Search

Introduction: Determining the causal relationship between polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) holds significant implications for GDM prevention and treatment. Despite numerous observational studies suggesting an association between PCOS and GDM, it remains unclear whether a definitive causal relationship exists between these two conditions and which specific features of PCOS contribute to increased incidence of GDM., Methods: The causal relationship between polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), its characteristic indices, and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) was investigated using a two-sample Mendelian randomization study based on publicly available statistics from genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The inverse-variance weighted method was employed as the primary analytical approach to examine the association between PCOS, its characteristic indices, and GDM. MR Egger intercept was used to assess pleiotropy, while Q values and their corresponding P values were utilized to evaluate heterogeneity. It is important to note that this study adopts a two-sample MR design where PCOS and its characteristic indices are considered as exposures, while GDM is treated as an outcome., Results: The study results indicate that there is no causal relationship between PCOS and GDM (all methods P > 0.05, 95% CI of OR values passed 1). The IVW OR value was 1.007 with a 95% CI of 0.906 to 1.119 and a P value of 0.904. Moreover, the MR Egger Q value was 8.141 with a P value of 0.701, while the IVW Q value was also 8.141 with a P value of 0.774, indicating no significant heterogeneity. Additionally, the MR Egger intercept was 0.0004, which was close to zero with a P value of 0.988, suggesting no pleiotropy. However, the study did find a causal relationship between several other factors such as testosterone, high-density lipoprotein, sex hormone-binding globulin, body mass index, waist-hip ratio, apolipoprotein A-I, number of children, diabetes illnesses of mother, father and siblings, hemoglobin A1c, fasting insulin, fasting blood glucose, years of schooling, and GDM based on the IVW method., Conclusion: We observed no association between genetically predicted PCOS and the risk of GDM, implying that PCOS itself does not confer an increased susceptibility to GDM. The presence of other PCOS-related factors such as testosterone, high-density lipoprotein, and sex hormone-binding globulin may elucidate the link between PCOS and GDM. Based on these findings, efforts aimed at preventing GDM in individuals with PCOS should prioritize those exhibiting high-risk features rather than encompassing all women with PCOS., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Guixue, Yifu, Xiaofeng, Qian, Yuan, Wen, Conghui and Zuobin.)

Clinical prediction models play an important role in the field of medicine. These can help predict the probability of an individual suffering from disease, complications, and treatment outcomes by applying specific methodologies. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common disease with a high incidence rate, huge heterogeneity, short- and long-term complications, and complex treatments. In this systematic review study, we reviewed the progress of clinical prediction models in PCOS patients, including diagnosis and prediction models for PCOS complications and treatment outcomes. We aimed to provide ideas for medical researchers and clues for the management of PCOS. In the future, models with poor accuracy can be greatly improved by adding well-known parameters and validations, which will further expand our understanding of PCOS in terms of precision medicine. By developing a series of predictive models, we can make the definition of PCOS more accurate, which can improve the diagnosis of PCOS and reduce the likelihood of false positives and false negatives. It will also help discover complications earlier and treatment outcomes being known earlier, which can result in better outcomes for women with PCOS., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Objective: To investigate clinical outcomes of open and retroperitoneal laparoscopic nephron-sparing surgery in the treatment of complex renal tumours., Methods: A retrospective case study was conducted. Patients with complex renal tumours admitted to our hospital between January 2018 and September 2019 were enrolled; the included patients (n=40) were divided into the observation group (open partial nephrectomy, n=20) and control group (laparoscopic partial nephrectomy, n=20) according to operation modes. The operation time, renal warm ischaemia time, intraoperative blood loss, renal pedicle blocking time, intestinal function recovery time, postoperative hospital stay, and postoperative complications were recorded., Results: Significant differences were noted regarding renal warm ischaemia time, renal pedicle blocking time, intraoperative blood loss, operation time, and postoperative hospital stay between the observation and control groups ( P <0.05); however, no significant difference was observed in intestinal function recovery time and postoperative drainage days ( P >0.05)., Conclusion: Open surgery remains the recommended surgical method for the treatment of few complex tumours in the renal hilus region and has gradually become the renal surgery of choice at present, although laparoscopic surgery has evolved tremendously., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (Copyright: © Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences.)

Objectives: To study the relationship between the reliability and validity of VES-13 and the influencing factors of the vulnerable condition of patients with advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer, so as to provide a reference for the health management and nursing of elderly inpatients., Methods: By means of convenience sampling, 150 vulnerable patients with advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer who were admitted to the Department of Oncology of the Affiliated Hospital of Hebei University from April 2019 to March 2020 were selected. General data questionnaire, simple mental state checklist, anxiety self-assessment scale, and the vulnerable elders 13 survey (VES-13) were used in this study. The reliability and validity were tested by SPSS 20.0., Results: For this group of patients, VES-13 Cronbach's α was 0.832, living function was 0.778, body function was 0.846, and the correlation coefficient between items was between 0.401 and 0.823 (P<0.01); the retest reliability was 0.831 (P<0.05), and the correlation coefficient was0.504 (P<0.05). The average time to fill in each scale was 4.53±1.32 Minutes, and general indicators such as economic status and education level were significantly correlated with vulnerability. The clinical indicators of prostate-specific antigen levels, multiple bone metastases, and bone pain were significantly correlated with vulnerability., Conclusion: VES-13 scale had high level of reliability and operability, and was straight forward to understand and use; it can be used as an effective tool for the assessment of vulnerability in patients with advanced prostate cancer. The vulnerability of patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer showed significant correlation with economic status, education level, prostate-specific antigen level, multiple bone metastases, bone pain and other indicators. Nursing staff should pay close attention to the relevant factors of inpatients and give targeted advance intervention measures to facilitate rapid recovery of elderly inpatients., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (Copyright: © Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences.)

Purpose: To explore the role of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) in renal ischemia/reperfusion injury of diabetic rats., Methods: Sixty adult male rats were randomly divided into 6 groups, including sham group (S group), ischemia-reperfusion group (I/R group), ischemia-reperfusion+ATRA group (A group), diabetic group (D group), diabetic ischemia-reperfusion group (DI/R group), diabetic ischemia-reperfusion +ATRA group (DA group). The levels of creatinine (Cr), cystatin C (Cys-C) and β2-microglobulin (β2-MG) were measured. Morphology of renal tissue was observed under light microscope., Results: DJ-1, Nrf2, HO-1 and caspase-3 were detected by western blot. DJ-1, Nrf2, HO-1 and caspase-3 in I/R group, D group and DI/R group was higher than that in S group. Compared with I/R group, Nrf2 and HO-1 in A group was decreased, but caspase-3 was increased. However, Nrf2 in DA group was higher than that in DI/R group, HO-1 and caspase-3 in DA group were lower than that in DI/R group. Compared with group S, Cr, Cys-C and β2-MG in I/R group, A group, D group, and DI/R group were higher. Whereas the levels of Cr, Cys-C, β2-MG and renal injury score in DA group were lower than those in DI/R group., Conclusion: ATRA has a protective effect on renal ischemia-reperfusion injury in diabetic rats, maybe relating to DJ/Nrf2 pathway.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the serum NF-κBp65, TLR4 (Toll-like receptor 4) expression in patients of preeclampsia and its diagnostic value as biomarkers., Methods: Thirty patients with preeclampsia (case group) and 30 normal pregnant women (control group) were included in this study. The serum level of NF-κBp65 and TLR4 were examined by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and compared between the two groups. The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity and area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were calculated by STATA11.0 statistical software., Results: The expression level of TLR4 and NF-κBp65 in serum of preeclampsia patient group was 3.76±1.07ng/ ml and 183.20±49.19ng/ml, whereas that in the serum of the normal pregnant group was 2.43±0.69ng/ml and 98.68±29.80ng/ml. The expression of TLR4 and NF-κBp65 in serum of preeclampsia patient group was significantly higher than that of the normal pregnant group (P<0.05); The Pearson correlation test showed that the TLR4 expression in the serum of preeclampsia patients and normal pregnant women was positively correlated with their NF-κBp65 expression [r preeclampsia =0.46, (P<0.05), r normal =0.48, (P<0.05)]. When TLR4 and NF-κBp65 were selected as the reference indexes, the diagnostic sensitivity of preeclampsia was 86.67% (95%CI:69.28%-96.24%) and 90.33% (95%CI:73.47%-97.89%), and the specific ity was 70.00% (95%CI:50.60%-85.27%) and 83.33% (95%CI:65.28%-94.36%). The area under the ROC curve was 0.84 and 0.89., Conclusion: Serum levels of TLR4 and NF-κBp65 was significantly higher in patients with preeclampsia which may involve in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia, and can be used as biomarker for predicting preeclampsia., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement: Authors state no conflict of interest.

Objective: To analyze the construction and operation status of management system of laboratories of schistosomiasis control institutions in Hubei Province, so as to provide the reference for the standardized detection and management of schistosomiasis laboratories., Methods: According to the laboratory standard of schistosomiasis at provincial, municipal and county levels, the management system construction and operation status of 60 schistosomiasis control institutions was assessed by the acceptance examination method from 2013 to 2015., Results: The management system was already occupied over all the laboratories of schistosomiasis control institutions and was officially running. There were 588 non-conformities and the inconsistency rate was 19.60%. The non-conformity rate of the management system of laboratory quality control was 38.10% (224 cases) and the non-conformity rate of requirements of instrument and equipment was 23.81% (140 cases)., Conclusions: The management system has played an important role in the standardized management of schistosomiasis laboratories.

Purpose: To determine whether Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) is the potential targets of prevention or progression in the renal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury of STZ-induced diabetic rats., Methods: Thirty six Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly arranged to the nondiabetic (ND) or diabetic group (DM), with each group further divided into sham (no I/R injury), I/R (ischemia-reperfusion) and CD (given by Chloroquine) group. Preoperatively, Chloroquine (40 mg/kg, intraperitoneal injection.) was administrated 6 days for treatment group. I/R animals were subjected to 25 min of bilateral renal ischemia. Renal function, histology, apoptosis, cytokines, expression of TLR7, MyD88 and NF-κB were detected., Results: The serum levels of blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, IL-6 and TNF-α, apoptotic tubular epithelial cells, expression of TLR7, MyD88 and NF-κB were significantly increased in DM+I/R group, compared with ND+I/R group (p<0.05). All these changes were further improved by TLR7 inhibition Chloroquine except Paller scores (p<0.05)., Conclusion: Toll-like receptor 7 inhibition attenuates the acute renal ischemia/reperfusion injury of STZ-induced diabetic in SD rats.

Purpose: This study evaluated whether a prophylaxis strategy directed by the graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) biomarker might reduce the 100-day incidence of acute GVHD grades II to IV., Patients and Methods: This controlled, open-label, randomized trial included 228 patients who underwent haploidentical transplantation. On the basis of bone marrow allogeneic graft CD4:CD8 ratios, patients were categorized as low risk (n = 83; group A) or high risk (n = 145). Patients at high risk were randomly assigned to either receive (n = 72; group B) or not receive (n = 73; group C) low-dose corticosteroid prophylaxis., Results: The incidence in group B was 21% (95% CI, 11% to 31%) compared with 26% (95% CI, 16%to 36%; P = .43) in group A and 48% (95% CI, 32% to 60%; P < .001) in group C. Low-dose corticosteroid prophylaxis was significantly associated with a relatively low risk of acute GVHD grades II to IV (hazard ratio, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.49 to 0.89; P = .007) and rapid platelet recovery (hazard ratio, 0.30; 95% CI, 0.23 to 0.47; P < .001). The incidence of moderate-to-severe chronic GVHD in group B (21%) was lower than that in both group A (50%; P = .025) and group C (36%; P = .066). The 100-day corticosteroid doses were 205 ± 111 mg in group B, 229 ± 149 mg in group A (P = .256), and 286.54 ± 259.67 mg in group C (P = .016). Compared with group C, group B showed significantly lower incidences of femoral head necrosis (P = .034) and hypertension (P = .015). Infection rates were comparable among these groups., Conclusion: Our results suggest that risk stratification-directed, low-dose corticosteroid prophylaxis significantly decreased the incidence of acute GVHD grades II to IV, accelerated platelet recovery, and reduced adverse events without increasing infections., (© 2016 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.)

In this paper, nanowire network anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) was fabricated by just adding a simple film-eroding process after the production of porous AAO. After depositing 50 nm of Au onto the surface, nanowire network AAO can be used as ultrasensitive and high reproducibility surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate. The average Raman enhancement factor of the nanowire network AAO SERS substrate can reach 5.93 × 106, which is about 14% larger than that of commercial Klarite® substrates. Simultaneously, the relative standard deviations in the SERS intensities are limited to approximately 7%. All of the results indicate that our large-area low-cost high-performance nanowire structure AAO SERS substrates have a great advantage in chemical/biological sensing applications.

Noble metal nanogap structure supports strong surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) which can be used to detect single molecules. However, the lack of reproducible fabrication techniques with nanometer-level control over the gap size has limited practical applications. In this letter, by depositing the Au film onto the cicada wing, we engineer the ordered array of nanopillar structures on the wing to form large-area high-performance SERS substrates. Through the control of the thickness of the Au film deposited onto the cicada wing, the gap sizes between neighboring nanopillars are fine defined. SERS substrates with sub-10-nm gap sizes are obtained, which have the highest average Raman enhancement factor (EF) larger than 2 × 108, about 40 times as large as that of commercial Klarite® substrates. The cicada wings used as templates are natural and environment-friendly. The depositing method is low cost and high throughput so that our large-area high-performance SERS substrates have great advantage for chemical/biological sensing applications.

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of a three-stage intervention to reduce caesarean deliveries in a Chinese tertiary hospital., Methods: A retrospective study was conducted to assess whether educating staff, educating patients and auditing surgeon practices (introduced in 2005) had reduced caesarean delivery rates. Multiple logistic regression was used to check for a potential association between caesarean rates and rates of admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)., Findings: The caesarean delivery rate ranged from 53.5% to 56.1% in 2001-2004 and from 43.9% to 36.1% in 2005-2011. When 2001-2004 and 2005-2011 were treated as "before" and "after" periods to evaluate the intervention's impact on the mean caesarean section rate, a significant reduction was noted: from 54.8% to 40.3% (odds ratio, OR: 0.56; 95% confidence interval, CI: 0.52-0.59; χ(2) test: P < 0.001). The overall drop in the caesarean section rate was significant (χ(2) test: P < 0.001) and inversely correlated with the years (Spearman's ρ: -0.096; P < 0.001). Although complicated pregnancies increased after 2004, the primary caesarean section rate decreased annually by 20% on average in 2005-2011, after practice audits were implemented. Multiple logistic regression showed a positive association between the caesarean delivery rate and the rate of admission to the NICU (adjusted OR: 1.26; 95% CI: 1.14-1.40)., Conclusion: Patient and staff education and practice audits reduced the Caesarean section rate in a tertiary referral hospital without an increase in admissions to the NICU.