Objective:To assess the diagnostic performance of serum anti-toxocara immunoglobulin G (anti-T-IgG) in ocular toxocariasis (OT) patients.Methods:A diagnostic tests. A total of 109 patients (109 eyes) with clinically-suspected OT who treated in Department of Ophthalmology of Xuzhou First People’s Hospital from June 2015 to December 2022 were included. Patients were divided into two groups, 76 with OT and 33 with non-OT, according to the clinical manifestations and Goldmann-Witmer coefficient. Paired serum and intraocular fluid samples from each patient were collected and analyzed for specific anti-T-IgG using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. Mann-Whitney test was performed for comparison between groups. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to assess the diagnostic performance of serum anti-T-IgG. Kappa analysis was performed to examine the consistency of serum or intraocular fluid anti-T-IgG positive rate with OT diagnostic result. Spearman’s rank correlation test was performed to assess the association.Results:Compared with the non-OT group, the proportions of children and history of exposure to cats and dogs ( χ2=9.785, 12.026) were significantly higher in OT group, and the differences were statistically significant ( P<0.01). The positive rate ( χ2=24.551) and U value ( Z=-4.379) of serum anti-T-IgG in OT group were higher than those in non-OT group, and the differences were statistically significant ( P<0.000 1). The recommended serum anti-T-IgG cut-off value of 11 U had 0.72 sensitivity, 0.79 specificity, 0.89 positive predictive value, 0.55 negative predictive value, and 0.77 area under the ROC with 95% confidence interval ( CI) 0.669-0.860. Correlation analysis showed that serum anti-T-IgG was positively correlated with intraocular fluid anti-T-IgG ( r s=0.520, 95% CI 0.363-0.648, P<0.000 1). The Kappa values of serum and intraocular fluid anti-T-IgG positive rate with OT diagnosis were 0.457 (95% CI 0.292-0.622) and 0.711 (95% CI 0.582-0.840), respectively. The Kappa value of serum anti-T-IgG positive rate with OT diagnosis was lower than that of intraocular fluid. Conclusion:The sensitivity and specificity of serum anti-T-IgG and the consistency between serum anti-T-IgG positive rate and OT diagnosis are low, suggesting that serum anti-T-IgG level cannot be used as a basis for OT diagnosis.

Objective To analyze the causal relationship between serum sex steroid hormone levels and myopia with the Mendelian randomization(MR)methods.Methods Sex hormone genetic tools classified by sex were publicly availa-ble summarized statistical data from the Genome-wide association study(GWAS)of the UK Biobank Consortium on sex hormone-binding globulin(SHBG),total testosterone(TT),bioavailable testosterone(BT),and estradiol(E2).The GWAS summarized statistical data for myopia were obtained from publicly available data published by the FinnGen Consorti-um R10.All data were downloaded from April 18 to April 31,2024 from the corresponding databases and analyzed.All re-sults from the MR study were mainly analyzed by inverse-variance weighting(IVW)method.Results The study showed that a higher serum SHBG level in European increased the risk of myopia development in women(IVW,OR=1.152,95％CI:1.014-1.308,P=0.029);low serum TT level(IVW,OR=0.821,95％CI:0.697-0.967,P=0.018)and serum BT lev-el(IVW,OR=0.820,95％CI:0.691-0.972,P=0.022)increased the risk of myopia development in women.There was no causal relationship between serum SHBG,TT,and BT levels and myopia in men.There was no causal effect between E2 level and myopia in women and men.The stability of our findings was supported by sensitivity analysis.Conclusion In-creased serum SHBG level and decreased serum TT and BT levels are associated with an increased risk of myopia in women,whereas no such association is found in men.There is no causal relationship between E2 and myopia.

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) refers to the simultaneous treatment of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and the effect of radiotherapy is enhanced with low-dose chemotherapy, which can reduce tumor recurrence and metastasis and improve clinical prognosis of patients. At present, the main factors for the increase of radiosensitivity of concurrent chemotherapy is that concurrent chemotherapy prevents the repair of tumor cells, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy act on different cell cycles and have synergistic effects. However, even for patients with locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) who have undergone CCRT, the 5-year survival rate is only 60%, which is still not ideal. In order to improve the efficacy, researchers have conducted a series of exploratory studies, which consist of the combination of targeted drugs and immunodrugs, and neoadjuvant regimens before CCRT, etc. Although targeted or immunologic drugs are effective treatment of LACC, in view of the lack of large-scale evidence-based medical evidence, multi-center prospective and randomized phase III clinical trials and high-level articles are needed to improve the level of evidence-based medicine. This consensus summarizes several key evidence-based medical studies published recently, especially the clinical research progress in targeted and immunological therapies, providing reference for domestic peers.

Objective To establish a hybrid deep learning lung sound classification model based on convolutional neural network(CNN)-long short-term memory(LSTM)for electronic auscultation.Methods Wavelet transform was used to extract features from the dataset,transforming lung sound signals into energy entropy,peak value and other features.On this basis,a classification model based on hybrid algorithm incorporating CNN and LSTM neural network was constructed.The features extracted by wavelet transform were input into CNN module to obtain the spatial features of the data,and then the temporal features were detected through LSTM module.The fusion of the two types of features enabled the classification of lung sounds through the model,thereby assisting in the diagnosis of pulmonary diseases.Results The accuracy rate and F1 score of CNN-LSTM hybrid model were significantly higher than those of other single models,reaching 0.948 and 0.950.Conclusion The proposed CNN-LSTM hybrid model demonstrates higher accuracy and more precise classification,showcasing broad potential application value in intelligent auscultation.

Objective:To assess the effectiveness and feasibility of carrier detection for Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) by using digital PCR assay.Methods:Peripheral blood samples were collected from 214 pregnant women who were routinely screened for SMA carriers, of which 204 were randomly selected samples and 10 were samples with known copy numbers of SMN1 exons 7 and 8. Samples with known copy numbers of SMN1 exons 7 and 8 were randomly mixed into the experiment to validate the performance of the digital PCR assay. The copy numbers of SMN1 exons 7 and 8 and SMN2 exons 7 and 8 in peripheral blood samples were detected by digital PCR assay. The results of SMN1 exons 7 and 8 were compared with those of the quantitative PCR method to assess the reliability and clinical performance of the digital PCR assay. Results:Among the 204 random samples, digital PCR has detected five samples with simultaneous heterozygous deletion of SMN1 exons 7 and 8, three samples with heterozygous deletion of SMN1 exon 8 only, and 196 samples with no deletion of SMN1 exons 7 and 8. Ten samples with known SMN1 exons 7 and 8 copy numbers were detected with the expected values. The digital PCR test results were fully consistent with that of the quantitative PCR. Conclusion:The results of digital PCR for the detection of copy number variation of SMN1 exons 7 and 8 were consistent with qPCR. Digital PCR assay was able to clearly distinguish the copy number of the target genes, therefore can be used for SMA carrier screening. Moreover, it can also detect copy number of SMN2 exons 7 and 8, which can provide more information for genetic counseling.

Objective To propose a method for mitigate the impact of anomaly points(such as dust,bubbles,scratches on the chip surface,and minor indentations)in images on the results of digital droplet PCR(ddPCR)detection to achieve high-throughput,stable,and accurate detection.Methods We propose a Filter Faster R-CNN ddPCR detection model,which employs Faster R-CNN to generate droplet prediction boxes followed by removing the anomalies within the positive droplet prediction boxes using an outlier filtering module(Filter).Using a plasmid carrying a norovirus fragment as the template,we established a ddPCR dataset for model training(2462 instances,78.56%)and testing(672 instances,21.44%).Ablation experiments were performed to test the effectiveness of 3 filtering branches of the Filter for anomaly removal on the validation dataset.Comparative experiments with other ddPCR droplet detection models and absolute quantification experiments of ddPCR were conducted to assess the performance of the Filter Faster R-CNN model.Results In low-dust and dusty environments,the Filter Faster R-CNN model achieved detection accuracies of 98.23%and 88.35%for positive droplets,respectively,with composite F1 scores reaching 99.15%and 99.14%,obviously superior to the other models.The introduction of the filtering module significantly enhanced the positive accuracy of the model in dusty environments.In the absolute quantification experiments,a regression line was plotted using the results from commercial flow cytometry equipment as the standard concentration.The results show a regression line slope of 1.0005,an intercept of-0.025,and a determination coefficient of 0.9997,indicating high consistency between the two results.Conclusion The ddPCR detection technique using the Filter Faster R-CNN model provides a robust detection method for ddPCR under various environmental conditions.

Objective To propose a method for mitigate the impact of anomaly points(such as dust,bubbles,scratches on the chip surface,and minor indentations)in images on the results of digital droplet PCR(ddPCR)detection to achieve high-throughput,stable,and accurate detection.Methods We propose a Filter Faster R-CNN ddPCR detection model,which employs Faster R-CNN to generate droplet prediction boxes followed by removing the anomalies within the positive droplet prediction boxes using an outlier filtering module(Filter).Using a plasmid carrying a norovirus fragment as the template,we established a ddPCR dataset for model training(2462 instances,78.56%)and testing(672 instances,21.44%).Ablation experiments were performed to test the effectiveness of 3 filtering branches of the Filter for anomaly removal on the validation dataset.Comparative experiments with other ddPCR droplet detection models and absolute quantification experiments of ddPCR were conducted to assess the performance of the Filter Faster R-CNN model.Results In low-dust and dusty environments,the Filter Faster R-CNN model achieved detection accuracies of 98.23%and 88.35%for positive droplets,respectively,with composite F1 scores reaching 99.15%and 99.14%,obviously superior to the other models.The introduction of the filtering module significantly enhanced the positive accuracy of the model in dusty environments.In the absolute quantification experiments,a regression line was plotted using the results from commercial flow cytometry equipment as the standard concentration.The results show a regression line slope of 1.0005,an intercept of-0.025,and a determination coefficient of 0.9997,indicating high consistency between the two results.Conclusion The ddPCR detection technique using the Filter Faster R-CNN model provides a robust detection method for ddPCR under various environmental conditions.

Objective:To investigate the influencing of inferior mediastinum and esophageal hiatus lymph node metastasis by submucosal different venous divisions of esophagogastric junction (EGJ) invaded in Siewert type Ⅱ adenocarcinoma of esophagogastric junction (AEG).Methods:The retrospective case-control study was conducted. The clinicopathological data of 547 patients with Siewert type Ⅱ AEG who were admitted to Shanxi Cancer Hospital from January 2018 to December 2021 were collected. There were 461 males and 86 females, aged 61 (range, 33?75)years. Observa-tion indicators: (1) lymph node metastasis rate in different groups; (2) influencing factors of inferior mediastinum lymph node metastasis in Siewert type Ⅱ AEG; (3) influencing factors of esophageal hiatus lymph node metastasis in Siewert type Ⅱ AEG. Measurement data with normal distribution were represented as Mean± SD, and comparison between groups was conducted using the t test. Measurement data with skewed distribution were represented as M(range) or M( Q1, Q3), and com-parison between groups was conducted using the Mann-Whitney U test. Count data were described as percentages or absolute numbers, and comparison between groups was conducted using the chi-square test. The univariate analysis was conducted using the corresponding statistical methods based on data type. The Logistic regression model was used for multivariate analysis. Results:(1) Lymph node metastasis rate in different groups. The lymph node metastasis rate in No. 1, 2, 3, 4sa, 4sb, 7, 8a, 9, 11,20, 108, 110 of the 547 patients was 17.37%(95/547), 6.76%(37/547), 46.44%(254/547), 1.65%(9/547), 1.10%(6/547), 23.22%(127/547), 4.39%(24/547), 3.11%(17/547), 3.47%(19/547), 3.66%(20/547), 0.55%(3/547), 4.20%(23/547), respectively. Of the 547 patients, there were 456 cases with proximal of AEG invading submucosal palisade venous of EGJ including 4 cases with inferior mediastinum lymph node metastasis and no case with media mediastinum or up media-stinum lymph node metastasis. There were 91 cases with proximal of AEG invading submucosal perforator venous of EGJ including 18 cases with inferior mediastinum lymph node metastasis, 3 cases with media mediastinum lymph node metastasis and no case with up mediastinum lymph node metastasis. (2) Influencing factors of inferior mediastinum lymph node metastasis in Siewert type Ⅱ AEG. Results of multivariate analysis showed that age, tumor invading submucosal perforator venous of EGJ and histological classification were independent influencing factors for inferior media-stinum lymph node metastasis of Siewert type Ⅱ AEG ( odds ratio=0.93, 23.33, 0.31, 95% confidence interval as 0.87?0.99, 4.18?130.28, 0.12?0.78, P<0.05). (3) Influencing factors of esophageal hiatus lymph node metastasis in Siewert type Ⅱ AEG. Tumor invading submucosal perforator venous of EGJ was an independent influencing factor for esophageal hiatus lymph node metastasis of Siewert type Ⅱ AEG ( odds ratio=14.95, 95% confidence interval as 2.46?90.76, P<0.05). Conclusion:Age, tumor invading submucosal perforator venous of EGJ and histological classification are independent influencing factors for inferior mediastinum lymph node metastasis of Siewert type Ⅱ AEG, and tumor invading submucosal perforator venous of EGJ is an independent influencing factor for esophageal hiatus lymph node metastasis.

Objective:To retrospectively analyze the gender differences in the clinical characteristics and perioperative outcomes of patients with type A aortic dissection in our institution.Methods:From January 2019 to January 2020, total 405 patients underwent surgical treatment for type A aortic dissection at Beijing Anzhen Hospital, including extensive aortic repair (total aortic arch replacement combined with stenting elephant trunk implantation) and limited aortic repair. In the entire cohort, male 295 cases, female 110 cases. All measures in this study were expressed as ± s or median(quartiles) and analyzed by Student t test for variables or non- parametric tests; count data were expressed as frequencies and percentages and analyzed by χ2 test and Fisher exact probability test. Independent risk factors were analyzed by logistic multivariate regression. Results:Females were older than males[(53.3 ± 12.4)years old vs. (47.1 ± 11.0)years old, P<0.001] and had significantly higher proportion of diabetes(9.1% vs. 4.1%, P=0.047) and previous cerebrovascular disease (11.8% vs. 5.8%, P=0.038). Females had a lower proportion of total aortic arch replacement combined with elephant trunk implantation (64.5% vs. 82.7%, P<0.001), while aortic cross-clamp time[168.0(144.8, 201.5) minutes vs. 190.0 (163.0, 217.0) minutes, P<0.001] and CPB time[99.0 (79.8, 118.0) min vs. 107.0 (91.0, 126.0) min, P=0.006] were significantly shorter than males. Females had significantly higher rates of pulmonary infection (14.5% vs. 5.8%, P=0.004) and stroke than males (15.5% vs. 8.1%, P=0.030). The difference in the proportion of postoperative deaths between female and male TAAD patients was not statistically significant (3.6% vs. 7.8%). Logistics multivariable regression analysis found that female was an independent risk factor for postoperative stroke ( OR=2.574, 95% CI: 1.198-5.531, P=0.015) and pulmonary infection ( OR=2.610, 95% CI: 1.180-5.772, P=0.018). Conclusion:Gender did not affect mortality after TAAD repair significantly, but females increased the risk of stroke and pulmonary infection after TAAD surgery.

Objective:To investigate the differences in outcomes of surgical strategies and prognosis of patients with acute type A aortic dissection(ATAAD) during the period of COVID-19 Omicron variant epidemic compared with the non-epidemic period.Methods:Clinical data were retrospectively collected from ATAAD patients during the COVID-19 Omicron variant epidemic(December 7, 2022 to January 10, 2023) and during the non-epidemic period(December 7, 2019 to January 10, 2020) to compare the differences in surgical strategies, perioperative mortality, and perioperative complication rates in ATAAD patients during the two different periods.Results:There were 14 patients in the COVID-19 infected group and 43 patients in the control group. Patients in the infected group had a shorter mean aortic clamp time[(89.71±16.27)min vs.(110.09±28.99)min, P<0.01], a significantly higher postoperative mortality rate relative to the control group(21.43% vs. 2.33%, P=0.02), a significantly longer length of stay in the ICU(3 days vs. 2 days, P=0.04) and the duration of intubation time(34 h vs. 14 h, P<0.01), and the incidence of adverse events, mainly cerebral infarction, was higher in infected group(28.57% vs. 6.98%, P=0.03). Conclusion:During the COVID-19 Omicron variant strain epidemic, our center preferred a more conservative surgical strategy in COVID-19 infected patients. Although the COVID-19 infection increased the postoperative mortality and complication rate of ATAAD, patients still achieve a more satisfactory outcome. Therefore, surgical treatment should be timely performed for ATAAD patients.