OBJECTIVE To investigate the mechanism by which aloin （ALO） ameliorates atherosclerosis （AS）. METHODS Eight C57BL/6J mice were assigned to the control group （CON group） and fed a standard diet； thirty-two apolipoprotein E-knockout （APOE－/－） mice were randomly divided into model group （MOD group）， ALO low-dose and high-dose groups [ALO-L group， ALO-H group， 20， 40 mg/（kg·d）]， and atorvastatin positive control group [ATO group， 4 mg/（kg·d）]， with 8 mice in each group， establishing the AS model through feeding with a high-fat diet. The mice were administered the drug via gavage or given an equal volume of deionized water for 8 consecutive weeks. The lipid levels in the serum of mice were measured， and the pathological structural changes in their aortas were observed. The expressions of macrophage polarization markers （CD86+ ， CD206+） in the aorta were determined， along with the mRNA expressions of inducible nitric oxide synthase （iNOS）， tumor necrosis factor-α （TNF-α）， arginase-1 （Arg-1）， and interleukin-10 （IL-10）， as well as the protein expressions of iNOS and Arg- 1， and the phosphorylation levels of nuclear factor κB p65 （NF-κB p65） and signal transduction and activator of transcription 3 （STAT3） proteins. Additionally， a macrophage polarization model was established using lipopolysaccharide （LPS）-induced RAW264.7 cells， and the effect of ALO （400 μmol/L） on the cellular polarization phenotype was investigated. RESULTS Compared with the MOD group， administration groups all showed significant improvement in dyslipidemia （except for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in the serum of ALO-L group） （P＜0.05）； aortic intimal structure improved significantly， plaque area was reduced significantly （P＜0.01）； the CD86+ relative fluorescence intensity in the aorta decreased significantly， the CD206+relative fluorescence intensity increased significantly （P＜0.01）， while the expressions of iNOS and TNF-α mRNA were down-regulated significantly （P＜0.05）； mRNA expressions of Arg-1 and IL-10， and protein expression of Arg-1 were increased significantly in ALO-H group and ATO group （P＜0.05）； the protein expressions of iNOS， and the phosphorylation levels of NF-κB p65 and STAT3 protein were decreased significantly （P＜0.05）. In vitro experiments further confirmed that ALO significantly reduced the proportion of LPS-induced M1-type macrophages but increased the proportion of M2-type macrophages （P＜0.01）. CONCLUSIONS ALO inhibits M1-type macrophage polarization and promotes M2-type polarization， ameliorates dyslipidemia and reduces arterial plaque formation in AS model mice， improve the structure of the aortic intima potentially through suppression of the NF-κB/STAT3 signaling pathway.

Dental treatments for children and adolescents have unique clinical characteristics that differ from dental care for adults in terms of children's physiology, psychology, and behavior. These differences impose specific requirements on the application of local anesthesia in pediatric dental procedures. This article presents expert consensus on the principles of local anesthesia techniques in pediatric dental therapies, including the use of common anesthetic drugs and dosage control, safety and efficacy evaluation, and prevention and management of complications. The aim is to improve the safety and quality of pediatric dental treatments and offer guidance for clinical application by dentists.
Humans ; Child ; Anesthesia, Local/methods* ; Consensus ; Anesthesia, Dental/methods* ; Adolescent ; Anesthetics, Local/administration & dosage* ; Dental Care for Children

Objective:To analyze the fail mode of neoadjuvant therapy combined with surgery for locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) after long-term follow-up.Methods:Clinical data of consecutive 238 patients with locally advanced resectable ESCC who underwent neoadjuvant therapy combined with surgery in Zhejiang Cancer Hospital from September 2012 to October 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. The failure mode in the whole cohort was analyzed after long-term follow-up. The overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS) rates were analyzed by Kaplan-Meier method. Survival differences were determined by log-rank test.Results:The pathological complete response (pCR) rate was 42.0% in 238 patients. After a median follow-up of 46.1 months, tumor progression occurred in 96 patients (40.3%), including 25 patients (10.5%) with local recurrence, 61 patients (25.6%) with distant metastases, and 10 patients (4.2%) with simultaneous local recurrence and distant metastases. The median OS and DFS were 64.7 months and 49.9 months. And the 3-, 5-, and 7-year OS and DFS rates were 70.0%, 52.8%, 36.4% and 63.5%, 42.5%, and 30.0%, respectively. The 3-, 5-, and 7-year locoregional recurrence-free survival rates and distant metastasis-free survival rates were 86.0%, 71.4%, 61.2% and 70.6%, 55.9%, 43.0%. Compared with non-pCR patients, the overall progression rate and distant metastasis rate of pCR patients were lower (26.0% vs. 50.7%, 16.0% vs. 32.6%, both P<0.05). And the 3-, 5-, and 7-year OS (83.0% vs. 60.2%, 69.7% vs. 41.7%, 50.4% vs. 27.7%, all P<0.001) and DFS rates (80.4% vs. 51.4%, 63.9% vs. 31.2%, 45.9% vs. 20.3%, all P<0.001) were significantly better in pCR patients. Conclusions:Distant metastasis is the main failure mode of patients with locally advanced ESCC after neoadjuvant therapy. Patients with postoperative pCR can achieve better long-term survival.

Objective:To study the risk factors and prediction model of radiation pneumonitis (RP) after radical chemoradiotherapy for locally advanced esophageal cancer based on dosiomics.Methods:Clinical data of 105 patients with esophageal cancer undergoing radical chemoradiotherapy at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital between January 2020 and August 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. RP was scored using the National Cancer Institute's Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 5.0 (CTCAE 5.0). Clinical factors, traditional dosimetric features and dosiomics features were collected, respectively. The features for predicting PR were analyzed by limma package. Support vector machine, k-nearest neighbor, decision tree, random forest and extreme gradient boosting were used to establish the prediction model, and the ten-fold cross-validation method was employed to evaluate the performance of the model. The differences of this model when different features were chosen were analyzed by delong test.Results:The incidence of RP in the whole group was 21.9%. One clinical factor, 6 traditional dosimetric features and 42 dosiomics features were significantly correlated with the occurrence of RP (all P<0.05). Support vector machine using linear kernel function yielded the optimal prediction performance, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) without and with dosiomics features was 0.72 and 0.75, respectively. The models established by support vector machine, random forest and extreme gradient boosting were significantly different with and without dosiomics features (all P<0.05). Conclusion:The addition of dosiomics features can effectively improve the performance of the prediction model of RP after radiotherapy for esophageal cancer.

The rapid progress on immunotherapy and targeted therapy has brought long-term survival benefits for locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The oncology community has also paid more attention to the local treatment for advanced NSCLC, especially for patients with limited metastatic lesions, also known as oligo-metastasis. Many studies have reported that oligo-metastatic NSCLC patients could benefit from the combination of local and systematic treatment, and even to be cured. In recent years, with the advances in radiation technology, stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) has achieved precise high-dose radiotherapy for small target tumors. Currently, SBRT has been widely applied in the treatment of inoperable early lung cancer, and its application value and safety in patients with advanced lung cancer are also being actively explored. In this article, the research status, progress and future development direction of SBRT in the treatment of oligo-metastatic NSCLC were discussed.

Objective:To analyze the failure patterns and survival after stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in patients with T 1-2N 0M 0 non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Methods:Clinical data of early-stage NSCLC patients who received SBRT at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital from January 2012 to September 2018 were retrospectively analyzed. The primary observed endpoint was the pattern of disease progression, which was divided into intra-field recurrence, regional lymph node recurrence and distant metastasis. Overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were calculated by Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate analysis was conducted by log-rank test, and multivariate analysis was performed by Cox's model.Results:A total of 147 patients with 156 lesions were included. The median follow-up time was 44.0 months (16.5-95.5 months). A total of 57 patients (38.8%) progressed: 14 patients (24.5%) had recurrence with the 1-, 3-, and 5-year local recurrence rates of 2.0%, 10.9%, and 14.3%, respectively; 36 patients (63.2%) had Distant metastasis with the 1-, 3- and 5-year distant metastasis rates of 12.2%, 22.4% and 28.6%, respectively; and 7 patients (12.3%) had recurrence complicated with distant metastasis. The 3-, 5- and 7-year OS rates were 80.5%, 64.2% and 49.9% for all patients, respectively. The median OS was 78.4 months. The 3-, 5- and 7-year PFS rates were 64.8%,49.5% and 41.5%, with a median PFS of 57.9 months (95% CI: 42.3-73.5 months). Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that biologically equivalent dose and age were the factors affecting the efficacy of SBRT (both P<0.05). Conclusion:Distant metastasis is the main failure pattern in patients with T 1-2N 0M 0 NSCLC after SBRT. High-risk population should be selected for further systematic treatment to improve the efficacy.

Objective:To investigate the prognostic factors of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma with pulmonary metastasis.Methods:Clinical characteristics of 135 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients presenting with pulmonary metastasis after treatment in Zhejiang Cancer Hospital from 2008 to 2018 were retrospectively analyzed. Thesurvival rate was calculated by Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate analysis was performed by log-rank test. Multivariate prognostic analysis was conducted by Cox models.Results:The median follow-up time of 135 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was 94.2 months (19.5-258.9 months), and 109 patients died (80.7%). The 1-and 2-year overall survival rates were 47.4% and 25.1%, with the median survival time was 11.1 months (7.3-14.9 months). Univariate prognostic analysis showed that age, number of lung metastases, treatment of lung metastases, lymph node metastasis, distant organ metastasis, and the interval between the first treatment and lung metastasis were the prognostic factors of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma with lung metastasis (all P<0.05). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that age and number of lung metastases were the independent prognostic factors for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma with lung metastases (all P<0.05). Conclusions:Age and number of lung metastases are the independent prognostic factors for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma with lung metastases. Surgery or radiotherapy-based regional therapy can enhance clinical prognosis.

Objective:Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a highly malignant tumor with a high risk of brain metastasis (BMs). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinical factors affecting the occurrence of BMs in patients with stage IIB-IIIB SCLC who achieved complete remission (CR) after thoracic radio-chemotherapy.Methods:Clinical data of 191 patients with stage IIB-IIIB SCLC who achieved CR after thoracic radio-chemotherapy in Zhejiang Cancer Hospital from January 2009 to April 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. Common clinical factors related to the risk of BMs, including gender, age, thoracic radiotherapy dose, combined mode of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, pretreatment serum NSE and LDH, whether PCI was performed, TMN stage and PS score, were analyzed using log-rank method for univariate analysis, COX regression method for multivariate analysis and Kaplan-Meier method to plot the survival curve.Results:Univariate analysis showed that pretreatment LDH level≥240IU, pretreatment NSE ≥17 ng/ml and no PCI were positively correlated with the risk of BMs (all P＜0.05). Multivariate analysis showed that the risk of BMs was only positively correlated with pretreatment LDH≥240IU [HR: 1.90, 95%CI(1.07-3.37), P=0.029], and no PCI [HR:2.08, 95%CI(1.17-3.72), P=0.013]. Conclusion:Pretreatment serum LDH levels provide important value for predicting the risk of BMs in patients with stage IIB-IIIB SCLC who achieve CR after thoracic radio-chemotherapy.

With the advancement of imaging diagnosis and the development of modern radiotherapy, the survival of cancer patients has been prolonged and the incidence rate of brain metastases (BM) has been significantly increased. The quality of life of patients and potential radiotherapy-induced neurocognitive impairment have gradually captivated widespread attention. Whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) is one of the common local therapies for BM patients. However, the application of WBRT is controversial because it may lead to neurocognitive impairment. The incidence of metastatic tumors in hippocampus and radiation-induced neurocognitive impairment can accelerate the implementation of hippocampal-avoidance WBRT (HA-WBRT). In this article, the feasibility of HA-WBRT was discussed and research progress in recent years was reviewed.

Objective:To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for stage Ⅰ-Ⅱ non-small cell lung cancer.Methods:Retrospective analysis of patients with early stage lung cancer who received SBRT in Zhejiang Cancer Hospital from 2012 to 2018 was conducted. The Kaplan-Meier method was used for survival analysis. The main endpoints of the study were locoregional control (LRC) and cancer specific survival (CSS).Results:A total of 142 eligible cases were included, with a median BED10100Gy (100-132Gy). The median age was 75.6 years (47.2-89.0 years), among which 75 patients were aged (greater than or equal to 75 years old). The median follow-up time was 31.0 months, for patients< 75 years old and patients ≥ 75 years old. The 5-year LRC were 84.5% and 95.8% respectively, 5-year CSS were 72.4% and 78.6% respectively, for patients< 75 years old and elderly patients. The systemic response was mild during treatment, no grade 4-5 adverse events occurred in all patients. The main acute side effect was radiation pneumonitis (RP) below grade 3. Grade 2 RP appeared in 14 patients (9.9%) after SBRT where grade 3 RP occurred in 2(1.4%). There was no treatment-related mortality in the SBRT group.Conclusions:SBRT is a safe and effective treatment for early primary lung cancer with satisfactory rates of LRC and CSS in 5 years and mild complication, which is similar to previous reports.