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Background Lucitanib is a novel multi-target inhibitor of FGFR1-3, VEGFR 1-3, and PDGFR α/β. Here, we evaluated the safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of lucitanib in recurrent and metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (RM-NPC). Methods Patients with pretreated RM-NPC were randomly divided into two treatment arms: continuous or intermittent treatment. The primary endpoint was safety and tolerability. Secondary endpoints were objective response rate (ORR), disease control rate (DCR), and progression-free survival (PFS). Results One hundred percent of patients in the continuous arm and 90% of patients in the intermittent arm had at least one treatment-related AE (TRAE). Grade ≥3 related TRAEs occurred in 5 patients in the continuous arm (5/10, 50%). No TRAEs grade >3 occurred in the intermittent arm. The ORR and DCR of the continuous arm was 20% and 90%, and the intermittent arm was 10% and 60%, respectively. All responses were observed by the first evaluation. The duration of response was more than 1 year, with two patients still on treatment with sustained response at more than 3 years. Conclusion Lucitanib has promising clinical activity and tolerable safety profile in heavily pretreated patients with NPC. Patients who responded to lucitanib treatment generally achieved a long DoR. Lucitanib is now being evaluated in phase II/III studies. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT03260179

In this paper, a controlled quantum dialogue protocol is designed based on five-qubit entangled states. One five-qubit entangled state can be used to exchange one communicant’s two private bits with the other communicant’s two private bits under the control of an honest supervisor. Security analysis turns out that it can overcome the information leakage problem and can resist the active attacks from an outside attacker. The designed protocol only needs single-particle measurements and Bell state measurements, both of which can be realized with current technologies.

Recently, Wang et al. put forward a high-capacity three-party quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol with single photons in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom (Int J Theor Phys (2013) 52:1043–1051). In this paper, the communication capacity of Wang et al.’s QSS protocol is improved by providing more composite unitary operations for Alice’s encoding. Compared with Wang et al.’s QSS protocol, the improved protocol doubles the communication capacity of the photon for sharing Alice’s secret bits. The improved protocol only needs two-qubit single-photon states in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom and single-photon measurements. Compared with the QSS protocols based on entangled states and entangled state measurements, the improved protocol is more feasible.

In this paper, we construct a semi-quantum dialogue (SQD) protocol by using Bell entangled states as the initial quantum resource. The information leakage problem is prevented by utilizing the entanglement correlation of two particles from one Bell entangled state. The security towards active attacks from an outside Eve is guaranteed by twice security checks and one classical one-time pad encryption process. The proposed SQD protocol can be realized in experiment with present quantum technologies. Compared with the traditional quantum dialogue (QD) protocols without information leakage, the advantage of the proposed SQD protocol lies in that it doesn’t require both communicants to possess quantum capabilities.

Hong-ming Pan,1,* Hong-ling Li,2,* Zhang-shun Shen,2 Hui Guo,2 Qian Zhao,2 Jian-guo Li2 1Graduate School of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, 050051, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Emergency Medicine, Hebei General Hospital, Shijiazhuang, 050051, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jian-guo LiDepartment of Emergency Medicine, Hebei General Hospital, No. 348 Heping West Road, Shijiazhuang, 050051, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 31185988361Email li_jian_guo3@163.comObjective: The present study aimed to explore the effectiveness of the etiology checklist and process thinking in the differential diagnosis for acute abdominal pain.Methods: A retrospective design was used to include 5,403 patients with acute abdominal pain in the Emergency Department of Hebei Provincial People’s Hospital. The patients with acute abdominal pain between July and December 2017 in whom the etiology checklist and process thinking were not implemented were selected as the traditional group. Those with acute abdominal pain between July and December 2018 in whom the etiology checklist and process thinking were implemented were selected as the process thinking group. The clinical data, such as the emergency length of stay, hospitalization expenses, hospitalization length of stay, diagnostic accuracy, and outcome, were compared between the two groups.Results: For patients at emergency level 2 and above, the average emergency length of stay was shorter in the process thinking group than in the traditional group, while the average emergency length of stay was longer for patients at emergency level 3. For hospitalized patients at emergency level 2 and above and patients at emergency level 3, those in the process thinking group had improved diagnostic accuracy, shorter average hospitalization length of stay, reduced average hospital expenses, and improved outcomes. In the comparison among six physicians, the results in the traditional group were inconsistent and statistically different in terms of the average emergency length of stay and diagnostic accuracy, while the results in the process thinking group tended to be consistent. The differences were not statistically different.Conclusion: The diagnostic model for acute abdominal pain based on the etiology checklist and process thinking could improve the diagnostic accuracy and outcomes for patients with acute abdominal pain.Keywords: acute abdominal pain, emergency diagnosis, lateral thinking, process thinking

A quantum dialogue scheme based on entanglement swapping and Hadamard operation via cavity QED is proposed, which effectively uses the evolution law of atom in cavity QED. The proposed scheme uses Bell states and GHZ states as quantum resource and only needs single-atom measurements. The proposed scheme is secure against active attacks from an eavesdropper and can transmit 4 secret bits per round communication.

Background: Lymph node metastasis (LNM) of lung cancer is an important factor associated with prognosis. Dysregulated microRNAs (miRNAs) are becoming a new powerful tool to characterize tumorigenesis and metastasis. We have developed and validated a miRNA disease signature to predict LNM in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Method: LUAD miRNAs and clinical data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were obtained and divided randomly into training (n = 259) and validation (n = 83) cohorts. A miRNA signature was built using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) (λ = -1.268) and logistic regression model. The performance of the miRNA signature was evaluated using the area under curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). We performed decision curve analysis (DCA) to assess the clinical usefulness of the signature. We also conducted a miRNA-regulatory network analysis to look for potential genes engaged in LNM in LUAD. Result: Thirteen miRNAs were selected to build our miRNA disease signature. The model showed good calibration in the training cohort, with an AUC of 0.782 (95% CI: 0.725-0.839). In the validation cohort, AUC was 0.691 (95% CI: 0.575-0.806). DCA demonstrated that the miRNA signature was clinically useful. Conclusion: The miRNA disease signature can be used as a noninvasive method to predict LNM in patients with lung adenocarcinoma objectively and the signature achieved high accuracy for prediction.

Quantum private comparison (QPC) aims to determine whether two parties’ private inputs are equal or not without leaking out their genuine contents. At present, there is seldom QPC protocol which uses single photons as quantum resource. In this paper, we are devoted to converting Zhang et al.’s three-party quantum summation (QS) protocol based on single photons (Int. J. Quantum Inf. 15(2), 1750010, 2017) into the corresponding two-party QPC protocol with single photons. The correctness and the security of the proposed QPC protocol with single photons can be guaranteed. The proposed QPC protocol is naturally free from Trojan horse attacks because of its single directional particle transmission mode.

Recently, Jia et al. proposed the quantum private comparison protocol with the genuine four-particle entangled states (Jia et al., Int. J. Theor. Phys. 51(4), 1187–1194 (2012)). Jia et al. claimed that in this protocol, TP cannot obtain Alice and Bob’s secrets and only knows their comparison result. However, in this paper, we demonstrate that if TP is a genuine semi-honest third party, he can totally obtain Alice and Bob’s secrets by launching a particular intercept-resend-measure attack. After suggesting the intercept-resend-measure attack strategy from TP first, we put forward one corresponding improvement to prevent this attack.

Objective The pathogenesis of sepsis associated encephalopathy (SAE) remains poorly understood. Vagus nerve plays an important role in gut-microbiota-brain axis. This study aimed to investigate whether vague nerve is a key mediator of the impact of intestinal microbiota on SAE. Methods Male rats were randomly divided into four groups (n = 20): SHAM (SH) group, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) group, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) +LPS group, and vagotomy (VGX) + LPS + FMT group. The left cervical vagotomy was performed 30 min before LPS administration in LPS + FMT + VGX group. LPS+ FMT and LPS + FMT + VGX groups received nasogastric infusion of feces from healthy donor three times a day. Fecal samples were collected every two days to monitor changes in microbiota composition by 16S rDNA analysis. Brain function was evaluated by behavioral tests and EEG. The levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-10 in brain cortex were detected by ELISA. The expression of Iba-1 in brain cortex was assessed by immunohistochemistry and Western blot analysis. Results Significant modification of microbiota composition, characterized by a profound increase of commensals in the Firmicutes phylum and depletion of opportunistic organisms in the Proteobacteria phylum, was observed in FMT groups compared to LPS group. Furthermore, we identified a reconstituted bacterial community enriched in Firmicutes and depleted of Proteobacteria. In both FMT groups the diversity of the fecal microbiota and the microbiota composition were similar to SH group. LPS mice treated with FMT demonstrated a better spatial memory and less EEG abnormalities, significantly attenuated levels of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and decreased number of Iba-1 positive microglia in the cortex, but these beneficial effects of FMT were reversed by VGX. Conclusions FMT can change intestinal microbiota in sepsis patients, and vagus nerve is a key mediator between intestinal microbiota and SAE. These findings suggest that FMT and vagus nerve are potential therapy targets for treating SAE.

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a minimally invasive technology for the treatment of liver malignancies and is used as an adjuvant therapy in patients with colorectal liver metastasis (CLM). This study enrolled a total of 49 CLM patients who underwent RFA treatment. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed using the log-rank test and Cox proportional hazard model, respectively. Univariate analysis showed that OS was closely correlated with tumor size, frequency of RFA treatment, resection of the liver lesion, and CEA levels before RFA (p p