Search

Background Meningioma subtypes are one of the most common key points to the treatment and prognosis of patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differential diagnostic value of radiomics features on meningioma. Methods A total of 241 patients with meningioma who had undergone tumor resection were randomly selected including 80 with meningothelial meningioma, 80 with fibrous meningioma, and 81 with transitional meningioma. These meningiomas were divided into 4 groups including: meningothelial versus fibrous (group 1), fibrous versus transitional (group 2), meningothelial versus transitional (group 3), and meningothelial versus fibrous versus transitional (group 4). All patients were examined using the same magnetic resonance scanner (GE 3.0 T) and the preoperative contrast-enhanced T1-weighted images were available. Radiomics features from the contrast-enhanced T1-weighted images of 241 patients were evaluated by 2 experienced radiology specialists. Results A total of 385 radiomics features were extracted from the images of each patient. Several preprocessing methods were applied on the radiomics dataset to reduce the redundancy and highlight differences between different meningioma before the Fisher discrimination analysis was adopted and leave one out cross validation methods were used for the model validation. The differentiation accuracies of the Fisher discriminant analysis model for groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 were 99.4%, 98.8%, 100% and 100%, respectively; leave one out cross validation method was achieved for group 1, 2, 3, and 4 with the accuracies of 91.3%, 95.0%, 100%, and 94.2%, respectively. Conclusions Radiomics features and the combined Fisher discriminant analysis could provide satisfactory performance in the preoperative differential diagnosis of meningioma subtypes and enable the potential ability for clinical application.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common causes of neurodegenerative diseases in the elderly. Cholinergic dysfunction is one of the pathological hallmarks of AD and leads to learning and memory impairment. Transient receptor potential vanilloid 4(TRPV4), a nonselective cation channel, is involved in learning and memory functions. HC067047, a TRPV4 specific inhibitor, has been reported to protect neurons against cerebral ischemic injury and amyloid-β -(Aβ) 40-induced hippocampal cell death. However, whether HC067047 could improve scopolamine (SCP)-induced cognitive dysfunction in mice is still unknown. The aims of this study were to verify whether HC067047 could ameliorate the SCP-induced learning and memory impairments in mice and to elucidate its underlying mechanisms of action. In this study, we examined the neuroprotective effect of the HC067047 against cognitive dysfunction induced by SCP (5 mg/kg, i.p.), a muscarinic receptor antagonist. The results showed that administration of HC067047(10 mg/kg, i.p.) significantly ameliorated SCP-induced cognitive dysfunction as assessed by the novel place recognition test (NPRT) and novel object recognition test (NORT). In the Y-maze test, HC067047 significantly enhanced the time spent in the novel arm in SCP mice. To further investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the neuroprotective effect of HC067047, expression of several proteins involved in apoptosis was examined. The results demonstrated that HC067047 treatment decreased the protein levels of proapoptotic proteins such as Bax and caspase-3 in the hippocampus of SCP mice. In addition, HC067047 enhanced expression of the neurogenesis marker DCX and improved levels of the mature neuronal marker NeuN in SCP mice. These findings suggest the neuroprotective potential of the TRPV4 inhibitor HC067047 for the management of dementia with learning and memory loss.

A novel one-step hydrothermal method has been developed to deposit a superhydrophobic hydroxyapatite coating on Mg-Gd-Nd-Zn-Zr alloy substrate from a solution containing stearic acid and calcium-phosphate compounds. The as-prepared coatings were mainly made up of hydroxyapatite and calcium stearate. When the volume ratio of ethanol and deionized water is 6:4, the hydroxyapatite coating had a maximum contact angle of 152.8° and a sliding angle of

Early life stress exerts detrimental effects on cognitive function, but the mechanism by which this occurs is unknown. The NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated inflammatory response has emerged as a prominent contributor to cognitive impairment induced by chronic stress. In the present study, we showed that 8-week chronic social isolation (SI) led to cognitive impairment in mice, remarkably increasing expression of the hippocampal NLRP3 inflammasome. Furthermore, the 8-week SI procedure significantly increased the levels of hippocampal IL-1β and IL-18 without significant alteration of the level of serum IL-1β, suggesting a central mechanism for IL-1β-related CNS inflammation. Moreover, inflammatory microglial and expression of AMPAR were reduced in the hippocampus of SI mice. Minocycline is an antibiotic that limits microglia responses, and previous study also showed that minocycline could prevent stress-induced pro-inflammatory cytokine expression in the brain. Our experiment found that minocycline improved cognitive behavior in SI mice. Minocycline also prevented expression of the hippocampal NLRP3 inflammasome, indicating that microglia might be the primary contributor to SI-induced hippocampal NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Furthermore, alterations in SI mice were also restored by chronic treatment with the NLRP3 inhibitor MCC950. These results indicate that the microglia-derived NLRP3 inflammasome may be primarily involved in the inflammatory response to social isolation and that specific NLRP3 inflammasome inhibition using MCC950 may represent a promising therapeutic approach for early stress induced cognitive impairment.

AIM To investigate the ability of computed tomography texture analysis (CTTA) to distinguish different hypervascular hepatic focal lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS CTTA software was used to analyse retrospectively 18 cases of focal nodular hyperplasia, 10 cases of hepatic adenoma, 20 cases of haemangioma, 20 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma, and 20 cases of hepatic metastases using arterial phase scans. A list of texture features was generated for lesion classification. Fisher's discriminant analysis (FDA) was used to construct a predictive model from these parameters and to estimate the discriminant accuracy. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to assess the diagnostic performance of texture analysis of benign and malignant tumours. RESULTS Fifteen texture features were significant differences between the five different histopathological types of all lesions. The total discriminant accuracy was 69.3%, with 55.7% cross-validation accuracy. Seven texture features showed significant differences between the benign and malignant tumours. The total discriminant accuracy in the sample was 83%, with 77.3% cross-validation accuracy. The area under the ROC curve (AUROC) of united texture features was 0.927 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.875–0.979). CONCLUSIONS CTTA can be used as an aid in the differential diagnosis of hypervascular solid focal hepatic lesions, especially the differential diagnosis between benign and malignant lesions.