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Exosomes, small extracellular vesicles secreted by various cells, play crucial roles in the pathogenesis and treatment of oral diseases. Recent studies have highlighted their involvement in orthodontics, periodontitis, oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), and hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD). Exosomes have a positive effect on the inflammatory environment of the oral cavity, remodeling and regeneration of oral tissues, and offer promising therapeutic options for bone and periodontal tissue restoration. In OSCC tumor-derived exosomes promote cancer progression through cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and angiogenesis, and serve as potential biomarkers for early diagnosis and prognosis. Additionally, engineered exosomes constructed specifically based on exosome properties hold great promise for targeted drug delivery and regenerative therapies such as bone regeneration in orthodontics and periodontal healing. With continued research, exosomes hold great potential for improving diagnosis and treatment in oral diseases, advancing personalized and regenerative therapies., Competing Interests: The authors declared that they have no competing interests in this work., (© 2025 Miao et al.)

Tumor segmentation using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plays a significant role in assisting brain tumor diagnosis and treatment. Recently, U-Net architecture with its variants have become prevalent in the field of brain tumor segmentation. However, the existing U-Net models mainly exploit coarse first-order features for tumor segmentation, and they seldom consider the more powerful second-order statistics of deep features. Therefore, in this work, we aim to explore the effectiveness of second-order statistical features for brain tumor segmentation application, and further propose a novel second-order residual brain tumor segmentation network, i.e., SoResU-Net. SoResU-Net utilizes a number of second-order modules to replace the original skip connection operations, thus augmenting the series of transformation operations and increasing the non-linearity of the segmentation network. Extensive experimental results on the BraTS 2018 and BraTS 2019 datasets demonstrate that SoResU-Net outperforms its baseline, especially on core tumor and enhancing tumor segmentation, illuminating the effectiveness of second-order statistical features for the brain tumor segmentation application.

Purpose: To explore the efficacy and reliability of enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) applied in the perioperative period of precise hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)., Methods: The propensity score matching and a retrospective cohort study were employed. The clinical and pathological data of 122 hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with surgical indications admitted to our hospital from March 2014 to March 2016 were collected. These 122 patients were subjected to propensity score matching and divided into ERAS group and Control group. The surgical situation, postoperative recovery [postoperative alanine aminotransferase (ALT), total bilirubin (TBiL) and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels], postoperative complications, postoperative hospital stay, hospitalization costs and patient satisfaction score were observed and compared between the two groups. All patients were followed up to record their postoperative survival., Results: The average drainage tube removal time, bowel sound time, postoperative flatus time and postoperative hospital stay of patients were overtly shorter in ERAS group than in Control group. Besides, the postoperative numerical rating scale (NRS) score and the incidence rate of moderate and severe pain after surgery were lower in ERAS group than in Control group. The total hospitalization cost was significantly lower in ERAS group than in Control group. The patient satisfaction score was obviously higher in ERAS group than in Control group. ERAS group had fewer cases of postoperative vomiting, abdominal distension, biliary fistula, intestinal obstruction, large-volume ascites, liver failure, wound infection, pulmonary infection and abdominal infection than Control group, but the differences were not statistically significant. The ALT, TBiL and CRP levels of patients were notably lower in ERAS group than in Control group at d 7 after surgery. Based on the follow-up results, there was no significant difference in overall survival between the two groups., Conclusion: ERAS applied in the perioperative period of HCC patients receiving precise hepatectomy is reliable and effective and has positive significance for the promotion of postoperative rehabilitation, which is worthy of popularization in clinical practice.

Genome-wide association studies have identified that TERT gene was associated with telomere length and age-related diseases. However, little study directly focused on the association between TERT gene polymorphisms and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). We conducted a case-control study to examine the effect of TERT polymorphisms on CHD risk among 596 CHD patients and 603 healthy controls from China. Five significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in TERT were selected and genotyped using Sequenom Mass-ARRAY technology. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using unconditional logistic regression adjusting for age and gender. Allelic model analysis revealed that for TERT rs10069690, allele frequency distributions differed between cases and controls (OR= 1.267, 95%CI = 1.018-1.576; p = 0.034). Genotypic model analysis revealed that genotype frequency distributions of rs10069690 differed between cases and controls after adjusted by age and sex (TC vs. CC: adjusted OR = 1.352, 95% CI = 1.007-1.815; p = 0.045). Genetic model analysis revealed that rs10069690 was associated with an increased risk of CHD under co-dominant, dominant, over-dominant and log-additive models. After adjustments, it remained significant under over-dominant model (adjusted OR = 1.35, 95% CI = 1.01-1.81; p = 0.044). Our results shed new light on the association between telomere-related gene TERT polymorphisms and CHD susceptibility in a Chinese Han population., Competing Interests: CONFLICTS OF INTEREST The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Grapevine is one of the world's most important fruit crops. European cultivated grape species have the best fruit quality but show almost no resistance to powdery mildew (PM). PM caused by Uncinula necator is a harmful disease that has a significant impact on the economic value of the grape crop. In this study, we examined a RING-H2-type ubiquitin ligase gene VpRH2 that is associated with significant PM-resistance of Chinese wild-growing grape Vitis pseudoreticulata accession Baihe-35-1. The expression of VpRH2 was clearly induced by U. necator inoculation compared with its homologous gene VvRH2 in a PM-susceptible grapevine V. vinifera cv. Thompson Seedless. Using a yeast two-hybrid assay we confirmed that VpRH2 interacted with VpGRP2A, a glycine-rich RNA-binding protein. The degradation of VpGRP2A was inhibited by treatment with the proteasome inhibitor MG132 while VpRH2 did not promote the degradation of VpGRP2A. Instead, the transcripts of VpRH2 were increased by over-expressing VpGRP2A while VpRH2 suppressed the expression of VpGRP2A. Furthermore, VpGRP2A was down-regulated in both Baihe-35-1 and Thompson Seedless after U. necator inoculation. Specifically, we generated VpRH2 overexpression transgenic lines in Thompson Seedless and found that the transgenic plants showed enhanced resistance to powdery mildew compared with the wild-type. In summary, our results indicate that VpRH2 interacts with VpGRP2A and plays a positive role in resistance to powdery mildew., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Topochemical reaction strategies offer an important low-temperature (<500 °C) approach to the conscious manipulation of various inorganic host materials, allowing access to compounds that cannot be prepared by standard high-temperature methods. As the utility of these strategies continues to expand, researchers will be able to more effectively target materials with technologically significant properties. This Progress Report presents recent advances in topochemical reaction strategies as applied to perovskite and perovskite-related compounds. Emphasis is placed on structural modifications and corresponding variations in properties. Additionally, the future prospects of this approach to the rational design of intricate target compounds are discussed., (Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)