Spinal cord injury often leads to central neuropathic pain syndromes, such as allodynic and hyperalgesic behaviors. Electrophysiologically, spinal dorsal horn neurons show enhanced activity to non-noxious and noxious stimuli as well as increased spontaneous activity following spinal cord injury, which often called hyperexcitability or central sensitization. Under hyperexcitable states, spinal neurons lose their ability of discrimination and encoding somatosensory information followed by abnormal somatosensory recognition to non-noxious and noxious stimuli. In the present review, we summarize a variety of pathophysiological mechanisms of neuronal hyperexcitability for treating or preventing central neuropathic pain syndrome following spinal cord injury.
Animals ; Central Nervous System Sensitization ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Neuralgia ; Neurons ; Posterior Horn Cells ; Rats ; Spinal Cord ; Spinal Cord Injuries

Background and Objectives: Measurement of sleep parameters in both supine and non-supine positions is important for the diagnosis of positional obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). However, the influence of right and left lateral decubitus positions (RLDP and LLDP, respectively) on sleep parameters is relatively unknown and has not been well investigated. This study was performed to verify the associations between sleep parameters and lateral decubitus sleep position. Methods: A retrospective study was performed on 38 patients who were diagnosed with OSA and underwent surgical interventions from January 2014 to December 2016. Preoperative sleep parameters were evaluated with WatchPAT, and patients who slept sufficiently in both RLDP and LLDP to accurately analyze sleep parameters were enrolled in the study. Basic clinical data including body mass index (BMI) and nasal endoscopic findings of patients were assessed. Results: The difference in peripheral arterial tonometry apnea-hypopnea index (pAHI) and PAT respiratory disturbance index (pRDI) between RLDP and LLDP showed no association with the side of deviated nasal septum. Patients with higher BMI showed higher pRDI in LLDP than RLDP (p=0.038). The difference in sleep position percentage between RLDP and LLDP was negatively correlated with the difference in pRDI (p=0.023). Conclusion Higher BMI patients with OSA might benefit more from sleeping in RLDP than LLDP. Patients slept longer in the lateral decubitus position that produced lower pRDI. Not only supine and non-supine positions, but also RLDP and LLDP need to be evaluated in patients with OSA.

Background: Fusobacterium nucleatum has been identified to promote tumor progression in colorectal cancer (CRC). However, association between F. nucleatum and prognostic or clinicopathological features has been diverse among studies, which could be affected by type of biospecimen (formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded or fresh frozen [FF]). Methods: Articles were systemically reviewed for studies that included the correlation between F. nucleatum and prognosis or clinicopathological features in CRC. Results: Ten articles, eight studies with survival-related features involving 3,199 patients and nine studies with clinical features involving 2,655 patients, were eligible for the meta-analysis. Overall survival, disease-free survival, and cancer-specific survival were all associated with worse prognosis in F. nucleatum–high patients (p<.05). In subgroup analysis, only studies with FF tissues retained prognostic significance with F. nucleatum. In meta-analysis of clinicopathological variables, F. nucleatum level was associated with location within colon, pT category, MLH1 hypermethylation, microsatellite instability status, and BRAF mutation regardless of type of biospecimen. However, lymph node metastasis and KRAS mutation was only associated with F. nucleatum level in FF-based studies. Conclusions In conclusion, type of biospecimen could affect the role of F. nucleatum as a biomarker associated with clinicopathological features and prognosis.

OBJECTIVE: Although curcumin has a protective effect on bone remodeling, appropriate therapeutic concentrations of curcumin are not well known as therapeutic drugs for osteoporosis. The purpose of this study was to compare the bone sparing effect of treatment of low-dose and high-dose curcumin after ovariectomy in rats. METHODS: Forty female Sprague-Dawley rats underwent either a sham operation (the sham group) or bilateral ovariectomy (OVX). The ovariectomized animals were randomly distributed among three groups; untreated OVX group, low-dose (10 mg/kg) curcumin administered group, and high-dose (50 mg/kg) curcumin group. At 4 and 8 weeks after surgery, serum biochemical markers of bone turnover were analyzed. Bone histomorphometric parameters of the 4th lumbar vertebrae were determined by micro-computed tomography (CT). In addition, mechanical strength was determined by a three-point bending test. RESULTS: High-dose curcumin group showed significantly lower osteocalcin, alkaline phosphatase, and the telopeptide fragment of type I collagen C-terminus concentration at 4 and 8 weeks compared with the untreated OVX group as well as low-dose curcumin group. In the analyses of micro-CT scans of 4th lumbar vertebrae, the high-dose curcumin treated group showed a significant increase in bone mineral densities (p=0.028) and cortical bone mineral densities (p=0.036) compared with the low-dose curcumin treated group. Only high-dose curcumin treated group had a significant increase of mechanical strength compared with the untreated OVX group (p=0.015). CONCLUSION: The present study results demonstrat that a high-dose curcumin has therapeutic advantages over a low-dose curcumin of an antiresorptive effect on bone remodeling and improving bone mechanical strength.
Alkaline Phosphatase ; Animals ; Biomarkers ; Bone Density ; Bone Remodeling ; Collagen Type I ; Curcumin* ; Female ; Humans ; Lumbar Vertebrae ; Osteocalcin ; Osteoporosis ; Ovariectomy ; Rats* ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to verify the appropriateness of ovariectomized rats as the osteoporosis animal model. METHODS: Twelve female Sprague-Dawley rats underwent a sham operation (the sham group) or bilateral ovariectomy [the ovariectomy (OVX) group]. Eight weeks after operations, serum biochemical markers of bone turnover were analyzed; osteocalcin and alkaline phosphatase, which are sensitive biochemical markers of bone formation, and C-terminal telopeptide fragment of type I collagen C-terminus (CTX), which is a sensitive biochemical marker of bone resorption. Bone histomorphometric parameters and microarchitectural properties of 4th lumbar vertebrae were determined by micro-computed tomographic (CT) scan. RESULTS: The OVX group showed on average 75.4% higher osteocalcin and 72.5% higher CTX levels than the sham group, indicating increased bone turnover. Micro-CT analysis showed significantly lower bone mineral density (BMD) (p=0.005) and cortical BMD (p=0.021) in the OVX group. Furthermore, the OVX group was found to have a significantly lower trabecular bone volume fraction (p=0.002). CONCLUSION: Our results showed that bone turnover was significantly increased and bone mass was significantly decreased 8 weeks after ovariectomy in rats. Thus, we propose that the ovariectomized rat model be considered a reproducible and reliable model of osteoporosis.
Alkaline Phosphatase ; Animals ; Biomarkers ; Bone Density ; Bone Resorption ; Collagen Type I ; Female ; Humans ; Lumbar Vertebrae ; Osteocalcin ; Osteogenesis ; Osteoporosis ; Ovariectomy ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Salicylamides ; X-Ray Microtomography

The conventional radiologic method for liver segmentation is based on the position of the hepatic and portal veins. However, during surgery, liver segments are resected based on the distribution of hepatic portal blood flow. This discrepancy can lead to a number of problems, such as miscommunication among clinicians, missing the location of the segment with the hepatic mass, and the risk of extended hepatic resection. We suggest a novel method to determine hepatic segments based on portal blood flow, as in the surgical approach, but by using high and low mechanical indexes in contrast-enhanced ultrasonography with Sonazoid. This approach is helpful for preoperatively determining hepatic segments and reducing the risk of missing the location of a hepatic tumor or extended hepatic resection.

Background: Autoencoder (AE) is one of the deep learning techniques that uses an artificial neural network to reconstruct its input data in the output layer. We constructed a novel supervised AE model and tested its performance in the prediction of a co-existence of the disease of interest only using diagnostic codes. Methods: Diagnostic codes of one million randomly sampled patients listed in the Korean National Health Information Database in 2019 were used to train, validate, and test the prediction model. The first used AE solely for a feature engineering tool for an input of a classifier. Supervised Multi-Layer Perceptron (sMLP) was added to train a classifier to predict a binary level with latent representation as an input (AE + sMLP). The second model simultaneously updated the parameters in the AE and the connected MLP classifier during the learning process (End-to-End Supervised AE [EEsAE]). We tested the performances of these two models against baseline models, eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) and naïve Bayes, in the prediction of co-existing gastric cancer diagnosis. Results: The proposed EEsAE model yielded the highest F1-score and highest area under the curve (0.86). The EEsAE and AE + sMLP gave the highest recalls. XGB yielded the highest precision. Ablation study revealed that iron deficiency anemia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, essential hypertension, gastric ulcers, benign prostate hyperplasia, and shoulder lesion were the top 6 most influential diagnoses on performance. Conclusion A novel EEsAE model showed promising performance in the prediction of a disease of interest.

General anesthesia is associated with a risk for postoperative pulmonary complications. The risk is even higher in patients with chronic respiratory failure, and postoperative mortality rates are high. Proper perioperative anesthetic management is important in such patients. Therefore, it is essential to optimize the patient’s physical status before anesthesia and to determine the optimal anesthesia technique based on the pre-anesthesia evaluation of the patient’s pulmonary function. We successfully performed abdominal surgery under spinal anesthesia in a patient with severe chronic respiratory failure.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate pain-related behaviors after bilateral C2 root resection and change in pain patterns in the suboccipital region in rats.METHODS: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to three groups (n=25/group); näive, sham, and C2 resection. Three, 7, 10, and 14 days after surgery, cold allodynia was assessed using 20 μL of 99.7% acetone. c-Fos and c-Jun were immunohistochemically stained to evaluate activation of dorsal horn gray matter in C2 segments of the spinal cord 2 hours, 1 day, 7 days, and 14 days after surgery.RESULTS: Three days after surgery, the response to acetone in the sham group was significantly greater than in the näive group, and this significant difference between the näive and sham groups was maintained throughout the experimental period (p < 0.05 at 3, 7, 10, and 14 days). Seven, 10, and 14 days after surgery, the C2 root resection group exhibited a significantly greater response to acetone than the näive group (p < 0.05), and both the sham and C2 resection groups exhibited significantly greater responses to acetone compared with 3 days after surgery. No significant difference in cold allodynia was observed between the sham and C2 root resection groups throughout the experimental period. Two hours after surgery, both the sham and C2 root resection groups exhibited significant increases in c-Fos- and c-Jun-positive neurons compared with the naive group (p=0.0021 and p=0.0358 for the sham group, and p=0.0135 and p=0.014 for the C2 root resection group, respectively). One day after surgery, both the sham and C2 root resection groups exhibited significant decreases in c-Fos -positive neurons compared with two hours after surgery (p=0.0169 and p=0.0123, respectively), and these significant decreases in c-Fos immunoreactivity were maintained in both the sham and C2 root resection groups 7 and 14 days after surgery. The sham and C2 root resection groups presented a tendency toward a decrease in c-Jun-positive neurons 1, 7, and 14 days after surgery, but the decrease did not reach statistical significance.CONCLUSION: We found no significant difference in cold allodynia and the early expression of c-Fos and c-Jun between the sham and C2 resection groups. Our results may support the routine resection of the C2 nerve root for posterior C1–2 fusion, but, further studies are needed.
Acetone ; Animals ; Gray Matter ; Humans ; Hyperalgesia ; Male ; Neuralgia ; Neurons ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Spinal Cord ; Spinal Cord Dorsal Horn

Background: The prognostic potential of Crohn-like lymphoid reaction (CLR) in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) has been investigated through the assessment of different criteria. Methods: The prognostic impact of CLR was investigated in 636 CRC patients to compare methods from previously published articles. These methods included CLR measured by number of lymphoid aggregates (LAs) (CLR count), LA size greater than or equal to 1 mm (CLR size), CLR density with a cutoff value of 0.38, and subjective criteria as defined by intense CLR. Results: In univariate survival analysis, CLR-positive CRC as defined by the four aforementioned methods was associated with better overall survival (OS) (hazard ratio [HR], 0.463; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.305 to 0.702; p <.001; HR, 0.656; 95% CI, 0.411 to 1.046; p=.077; HR, 0.363; 95% CI, 0.197 to 0.669; p=.001; and HR, 0.433; 95% CI, 0.271 to 0.690; p<.001, respectively) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR, 0.411; 95% CI, 0.304 to 0.639; p<.001; HR, 0.528; 95% CI, 0.340 to 0.821; p=.004; HR, 0.382; 95% CI, 0.226 to 0.645, p=.004; and HR, 0.501; 95% CI, 0.339 to 0.741; p<.001, respectively) than CLR-negative CRC, regardless of criteria with the exception of OS for CLR density. In multivariate analysis, two objective criteria (CLR count and CLR density) and one subjective criterion (intense CLR) for defining CLR were considered independent prognostic factors of OS and DFS in CRC patients. Conclusions CLR has similar traits regardless of criteria, but CLR-positivity should be defined by objective criteria for better reproducibility and prognostic value.