Diet and nutrition against inflammatory bowel disease: Trick or treat(ment)?

Even if the relationships between nutrition and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) remain underexplored, the current literature is providing, day by day, much more evidence on the effects of various diets in both prevention and treatment of such illnesses. Wrong dietary habits, together with other environmental factors such as pollution, breastfeeding, smoke, and/or antibiotics, are among the theoretical pathogenetic causes of IBD, whose multifactorial aetiology has been already confirmed. While some of these risk factors are potentially reversible, some others cannot be avoided, and efficient treatments become necessary to prevent IBD spread or recurrence. Furthermore, the drugs currently available for treatment of such disease provide low-to-no effect against the symptoms, making the illnesses still strongly disabling. Whether nutrition and specific diets will prove to effectively interrupt the course of IBD has still to be clarified and, in this sense, further research concerning the applications of such dietary interventions is still needed.     

High Order Finite Difference Hermite WENO Fixed-Point Fast Sweeping Method for Static Hamilton-Jacobi Equations

In this paper, we combine the nonlinear HWENO reconstruction in [43] and the fixed-point iteration with Gauss-Seidel fast sweeping strategy, to solve the static Hamilton-Jacobi equations in a novel HWENO framework recently developed in [22]. The proposed HWENO frameworks enjoys several advantages. First, compared with the traditional HWENO framework, the proposed methods do not need to introduce additional auxiliary equations to update the derivatives of the unknown function $\phi$. They are now computed from the current value of $\phi$ and the previous spatial derivatives of $\phi$. This approach saves the computational storage and CPU time, which greatly improves the computational efficiency of the traditional HWENO scheme. In addition, compared with the traditional WENO method, reconstruction stencil of the HWENO methods becomes more compact, their boundary treatment is simpler, and the numerical errors are smaller on the same mesh. Second, the fixed-point fast sweeping method is used to update the numerical approximation. It is an explicit method and does not involve the inverse operation of nonlinear Hamiltonian, therefore any Hamilton-Jacobi equations with complex Hamiltonian can be solved easily. It also resolves some known issues, including that the iterative number is very sensitive to the parameter $ε$ used in the nonlinear weights, as observed in previous studies. Finally, to further reduce the computational cost, a hybrid strategy is also presented. Extensive numerical experiments are performed on two-dimensional problems, which demonstrate the good performance of the proposed fixed-point fast sweeping HWENO methods.     

Treatment of metachronous colorectal cancer metastases in the Netherlands: A population-based study

BackgroundThis study aimed to describe the treatment of metachronous colorectal cancer metastases in a recent population-based cohort.MethodPatients with stage I-III colorectal cancer (CRC), diagnosed between January 1st and June 30th^, 2015 who were surgically treated with curative intent were selected from the Netherlands Cancer Registry. Follow-up was at least 3 years after diagnosis of the primary tumour. Treatment of metachronous metastases was categorized into local treatment, systemic treatment, and best supportive care. Overall survival was estimated using Kaplan-Meier method.ResultsOut of 5412 patients, 782 (14%) developed metachronous metastases, of whom 393 (50%) underwent local treatment (LT) with or without systemic therapy, 30% of patients underwent only systemic therapy (ST) and 19% only best supportive care (BSC). The most common metastatic site was the liver (51%) followed by lungs (33%) and peritoneum (22%). LT rates were 69%, 66%, and 44% for liver-only, lung-only and, peritoneal-only metastases respectively. Patients receiving LT and ST were significantly younger than patients receiving LT alone, while patients receiving BSC were significantly older than the other groups (p < 0.001). Patients with liver-only or lung-only metastases had a 3-year OS of 50.2% (43.3–56.7 95% CI) and 61.5% (50.7–70.6 95% CI) respectively. Patients with peritoneal-only disease had a lower 3-year OS, 18.1% (10.1–28.0 95% CI).ConclusionPatients with metastases confined to the liver and lung have the highest rates of local treatment for metachronous metastatic colorectal cancer. The number of patients who underwent local treatment is higher than reported in previous Dutch and international studies.     

The effectiveness of humanoid diagram teaching strategy on care capacity and retention in novice nurses

AimTo examine the effectiveness of a Humanoid Diagram Teaching Strategy (HDTS) on care capabilities and retention of novice nurses.BackgroundGuiding novice nurses in clinical practice is a matter of concern and the use of diagrams in assisting the learning process and to promote learning efficiency has been acknowledged.DesignThis is a quasi-experimental study with asynchronous repeated measurements for the experimental and control groups.MethodsThe study was conducted in a medical centre in southern Taiwan with 24 novice nurses. The intervention, Humanoid Diagrams Teaching Strategy, contained three parts: the head and neck; trunk; and limbs. The HDTS was applied three time weekly. Each session lasted approximately 30 min and the training lasted 4 weeks. The effectiveness of HDTS was measured using Mini-CEX, CbD and retention rates in the 3rd and 6th months of novice nurses’ experience.ResultsAfter the HDTS, although increases in mini-CEX and CbD scores in the experimental group were greater than the control group, these differences were not statistically significant after considering the time interaction. But the 3rd month and 6th month novice nurses’ retention rates were statistically significantly different by comparing the differences under the time interaction effects in both groups.ConclusionsThe Humanoid Diagram Teaching Strategy is an effective tool for preceptors to use in assisting novice nurses in learning, improving their nursing care knowledge and technical skills and to increase their retention rate.     

醛固酮受体拮抗剂螺内酯治疗难治性高血压疗效和安全性的Meta分析

背景难治性高血压是一种特殊类型的高血压，病因复杂，治疗难度大，更易引起靶器官损害。近年研究发现，在难治性高血压患者三联常用降压药物治疗基础上添加小剂量螺内酯能有效控制血压。但这些研究规模普遍较小，其有效性与安全性尚需进一步验证。目的系统评价螺内酯治疗难治性高血压的疗效及安全性。方法计算机检索PubMed、Web of Science、The Cochrane Library、中国知网、维普网、万方数据知识服务平台，筛选螺内酯治疗难治性高血压的随机对照研究，检索时间为建库至2021-05-03。由2名研究员独立筛选文献、提取资料并评价纳入研究的偏倚风险后，采用RevMan 5.3软件进行Meta分析。结果共纳入20项研究。9项研究未报告随机化分组方法，1项研究按纳入顺序编号奇偶分配（错误的随机化方法），7项研究未描述是否采用盲法，4项研究为开放标签，3项研究描述了分配隐藏，1项研究结果数据不完整、未报告对照组治疗后的安全性指标。Meta分析结果显示，疗效方面：与安慰剂和空白对照相比，螺内酯降低诊室血压、24 h动态血压、日间血压及夜间血压的效果好（P<0.05）；与其他降压药物总体相比，螺内酯降低诊室收缩压、24 h动态血压、日间收缩压、夜间收缩压及家庭自测收缩压的效果好（P<0.05）；与肾脏去交感神经术相比，螺内酯降低日间血压及夜间收缩压的效果好（P<0.05）。安全性方面：与安慰剂相比，应用螺内酯患者的血钾及血肌酐水平高（P<0.05）；与其他降压药物总体相比，应用螺内酯患者的血钾水平升高（P<0.05）；与肾脏去交感神经术相比，应用螺内酯患者的血肌酐水平升高（P<0.05）。结论螺内酯治疗难治性高血压是相对有效及安全的，但受纳入研究数量和质量的限制，该结论尚需更多高质量研究予以证实。