Objective:To explore the value of dual-layer detector spectral CT quantitative parameters in evaluating the treatment response of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).Methods:The study was a cross-sectional study. From May 2021 to March 2023, a total of 52 patients with LARC who received complete nCRT and were pathologically confirmed rectal adenocarcinoma at the Guangdong Province Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine were retrospectively enrolled. Each patient underwent spectral CT examination before and after nCRT, including plain scan, arterial phase (AP), and venous phase (VP) scans. According to the tumor regression grade, the patients were divided into the good response ( n=20) and the poor response group ( n=32). Measurements of the primary tumor′s spectral CT parameters, including effective atomic number (Z eff) at plain scan, iodine concentration (IC), CT values of 40 keV and 100 keV virtual monochromatic image (VMI) at dual-enhanced phases, were taken before and after nCRT. Additionally, the normalized iodine concentration (NIC), spectral curve slope (λHU), and the change rate of the above parameters before and after nCRT were calculated. The independent sample t-test or Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the differences between the two groups. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to assess the efficacy of various metrics in evaluating the tumor treatment response of nCRT. A binary logistic regression analysis of combined parameter results was performed for the parameters with the areas under curve (AUC)>0.75, and the AUC of the combined parameter was evaluated. Results:There were significant differences in NIC AP and λHU VP before nCRT, NIC VP and λHU VP after nCRT, and the change rates of Z eff, NIC AP, NIC VP and λHU AP between the good response group and the poor response group ( P<0.05). The remaining parameters showed no statistically significant difference ( P>0.05). The ROC curve results showed that the AUCs of the above 8 parameters for evaluating tumor treatment response of nCRT were 0.702, 0.655, 0.695, 0.769, 0.738, 0.807, 0.791, and 0.677, respectively. The AUC of the combined model of the three parameters with AUC>0.75 (λHU VP after nCRT, the change rate of NIC AP and NIC VP) was 0.869, with 80.0% sensitivity and 84.4% specificity. Conclusion:The quantitative parameters derived from spectral CT may provide new markers for evaluating the response to nCRT treatment in patients with LARC. The multi-parameter combined model can improve diagnostic efficacy.

Objective To compare the incidence of catheter-related venous thrombosis between midline catheters and peripherally inserted central catheters.Methods Randomized controlled trials and cohort studies on the incidence of venous thrombosis associated with midline catheters and PICC catheters were searched from CNKI,Wanfang database,VIP database,Web of Science,PubMed,Embase and Cochrane Library from inception to December 31,2022.Review Manager 5.4 software and Stata 14.0 software were used to analyse and describe the outcome indicators.Results A total of 16 studies were included,including 12 cohort studies and 4 randomized controlled studies,with 21853 subjects.The results of the Meta-analysis showed that the incidence of catheter-related venous thrombosis per thousand catheter days of midline catheters was statistically significant compared with PICC[RR=2.74,95％CI(1.21,6.21),P=0.016].There was no significant difference in the incidence of catheter-related venous thrombosis compared with PICC[RR=0.85,95％CI=(0.70,1.03),P=0.101].In the subgroups,the incidence of superficial vein thrombosis in the midline catheter was significantly different from that in the PICC[RR=2.36,95％C/=(1.56,3.58),P＜0.001].Conclusion The current evidence shows that the incidence rate of catheter-related venous thrombosis per thousand catheter days and superficial vein thrombosis was higher for midline catheters than PICCs.Therefore,in clinical practice,vascular access devices should be selected reasonably,and the occurrence and development of catheter-related superficial venous thrombosis should be paid attention to,and clinical screening should be effectively carried out on the basis of a full evaluation.

Objective:To analyze the trends in literature related to oral microbiology and regenerative medicine from 2014 to 2023. By identifying key research countries, institutions, and their collaboration networks, as well as exploring research hotspots and development directions, the study seeks to provide references for researchers and decision-makers in the field of oral microbiology and regenerative medicine, thereby guiding the direction of future research.Methods:Relevant literature was retrieved using the Web of Science Core Collection database, with data processing and analysis conducted using CiteSpace 6.2.R6 software. Time slicing, node type selection, and the application of the g-index (g-index) were used for filtering, analyzing countries, institutions, authors, journals, and keywords.Results:The volume of literature in the field of oral microbiology and regenerative medicine has steadily increased from 2014 to 2023, with the number of publications first exceeding one hundred in 2020 and reaching 134 in 2022, accompanied by a citation frequency of 3 363 times. China and the United States have been at the forefront in terms of the volume of publications, while the United States and Germany lead in terms of intermediary centrality. The research primarily spans disciplines such as oral medicine, interdisciplinary studies, materials science, and immunology. High-frequency keywords include stem cells, scaffold materials, and gut microbiota, while cluster analysis indicates that inflammation, drug delivery, and antimicrobial activity remain consistent research themes. In recent years, the research heat in "tissue regeneration""gut microbiota " and "maxillofacial surgery" has risen, suggesting these may become focal points of future research.Conclusions:Over the past decade, the volume of literature published in the fields of oral microbiology and regenerative medicine, along with their citation frequencies, has increased annually. The research focus has shifted over time. Understanding the interactions between oral and gut microbiomes is crucial for developing innovative regenerative treatment strategies.

Objective To investigate the role of pharmacists in smoking cessation abroad and foster the dissemination and initiation of smoking cessation services led by pharmacist. Methods A search and compiles information on the value of pharmacists in offering smoking cessation services were carried out through the PubMed and Scopus electronic databases and the evolution of supportive policies were analyzed. The feasibility and barriers to pharmacists providing these services were examined. Results The involvement of pharmacists in smoking cessation positively impacted public health and the economy. Endowing pharmacists with the authority to prescribe smoking cessation medications, providing training in this service, and bolstering their potential through interprofessional collaboration can effectively address the barriers to their role in smoking cessation. Conclusion It is advisable to consider integrating smoking cessation services led by pharmacist into healthcare and public health policy guidelines ,which could enhance the efficacy and sustainability of smoking cessation initiatives.

Objective To rationally allocate pharmaceutical and healthcare human resources,and to explore the feasibility of implementing the system of licensed assistant pharmacists in retail pharmacies.Methods Through literature review,questionnaire surveys,and statistical analysis of exam scores,the training status of pharmacy technicians with secondary vocational education,the employment situation in retail pharmacies,and the results of the licensed pharmacist qualification examination were deeply understood.Results Every year,a certain number of graduates with a secondary vocational education in pharmacy entered society,and retail pharmacies were willing to recruit pharmacy technicians with this educational background,their professional competence were recognized.Pharmacy technicians with secondary vocational education can obtain the professional qualification of practicing pharmacists through hard work,and demonstrated the basic competency for working as licensed assistant pharmacists.Conclusion The implementation of the licensed assistant pharmacist system among pharmacy technicians with secondary vocational education in retail pharmacies is feasible.This system can fully leverage the role of pharmacy technicians with secondary vocational education,make up for the shortage of professional personnel in certain regions,promote the construction of the pharmaceutical care system in retail pharmacies,and ensure drug quality and medication safety.

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.

Liver ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is a significant factor contributing to liver dysfunction following surgical procedures such as liver transplantation and hepatectomy, and its pathogenesis is closely associated with oxidative stress and immune responses. However, effective prevention and therapeutic strategies are still lacking. Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), primarily produced by the fermentation of gut microbiota, are the major source of these acids in the human body. Research has indicated that SCFAs play a significant role in oxidative stress and immune response. This review primarily focuses on the advancements on the role of SCFAs, the main metabolic byproducts of gut microbiota, in liver IRI, with a view to provide insights for the development of prevention and treatment strategies for liver IRI.

Objective:To assess the efficacy of different fusion strategies involving the convolutional block attention module (CBAM) and Unet for automatic pancreas segmentation in enhanced CT images of patients with acute pancreatitis.Methods:A retrospective analysis was conducted on 1 158 patients with acute pancreatitis admitted to the Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College between January 1st, 2016 and July 30th, 2021. Among them, 141 patients with first-episode acute pancreatitis were randomly categorized into mild, moderate, and severe cases. The test set comprised 5 mild and 15 severe cases, while the remaining 126 cases were used for training. Within the training set, 20% of the data was randomly allocated as the validation set. Different fusion paths of the CBAM and Unet networks were trained, utilizing the Dice similarity coefficient, Hausdorff distance (HD), and pixel accuracy (PA) as evaluation metrics. The model demonstrating the best performance on the validation set was selected and evaluated on the test set. Additionally, the Unet model was combined with the attention gate attention mechanism (AttentionUnet) in the skip connection, and the ResBlock replaced the original convolution module (ResUnet) in the Unet network. Moreover, the skip connection branch module of feature extraction was integrated with CBAM (ResUnet_CBAM) for comparison.Results:Unet_CBAM achieved better results on the test set with a Dice value of 80.06%, a HD value of 3.765 9 and a PA value of 0.992 3, all surpassing other fusion strategies. The segmentation accuracy of the pancreatic region in CT images of acute pancreatitis patients was notably enhanced compared to Unet and its related variant networks.Conclusions:The Unet network integrated into CBAM after skip connection can better perform pancreatic segmentation on enhanced CT images of patients with acute pancreatitis and can effectively improve the efficiency of relevant personnel in pancreatic segmentation on enhanced CT images of patients with acute pancreatitis.

The construction of a medication safety culture is important for medication safety management and rational drug use.The construction of medication safety culture standards is formulated based on relevant national policies and regulations,accreditation standards for hospitals,expert opinions,the current situation,and the development trend of the healthcare industry.With scientificity,general applicability,instructive guidance,and practicality,they standardized basic requirements,management processes,and improvement of the construction of medication safety culture.To facilitate understanding and the implementation of the standards,we describe the process of standards formulation and explain the key points of the standards.

Male infertility is a significant cause of psychosocial and marital distress in approximately 50% of couples who are unable to conceive, with male factors being the underlying cause. Guijiajiao (Colla Carapacis et Plastri, CCP) is a Traditional Chinese Medicine commonly used to treat male infertility. The present study aimed to investigate the potential mechanisms underlying the preventive effects of CCP on male infertility. An infertile male rat model was established using cyclophosphamide (CTX), and CCP was administered for both treatment and prevention. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) was also performed to explore the role of gut microbiota in the CCP-mediated prevention of male infertility in rats. Sperm motility and concentration were determined using a semi-automatic sperm classification analyzer. Subsequently, histopathological analysis using HE staining was performed to examine the changes in the small intestine and testis. Moreover, the serum levels of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and testosterone were measured by ELISA. In addition, immunohistochemistry was conducted to detect CD3 expression in the small intestine, while RT-qPCR was employed to assess the expressions of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β), cluster of differentiation 3 (CD3), Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), and C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 10 (CXCL-10) in the small intestine and epididymis. Finally, gut microbiota was analyzed by 16S rRNA sequencing. CCP improved sperm motility, number, and concentration in CTX-induced infertile male rats. CCP increased the serum testosterone level, inhibited the immune cell infiltration of the intestinal lamina propria, and promoted the aggregation of CD3⁺ T cells in CTX-induced male infertility rats. CCP also inhibited the expressions of MCP-1, CXCL-10, and IL-1β in the epididymis of male infertility rats. At the genus level, CTX led to a reduction in the abundance of Lactobacillus, Clostridia_UCG.014, and Romboutsia in the intestinal tract of rats. In contrast, CCP decreased the abundance of Ruminococcus and increased the abundance of Romboutsia in infertile male rats. Additionally, FMT experiments proved that the gut microbiota of CCP-treated rats facilitated testicular tissue recovery and spermatogenesis while also reducing the serum LPS level in infertile male rats. CCP improves the spermatogenic ability of infertile male rats by restoring gut microbiota diversity and inhibiting epididymal inflammation.
Humans ; Rats ; Male ; Animals ; Gastrointestinal Microbiome ; Lipopolysaccharides/pharmacology* ; RNA, Ribosomal, 16S ; Semen ; Sperm Motility ; Infertility, Male/prevention & control* ; Testosterone