BACKGROUND: Chronic liver disease (CLD), mainly non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), is a significant public health concern worldwide. This study aims to quantify the burden of NAFLD in CLD globally and within China, using data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2021, providing crucial insights for global and local health policies. METHODS: The study used comprehensive data from the GBD study 2021. It included estimates of prevalence, incidence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Age-standardized rates and average annual percent change (AAPC) from 2011 to 2021 were reported. A meticulous decomposition analysis was conducted. RESULTS: In 2021, there were 1582.5 million prevalent cases, 47.6 million incident cases, 1.4 million deaths, and 44.4 million DALYs attributable to CLD, globally. Among these, NAFLD has emerged as the predominant cause, accounting for 78.0% of all prevalent CLD cases (1234.7 million) and 87.2% of incident cases (41.5 million). Correspondingly, NAFLD had the highest age-standardized prevalence (15,017.5 per 100,000 population) and incidence (876.5 per 100,000 population) rates among CLDs. In addition, China's CLD age-standardized prevalence rate was 21,659.5 per 100,000 population, and the age-standardized incidence rate was 752.6 per 100,000 population, higher than the global average. From 2011 to 2021, the global prevalence rate of CLD increased slowly (AAPC = 0.17), consistent with the trend in China (AAPC = 0.23). Furthermore, the prevalence rate of NAFLD rose significantly in China (AAPC = 1.30) compared with the global average (AAPC = 0.91). Decomposition analysis also showed the worldwide increase in deaths and DALYs for NAFLD, which were primarily attributable to population growth and aging. CONCLUSIONS The burden of CLD and NAFLD remains substantial globally and within China in terms of high prevalence and incidence. As such, this underscores the need for targeted prevention and treatment strategies. These findings emphasize the importance of continued surveillance and research to mitigate the growing impact of liver diseases on global and Chinese health systems.
Humans ; Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease/mortality* ; Global Burden of Disease ; China/epidemiology* ; Prevalence ; Male ; Disability-Adjusted Life Years ; Female ; Incidence ; Middle Aged ; Chronic Disease ; Adult ; Quality-Adjusted Life Years ; Liver Diseases/epidemiology* ; Aged

Drug development encompasses multiple processes, wherein protein subcellular localization is essential. It promotes target identification, treatment development, and the design of drug delivery systems. In this research, a deep learning framework called LocPro is presented for predicting protein subcellular localization. Specifically, LocPro is unique in (a) combining protein representations from the pre-trained large language model (LLM) ESM2 and the expert-driven tool PROFEAT, (b) implementing a hybrid deep neural network architecture that integrates convolutional neural network (CNN), fully connected (FC) layer, and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) blocks, and (c) developing a multi-label framework for predicting protein subcellular localization at multiple granularity levels. Additionally, a dataset was curated and divided using a homology-based strategy for training and validation. Comparative analyses show that LocPro outperforms existing methods in sequence-based multi-label protein subcellular localization prediction. The practical utility of this framework is further demonstrated through case studies on drug target subcellular localization. All in all, LocPro serves as a valuable complement to existing protein localization prediction tools. The web server is freely accessible at https://idrblab.org/LocPro/.

Autophagy is a cellular self-degradation process that maintains homeostasis and has been shown to promote tumor progression in advanced stages.Pancreatic cancer cells and the surrounding stromal cells exhibit high levels of autophagy.Therefore,targeting au-tophagy has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy for pancreatic cancer.This review focuses on research targeting autophagy in pancreatic cancer treatment,elaborating on the roles and underlying mechanisms of autophagy in pancreatic cancer cell proliferation,metas-tasis,modulation of the tumor immune microenvironment,and drug resistance.Additional-ly,we summarize preclinical and clinical studies investigating autophagy-targeted therapies both as monotherapy and in combination with other treatments,aiming to provide new theo-retical rationale and therapeutic strategies for pancreatic cancer management.

Objective:To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of belumosudil for the treatment of chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) .Methods:We retrospectively collected data on patients with cGVHD who received belumosudil at Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine from May 2023 to March 2024. The study endpoints were overall response rate (ORR), organ-specific response rates, time to response (TTR), changes in Lee Symptom Scale (LSS) scores, tapering or discontinuation of corticosteroid treatment, failure-free survival (FFS), and adverse events.Results:The study included 20 patients with cGVHD who received belumosudil, of whom 15 were men and 5 women. The median age was 34.5 (12-67) years, and three patients were under 18 years old. The median follow-up duration was 5.0 (1.4 - 9.8) months. All patients had severe cGVHD, and 18 (90.0%) showed involvement of at least four organs. The median number of prior treatment lines was 4, and 15 patients (75%) had previously received ruxolitinib. All patients received 200 mg of belumosudil once daily in combination with other cGVHD systemic therapies. The ORR was 90.0% (95% CI: 68.3%-98.8%), and all responses were partial responses. The median TTR was 1.6 (0.9 - 8.4) months. The LSS scores improved in a clinically meaningful way in 80.0% (16/20) of the patients within 3 months. The corticosteroid dose was reduced in 42.6% (6/14) of the patients. The 3-month FFS was 79.6% (95% CI: 61.4%-100.0%). Most adverse events were grade 1 or grade 2, and two patients (10.0%) experienced grade 3 or higher-grade adverse events. Conclusions:In the real-world setting, belumosudil demonstrated good effectiveness and safety in patients with cGVHD with a history of severe disease and multiorgan involvement.

Objective:Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare autoimmune disease. This study aims to describe the baseline characteristics and clinical outcomes of Chinese PSC patients and explore risk factors associated with prognosis, addressing the lack of long-term prognostic analysis in China.Methods:Clinical data of PSC patients were retrospectively collected from May 2009 to June 2023 in Beijing Friendship Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, and patient follow-up was conducted through outpatient visits, telephone calls, and medical record reviews. The Cox proportional hazards model and the Kaplan-Meier method were employed to identify risk factors and estimate transplant-free survival.Results:A total of 65 PSC patients were enrolled, with male patients accounting for 50.8% and an average age of onset of 44 years. The disease types primarily included large duct PSC (57.9%) and whole duct PSC (22.8%). Most patients (78.5%) sought medical attention due to symptoms, with common clinical manifestations including jaundice (32.3%), fatigue (23.1%), abdominal discomfort (21.5%), pruritus (16.9%), and fever (10.8%). A total of 19 patients (29.2%) had concomitant ulcerative colitis. Compared to large duct PSC or whole duct PSC, small duct PSC showed a lower proportion of concomitant ulcerative colitis ( P<0.001) and milder baseline disease severity. After a median follow-up of 29 months (interquartile range: 11,53), 19 patients experienced liver transplantations and/or liver disease-related deaths. The overall 2-year and 5-year transplant-free survival rates for PSC patients were 76.0% and 59.5%, respectively. Elevated bile acid levels were identified as an independent risk factor for poor outcomes in PSC patients. Conclusion:The study population of Chinese PSC patients predominantly consisted of middle-aged males, characterized by a low ratio of asymptomatic cases, a low incidence of associated inflammatory bowel disease, and a low rate of transplant-free survival. Elevated bile acid level was identified as an independent risk factor for poor outcomes in PSC patients.

Drug development encompasses multiple processes,wherein protein subcellular localization is essential.It promotes target identification,treatment development,and the design of drug delivery systems.In this research,a deep learning framework called LocPro is presented for predicting protein subcellular localization.Specifically,LocPro is unique in(a)combining protein representations from the pre-trained large language model(LLM)ESM2 and the expert-driven tool PROFEAT,(b)implementing a hybrid deep neural network architecture that integrates convolutional neural network(CNN),fully connected(FC)layer,and bidirectional long short-term memory(BiLSTM)blocks,and(c)developing a multi-label framework for predicting protein subcellular localization at multiple granularity levels.Additionally,a dataset was curated and divided using a homology-based strategy for training and validation.Compar-ative analyses show that LocPro outperforms existing methods in sequence-based multi-label protein subcellular localization prediction.The practical utility of this framework is further demonstrated through case studies on drug target subcellular localization.All in all,LocPro serves as a valuable complement to existing protein localization prediction tools.The web server is freely accessible at https://idrblab.org/LocPro/.

Objective:To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of belumosudil for the treatment of chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) .Methods:We retrospectively collected data on patients with cGVHD who received belumosudil at Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine from May 2023 to March 2024. The study endpoints were overall response rate (ORR), organ-specific response rates, time to response (TTR), changes in Lee Symptom Scale (LSS) scores, tapering or discontinuation of corticosteroid treatment, failure-free survival (FFS), and adverse events.Results:The study included 20 patients with cGVHD who received belumosudil, of whom 15 were men and 5 women. The median age was 34.5 (12-67) years, and three patients were under 18 years old. The median follow-up duration was 5.0 (1.4 - 9.8) months. All patients had severe cGVHD, and 18 (90.0%) showed involvement of at least four organs. The median number of prior treatment lines was 4, and 15 patients (75%) had previously received ruxolitinib. All patients received 200 mg of belumosudil once daily in combination with other cGVHD systemic therapies. The ORR was 90.0% (95% CI: 68.3%-98.8%), and all responses were partial responses. The median TTR was 1.6 (0.9 - 8.4) months. The LSS scores improved in a clinically meaningful way in 80.0% (16/20) of the patients within 3 months. The corticosteroid dose was reduced in 42.6% (6/14) of the patients. The 3-month FFS was 79.6% (95% CI: 61.4%-100.0%). Most adverse events were grade 1 or grade 2, and two patients (10.0%) experienced grade 3 or higher-grade adverse events. Conclusions:In the real-world setting, belumosudil demonstrated good effectiveness and safety in patients with cGVHD with a history of severe disease and multiorgan involvement.

Objective:Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare autoimmune disease. This study aims to describe the baseline characteristics and clinical outcomes of Chinese PSC patients and explore risk factors associated with prognosis, addressing the lack of long-term prognostic analysis in China.Methods:Clinical data of PSC patients were retrospectively collected from May 2009 to June 2023 in Beijing Friendship Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, and patient follow-up was conducted through outpatient visits, telephone calls, and medical record reviews. The Cox proportional hazards model and the Kaplan-Meier method were employed to identify risk factors and estimate transplant-free survival.Results:A total of 65 PSC patients were enrolled, with male patients accounting for 50.8% and an average age of onset of 44 years. The disease types primarily included large duct PSC (57.9%) and whole duct PSC (22.8%). Most patients (78.5%) sought medical attention due to symptoms, with common clinical manifestations including jaundice (32.3%), fatigue (23.1%), abdominal discomfort (21.5%), pruritus (16.9%), and fever (10.8%). A total of 19 patients (29.2%) had concomitant ulcerative colitis. Compared to large duct PSC or whole duct PSC, small duct PSC showed a lower proportion of concomitant ulcerative colitis ( P<0.001) and milder baseline disease severity. After a median follow-up of 29 months (interquartile range: 11,53), 19 patients experienced liver transplantations and/or liver disease-related deaths. The overall 2-year and 5-year transplant-free survival rates for PSC patients were 76.0% and 59.5%, respectively. Elevated bile acid levels were identified as an independent risk factor for poor outcomes in PSC patients. Conclusion:The study population of Chinese PSC patients predominantly consisted of middle-aged males, characterized by a low ratio of asymptomatic cases, a low incidence of associated inflammatory bowel disease, and a low rate of transplant-free survival. Elevated bile acid level was identified as an independent risk factor for poor outcomes in PSC patients.

Autophagy is a cellular self-degradation process that maintains homeostasis and has been shown to promote tumor progression in advanced stages.Pancreatic cancer cells and the surrounding stromal cells exhibit high levels of autophagy.Therefore,targeting au-tophagy has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy for pancreatic cancer.This review focuses on research targeting autophagy in pancreatic cancer treatment,elaborating on the roles and underlying mechanisms of autophagy in pancreatic cancer cell proliferation,metas-tasis,modulation of the tumor immune microenvironment,and drug resistance.Additional-ly,we summarize preclinical and clinical studies investigating autophagy-targeted therapies both as monotherapy and in combination with other treatments,aiming to provide new theo-retical rationale and therapeutic strategies for pancreatic cancer management.

A 27-year-old female patient with AIDS received tenofovir alafenamide lamivudine and efavirenz(ART scheme). Because of the combined infection of talaromyces marneffei, she was given intravenous infusion of voriconazole 200 mg once per 12 hours. On the 4th day of medication, the valley blood concentration of voriconazole was 0.1 mg/L. The clinical pharmacist participated in the consultation and found that there was a drug interaction between efavirenz and voriconazole. The pharmacist recommended to discontinue efavirenz and switch to dolutegravir. After discontinuing efavirenz, the patient measured the blood trough concentration of voriconazole multiple times and adjusted the dose of voriconazole multiple times. Within 14 days of efavirenz discontinuation, the blood trough concentration of voriconazole changed slowly(0.1-0.4 mg/L), and after 14 days, the blood trough concentration remained basically stable. After increasing the dose of voriconazole to 300 mg once every 12 hours orally, the blood trough concentration of voriconazole increased to 1.8 mg/L, which was within the reference value range. This case suggests that when voriconazole is used in combination with efavirenz, even after discontinuing efavirenz, the metabolic induction effect of efavirenz still exists. Therefore, it is necessary to empirically increase the dose of voriconazole and dynamically adjust it based on therapeutic drug monitoring results.