be characterized by materials science. The swelling rate of GT/PCL/ECM scaffold [(1, 092.0±32.2)%] was higher than that of ECM scaffold [(933.6±16.3)%] ( P<0.01). The porosity of GT/PCL/ECM scaffold [(92.3±2.3)%] was higher than that of ECM scaffold [(85.9±2.2)%] ( P<0.05). The compressive strength of ECM scaffold [(2.7±0.1)kPa] and of GT/PCL/ECM scaffold [(2.4±0.1)kPa] showed no statistical difference ( P>0.05). The degradation rate of ECM scaffold was higher than that of GT/PCL/ECM scaffold, but the difference was not statistically significant ( P>0.05). The cytotoxicity rating of GT/PCL/ECM scaffold was grade I, indicating that its biocompatibility was better. At 3 weeks, the MRI WORMS score in Group C [(49.0±11.4)points] was significantly higher than that in Group B [(40.0±6.7)points] and that in Group A [(24.0±6.5) points] ( P<0.05 or 0.01); the general ICRS score of group C was [(7.4±1.1) points], which was significantly higher than that of group B [(4.6±1.1)points] and group A [(3.0±1.2)points] ( P<0.01); The ICRS histological scores of group C and group B were [(6.8±0.8)points] and [(4.2±0.8)points] respectively compared with group A [(2.8±0.8)points] were significantly higher ( P<0.05 or 0.01). Conclusion:GT/PCL/ECM (NFA) scaffold has similar tissue structure to natural cartilage and is superior to traditional ECM scaffold in physical properties and biocompatibility, which provides a stable environment for chondrocyte adhesion and growth, promotes collagen regeneration, and thus accelerates the repair of cartilage injury.

Considering the small differences between different types in the diabetic retinopathy (DR) grading task, a retinopathy grading algorithm based on cross-layer bilinear pooling is proposed. Firstly, the input image is cropped according to the Hough circle transform (HCT), and then the image contrast is improved by the preprocessing method; then the squeeze excitation group residual network (SEResNeXt) is used as the backbone of the model, and a cross-layer bilinear pooling module is introduced for classification. Finally, a random puzzle generator is introduced in the training process for progressive training, and the center loss (CL) and focal loss (FL) methods are used to further improve the effect of the final classification. The quadratic weighted Kappa (QWK) is 90.84% in the Indian Diabetic Retinopathy Image Dataset (IDRiD), and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) in the Messidor-2 dataset (Messidor-2) is 88.54%. Experiments show that the algorithm proposed in this paper has a certain application value in the field of diabetic retina grading.
Humans ; Diabetic Retinopathy/diagnostic imaging* ; Algorithms ; ROC Curve ; Diabetes Mellitus

Objective:To study the mechanism of protective effect of erythropoietin (EPO) on glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis in rats through promoting vascular action mediated by VEGF, promoting osteogenesis, and inhibiting bone resorption.Methods:An animal experiment of 24 SD rats in total were divided into three groups: the osteoporosis group (20 mg/kg BW of methylprednisolone biwim for 6 weeks); the EPO group (MP 20 mg/kg biw+EPO 500 u/kg qdim); the nature salt group (0.9%NS). After 12 weeks, rats were harvested and received examination of histology (HE staining) for demonstration of protective effect, immunohistochemistry with CD31 stainingfor microvascular changes ,changes of VEGF and PCNA expressions using Western Boltfor microvascular and cell proliferation, and ELISA to detectOPN, PINP, CTX-1 in serumasbone turnover marker.Results:Hematoxylin and eosin staining in the model group showed that the bony trabeculae had become obviously narrow and sparse with discontinuity of the integrity. The integrity of the trabeculae was better in the EPO group. Immunohistochemical results: the EPO group CD31+ cell 16.60±4.88, the osteoporosis group 12.96±4.54, the NS group 25.84±7.97. CD31 expression was higher in the EPO group than the osteoporosis group. Western Bolt: in the NS groupthe ratio of VEGF/β-actin greyscalewas 0.570±0.022, with the osteoporosis group 0.446±0.083 and the EPO group 0.584±0.009; The ratio of PCNA/β-actingreyscale was 0.541±0.158 in the NS group, withthe osteoporosis group 0.187±0.099, the EPOgroup 0.733±0.257. VEGF and PCNA expression in the EPO group were higher than those in the osteoporosis group. ELISA: OPN results: the NS group 78.34±17.28 pg/ml, the osteoporosis group 368.48±97.23 pg/ml, the EPO group 217.62±39.11 pg/ml; P1NP results: the NS group 1 507.00±58.49 ng/ml, the osteoporosis group 1 196.00±91.32 ng/ml, the EPO group 1 621.00±65.57 ng/ml; CTX-1 results: the NS group 27.10±4.78 ng/ml, the osteoporosis group 39.46±9.23 ng/ml, the EPO group 31.17±4.11 ng/ml. The level of OPN and CTX-1 in the EPO group were lower than that in the osteoporosis group, and P1NP was higher than that in the osteoporosis group.Conclusion:EPO generates certain protective effect on bone of rats withglucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis. Its potential mechanism is to promote vascular action, promote osteogenesis, and inhibit bone resorption.