Objective To study the effect of repairment of articular cartilage defects in non weight-bearing area of rabbit with bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) seeded on human acellular amniotic membrane (HAAM).Methods From July 2012 to March 2013,bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells were isolated and purified from rabbit in vitro.The cells were seeded on human acellular anniotic membrane at the concentration of 1.63 × l05/cm2.From 7 days to 8 days after cultured,the complexes of BMSC and HAAM were examined under electronmicroscope,light microscope and by HE stain.Full thickness empty defects measuring 4 mm in diameter by 3 mm depth were prepared in femoral intercondylar fossa of 24 rabbits.The rabbits were randomized into two groups:group A and group B with 12 each group.The defects of right knees were served as control and the left as experimental group.BMSCs/HAAM composite was cultured and then transplanted into the defect of left knee joint in group A as group BMSCs/HAAM and HAAM into group B as group HAAM.These rabbits were killed at 4 and 12 weeks after surgery in each group and the newly cartilage samples were evaluated grossly,histologically are graded.Results In the 4th and 12th week after the operation,the regenerated tissue were white,soft and smooth.Chondrocytes were found in the tissue In the 12th week,the morphology,distribution and arrangement of the regenerated tissues were similar to normal cartilage in the knees with HAAM-BMSCs transplantation.The regenerated tissues grew to be integrated with the surrounding normal cartilage with obscure boundary between them.Chondrocytes were found in all layer of the tissue,surrounding normal cartilage with obscure boundary between them.In the HAAM transplantation,the rough surface of regenerated tissue sunk obviously and the fibmblasts in all layer were found.While there were no regenerated tissue in the control side.Conclusion BMSCs seeded on HAAM could repair the articular cartilage defects of femoral intercondylar fossa from rabbits.

Objective To study the diagnostic evaluation of spiral CT for acute pulmonary embolism(PE).Methods 24 patients with PE were scanned with SCT(Philips AVEL.)pre-and post-injection of 100 ml contrast medium(Ultravist or Omnipaque 300 mgI/ml)from elbow vein.Enhanced CT scans were started after injection of 15 and 30 seconds respecting.Results The indirect signs on plain CT image were:lung-making sparse in 12 cases;lesion of pulmonary infarction in 11 cases;pulmonary hypertension signs in 3 cases;pleural thickening in 4 cases;pleural effusions in 8 cases.The direct signs on enhanced CT images were:Intraluminal filling defect (mural filling defect in 32 vessels;partial filling defect in 30 vessels;total occlusion in 92 vessels and central filling defect that was railway-track sign in 15 vessels)and smaller caliber of pulmonary artery in 14 vessels.Conclusion Enhanced pulmonary SCT angiography is the safe,quick and effective imagilogic examination for acute PE.

Objective To explore the characteristics and differences of micro-perfusion between patients after transplant kidney with stable renal function,acute rejection and chronic rejection by contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) quantifying.Methods Thirty-three patients with stable renal function,27 patients with acute rejection and 14 patients with chronic rejection were enrolled.The perfusion parameters of region of interest in renal cortex and medulla were obtained by CEUS offline data quantitative analysis software.The perfusion parameters in stable renal function group were compared with those in acute rejection and chronic rejection groups;furthermore,the value of color Doppler and CEUS in the diagnosis of chronic rejection was explored and compared.Results As for resistance index RI on color Doppler,it made no statistical difference among three groups (P＞0.05).The perfusion parameters derived from CEUS quantitative analysis and Color Doppler parameter resistance index (RI) were not statistically different among renal function stabilization,acute rejection and chronic rejection groups (P＞0.05);as compared with stable renal function group,there were marked reductions in peak intensity of cortex (PIc),peak intensity of medulla (PIm),ascending slope of cortex (a3c),ascending slope of medulla (a3m) and area under the curve of cortex (AUCc) in chronic rejection group.And mean transit time of cortex (MTTc) and mean transit time of medulla (MTTm) became significantly prolonged (P＜ 0.05).Except for a3m,PIc and PIm were not significantly different between stable renal function and acute rejection groups (P＜ 0.05).As compared with acute rejection group,MTTc and MTTm were significantly prolonged in chronic rejection group while AUCm and PIm declined markedly (P＜0.05).When PIm＜26.7dB,the diagnostic efficiency of chronic rejection was the highest and the sensitivity and specificity were 85.7％ and 72.7％ respectively.Conclusions As compared with color Doppler,CEUS quantitative parameters based on S-G filter theory can evaluate the micro-perfusion of transplant kidney more precisely and may provide diagnostic clue for chronic rejection.

Objective:To explore the predictive value of various specific sonographic features on molecular subtypes for invasive breast carcinoma(IBC).Methods:Sonographic and clinicopathological data were retrospectively reviewed for 500 IBC patients who accepted surgical therapy in Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center from January 2014 to March 2016. All tumors were divided into 5 molecular subtypes. The relationships of sonographic variations associated with the molecular subtypes for IBC were analyzed by univariate and multivariate Logsitic regression analyses.Results:Specific sonographic features for triple-negative subtype included regular shape ( OR=2.06, P=0.018), no spiculated/angular margin ( OR=1.98, P=0.029), posterior acoustic enhancement ( OR=2.26, P=0.005), and no calcification ( OR=2.13, P=0.006). Specific sonographic feature for human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 positive (HER2) subtype was posterior acoustic enhancement ( OR=2.23, P=0.006). Specific sonographic features for Luminal A subtype included spiculated/angular margin ( OR=2.24, P=0.001), posterior acoustic shadow ( OR=1.84, P=0.026), and no calcification ( OR=1.89, P=0.016). There were no specific sonographic features for the Luminal B with HER2 negative subtype, while that for the Luminal B with HER2 positive subtype was calcification ( OR=3.61, P<0.001). However, when used these sonographic features to predict molecular subtypes of breast cancer, the sensitivity values were 8.4%-57.3%, and positive predictive values were 9.5%-53.3%. Conclusions:The variety of sonographic features is associated with molecular subtypes of IBC.However, due to the overlap of sonographic features between different subtypes, molecular subtypes of IBC cannot be predicted by sonographic features.

Accurate segmentation of retinal blood vessels is of great significance for diagnosing, preventing and detecting eye diseases. In recent years, the U-Net network and its various variants have reached advanced level in the field of medical image segmentation. Most of these networks choose to use simple max pooling to down-sample the intermediate feature layer of the image, which is easy to lose part of the information, so this study proposes a simple and effective new down-sampling method Pixel Fusion-pooling (PF-pooling), which can well fuse the adjacent pixel information of the image. The down-sampling method proposed in this study is a lightweight general module that can be effectively integrated into various network architectures based on convolutional operations. The experimental results on the DRIVE and STARE datasets show that the F₁-score index of the U-Net model using PF-pooling on the STARE dataset improved by 1.98%. The accuracy rate is increased by 0.2%, and the sensitivity is increased by 3.88%. And the generalization of the proposed module is verified by replacing different algorithm models. The results show that PF-pooling has achieved performance improvement in both Dense-UNet and Res-UNet models, and has good universality.
Algorithms ; Retinal Vessels ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted

OBJECTIVETo explore whether the intake of dietary carotenoids could protect against skeletal fluorosis in Guizhou province in which coal-burning fluorosis is endemic.

METHODSA case-control study of 196 patients with skeletal fluorosis and 196 age and gender-matched controls was conducted in Zhijin, Guizhou Province. Face-to-face interviews were conducted to assess habitual dietary intake using a 75-item food frequency questionnaire and various covariates with structured questionnaires. Urinary fluoride was measured using an ion-selective electrode method. The genotype of superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) rs11968525 was detected by TaqMan method.

RESULTSWe observed significant dose-dependent inverse associations of skeletal fluorosis with intake of β-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin, lycopene, and total carotenoids (P-trend = 0.002 to 0.018), whereas α-carotene and β-cryptoxanthin intakes were not found to be related to skeletal fluorosis, after adjustment for potential confounders. The adjusted ORs and 95% CI of skeletal fluorosis for the highest versus lowest quartile were 0.30 (0.10, 0.86) for β-carotene, 0.23 (0.08, 0.66) for lycopene, 0.26 (0.10, 0.75) for lutein/zeaxanthin and 0.34 (0.14, 0.74) for total carotenoids (all P-trend < 0.05). Stratified analyses showed that the protective effects of lutein/zeaxanthin and total carotenoids on skeletal fluorosis were more evident for individuals with the AG+AA genotypes of SOD2 (rs11968525).

CONCLUSIONIncreased intakes of β-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin, lycopene, and total carotenoids are independently associated with a lower risk of coal-burning skeletal fluorosis. SOD2 (rs11968525) polymorphisms might modify the inverse associations between dietary carotenoids and skeletal fluorosis.

Bone Diseases, Metabolic ; genetics ; prevention & control ; urine ; Carotenoids ; administration & dosage ; Case-Control Studies ; China ; Coal ; Energy Intake ; Environmental Exposure ; analysis ; Feeding Behavior ; Female ; Fluoride Poisoning ; genetics ; prevention & control ; urine ; Fluorides ; urine ; Humans ; Middle Aged ; Polymorphism, Genetic ; Superoxide Dismutase ; genetics ; Surveys and Questionnaires

Objective: To explore the improvement rate of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection who received entecavir alone or in combination with anluohuaxianwan for 78 weeks. Methods: Patients with chronic HBV infection were randomly treated with entecavir alone or in combination with anluohuaxian for 78 weeks. Ishak fibrosis score was used for blind interpretation of liver biopsy specimens. The improvement in liver fibrosis condition before and after the treatment was compared. Student's t test and non-parametric test (Mann-Whitney U-Test and Kruskal-Wallis test) were used to analyze the measurement data. The categorical variables were analyzed by Chi-square test method and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used to test bivariate associations. Results: Liver fibrosis improvement rate after 78 weeks of treatment was 36.53% (80/219) and the progression rate was 23.29% (51/219). The improvement of liver fibrosis was associated to the degree of baseline fibrosis and treatment methods (P < 0.05). The improvement rate of hepatic fibrosis in patients treated with anluohuaxianwan combined with entecavir at baseline F < 3 (54.74%, 52/95) was significantly higher than that in patients treated only with entecavir (33.33%, 16/48), P = 0.016 and the progression rate of hepatic fibrosis (13.68%, 13/95) was lower than that in patients treated alone (18.75%, 9/48), P = 0.466. In patients with baseline F < 3, the proportion of patients with improved and stable liver fibrosis in the combined treatment group (68.1%, 32/47) was higher than that in the treatment group alone (51.7%, 15/29). Conclusion Combined anluohuaxianwan and entecavir treatment can significantly improve the improvement rate of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection. Furthermore, it has the tendency to improve the stability rate and reduce the rate of progression of liver fibrosis.