The incidence of osteoporotic thoracolumbar vertebral fracture (OTLVF) in the elderly is gradually increasing. The kyphotic deformity caused by various factors has become an important characteristic of OTLVF and has received increasing attention. Its clinical manifestations include pain, delayed nerve damage, sagittal imbalance, etc. Currently, the definition and diagnosis of OTLVF with kyphotic deformity in the elderly are still unclear. Although there are many treatment options, they are controversial. Existing guidelines or consensuses pay little attention to this type of fracture with kyphotic deformity. To this end, the Lumbar Education Working Group of the Spine Branch of the Chinese Medicine Education Association and Editorial Committee of Chinese Journal of Trauma organized the experts in the relevant fields to jointly develop Clinical guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of osteoporotic thoracolumbar vertebral fractures with kyphotic deformity in the elderly ( version 2024), based on evidence-based medical advancements and the principles of scientificity, practicality, and advanced nature, which provided 18 recommendations to standardize the clinical diagnosis and treatment.

Objective:To evaluate the effect of exogenous interleukin-18 (IL-18) binding protein (IL-18BP) on sepsis-associated lung injury and the role of NOD-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasomes in rats.Methods:This study was performed in two parts. Experiment Ⅰ Thirty-six SPF-grade healthy male Sprague-Dawley rats, aged 6-8 weeks, weighing 200 g, were allocated into 3 groups ( n=12 each) using a random number table method: sham operation group (S group), sepsis-associated lung injury group (SLI group), and sepsis-associated lung injury+ IL-18BP group (SI group). The rat model of sepsis-associated lung injury was developed using cecal ligation and puncture. The rats in group S underwent laparotomy without the subsequent ligation and puncture procedures. IL-18BP 1.5 mg/kg was intraperitoneally injected immediately after surgery in group SI. Experiment Ⅱ The aforementioned 36 rats were allocated into 3 groups ( n=12 each) using a random number table method: sepsis-associated lung injury + IL-18BP + vehicle group (SIV group), sepsis-associated lung injury + IL-18BP + MCC950 group (SIM group), and sepsis-associated lung injury + IL-18BP + nigericin group (SIN group). In SIV group, SIM group and SIN group, solvent, MCC950 (NLRP3 inhibitor, 5 mg/kg) and nigerin (NLRP3 agonist, 2 mg/kg) were intraperitoneally injected at 30 min before surgery respectively, and IL-18BP 1.5 mg/kg was intraperitoneally injected after operation. HE staining was used to observe the lung injury at 24 h after operation. The left lung tissues were obtained for calculation of the wet/dry weight (W/D) ratio. The concentrations of IL-18 and IL-18BP in broncho-alveolar lavage fluid (BALF) were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The percentage of NLRP3 positive cells in lung tissues was detected by immunofluorescence. The expression of IL-18, IL-18BP, cl-caspase-1 and gasdermin D (GSDMD) in lung tissues was detected by Western blot. Results:Experiment Ⅰ Compared with group S, the injury score of lung tissues, W/D ratio, concentrations of IL-18 and IL-18BP in BALF, and percentage of NLRP3 positive cells were significantly increased, and the expression of IL-18, IL-18BP, cl-caspase-1 and N-GSDMD was up-regulated in group SLI ( P<0.05). Compared with group SLI, the injury score of lung tissues, W/D ratio, concentrations of IL-18 and IL-18BP in BALF, and percentage of NLRP3 positive cells were significantly decreased, the expression of IL-18, cl-caspase-1 and N-GSDMD was down-regulated, and the expression of IL-18BP was up-regulated in group SI ( P<0.05). Experiment Ⅱ Compared with group SIV, the injury score of lung tissues, W/D ratio, concentrations of IL-18 in BALF, and percentage of NLRP3 positive cells were significantly decreased, and the expression of IL-18, cl-caspase-1 and N-GSDMD was down-regulated in group SIM, and the injury score of lung tissues, W/D ratio, concentrations of IL-18 in BALF, and percentage of NLRP3 positive cells were significantly increased, and the expression of IL-18, cl-caspase-1 and N-GSDMD was up-regulated in group SIN ( P<0.05). Conclusions:Exogenous IL-18BP can reduce sepsis-associated lung injury, and the mechanism is related to inhibition of activation of NLRP3 inflammasomes in rats.

Adult ; Humans ; Retrospective Studies ; Pneumonia ; Community-Acquired Infections/epidemiology* ; Hospitalization

BACKGROUND: The effect of intra-operative chemotherapy (IOC) on the long-term survival of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) remains unclear. In this study, we evaluated the independent effect of intra-operative infusion of 5-fluorouracil in combination with calcium folinate on the survival of CRC patients following radical resection. METHODS: 1820 patients were recruited, and 1263 received IOC and 557 did not. Clinical and demographic data were collected, including overall survival (OS), clinicopathological features, and treatment strategies. Risk factors for IOC-related deaths were identified using multivariate Cox proportional hazards models. A regression model was developed to analyze the independent effects of IOC. RESULTS: Proportional hazard regression analysis showed that IOC (hazard ratio [HR]=0.53, 95% confidence intervals [CI] [0.43, 0.65], P  < 0.001) was a protective factor for the survival of patients. The mean overall survival time in IOC group was 82.50 (95% CI [80.52, 84.49]) months, and 71.21 (95% CI [67.92, 74.50]) months in non-IOC group. The OS in IOC-treated patients were significantly higher than non-IOC-treated patients ( P  < 0.001, log-rank test). Further analysis revealed that IOC decreased the risk of death in patients with CRC in a non-adjusted model (HR=0.53, 95% CI [0.43, 0.65], P  < 0.001), model 2 (adjusted for age and gender, HR=0.52, 95% CI [0.43, 0.64], P  < 0.001), and model 3 (adjusted for all factors, 95% CI 0.71 [0.55, 0.90], P  = 0.006). The subgroup analysis showed that the HR for the effect of IOC on survival was lower in patients with stage II (HR = 0.46, 95% CI [0.31, 0.67]) or III disease (HR=0.59, 95% CI [0.45, 0.76]), regardless of pre-operative radiotherapy (HR=0.55, 95% CI [0.45, 0.68]) or pre-operative chemotherapy (HR=0.54, 95% CI [0.44, 0.66]). CONCLUSIONS: IOC is an independent factor that influences the survival of CRC patients. It improved the OS of patients with stages II and III CRC after radical surgery. TRIAL REGISTRATION chictr.org.cn, ChiCTR 2100043775.
Humans ; Fluorouracil/therapeutic use* ; Leucovorin/therapeutic use* ; Colorectal Neoplasms/pathology* ; Retrospective Studies ; Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols/therapeutic use* ; Proportional Hazards Models ; Prognosis

Objective:To establish the common carotid artery aneurysm models of Wallstent double stent overlapping implantation in miniature pigs, and evaluate the safety and effectiveness of this procedure by observing the imaging and pathological changes.Methods:Sidewall aneurysm and fusiform aneurysm models in Bama miniature pigs were established surgically and 2 Wallstent stents were overlapped and implanted in situ. Aneurysm healing immediately after surgery and during 8 weeks of follow-up were evaluated according to 2D-DSA by O'Kelly-Marotta (OKM) grading scale and Kamran scale; degrees of stent adhesion immediately after surgery and status of stent endothelialization and aneurysm healing at 2, 4, and 8 weeks after surgery were observed by high resolution C-arm CT(HR-CBCT) and optical coherence tomography (OCT); and the changes of stent endothelialization were evaluated by comparing the HR-CBCT and OCT results with histopathology at 8 weeks after surgery. Perioperative adverse events were recorded.Results:After successful establishment of common carotid artery aneurysm models (including 4 sidewall aneurysms and 4 fusiform aneurysms with average diameter of [11.0±2.8] mm) in 8 miniature pigs, a total of 16 Wallstent stents (2 in each aneurysm) were implanted across the aneurysmal neck, with a technical success rate of 100%. No serious complications such as acute stent thrombosis, or aneurysm rupture and bleeding were observed in the perioperative period. The 2D-DSA immediately after surgery showed obvious intracranial contrast agent retention in 6 patients (1 patient in grading 1, 3 in grading 2, and 2 in grading 3) and aneurysm occlusion in 2 patients (grading 4). Eight weeks after follow-up, all 8 aneurysms had complete occlusions (grading 4); and 2 experimental pigs had in-stent restenosis, with stenosis rates of 52% and 67%, respectively. HR-CBCT and OCT immediately after surgery and during follow-up indicated that the stent metal braid was gradually covered by proliferating intima, with disappeared aneurysm. The cause of in-stent restenosis in 2 experimental pigs was local intima hyperplasia resulted from poor stent adhesion, and pathological findings indicated that the intima hyperplasia was mainly composed of smooth muscle cells and fibrous connective tissues.Conclusion:In animal models, Wallstent stent overlapping implantation is safe and effective in common carotid aneurysms, but intraoperative adverse adhesion of overlapping stent should be avoided.

A case of a 69-year-old female patient, with cough, expectoration, chest tightness and shortness of breath for 10 days accompanied by left pleural effusion, was reported. Initially, a large number of suspected malignant lymphoma cells were found in the patient′s pleural effusion through routine cell morphological examination after admission, which was the direction of clinical diagnosis and treatment in the next step. Then the patient was diagnosed as primary pulmonary diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) through imaging, bone marrow and lung biopsy pathology. Finally, the patient was treated effectively with R-CHOP regimen, but she died of respiratory failure 9 weeks later, because she did not receive regular follow-up and treatment after the sixth chemotherapy cycle. Primary pulmonary DLBCL, an extremely rare extranodal lymphoma' lacks specificity clinical manifestations and is easy to be missed and misdiagnosed. DLBCL with a large number of malignant pleural effusion progresses rapidly and has a poor prognosis. The routine cell morphology examination of pleural effusion is simple and intuitive, which can capture key information in the shortest time, preliminarily provide clinical diagnosis and treatment ideas, and provide accurate basis for disease diagnosis.

Osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture (OVCF) can lead to lower back pain and may be even accompanied by scoliosis, neurological dysfunction and other complications, which will affect the daily activities and life quality of patients. Vertebral augmentation is an effective treatment method for OVCF, but it cannot correct unbalance of bone metabolism or improve the osteoporotic status, causing complications like lower back pain, limited spinal activities and vertebral refracture. The post-operative systematic and standardized rehabilitation treatments can improve curative effect and therapeutic efficacy of anti-osteoporosis, reduce risk of vertebral refracture, increase patient compliance and improve quality of life. Since there still lack relevant clinical treatment guidelines for postoperative rehabilitation treatments following vertebral augmentation for OVCF, the current treatments are varied with uneven therapeutic effect. In order to standardize the postoperative rehabilitation treatment, the Spine Trauma Group of the Orthopedic Branch of Chinese Medical Doctor Association organized relevant experts to refer to relevant literature and develop the "Guideline for postoperative rehabilitation treatment following vertebral augmentation for osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture (2022 version)" based on the clinical guidelines published by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) as well as on the principles of scientificity, practicality and advancement. The guideline provided evidence-based recommendations on 10 important issues related to postoperative rehabilitation treatments of OVCF.

Accurate identification of cell types from single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data plays a critical role in a variety of scRNA-seq analysis studies.This task corresponds to solving an unsupervised clustering problem,in which the similarity measurement between cells affects the result significantly.Although many approaches for cell type identification have been proposed,the accuracy still needs to be improved.In this study,we proposed a novel single-cell clustering framework based on similarity learning,called SSRE.SSRE models the relationships between cells based on subspace assumption,and generates a sparse representation of the cell-to-cell similarity.The sparse representation retains the most similar neighbors for each cell.Besides,three classical pairwise similarities are incorporated with a gene selection and enhancement strategy to further improve the effectiveness of SSRE.Tested on ten real scRNA-seq datasets and five simulated data-sets,SSRE achieved the superior performance in most cases compared to several state-of-the-art single-cell clustering methods.In addition,SSRE can be extended to visualization of scRNA-seq data and identification of differentially expressed genes.The matlab and python implementations of SSRE are available at https://github.com/CSUBioGroup/SSRE.

Objective: Previous cross-sectional studies suggested that elevated levels of total cholesterol content of erythrocyte membrane (CEM) could significantly increase the risk of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The purpose of the present study was to assess the predictive value of baseline CEM levels for the risk of clinical endpoint events in patients with ACS through prospective follow-up studies. Methods: This study is a prospective follow-up study, which consisted of 859 patients with first ACS (698 patients with unstable angina pectoris and 161 patients with acute myocardial infarction), diagnosed and hospitalized in the First and Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University. The routine blood lipid levels and CEM were measured. Patients were divided into two groups according to the median of baseline CEM: CEM≤131.56 μg/mg group (n=430) and CEM>131.56 μg/mg group (n=429). Patients were followed up at 6 months interval. The clinical endpoints were nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, all-cause mortality, all-cause mortality, heart failure requiring hospitalization, and coronary artery revascularization. Kaplan-Meier curve analysis and Cox proportional hazard model were used to analyze the impact of elevated CEM on the occurrence of clinical end-point events. HR values and 95%CI of each variable were obtained. Cox regression analysis of all-cause mortality was performed according to whether patients had risk factors for coronary heart disease (hypertension, diabetes, smoking and elevated LDL-C) and whether they were treated with PCI. Results: The follow-up time was 1 640 (1 380, 2 189) days. Cox analysis after adjustment showed that an elevated baseline of CEM (>131.56 μg/mg) was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality (HR=1.690, 95%CI 1.041-2.742, P=0.034), but had no significant predictive effect on the other clinical endpoints. Subgroup analysis showed that elevated baseline CEM levels in ACS patients with LDL-C>1.8 mmol/L (HR=1.687, 95%CI 1.026-2.774, P=0.039), receiving in-hospital PCI (HR=2.365, 95%CI 1.054-5.307, P=0.037), or male (HR=1.794, 95%CI 1.010-3.186, P=0.046) were associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Conclusion The results showed that elevated CEM levels can increase the risk of all-cause mortality in ACS patients.

A 26?year?old male patient presented with facial depigmented patches for 10 years, some of which turned to blue?grey 7 years prior to the presentation. Before the white patches turned blue?gray, the patient developed contact dermatitis due to topical application of self?made drugs. Skin examination showed blue?gray hyperpigmentation on the left upper lip and in the temporal region, with white hairs in the hyperpigmented lesions on the left upper lip. Dermoscopy revealed irregularly shaped, light to dark blue?gray patches on the left upper lip, which were intermingled with white patches in some regions, and white hair stubs were observed in the white patches. Histopathological examination of temporal lesions showed decreased melanocytes in some regions in the epidermis, pigmentation in both basal and suprabasal layers, perivascular infiltration of a small number of chronic inflammatory cells and melanophages in the superficial dermis, and melanophage infiltration around sweat ducts. Finally, the patient was diagnosed with blue vitiligo. He refused to receive any treatments, and follow?up was under way.