Objective     To construct a radiomics model for identifying clinical high-risk carotid plaques. Methods     A retrospective analysis was conducted on patients with carotid artery stenosis in China-Japan Friendship Hospital from December 2016 to June 2022. The patients were classified as a clinical high-risk carotid plaque group and a clinical low-risk carotid plaque group according to the occurrence of stroke, transient ischemic attack and other cerebrovascular clinical symptoms within six months. Six machine learning models including eXtreme Gradient Boosting, support vector machine, Gaussian Naive Bayesian, logical regression, K-nearest neighbors and artificial neural network were established. We also constructed a joint predictive model combined with logistic regression analysis of clinical risk factors. Results    Finally 652 patients were collected, including 427 males and 225 females, with an average age of 68.2 years. The results showed that the prediction ability of eXtreme Gradient Boosting was the best among the six machine learning models, and the area under the curve (AUC) in validation dataset was 0.751. At the same time, the AUC of eXtreme Gradient Boosting joint prediction model established by clinical data and carotid artery imaging data validation dataset was 0.823. Conclusion     Radiomics features combined with clinical feature model can effectively identify clinical high-risk carotid plaques.

Child ; Humans ; Granulomatous Disease, Chronic/complications* ; Pneumonia

The methodological framework for interventional clinical research of Chinese medicine （CM） under the research mode of syndrome dominating disease provides a set of technical principles and methods to design， evaluate， and implement of this kind. It consists of three main parts including general principles， research points and key design elements， with a total of 25 items. This methodological framework proposes implementing requirements and recommendations in a variety of aspects， including basic norms to be followed in relevant studies， perspectives for selecting research topics， as well as the technological details on study population （P）， intervention （I） and comparison（C）， outcome measurement （O）， time frame （T） of treatment and follow-up， sample orientation （prospective versus retrospective）， study design （S） format and type. To provide practical guidance for future studies， this article clearly explains each items of the methodological framework through some supportive cases.

Objective:To assess the efficiency of modified enrichment method for cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) through purified superparamagnetic beads during non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT).Methods:A total of 26 252 pregnant women undergoing NIPT at the Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital of Haidian District from December 2017 to September 2022 were recruited and randomly assigned into the conventional group ( n = 10 573) and the modified enrichment group ( n = 15 679), who were then subjected to the screening and enrichment of the cffDNA using a conventional and modified technique, respectively. High-risk pregnant women detected by NIPT were subjected to invasive prenatal diagnosis. All women were followed up for their pregnancy outcomes, and the detection efficacy of the two methods was compared in terms of fragment size, concentration of cffDNA, duplicate detection rate, and indices of clinical laboratory tests. Results:The fragment size of the main peak of the cell-free DNA library of the modified enrichment group was significantly lower than that of the conventional group [267 (264, 269) bp vs. 294 (292, 296) bp, P<0.01], while the concentration of cffDNA was significantly higher [21.86% (17.61%, 26.36%) vs. 9.08% (6.87%, 11.87%), P<0.01]. In addition, the duplicate detection rate (0.740% vs. 2.02%, χ2=83.90, P<0.01) and detection failure rate (0.006% vs. 0.057%, P<0.05) in the modified enrichment group were significantly lower than those of the conventional group. The combined positive predictive value (PPV) in both high-risk (64.3% vs. 76.1%) and low-risk (35.3% vs. 45.5%) pregnant women from the modified enrichment group was slightly lower than those from the conventional group, though no significant difference was detected. There was one false negative case for trisomy 21 among the high-risk pregnant women from the conventional group, and no false negative case was found in the modified enrichment group. Conclusion:The modified technique to screen and enrich the cffDNA has significantly enhanced the relative concentration of cffDNA and reduced the failure and duplication detection rate of NIPT, which has significantly reduced the incidence of false negative cases due to the low concentration of cffDNA, and greatly increased the overall detection efficacy of NIPT.

Objective To investigate the expressions of glycolysis-related factors and changes in Notch1 signaling in endometrial tissues of adenomyosis(AM)and Ishikawa cells to explore the pathogenesis of AM.Methods Eutopic endometrial tissues were collected from 8 patients with AM and 8 patients with uterine fibroids matched for clinical characteristics(control group).The expressions of Notch1 signaling proteins and glycolysis-related factors in the collected tissues were detected using qRT-PCR and Western blotting,and the levels of glucose and lactic acid were determined.An Ishikawa cell model with lentivirus-mediated stable Notch1 overexpression was established for assessing cell survival rate with CCK-8 assay,cell migration and invasion abilities with Transwell migration and invasion assays,and glycolytic capacity by determining the extracellular acidification rate.Results Compared with those in the control group,the endometrial tissues in AM group showed significantly increased expression level of carbohydrate antigen 125(CA125),increased mRNA expression levels of Notch1,HK2 and PDHA and protein expressions of Notch1,GLUT1,HK2,PKM and PDHA,lowered glucose level and increased lactate level.The Ishikawa cell models with stable Notch1 overexpression exhibited significantly increased cell survival rate with attenuated cell migration and invasion abilities and decreased glycolysis capacity and reserve.Conclusion The Notch1 signaling pathway participates in the pathogenesis of AM possibly by regulating the proliferation,migration,invasion and glycolysis of endometrial cells.

Objective To investigate the expressions of glycolysis-related factors and changes in Notch1 signaling in endometrial tissues of adenomyosis(AM)and Ishikawa cells to explore the pathogenesis of AM.Methods Eutopic endometrial tissues were collected from 8 patients with AM and 8 patients with uterine fibroids matched for clinical characteristics(control group).The expressions of Notch1 signaling proteins and glycolysis-related factors in the collected tissues were detected using qRT-PCR and Western blotting,and the levels of glucose and lactic acid were determined.An Ishikawa cell model with lentivirus-mediated stable Notch1 overexpression was established for assessing cell survival rate with CCK-8 assay,cell migration and invasion abilities with Transwell migration and invasion assays,and glycolytic capacity by determining the extracellular acidification rate.Results Compared with those in the control group,the endometrial tissues in AM group showed significantly increased expression level of carbohydrate antigen 125(CA125),increased mRNA expression levels of Notch1,HK2 and PDHA and protein expressions of Notch1,GLUT1,HK2,PKM and PDHA,lowered glucose level and increased lactate level.The Ishikawa cell models with stable Notch1 overexpression exhibited significantly increased cell survival rate with attenuated cell migration and invasion abilities and decreased glycolysis capacity and reserve.Conclusion The Notch1 signaling pathway participates in the pathogenesis of AM possibly by regulating the proliferation,migration,invasion and glycolysis of endometrial cells.

Objective:To investigate and summarize pediatric patients with severe Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (MPP) presenting with varied clinical and chest imaging features in order to guide the individualized treatment. Methods:This was a retrospective cohort study. Medical records of clinical, imaging and laboratory data of 505 patients with MPP who were admitted to the Department Ⅱ of Respirology Center, Beijing Children′s Hospital, Capital Medical University from January 2016 to October 2023 and met the enrollment criteria were included. They were divided into severe group and non-severe group according to whether lower airway obliterans was developed. The clinical and chest imaging features of the two groups were analyzed. Those severe cases with single lobe ≥2/3 consolidation (lobar consolidation) were further divided into subtype lung-necrosis and subtype non-lung-necrosis based on whether lung necrosis was developed. Comparison on the clinical manifestations, bronchoscopic findings, whole blood C-reactive protein (CRP) and other inflammatory indicators between the two subtypes was performed. Comparisons between two groups were achieved using independent-sample t-test, nonparametric test or chi-square test. Univariate receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were performed on the indicators such as CRP of the two subtypes. Results:Of the 505 cases, 254 were male and 251 were female. The age of the onset was (8.2±2.9) years. There were 233 severe cases, among whom 206 were with lobar consolidation and 27 with diffuse bronchiolitis. The other 272 belonged to non-severe cases, with patchy, cloudy infiltrations or single lobe <2/3 uneven consolidation or localized bronchiolitis. Of the 206 cases (88.4%) severe cases with lobar consolidation, 88 harbored subtype lung-necrosis and 118 harbored subtype non-lung-necrosis. All 206 cases (100.0%) presented with persistent high fever, among whom 203 cases (98.5%) presented with inflammatory secretion obstruction and plastic bronchitis under bronchoscopy. Of those 88 cases with subtype lung-necrosis, there were 42 cases (47.7%) with dyspnea and 39 cases (44.3%) with moderate to massive amount of pleural effusion. There were 35 cases (39.8%) diagnosed with lung embolism during the disease course, of which other 34 cases (38.6%) were highly suspected. Extensive airway mucosal necrosis was observed in 46 cases (52.3%), and the level of their whole blood CRP was significantly higher than that of subtype non-lung-necrosis (131.5 (91.0, 180.0) vs. 25.5 (12.0, 43.1) mg/L, U=334.00, P<0.001). They were regarded as subtype "lung consolidation-atelectasis-necrosis". Of those 118 cases with subtype non-lung-necrosis, 27 cases (22.9%) presented with dyspnea and none were with moderate to massive amount of pleural effusion. Sixty-five cases (55.1%) presented with plastic bronchitis and localized airway mucosal necrosis was observed in 32 cases (27.1%). They were deemed as subtype "lung consolidation-atelectasis". ROC curve analyses revealed that whole blood CRP of 67.5 mg/L on the 6-10 th day of disease course exhibited a sensitivity of 0.96, a specificity of 0.89, and an area under the curve of 0.97 for distinguishing between these two subtypes among those with lobar consolidation. Conclusions:Pediatric patients with severe MPP present with lobar consolidation or diffuse bronchiolitis on chest imaging. Those with lobar consolidation harbor 2 subtypes as "lung consolidation-atelectasis-necrosis" and "lung consolidation-atelectasis". Whole blood CRP of 67.5 mg/L can be applied as an early discriminating indicator to discriminate between these two subtypes.

Objective:To investigate the feasibility of a three-dimensional no new U-Net (3D nnU-Net) deep learning (DL) network for the automatic segmentation of colorectal cancer (CRC) based on abdominal CT images.Methods:This was a cross-sectional study. From January 2018 to May 2023, a total of 2180 primary CRC patients, confirmed by pathology at the Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine (center 1, n=777), Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University (center 2, n=732), and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital (center 3, n=671), were enrolled in this retrospective study. The baseline abdominal CT examination of each patient was conducted using CT equipment from 7 different models across 4 vendors, at the 3 centers, encompassing both the arterial phase (AP) and venous phase (VP). Two radiologists manually delineated the volume of interest to circumscribe the entire tumors in dual-enhanced phase CT images. The CT data of CRC patients from center 1 and center 3 were merged and divided into a training set ( n=1 159) and a validation set ( n=289) using a weighted random method with a ratio of 4∶1. The patients from center 2 were used as an independent external test set ( n=732). The 3D nnU-Net segmentation model was trained and tested. Using manually annotated label data as the benchmark, segmentation performance of the model was evaluated based on different phases and tumor locations. The segmentation coverage rate (SCR), Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), recall (REC), precision (PRE), F1-score, and 95% Hausdorff distance (HD 95) were calculated. The mean manual segmentation time and the mean automatic time were compared using independent samples t-test. Results:In the independent external test set, the performance of the 3D nnU-Net model based on the AP CT images was superior to that based on the VP CT images. On the AP images, the SCR, DSC, REC, PRE, F1-score, and HD 95 were 0.865, 0.714, 0.716, 0.736, 0.714, and 27.228, respectively; on the VP images, they were 0.834, 0.679, 0.710, 0.675, 0.679, and 29.358, respectively. The model achieved the best performance on right-sided colon cancer, with SCR, DSC, REC, PRE, F1-score, and HD95 on the AP CT images at 0.901, 0.775, 0.780, 0.787, 0.775, and 21.793, respectively. Next were left-sided colon cancer and rectal cancer, while the segmentation performance for transverse colon cancer was the worst (SCR, DSC, REC, PRE, F1-score, and HD 95 were 0.731, 0.631, 0.641, 0.630, 0.631 and 38.721, respectively). The automatic segmentation time on a single phase was (1.0±0.3) min, while the manual segmentation time was (17.5±6.0) min ( t=128.24, P<0.001). Conclusions:After training and validating on a dataset from multiple centers with various CT scanner vendors, the 3D nnU-Net DL model demonstrates the capability to automatically segment CRC based on abdominal CT images, while also showcasing commendable robustness and generalization ability.

Objective:To understand the contamination risk, drug resistance and virulence characteristics of cooked food pathogens in Tianjin.Methods:Pathogenic bacteria were isolated and identified in cooked food sold in Tianjin from 2019 to 2021, drug susceptibility test and whole genome sequencing were conducted for the isolates, and multilocus sequence typing, drug resistance gene, phenotype and virulence gene were analyzed for the data.Results:Ten pathogenic bacteria were isolated from 245 cooked food samples collected. The ST types of 7 Salmonella strains were ST40, ST198, ST14, ST13 and ST155. The two strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus were ST647 and ST2622 respectively. One strain of Cronobacter sakazakii was ST8 type. All the 6 isolates were drug-resistant, and 3 of them were multidrug-resistant (MDR). A total of 63 drug-resistant genes were predicted in 10 isolates. Two Salmonella strains were ampicillin-chloramphenicol-streptomycin-sulfamethoxazole-tetracycline resistant (MDR-ACSSuT), and both Salmonella strains carried gyrA double mutations (S83F, D87N) and parC mutations (S80I). Vibrio parahaemolyticus mainly carries blaCARB and tet (35) genes, while Cronobacter sakazakii carries only one resistance gene blaCSA-1. A total of 163 virulence genes were predicted from 10 isolates. Conclusions:In this study, pathogenic bacteria are repeatedly detected in quail eggs, warning that other eggs besides chicken eggs should also pay special attention to the risk of contamination. The isolates in this study are all of the prevalent ST type with widespread drug resistance, and MDR-ACSSuT strains should be paid attention to. The key role of gyrA double mutation (S83F, D87N) and parC mutation (S80I) in the development of quinolone resistance should not be ignored. T3SS (typeⅢ secretory system) and T6SS (typeⅥ secretory system) are important virulence gene clusters of Salmonella and Vibrio parahemolyticus.

Objective: To describe the current situation of leisure time physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep duration of children and adolescents aged 6-14 in Beijing, and provide a reference basis for guiding school age children to carry out reasonable physical activities and formulating effective intervention measures. Methods: A multistage stratified cluster random sampling method was used to investigate the nutritional and health status of 3 460 students in the first,third,fifth and seventh grades. Through the questionnaire surveys, the basic information of children and families and the activity information of children physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep were collected and statistically analyzed. Results: The results showed that the median time of children daily leisure time physical activity (LTPA) was 20.0 (8.6, 38.6) min, children in suburb areas (18.6 min) and seventh grade (14.3 min) had shorter LTPA time( Z/H =5.12，119.11， P <0.01). The average daily sleep duration of children was (8.71 ± 0.76) h, the proportion of school age children with insufficient sleep reached 54.7%. With an increase in grades, the incidence of insufficient sleep increased significantly ( χ 2=407.13， P <0.01). The median daily sedentary time of children was 195.7(145.0, 255.7 ) min, and 84.5% of children engaged in more than two hours of sedentary behavior every day. Urban (202.9 min) and obese children (210.4 min) had longer sedentary behavior time, and with the increase in grade, the daily sedentary behavior time of children gradually increased ( Z/H =5.04，14.83，637.98， P <0.01). Conclusion Children and adolescents aged 6-14 years in Beijing have less LTPA time, too much sedentary time, and insufficient sleep duration. Grade is an important factor affecting physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep duration of children, and body shape may be related to their sedentary behavior and sleep time.It is suggested that targeted policies should be adopted for children of different grades to increase their physical activity and reduce their sedentary behavior to promote their healthy development.