Epidemiology of liver cirrhosis and associated complications: Current knowledge and future directions

Cirrhosis causes a heavy global burden. In this review, we summarized up-to-date epidemiological features of cirrhosis and its complications. Recent epidemiological studies reported an increase in the prevalence of cirrhosis in 2017 compared to in 1990 in both men and women, with 5.2 million cases of cirrhosis and chronic liver disease occurring in 2017. Cirrhosis caused 1.48 million deaths in 2019, an increase of 8.1% compared to 2017. Disability-adjusted life-years due to cirrhosis ranked 16th among all diseases and 7th in people aged 50-74 years in 2019. The global burden of hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus-associated cirrhosis is decreasing, while the burden of cirrhosis due to alcohol and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is increasing rapidly. We described the current epidemiology of the major complications of cirrhosis, including ascites, variceal bleeding, hepatic encephalopathy, renal disorders, and infections. We also summarized the epidemiology of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with cirrhosis. In the future, NAFLD-related cirrhosis will likely become more common due to the prevalence of metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, and the prevalence of alcohol-induced cirrhosis is increasing. This altered epidemiology should be clinically noted, and relevant interventions should be undertaken.     

Modeling hybrid rough set-based classification procedures to identify hemodialysis adequacy for end-stage renal disease patients

Healthcare problems observed in the majority of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients regarding hemodialysis (HD) treatment are serious issues for the Taiwanese healthcare services, and an interesting topic is thus the adequacy of HD therapy. This study successfully models a hybrid procedure to measure HD adequacy to assess therapeutic effects and to explore the relationship between accuracy and coverage for interested parties. The proposed model has better accuracy, a lower standard deviation, and fewer attributes than the listed methods under various evaluation criteria. The study results are useful to subsequent researchers to develop suitable applications, and to ESRD patients and their doctors to ensure satisfactory medical quality.     

Combination of Radiological and Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix Textural Features Used to Distinguish Solitary Pulmonary Nodules by Computed Tomography

The objective of this study was to investigate the method of the combination of radiological and textural features for the differentiation of malignant from benign solitary pulmonary nodules by computed tomography. Features including 13 gray level co-occurrence matrix textural features and 12 radiological features were extracted from 2,117 CT slices, which came from 202 (116 malignant and 86 benign) patients. Lasso-type regularization to a nonlinear regression model was applied to select predictive features and a BP artificial neural network was used to build the diagnostic model. Eight radiological and two textural features were obtained after the Lasso-type regularization procedure. Twelve radiological features alone could reach an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.84 in differentiating between malignant and benign lesions. The 10 selected characters improved the AUC to 0.91. The evaluation results showed that the method of selecting radiological and textural features appears to yield more effective in the distinction of malignant from benign solitary pulmonary nodules by computed tomography.     

心脏MR特征追踪技术早期评价高血压性心脏病左心室亚临床功能障碍的研究

目的探讨心脏MR特征追踪(CMR-FT)技术在早期定量分析高血压性心脏病(HHD)左心室亚临床功能障碍中的应用价值。方法回顾性分析2018年10月至2019年11月于华中科技大学同济医学院附属同济医院诊治的高血压性心脏病伴左心室肥厚(HHD-LVH)患者16例、高血压性心脏病不伴左心室肥厚(HHD-非LVH)患者24例及年龄与性别相匹配的血压正常者24名。所有研究对象进行3.0 T CMR检查,扫描序列包括心脏电影和钆延迟增强。通过Argus后处理软件测量左心室心功能参数,主要包括左心室舒张末期容积指数(LVEDVI)、左心室质量指数(LVMI)、左心室壁最大厚度(LVMWT)及左心室质量与左心室舒张末期容积比例(M/V)。采用CVI42商业后处理软件测量左心室心肌应变指标,包括整体径向、圆周、长轴应变(GRS、GCS、GLS),收缩期径向、圆周、长轴应变率峰值(SRSR_peak、SCSR_peak、SLSR_peak),舒张期径向、圆周、长轴应变率峰值(DRSR_peak、DCSR_peak、DLSR_peak)。以单因素方差分析(scheffe校正)或Kruskal-Wallis检验比较3组组间连续性变量的差异。以Pearson或Spearman相关系数进行相关性分析。结果HHD-LVH组的LVEDVI、LVMI、LVMWT及M/V均显著高于HHD-非LVH组和对照组(P<0.05)。与对照组比较,HHD-LVH组的GRS、GCS和GLS减低,HHD-LVH组和HHD-非LVH组的DRSR_peak、DCSR_peak和DLSR_peak均减低,差异均具有统计学意义(P<0.05)。相关性分析发现LVMI与GRS(r=-0.384,P=0.002)、GCS(r=0.392,P=0.001)、GLS(r=0.491,P<0.0001)存在线性相关,LVMWT与GRS(r=-0.362,P=0.003)、GCS(r=0.384,P=0.002)、GLS(r=0.422,P=0.001)存在非线性相关,LVEDVI与GRS(r=-0.295,P=0.018)、GCS(r=0.264,P=0.035)存在非线性相关。结论CMR-FT技术测量的心肌应变指标可作为早期评价HHD患者左心室亚临床功能障碍的影像学参数,并有助于指导早期干预治疗,改善心室重塑。     

Short-Term Visual Experience Leads to Potentiation of Spontaneous Activity in Mouse Superior Colliculus

Spontaneous activity in the brain maintains an internal structured pattern that reflects the external environment,which is essential for processing information and developing perception and cognition.An essential prerequisite of spontaneous activity for perception is the ability to reverberate external information,such as by potentiation.Yet its role in the processing of potentiation in mouse superior colliculus(SC)neurons is less studied.Here,we used electrophysiological recording,optogenetics,and drug infusion methods to investigate the mechanism of potentiation in SC neurons.We found that visual experience potentiated SC neurons several minutes later in different developmental stages,and the similarity between spontaneous and visually-evoked activity increased with age.Before eye-opening,activation of retinal ganglion cells that expressed ChR2 also induced the potentiation of spontaneous activity in the mouse SC.Potentiation was dependenton stimulus number and showed feature selectivity for direction and orientation.Optogenetic activation of parvalbumin neurons in the SC attenuated the potentiation induced by visual experience.Furthermore,potentiation in SC neurons was blocked by inhibiting the glutamate transporter GLT1.These results indicated that the potentiation induced by a visual stimulus might play a key role in shaping the internal representation of the environment,and serves as a carrier for short-term memory consolidation.     

An improved electromagnetism-like mechanism algorithm and its application to the prediction of diabetes mellitus

Recently, the use of artificial intelligence based data mining techniques for massive medical data classification and diagnosis has gained its popularity, whereas the effectiveness and efficiency by feature selection is worthy to further investigate. In this paper, we presents a novel method for feature selection with the use of opposite sign test (OST) as a local search for the electromagnetism-like mechanism (EM) algorithm, denoted as improved electromagnetism-like mechanism (IEM) algorithm. Nearest neighbor algorithm is served as a classifier for the wrapper method. The proposed IEM algorithm is compared with nine popular feature selection and classification methods. Forty-six datasets from the UCI repository and eight gene expression microarray datasets are collected for comprehensive evaluation. Non-parametric statistical tests are conducted to justify the performance of the methods in terms of classification accuracy and Kappa index. The results confirm that the proposed IEM method is superior to the common state-of-art methods. Furthermore, we apply IEM to predict the occurrence of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) after a gestational DM. Our research helps identify the risk factors for this disease; accordingly accurate diagnosis and prognosis can be achieved to reduce the morbidity and mortality rate caused by DM.     

PICU重症病毒性脑炎儿童CT、MRI影像学特征分析

目的探讨重症监护病房(PICU)重症病毒性脑炎儿童CT、MRI影像学特征。方法选取2017年1月至2018年7月我院PICU收治的重症病毒性脑炎儿童60例为研究对象,均采用CT、MRI两种影像学方式进行检查,比较两种方式的检查结果,分析临床应用价值。结果 60例患者中有48例被确诊为病毒性脑炎,5例被误诊为其他疾病,7例因影像显示无异常漏诊,阳性检出率为80.00%;48例患儿中18例在额叶处,6例在颞叶处,18例病灶在基底节,6例在脑顶叶处MRI检查确诊为病毒性脑炎的有56例,其中漏诊3例,误诊1例,阳性检出率为93.33%;脑内异常病灶在基底节的有22例,5例在颞叶处,15例在额叶处,4例在枕叶处,7例在脑顶叶处,以及小脑和丘脑处各有1例,其中2例为多发患者。结论 CT、MRI检查在病毒性脑炎患儿中均具有一定的诊断价值,但MRI检查对病毒性脑炎的诊断误诊、漏诊率明显低于CT检查,具有更高的临床应用价值,值得在临床上推广。     

134例贲门息肉患者内镜及病理特征研究

目的研究胃贲门息肉的内镜下表现、病理特征,提高对其认识。方法回顾分析解放军总医院内镜中心2012年-2013年134例贲门息肉患者内镜及病理资料。结果贲门息肉的检出率为0.495%。134例贲门息肉中,增生性息肉123例,贲门腺癌2例,胃底腺息肉9例。增生性息肉的组织来源主要为胃柱状上皮。贲门增生性息肉常合并反流性食管炎和慢性胃炎。结论贲门息肉是一组异质性疾病,最多见的是增生性息肉,极少数为贲门腺癌。