Objective To identify renal function and other readily accessible indicators influencing the prognosis of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients after nephrectomy, and to construct a prognostic prediction model based on them. Methods The clinical and pathological data of 624 RCC patients undergoing radical or partial nephrectomy in the First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University during Jan. 2013 and Dec. 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. The independent prognostic factors affecting postoperative overall survival (OS) were identified with LASSO algorithm combined with Cox regression analysis. Based on these factors, a nomogram was constructed to predict the 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates. The performance of the model was evaluated using the concordance index (C-index), time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the area under the curve (AUC), calibration plots, and decision curve analysis (DCA). Finally, the cutoff value of the nomogram was calculated to stratify patients into risk groups. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis with log-rank testing was performed to compare outcomes between the risk groups. Results Nine independent prognostic factors were identified, including age, smoking history, diabetes mellitus history, maximum tumor diameter, tumor subtype, N stage, Fuhrman grade, preoperative serum creatinine and cystatin C (P＜0.05). The nomogram achieved a C-index of 0.891, with time-dependent AUC of 0.920, 0.903, and 0.867 for 1-, 3-, and 5-year OS, respectively. Calibration curves showed excellent agreement with actual observations, and DCA demonstrated significant clinical net benefits across a wide threshold probability range. Using a cutoff score of 110.4, Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed statistically significant survival differences between risk groups (P＜0.001). Conclusion The proposed nomogram, incorporating renal function and other readily accessible clinical indicators, exhibits strong predictive accuracy for postoperative survival in RCC patients and may serve as a practical tool for individualized clinical decision-making.

Intra-abdominal Hernia with Bowel Obstruction Triggering Multi-organ Failure: The Role of Preoperative Enteritis This report details the clinical course of a 41-year-old male who developed fulminant multiple organ dysfunction syndrome following emergency surgery for a strangulated intra-abdominal hernia. Preoperative manifestations, including diarrhea and marked leukocytosis, pointed towards an underlying infectious enteritis. We posited that surgical release of the obstructed, ischemic bowel segment precipitated a massive systemic influx of endotoxins and inflammatory mediators, triggering septic shock and rapid sequential organ failure. This case underscored the critical need to suspect concomitant gastrointestinal infection in patients presenting with mechanical bowel obstruction accompanied by infectious signs. Aggressive perioperative sepsis management encompassing early empiric antimicrobial therapy, vigilant hemodynamic monitoring, and preparedness for advanced organ support is essential to mitigate this severe complication.

Hepatic sinusoidal capillarization is the first event in the process of fibrogenesis， and inhibiting hepatic sinusoidal capillarization can effectively improve the pathological process of liver fibrosis. Various studies have shown that traditional Chinese medicine can significantly inhibit hepatic sinusoidal capillarization. This article systematically reviews the effective constituents， monomers， and compound prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicine， summarizes their mechanism of action in inhibiting hepatic sinusoidal capillarization， and analyzes the theoretical core of traditional Chinese medicine in inhibiting hepatic sinusoidal capillarization from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine， in order to provide ideas and literature support for the treatment of liver fibrosis.

This article reports a rare case of autoinflammatory disease presenting initially with skin induration and swelling after trauma as the initial manifestation, followed by progressive limb weakness. The patient was a middle-aged female who developed skin induration and swelling after trauma, which gradually progressed to limb weakness, dysarthria and bilateral facial paralysis, accompanied by livedo reticularis of the lower extremities, diffuse skin induration of the limbs, and beaded subcutaneous nodules in the right upper limb. The patient had a susceptibility to infection since childhood and a history of chronic livedo reticularis. Skin pathological examination revealed panniculitis. A comprehensive etiological screening for special infections and autoimmune diseases was completed with an unremarkable results, and whole-exome sequencing showed no abnormal findings. Following a multidisciplinary discussion combined with RNA sequencing results, the patient was diagnosed with an autoinflammatory disease, with a suspected type Ⅰ interferonopathy. Treatment with tofacitinib resulted in gradual improvement of clinical symptoms. This case highlights the importance of detailed medical history collection, systematic physical examination and multidisciplinary collaborative diagnosis and treatment, and underscores the pivotal role of molecular diagnosis in the confirmation of rare diseases. It can provide a reference for the clinical diagnosis and management of similar rare cases.

Neuronal intranuclear inclusion disease(NIID) is a rare, chronic progressive neurodegenerative disease predominantly presenting with adult-onset cases in China. This disease exhibits high clinical phenotypic heterogeneity, with neurological manifestations as the predominant symptoms in most patients and prominent involvement of other systems in a minority of cases. Some patients without characteristic early cranial magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) findings are prone to misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis. Herein, we report an adult female patient with NIID characterized by cyclic vomiting. She initially presented with difficult micturition, followed by the onset of cyclic vomiting several years later, without other neurological involve-ments throughout the disease course. Cranial MRI revealed symmetric progressive periventricular white matter lesions in the lateral ventricles. Genetic testing identified abnormal GGC repeat expansion in the NOTCH2NLC gene.Pathological examination of labial gland biopsy showed intranuclear inclusions positive for p62 and ubiquitin. By summarizing the clinical characteristics of this patient, this article aims to deepen clinicians′ understanding of NIID.

Cancer is one of the most lethal and burdensome diseases worldwide. Its progression not only causes irreversible damage to the body, but also imposes a substantial psychological burden on patients due to its complex prognosis. Immune imbalance, a hallmark of the tumor microenvironment (TME), accelerates tumor invasion and metastasis by impairing the function of effector immune cells, promoting the abnormal infiltration of immunosuppressive cells, and disrupting cytokine homeostasis, thereby constituting a major barrier to the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy. Compared with conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy, aerobic exercise has shown considerable potential in antagonizing tumor progression through relatively mild but effective immunomodulatory mechanisms. On the one hand, regular aerobic exercise enhances the number and activity of key effector immune cells, such as CD8⁺ T cells, thereby strengthening their ability to recognize and eliminate tumor cells and alleviate immune imbalance. On the other hand, aerobic exercise promotes tumor vascular normalization, improves vascular maturity, and stimulates the secretion of irisin and other anti-inflammatory myokines, thereby remodeling the TME and relieving its immunosuppressive state to delay tumor progression. However, psychological stress following a cancer diagnosis can not only act as an independent disruptive factor that exacerbates immune imbalance within the TME, but also amplify the effects of other detrimental factors, such as reduced treatment adherence, thereby further weakening the antagonistic effect of aerobic exercise on tumor growth. Psychological stress, as a chronic stressor, promotes the excessive secretion of emotion-related hormones, including glucocorticoids (GCs) and norepinephrine (NE), which further suppress the activation and effector functions of antitumor immune cells such as CD8⁺ T cells and natural killer (NK) cells, while facilitating the recruitment of protumor immune cells such as regulatory T cells (Tregs). These changes ultimately disrupt immune homeostasis in the TME, promote tumor immune evasion, accelerate tumor invasion and metastasis, and offset the beneficial effects of aerobic exercise on tumor control. In addition, psychological stress induces hyperactivation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and abnormal excitation of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), thereby maintaining elevated levels of GCs, NE, and related stress hormones, suppressing inflammatory chemokine expression and immune cell recruitment, and further disturbing immune homeostasis in the TME, which accelerates tumor progression. More importantly, prolonged psychological stress can also disrupt the homeostasis of central neurotransmitters, such as 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and glutamate (Glu). This not only directly inhibits the activation and effector functions of antitumor immune cells and promotes the establishment of an immunosuppressive microenvironment, but also impairs cellular energy metabolism and continuously provides energy for tumor cells through metabolic reprogramming, thereby sustaining rapid tumor growth and adaptation to a hostile TME. Ultimately, these alterations contribute to the dysregulation of “neuro-endocrine-immune” axis and weaken the protective effect of aerobic exercise against tumor progression. Therefore, this review focuses on the interaction between psychological stress and the “neuro-endocrine-immune” axis, with particular emphasis on the mechanisms by which psychological stress induces immune imbalance and weakens the antagonistic effect of aerobic exercise on tumor progression. We further highlight the important role of psychological stress in tumor progression and propose that combining psychotropic interventions, aerobic exercise, and clinical antitumor immunotherapy may help restore the tumor-killing capacity of the immune system. Such a multimodal strategy may exert synergistic effects at multiple levels, including psychological stress relief, neuroendocrine regulation, and reconstruction of immune homeostasis, thereby providing new perspectives for identifying therapeutic targets in solid tumors, enhancing the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy, and improving patient prognosis.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the prevalence and influencing factors of potentially inappropriate medication （PIM） among the elderly in nursing homes in Urumqi based on three PIM screening tools， and to compare the applicability of different tools. METHODS A cross-sectional study design was adopted. Elderly individuals from six nursing homes in Urumqi were selected as the research subjects from May 2021 to September 2023. Demographic characteristics， disease burden and medication records of the elderly were collected. PIM screening was performed using the Chinese PIM criteria （2024 edition）， the American Geriatrics Society （AGS） Beers criteria （2023 edition）， and the Screening Tool of Older Person’S Prescriptions（STOPP）/Screening Tool to Alert to Right Treatment（START） （2023 edition）. Fleiss’s Kappa test was used to assess the consistency among the three screening tools， and multivariate Logistic regression was used to analyze the influencing factors of PIM. RESULTS The prevalence of PIM screened by the Chinese PIM criteria was 47.4% （323/682）， by the AGS Beers criteria was 43.4% （296/682）， and by the STOPP criteria was 50.9% （347/682）. The consistency among the three screening tools was low （Fleiss’s Kappa＝0.12， P ＜0.001）. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that all three screening tools indicated that polypharmacy， aspirin use and psychotropic drug use were independent risk factors for PIM among elderly in nursing houses （all OR＞1， P ＜0.05）. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of PIM among the elderly in nursing homes in Urumqi is relatively high. Polypharmacy， aspirin use and psychotropic drug use are common independent risk factors for PIM. There are differences in screening results among the three tools with low consistency. The Chinese PIM criteria can serve as a first-line tool for PIM screening in nursing homes.

Objective To investigate the causal relationship between immune cells and various molecular subtypes of breast cancer (BC) by using two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR). Methods This study employed a two-sample MR analysis, with 731 immune cell types from the GWAS catalog as the exposure factors and four BC molecular subtypes (HR+/HER2−, HR+/HER2+, HR−/HER2+, and HR−/HER2−) from the BCAC Consortium as the outcome variables. For causal inference, inverse variance weighting (IVW) was employed as the primary analytical method, alongside multiple consistency validation approaches, including MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted mode, simple mode, and Bayesian weighted Mendelian randomization. Reverse MR and sensitivity analyses were employed to effectively evaluate and exclude potential biases and interference from reverse causality. Results Significant causal associations were identified for specific immune cell phenotypes across subtypes. In HR+ BC, the HER2+ subtype was associated with seven immunophenotypes (five protective and two risk increasing), whereas the HER2− subtype was associated with eight immunophenotypes (four protective and four risk increasing). In HR− BC, the HER2+ subtype was associated with five immunophenotypes (one protective and four risk increasing), and the HER2− subtype (triple-negative BC) was associated with seven immunophenotypes (six protective and one risk-increasing). CD28+CD45RA−CD8+ T cells and naive CD8+ T cells have a bidirectional causal relationship with HR+/HER2+ breast cancer, Whereas the expression of CD8 on CD39+CD8+ cells also has a bidirectional relationship with HR+/HER2− breast cancer. Furthermore, CD4−CD8− NKT cells exhibited opposing effect directions in HER2+ versus HER2− subtypes. Conclusion From a genetic perspective, this study confirms the existence of subtype-specific causal associations between immune cell phenotypes and distinct molecular subtypes of BC, revealing heterogeneity in immune regulation.

ObjectiveDiscriminating atypical hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from other malignancies in liver nodules classified as Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System category M (LR-M) remains a significant diagnostic challenge on conventional ultrasound examination. The LR-M category, originally intended to capture non-HCC malignancies, paradoxically contains up to 63% of atypical HCCs that deviate from classic enhancement patterns, leading to potential misdiagnosis and suboptimal treatment planning. While deep learning has shown promise in HCC diagnosis, most existing models rely exclusively on single-modality ultrasound, overlooking the diagnostic benefits of integrating complementary information from multiple imaging sources. To address this gap, we propose a novel attention-weighted tri-modal ultrasound network (TUS-Net) that integrates contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS), B-mode ultrasound (BUS), and time-intensity curves (TICs) to improve diagnostic accuracy for these clinically challenging lesions. MethodsOur framework incorporates a three-dimensional convolutional neural network (C3D) backbone to extract spatiotemporal features from CEUS videos, capturing dynamic vascular patterns critical for lesion characterization. To effectively fuse complementary modalities, we introduce a dual-channel feature fusion module (DCFFM) that adaptively combines features from CEUS and BUS through channel-wise attention mechanisms, allowing the model to dynamically weigh the contribution of each modality based on diagnostic relevance. Additionally, we propose a temporal intensity feature fusion module (TIFFM) that leverages quantitative hemodynamic information from TICs to guide the model’s attention toward diagnostically critical temporal phases, such as arterial wash-in and portal venous washout. The model is further enhanced by automated lesion localization using YOLOX and class activation mapping for interpretability, ensuring that predictions align with clinically meaningful imaging features. ResultsEvaluated on a tri-modal ultrasound dataset comprising 161 patients with pathologically confirmed LR-M nodules (131 atypical HCC and 30 non-HCC malignancies), our model achieved an accuracy of 86.83%, a sensitivity of 92.50%, a specificity of 75.50%, and an AUC of 89.32% in screening atypical HCC. Compared to single-modality baselines, TUS-Net demonstrated superior specificity, a clinically critical metric given the higher risk associated with misclassifying non-HCC malignancies. Ablation studies confirmed the contribution of each module, with the full model outperforming both standard C3D and 3D ResNet backbones integrated with attention mechanisms. A reader study involving junior and senior radiologists further validated the clinical utility of AI assistance, showing consistent improvements in specificity and inter-reader consistency, particularly for less experienced clinicians. ConclusionThese results surpass existing benchmark models and demonstrate the potential of our approach to enhance diagnostic precision in clinically specific cases. By intelligently fusing multi-modal ultrasound data with attention-guided mechanisms, TUS-Net offers a reliable and interpretable tool that holds promise for improving the non-invasive diagnosis of atypical HCC in challenging LR-M liver nodules.

ObjectiveTo investigate how vitamin B₁₂ eye drops regulate MMP-9 and TNF-α expression levels in the corneas of dry eye disease （DED） mouse model induced by a combination of an artificially simulated dry environment （air humidity 30%） and subcutaneous injection of hyoscine hydrobromide. MethodsFifty C57BL/6 female mice were used in the study. 10 mice formed A group （blank control）， while the remaining 40 mice were subjected to dry eye disease induction through subcutaneous injection of scopolamine hydrobromide in a controlled environment with 30% air humidity. All mice underwent schirmer I test （SIT）， tear break-up time （TBUT）， and corneal fluorescence staining score（CFS）evaluations. Mice meeting modeling criteria were randomly assigned to three groups： B group （model group）， C group （PBS control）， and D group （vitamin B₁₂ group）. 0， 7， 14， and 21 days after treatment， each group received TBUT， SIT， CFS， and corneal inflammation assessments. Macroscopic analysis evaluated the efficacy of vitamin B₁₂ eye drops in treating dry eye. After 21 days of treatment， all mice were euthanized via cervical dislocation and their corneas analyzed using HE staining to examine morphological changes. ELISA and immunohistochemical methods were employed to detect MMP-9 and TNF-α expression levels in corneal tissues across groups. ResultsIn dry environments （air humidity 30%）， subcutaneous injection of scopolamine hydrobromide induced changes in dry eye-related indicators in mice： SIT significantly decreased， TBUT significantly shortened， corneal fluorescein staining increased， and CFS all significantly elevated （P 0.05）， indicating successful establishment of the dry eye model. A total of 30 dry eye mice were enrolled. When the dry eye model was successfully established without drug intervention， no statistically significant differences were observed between B group， C group and D group in terms of TBUT， SIT， corneal fluorescein staining， or CFS. Compared with A group， B group， C group and D group showed statistically significant differences in reduced SIT， shortened TBUT， increased corneal fluorescein staining， and elevated CFS （P 0.05）. After drug intervention， D group （vitamin B₁₂ group） exhibited significantly increased SIT， prolonged TBUT， reduced corneal fluorescein staining， clearer corneas， decreased fluorescein staining， and lower CFS compared with B and C groups（P 0.05）. ELISA and immunohistochemical staining results showed that compared with A group， B and C groups exhibited significantly increased expression of MMP-9 and TNF-α in corneal tissues （P 0.05）. D group showed decreased expression of MMP-9 and TNF-α compared with B and C groups but remained higher than A group （P 0.05）. ConclusionThe expression of MMP-9 and TNF-α in the corneal tissues of mice with dry eye is elevated， suggesting that both inflammatory factors， MMP-9 and TNF-α， are involved in the development of dry eye. Vitamin B₁₂ eye drops may improve the symptoms of ocular surface discomfort by promoting the repair of the corneal epithelium. Vitamin B₁₂ eye drops may increase tear secretion， prolong tear film break up time， reduce corneal fluorescein staining， and alleviate the inflammatory reaction of the cornea by decreasing the expression of MMP-9 and TNF-α in the corneal tissues of the mice， thus playing a therapeutic role in the treatment of dry eye disease.