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Measuring elasticity without physical contact is challenging, as current methods often require deconstruction of the test sample. This study addresses this challenge by proposing and testing a photoacoustic effect-based method for measuring the elasticity of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) at various mixing ratios, which may be applied on the wide range of applications such as biomedical and optical fields. A dual-light laser source of the photoacoustic (PA) system is designed, employing cross-correlation signal processing techniques. The platform systems and a mathematical model for performing PDMS elasticity measurements are constructed. During elasticity detection, photoacoustic signal features, influenced by hardness and shapes, are analyzed using cross-correlation calculations and phase difference detection. Results from phantom tests demonstrate the potential of predicting Young's modulus using the cross-correlation method, aligning with the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard samples. However, accuracy may be affected by mixed materials and short tubes. Normalization or calibration of signals is suggested for aligning with Young's coefficient.

Primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP) primarily affects slim and tall young males. Exploring the etiological link between chest wall structural characteristics and PSP is crucial for advancing treatment methods. In this case-control study, chest computed tomography (CT) images from patients undergoing thoracic surgery, with or without PSP, were analyzed using Artificial Intelligence. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model of EfficientNetB3 and InceptionV3 were used with transfer learning on the Imagenet to compare the images of both groups. A heatmap was created on the chest CT scans to enhance interoperability, and the scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) was adopted to further compare the image level. A total of 2,312 CT images of 26 non-PSP patients and 1,122 CT images of 26 PSP patients were selected. Chest-wall apex pit (CAP) was found in 25 PSP and three non-PSP patients (p

Abelmoschus manihot (L.) Medic flower (AMf) exhibits both nutritional value and bioactivities such as antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, cardioprotective, and hepatoprotective effects. The aim of this investigation was to examine the potential impact of three different solvent extracts of AMf: supercritical CO2 extraction extract, water extract, and ethanol extract (AME), on management of diabetes. All three extracts demonstrated significant inhibitory effects on α-glucosidase (IC50 = 157–261 μg/mL) and lipase (IC50 = 401–577 μg/mL) activities while enhancing the α-amylase activity (32.4–41.8 folds at 200 μg/mL). Moreover, all three extracts exhibited notable inhibition of the formation of advanced glycation end-products, including the Amadori products (inhibition rates = 15.7–36.6%) and the dicarbonyl compounds (inhibition rates = 18.6–28.3%). Among the three extracts, AME exhibited the most pronounced inhibitory effect. AME displayed substantial in vitro and intracellular antioxidative activity, and effectively reduced ROS production (135% at 500 μg/mL) in β-cells under hyperglycemic (HG) conditions. AME also enhanced the activity and gene expression of antioxidant enzymes, which were markedly decreased in the HG-induced β-cells. Furthermore, AME protected β-cell viability and maintained normal insulin secretion under HG conditions, likely due to its ability to reduce oxidative stress within β-cells. This study demonstrated the potential of AME in preventing and managing diabetes and its associated complications. Further in vivo research is necessary to thoroughly elucidate the preventive effects and their underlying mechanisms.

Predicting and improving the response of rectal cancer to second primary cancers (SPCs) remains an active and challenging field of clinical research. Identifying predictive risk factors for SPCs will help guide more personalized treatment strategies. In this study, we propose that experience data be used as evidence to support patient-oriented decision-making. The proposed model consists of two main components: a pipeline for extraction and classification and a clinical risk assessment. The study includes 4402 patient datasets, including 395 SPC patients, collected from three cancer registry databases at three medical centers; based on literature reviews and discussion with clinical experts, 10 predictive variables were considered risk factors for SPCs. The proposed extraction and classification pipelines that classified patients according to importance were age at diagnosis, chemotherapy, smoking behavior, combined stage group, and sex, as has been proven in previous studies. The C5 method had the highest predicted AUC (84.88%). In addition, the proposed model was associated with a classification pipeline that showed an acceptable testing accuracy of 80.85%, a recall of 79.97%, a specificity of 88.12%, a precision of 85.79%, and an F1 score of 79.88%. Our results indicate that chemotherapy is the most important prognostic risk factor for SPCs in rectal cancer survivors. Furthermore, our decision tree for clinical risk assessment illuminates the possibility of assessing the effectiveness of a combination of these risk factors. This proposed model may provide an essential evaluation and longitudinal change for personalized treatment of rectal cancer survivors in the future.

This study used artificial intelligence techniques to identify clinical cancer biomarkers for recurrent gastric cancer survivors. From a hospital-based cancer registry database in Taiwan, the datasets of the incidence of recurrence and clinical risk features were included in 2476 gastric cancer survivors. We benchmarked Random Forest using MLP, C4.5, AdaBoost, and Bagging algorithms on metrics and leveraged the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) for imbalanced dataset issues, cost-sensitive learning for risk assessment, and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAPs) for feature importance analysis in this study. Our proposed Random Forest outperformed the other models with an accuracy of 87.9%, a recall rate of 90.5%, an accuracy rate of 86%, and an F1 of 88.2% on the recurrent category by a 10-fold cross-validation in a balanced dataset. We identified clinical features of recurrent gastric cancer, which are the top five features, stage, number of regional lymph node involvement, Helicobacter pylori, BMI (body mass index), and gender; these features significantly affect the prediction model’s output and are worth paying attention to in the following causal effect analysis. Using an artificial intelligence model, the risk factors for recurrent gastric cancer could be identified and cost-effectively ranked according to their feature importance. In addition, they should be crucial clinical features to provide physicians with the knowledge to screen high-risk patients in gastric cancer survivors as well.

Abstract Background Liver-type fatty acid-binding protein (L-FABP) is widely expressed in hepatocytes and plays a role in lipid metabolism. It has been demonstrated to be overexpressed in different types of cancer; however, few studies have investigated the association between L-FABP and breast cancer. The aim of this study was to assess the association between plasma concentrations of L-FABP in breast cancer patients and the expression of L-FABP in breast cancer tissue. Method A total of 196 patients with breast cancer and 57 age-matched control subjects were studied. Plasma L-FABP concentrations were measured using ELISA in both groups. The expression of L-FABP in breast cancer tissue was examined using immunohistochemistry. Result The patients had higher plasma L-FABP levels than the controls (7.6 ng/mL (interquartile range 5.2–12.1) vs. 6.3 ng/mL (interquartile range 5.3–8.5), p = 0.008). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed an independent association between L-FABP and breast cancer, even after adjusting for known biomarkers. Moreover, the rates of pathologic stage T2+T3+T4, clinical stage III, positive HER-2 receptor status, and negative estrogen receptor status were significantly higher in the patients with an L-FABP level greater than the median. Furthermore, the L-FABP level gradually increased with the increasing stage. In addition, L-FABP was detected in the cytoplasm, nuclear, or both cytoplasm and nuclear of all breast cancer tissue examined, not in the normal tissue. Conclusions Plasma L-FABP levels were significantly higher in the patients with breast cancer than in the controls. In addition, L-FABP was expressed in breast cancer tissue, which suggests that L-FABP may be involved in the pathogenesis of breast cancer.

IntroductionEndometriosis is defined as the growth of endometrial glands and stromal cells in a heterotopic location with immune dysregulation. It usually leads to chronic pelvic pain and subfertility. Although various treatments are available, the recurrence rate remains high. Adipose tissue is an abundant source of multipotent mesenchymal adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs). ADSCs display effects on not only tissue regeneration, but also immune regulation. Thus, the current study aims to test the effects of ADSCs on the growth of endometriosis.MethodsADSCs isolated from lipoaspiration-generated adipose tissue and their conditioned medium (ADSC-CM) were subjected to quality validation, including karyotyping as well as growth promotion and sterility tests for microbial contamination under Good Tissue Practice and Good Manufacturing Practice regulations. An autologous endometriosis mouse model was established by suturing endometrial tissue to peritoneal wall followed by treating with DMEM/F12 medium, ADSC-CM, ADSCs or ADSC-CM+ADSCs for 28 days. The area of endometriotic cysts and the degree of pelvic adhesion were measured. ICAM-1, VEGF and caspase 3 expression was assessed by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry. Moreover, the mice were allowed to mate and deliver. The pregnancy outcomes were recorded. The ADSC-CM was subjected to proteomics analysis with further data mining with Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA).ResultsBoth ADSC-CM and ADSCs passed quality validation. ADSC-CM reduced the area of endometriotic cysts. The inhibition by ADSC-CM was obliterated by adding ADSCs. The presence of ADSCs with or without ADSC-CM increased the peritoneal adhesion. ADSC-CM inhibited ICAM-1 and VEGF mRNA and protein expression, whereas the addition of ADSCs not only did not inhibit by itself, but also blocked the inhibition by ADSC-CM. The resorption rate was reduced by ADSC-CM. The number of live birth/dam and the survival rate of pup at 1 week-old were both increased by ADSC-CM in mice with endometriosis. IPA demonstrated that PTX3 was potentially critical for the inhibition of endometriosis by ADSC-CM due to its anti-inflammatory and antiangiogenic properties as well as its importance in implantation.ConclusionADSC-CM inhibited endometriosis development and improved pregnancy outcomes in mice. Potential translation to clinical treatment for human endometriosis is expected.

Objective: In this 3-year longitudinal cohort study, we aimed to evaluate the evolution of overactive bladder in female community residents aged 40 years and above in central Taiwan and identify its risk factors. Materials and methods: Female community residents aged 40 years and above were invited to participate in this study and fill out a yearly Overactive Bladder Symptom Score (OABSS) questionnaire over a 3-year period. A woman was defined to have OAB if the total OABSS was ≧4 and urgency score was ≧2. At the end of the third year, the incidence, remission, persistence, and relapse of OAB in these community residents were calculated. A novel statistical analysis technique, machine learning with data mining, was applied to examine its use in this field.Five machine learning models were used to predict the risk factors associated with persistent OAB and the results were compared with the conventional logistic regression model. Results: In total, 1469 female residents were included in the first year and 1290 (87.8%) women completed the questionnaires for all 3 years. The prevalence of OAB was 20.2% (n = 260). The second- and third-year incidence rates of OAB were 13.5% and 7.1%. The remission rates were 39.6% and 44.3%. Twenty-two percent of the women reported relapse of OAB in the third year. The two-year OAB persistence rate was 43.8%. For the prediction of risk factors for persistent OAB, the multivariable logistic regression model had better predictive accuracy (AUC = 0.664) than the five machine learning models. Age ≧ 60 was associated with persistent OAB (OR 2.8; 95% CI: 1.34–5.89, P = 0.002). Conclusion: The yearly incidence, remission, and persistence rates of OAB were high in female community residents aged 40 years and above in central Taiwan. Older women had a higher risk of persistent OAB symptoms in this 3-year longitudinal cohort study.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a multifactorial, complex condition that requires proper management to slow its progression. In Thailand, 11.6 million people (17.5%) have CKD, with 5.7 million (8.6%) in the advanced stages and >100,000 requiring hemodialysis (2020 report). This study aimed to develop a risk prediction model for CKD in Thailand. Data from 17,100 patients were collected to screen for 14 independent variables selected as risk factors, using the IBK, Random Tree, Decision Table, J48, and Random Forest models to train the predictive models. In addition, we address the unbalanced category issue using the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE). The indicators of performance include classification accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and precision. This study achieved an accuracy rate of 92.1% with the top-performing Random Forest model. Moreover, our empirical findings substantiate previous research through highlighting the significance of serum albumin, blood urea nitrogen, age, direct bilirubin, and glucose. Furthermore, this study used the SHapley Additive exPlanations approach to analyze the attributes of the top six critical factors and then extended the comparison to include dual-attribute factors. Finally, our proposed machine learning technique can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of these risk factors and assist in the development of future personalized treatment.

Objective: Endometriosis, defined as the growth of endometrial glands and stromal cells in a heterotopic location under the cyclic influence of ovarian hormones, is a common gynecological disorder manifested by chronic pelvic pain and infertility. In traditional Chinese medicine, endometriosis is characterized by stagnation of vital energy (qi) and blood stasis. Guizhi Fuling Wan (GFW) was first described in Chinese canonical medicine to treat disorders associated with stagnation of qi and blood stasis, including endometriosis. Therefore, the current study aimed to test the effects of combining GFW with western medicine on the suppression of endometriosis. Materials and methods: Endometriosis was generated by suturing endometrial tissue on the peritoneal wall of C57BL/6JNarl mice. The mice were subsequently treated with either GFW or current hormonal therapies or in combination for 28 days. Results: Endometriosis development was inhibited by GFW, Gestrinone, Visanne, GFW + Gestrinone or GFW + medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA). The expression of intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) was inhibited by GFW, Gestrinone, MPA, Visanne, GFW + Gestrinone, GFW + MPA and GFW + Visanne. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression was inhibited by GFW, Gestrinone, Visanne, GFW + Gestrinone and GFW + MPA. Both ICAM-1- and VEGF-reducing effects of GFW were attenuated by western medicines. Administration of GFW, MPA, Visanne, GFW + MPA and GFW + Visanne also correspondingly reduced macrophage population in peritoneal fluid. GFW, MPA, Visanne, GFW + MPA and GFW + Visanne enhanced B-cell population in peritoneal fluid. Conclusion: The current study reveals the therapeutic effects of GFW on endometriosis. However, the combination of GFW and current hormonal therapies potentially impedes the efficacy of each individual agent in treating endometriosis.

Glycosylation is the most complex post-modification effect of proteins. It participates in many biological processes in the human body and is closely related to many disease states. Among them, N-linked glycosylation is the most contained glycosylation data. However, the current N-linked glycosylation prediction tool does not take into account the serious imbalance between positive and negative data. In this study, we used protein sequence and amino acid characteristics to construct an N-linked glycosylation prediction model called N-GlycoGo. Based on sequence, structure, and function, 11 heterogeneous features were encoded. Further, XGBoost was selected for modeling. Finally, independent testing of human and mouse prediction models showed that N-GlycoGo is superior to other tools with Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) values of 0.397 and 0.719, respectively, which is higher than other glycosylation site prediction tools. We have developed a fast and accurate prediction tool, N-GlycoGo, for N-linked glycosylation. N-GlycoGo is available at http://ncblab.nchu.edu.tw/n-glycogo/.

Banana peel (BP) has potent antioxidative properties; however, the anti-inflammatory potential of BP and its related bioactive components remain unclear. This study used solvent extraction and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) to isolate and identify the active fractions and compounds in BP. BP was extracted with 95% ethanol (BP-95E) and partitioned with an ethyl acetate (EA) and water mixture to obtain the BP-95E-EA and BP-95E-H2O fractions. The BP-95E-EA fractions were further partitioned with n-hexane (Hex) and methanol (MeOH) mixtures to obtain BP-95E-EA-Hex and BP-95E-EA-MeOH subfractions, and the BP-95E-H2O fractions were partitioned with n-butanol (BuOH) to obtain BP-95E-H2O-BuOH subfractions and the H2O residual. The results show that the BP-95E-H2O-BuOH subfractions exhibited the most potent inhibition of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) secretion while down-regulating inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) protein expression in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated RAW264.7 macrophages. In this active subfraction, five non-polyphenol compounds were identified, namely, 5-hydroxyethyl furfural (5-HMF), guaiol, oleic acid, linoleic acid, and oleamide. 5-HMF, guaiol, and oleamide were the most effective at suppressing IL-6 and TNF-α secretion. The in vivo immunomodulatory action of BP was evaluated in an LPS-induced endotoxemia model of BALB/c mice. Oral administration of BP-95E-H2O-BuOH extracts (42 and 166 mg/kg b.w.) for two weeks lowered the serum levels of IL-6 and TNF-α and normalized the activated T-cell population, as evidenced by an increase in CD3CD69 and decrease in IFN-γ/IL-4 (Th1/Th2) in mice with systemic inflammation. Our findings reveal that BP exhibits anti-inflammatory and T-cell immunomodulatory effects that may contribute to delaying endotoxemia-associated disorders.

This study aimed to develop a risk-prediction model for second primary skin cancer (SPSC) survivors. We identified the clinical characteristics of SPSC and created awareness for physicians screening high-risk patients among skin cancer survivors. Using data from the 1248 skin cancer survivors extracted from five cancer registries, we benchmarked a random forest algorithm against MLP, C4.5, AdaBoost, and bagging algorithms for several metrics. Additionally, in this study, we leveraged the synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) for the issue of the imbalanced dataset, cost-sensitive learning for risk assessment, and SHAP for the analysis of feature importance. The proposed random forest outperformed the other models, with an accuracy of 90.2%, a recall rate of 95.2%, a precision rate of 86.6%, and an F1 value of 90.7% in the SPSC category based on 10-fold cross-validation on a balanced dataset. Our results suggest that the four features, i.e., age, stage, gender, and involvement of regional lymph nodes, which significantly affect the output of the prediction model, need to be considered in the analysis of the next causal effect. In addition to causal analysis of specific primary sites, these clinical features allow further investigation of secondary cancers among skin cancer survivors.

The progression of neurodegenerative diseases is associated with oxidative stress and inflammatory responses. Abelmoschus manihot L. flower (AMf) has been shown to possess excellent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. This study investigated the protective effect of ethanolic extract (AME), water extract (AMW) and supercritical extract (AMS) of AMf on PC12 neuronal cells under hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) stimulation. This study also explored the molecular mechanism underlying the protective effect of AME, which was the best among the three extracts. The experimental results showed that even at a concentration of 500 μg/mL, neither AME nor AMW showed toxic effects on PC12 cells, while AMS caused about 10% cell death. AME has the most protective effect on apoptosis of PC12 cells stimulated with 0.5 mM H2O2. This is evident by the finding when PC12 cells were treated with 500 μg/mL AME; the viability was restored from 58.7% to 80.6% in the Treatment mode (p < 0.001) and from 59.1% to 98.1% in the Prevention mode (p < 0.001). Under the stimulation of H2O2, AME significantly up-regulated the expression of antioxidant enzymes, such as catalase, glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase; promoted the production of the intracellular antioxidant; reduced glutathione; and reduced ROS generation in PC12 cells. When the acute inflammation was induced under the H2O2 stimulation, AME significantly down-regulated the pro-inflammatory cytokines and mediators (e.g., TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, COX-2 and iNOS). AME pretreatment could also greatly promote the production of nucleotide excision repair (NER)-related proteins, which were down-regulated by H2O2. This finding indicates that AME could repair DNA damage caused by oxidative stress. Results from this study demonstrate that AME has the potential to delay the onset and progression of oxidative stress-induced neurodegenerative diseases.

The Tactile Internet enables physical touch to be transmitted over the Internet. In the context of electronic medicine, an authenticated key agreement for the Tactile Internet allows surgeons to perform operations via robotic systems and receive tactile feedback from remote patients. The fifth generation of networks has completely changed the network space and has increased the efficiency of the Tactile Internet with its ultra-low latency, high data rates, and reliable connectivity. However, inappropriate and insecure authentication key agreements for the Tactile Internet may cause misjudgment and improper operation by medical staff, endangering the life of patients. In 2021, Kamil et al. developed a novel and lightweight authenticated key agreement scheme that is suitable for remote surgery applications in the Tactile Internet environment. However, their scheme directly encrypts communication messages with constant secret keys and directly stores secret keys in the verifier table, making the scheme vulnerable to possible attacks. Therefore, in this investigation, we discuss the limitations of the scheme proposed by Kamil scheme and present an enhanced scheme. The enhanced scheme is developed using a one-time key to protect communication messages, whereas the verifier table is protected with a secret gateway key to mitigate the mentioned limitations. The enhanced scheme is proven secure against possible attacks, providing more security functionalities than similar schemes and retaining a lightweight computational cost.

Previous studies have demonstrated that Siegesbeckia orientalis (SO) has a suppressive effect on the growth and migration of endometrial and cervical cancer cells. The present study examined the effect of SO ethanolic extract (SOE) on the proliferation and migration of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and examined the effects of SOE on non-cancerous cells using HaCaT keratinocytes as a model. The SOE effectively inhibited the proliferation of Hepa1-6 (IC50 = 282.4 μg/mL) and HepG2 (IC50 = 344.3 μg/mL) hepatoma cells, whereas it has less cytotoxic effect on HaCaT cells (IC50 = 892.4 μg/mL). The SOE treatment increased the generation of ROS in HCC, but decreased the expression of antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and catalase. In contrast, it reduced intracellular ROS formation and upregulated the expression of the related antioxidant enzymes in the H2O2-stimulated HaCaT cells. The SOE intervention also down-regulated the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 and the migration-related proteins including matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and β-catenin in the HCC, suggesting that SOE could promote HCC apoptosis and inhibit HCC migration. On the contrary, it reduced apoptosis and promoted the migration of the keratinocytes. Additionally, the SOE treatment significantly up-regulated the pro-inflammatory cytokines, including TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β, in Hepa1-6 and HepG2 cells. Conversely, it significantly decreased the expression of these cytokines in the H2O2-induced HaCaT cells. These findings indicated that SOE treatment can delay the progression of HCC by increasing oxidative stress, promoting inflammatory response, inducing cancer cell apoptosis and inhibiting their migration. It also has protective effects from pro-oxidant H2O2 in non-cancerous cells. Therefore, SOE may provide a potential treatment for liver cancer.

There is a need to increase the vaccine completion rates in women who have already received human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines. With vaccines requiring multiple doses, designing a vaccination control program and increasing the proportion of women who complete vaccination are critical and remain as huge challenges. Currently, there are no published reports on the differences in the background characteristics between postpartum women who are vaccinated or unvaccinated against HPV. This study aimed to determine the vaccination rates of the second and third doses of HPV vaccination utilizing an achievable HPV vaccination program in postpartum women. In this retrospective study, 243 postpartum women attending Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital between March and September 2014 were enrolled. These women were classified into two groups: one group received the HPV vaccine under a practical, controlled postpartum HPV vaccination program, and the other group did not. The rates for the second and third rounds of HPV vaccination in postpartum women were calculated. The differences in the background characteristics between the two groups were determined using the Student’s t test, chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test, and the multiple logistic models, as appropriate. Under the controlled postpartum HPV vaccination program, the completion rate for the three doses of postpartum HPV vaccination was 97.2%. Significant differences were observed according to maternal age, gender of the newborn, and postpartum Pap smear results between the two groups in our study. In conclusion, the controlled postpartum HPV vaccination program is a reasonable method for achieving an excellent completion rate for the three doses of postpartum HPV vaccination and may be a good model for any multiple-dose vaccination protocol.

The flower of Abelmoschus manihot L. is mainly used for the treatment of chronic kidney diseases, and has been reported to have bioactivities such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and antidepressant activities. This study used wild-type adult zebrafish as an animal model to elucidate the potential bioactivity of A. manihot flower ethanol extract (AME) in enhancing their sexual and reproductive functions. Zebrafish were fed AME twice a day at doses of 0.2%, 1%, and 10% for 28 days, and were then given the normal feed for an additional 14 days. The hormone 17-β estradiol was used as the positive control. Sexual behavioral parameters such as the number of times males chased female fish, the production of fertilized eggs, and the hatching rate of the fertilized eggs were recorded at days 0.33, 7, 14, 21, 28, and 42. The expression levels of sex-related genes—including lhcgr, ar, cyp19a1a, and cyp19a1b—were also examined. The results showed that the chasing number, fertilized egg production, and hatching rate were all increased with the increase in the AME treatment dose and treatment time. After feeding with 1% and 10% AME for 28 days, the chasing number in the treated group as compared to the control group increased by 1.52 times and 1.64 times, respectively; the yield of fertilized eggs increased by 1.59 times and 2.31 times, respectively; and the hatching rate increased by 1.26 times and 1.69 times, respectively. All three parameters exhibited strong linear correlations with one another (p < 0.001). The expression of all four genes was also upregulated with increasing AME dose and treatment duration. When feeding with 0.2%, 1%, and 10% AME for 28 days, the four sex-related genes were upregulated at ranges of 1.79–2.08-fold, 2.74–3.73-fold, and 3.30–4.66-fold, respectively. Furthermore, the effect of AME was persistent, as the promotion effect continued after the treatment was stopped for at least two weeks. The present findings suggest that AME can enhance the endocrine system and may improve libido and reproductive performance in zebrafish.

The glucotoxicity caused by long-term exposure of β-cells to high glucose (HG) conditions may lead to the generation of more reactive oxygen species (ROS), reduce the activity of antioxidant enzymes, cause cell damage and apoptosis, and induce insulin secretion dysfunction. Siegesbeckia orientalis linne is a traditional folk herbal medicine used to treat snake bites, rheumatoid arthritis, allergies, and immune deficiencies. In this study, we evaluated the protective effect of S. orientalis ethanol extract (SOE) on cell death and oxidative stress in RIN-m5f pancreatic β-cells stimulated by two HG concentrations (50–100 mM). In the cell viability assay, SOE could significantly increase the survival rate of pancreatic β-cells under HG-induced conditions. For the oxidative stress induced by HG condition, the treatment of SOE effectively reduced the ROS formation, increased the content of intracellular glutathione, and up-regulated the expression of antioxidant enzymes, catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase. As a result, the SOE treatment could decrease the glucotoxicity-mediated oxidative damage on RIN-m5F β-cells. Moreover, SOE had the function of regulating insulin secretion in pancreatic β-cells under different HG-mediated conditions. It could decrease the increasing intracellular insulin secretion under the low glucose concentration to normal level; while increase the decreasing intracellular insulin secretion under the relatively high glucose concentration to normal level. Taken together, this study suggests that SOE has a protective effect on pancreatic β-cells under the HG-stimulated glucotoxic environment.

The vascular nitric oxide (NO) system has a protective effect in atherosclerosis. NO is generated from the conversion of L-arginine to L-citrulline by the enzymatic action of endothelial NO synthase (eNOS). Compounds with the effect of enhancing eNOS expression are considered to be candidates for the prevention of atherosclerosis. In this study, extracts from the aerial, root, and whole plant of Glossogyne tenuifolia (GT) were obtained with ethanol, n-hexane, ethyl acetate (EA), and methanol extraction, respectively. The effects of these GT extracts on the synthesis of NO and the expression of eNOS in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were investigated. NO production was determined as nitrite by colorimetry, following the Griess reaction. The treatment of HUVECs with EA extract from the root of GT and n-hexane, methanol, and ethanol extract from the aerial, root, and whole plant of GT increased NO production in a dose-dependent manner. When at a dose of 160 μg/mL, NO production increased from 0.9 to 18.4-fold. Among these extracts, the methanol extract from the root of GT (R/M GTE) exhibited the most potent effect on NO production (increased by 18.4-fold). Furthermore, using Western blot and RT–PCR analysis, treatment of HUVECs with the R/M GTE increased both eNOS protein and mRNA expression. In addition, Western blot analysis revealed that the R/M GTE increased eNOS phosphorylation at serine1177 as early as 15 min after treatment. The chemical composition for the main ingredients was also performed by HPLC analysis. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that GT extracts increased NO production in HUVECs and that the R/M GTE increased NO production via increasing eNOS expression and activation by phosphorylation of eNOS at serine1177.

Background: The high effectiveness of cancer screening and therapies resulted in the increased diagnosis of multiple primary malignancies (MPMNs) in Taiwan. The aim of the present study was to investigate the clinical data of patients and to determine the frequency and clinical features of MPMNs. Methods: Between January 2010 and December 2014, a total of 2518 patients were screened and obtained retrospectively from the Tumor Registry Center of a metropolitan hospital. We quantified the clinical features and the most common cancer pairs of MPMNs using statistical and epidemiological indicators. Results: Two hundred and eleven patients with MPMNs were evaluated. The median age at initial cancer diagnosis was 63 years old (range 12–100 years). The median age of diagnosis of secondary cancer was 67 years old (range 35–95 years). The median time between initial and secondary cancer diagnoses was 5 months (range 0–57.1). The overall incidence of MPMNs was 8.38%, and the male: female ratio was 2.01:1. The most frequent types of cancer at secondary diagnosis were digestive (79 patients, 3.05%), breast (22 patients, 0.87%), liver (22 patients, 0.87%), head-neck (18 patients, 0.71%), and bladder cancer (14 patients, 0.56%). In women, the most frequent types of cancer at secondary diagnosis were digestive (25 cases, 2.21%), breast (22 cases, 1.95%), liver (11 cases, 0.97%), lung (8 cases, 0.71%), and gynecologic cancer (7 cases, 0.62%). In men, the most frequent types of cancer at secondary diagnosis were digestive (54 cases, 3.89%), head-neck (16 cases, 1.15%), liver (11 cases, 0.79%), bladder (10 cases, 0.72%), and prostate cancer (10 cases, 0.72%). The most common cancer pairs in males were digestive/digestive (22 cases, 1.59%), head-neck/head-neck (4 cases, 0.29%), lung/digestive (3 cases, 0.22%), and prostate/bladder (3 cases, 0.22%). In addition, tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, and betel-chewing were observed to be important risk factors for the development of MPMNs. Conclusion: Indeed, the cancer registries can help us understand the disease better and use our resources to the best effect in prevention and treatment of MPMNs. In the present study, we discovered that patients with MPMNs tend to be older than those with a single primary malignant neoplasm. In conclusion, the clinical features and the most common cancer pairs of MPMNs are demonstrated in the present study. Based on these data, further analysis of the relationship between them is worthwhile.

Due to the high effectiveness of cancer screening and therapies, the diagnosis of second primary cancers (SPCs) has increased in women with breast cancer. The present study was conducted to develop a novel machine learning–based classification scheme for predicting the risk factors of SPCs in breast cancer survivors. The proposed scheme was based on the XGBoost classifier with the following four comparable strategies: transformation, resampling, clustering, and ensemble learning, to improve the training balanced accuracy. Results suggested that the best prediction accuracy for an empirical case is the XGBoost associated with the strategies of resampling and clustering. The experimental results showed that age, sequence of radiotherapy and surgery, surgical margins of the primary site, human epidermal growth factor, high-dose clinical target volume, and estrogen receptors are relatively more important risk factors associated with SPCs in patients with breast cancer. These risk factors should be monitored for the early detection of breast cancer. In conclusion, the proposed scheme can support the important influence of personality and clinical symptom representations in all phases of the primary treatment trajectory. Our results further suggested that adaptive machine learning techniques require the incorporation of significant variables for optimal predictions.

In this paper, a computational method based on machine learning technique for identifying Alzheimer's disease genes is proposed. Compared with most existing machine learning based methods, existing methods predict Alzheimer's disease genes by using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique. Most methods have attained acceptable results, but the cost is expensive and time consuming. Thus, we proposed a computational method for identifying Alzheimer disease genes by use of the sequence information of proteins, and classify the feature vectors by random forest. In the proposed method, the gene protein information is extracted by adaptive k-skip-n-gram features. The proposed method can attain the accuracy to 85.5% on the selected UniProt dataset, which has been demonstrated by the experimental results.

The MADS-box gene family is an important transcription factor family involved in floral organogenesis. The previously proposed ABCDE model suggests that different floral organ identities are controlled by various combinations of classes of MADS-box genes. The five-class ABCDE model cannot cover all the species of angiosperms, especially the orchid. Thus, we developed a two-stage approach for MADS-box gene classification to advance the study of floral organogenesis of angiosperms. First, eight classes of reference datasets (A, AGL6, B12, B34, BPI, C, D, and E) were curated and clustered by phylogenetic analysis and unsupervised learning, and they were confirmed by the literature. Second, feature selection and multiple prediction models were curated according to sequence similarity and the characteristics of the MADS-box gene domain using support vector machines. Compared with the BindN and COILS features, the local BLAST model yielded the best accuracy. For performance evaluation, the accuracy of Phalaenopsis aphrodite MADS-box gene classification was 93.3%, which is higher than 86.7% of our previous classification prediction tool, iMADS. Phylogenetic tree construction – the most common method for gene classification yields classification errors and is time-consuming for analysis of massive, multi-species, or incomplete sequences. In this regard, our new system can also confirm the classification errors of all the random selection that were incorrectly classified by phylogenetic tree analysis. Our model constitutes a reliable and efficient MADS-box gene classification system for angiosperms.

The proliferation and migration of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are essential in the pathogenesis of various vascular diseases, such as atherosclerosis and restenosis. Among the mediators of VSMC during atherosclerosis development, platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-BB is a potent mitogen for VSMCs and greatly contributes to the intimal accumulation of VSMCs. Glossogyne tenuifolia (GT, Xiang-Ru) is a traditional antipyretic and hepatoprotective herb from Penghu Island, Taiwan. This study evaluated the inhibitory effect of GT ethanol extract (GTE) and GT water extract (GTW) on proliferative and migratory activities in PDGF-BB-induced VSMCs. The experimental results demonstrated that GTE significantly inhibited the PDGF-BB-stimulated VSMC proliferation and migration, as shown by MTT, wound healing, and Boyden chamber assays. GTE was found to have a much more potent inhibitory activity than GTW. Based on the Western blot analysis, GTE significantly blocked the PDGF-BB-induced phosphorylation of NF-κB and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways, including extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), p38, and JNK, in VSMCs. In addition, GTE retarded the PDGF-BB-mediated migration through the suppression of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 expression in VSMCs. Three main ingredients of GT—chlorogenic acid, luteolin-7-glucoside, and luteolin—all showed significant anti-proliferative effects on PDGF-BB-induced VSMCs. As a whole, our findings indicated that GTE has the potential to be a therapeutic agent to prevent or treat restenosis or atherosclerosis.

Antrodia cinnamomea (AC) has been shown to have anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, and immunomodulation activities. It is estimated that hundreds of metric tons of AC extraction waste (ACEW) are produced per year in Taiwan. This study aims to assess the feasibility of applying ACEW as feed supplement in the aquaculture industry. ACEW significantly inhibited the growth of microorganisms in the water tank, by around 39.4% reduction on the fifth day with feed supplemented of 10% ACEW. The feed conversion efficiency of zebrafish with 10% ACEW supplementation for 30 days was 1.22-fold compared to that of the control. ACEW dramatically improved the tolerances of zebrafish under the heat and cold stresses. When at water temperature extremes of 38 °C or 11 °C, compared to the 100% mortality rate in the control group, the 10% ACEW diet group still had 91.7% and 83.3% survival rates, respectively. In a caudal fin amputation test, the fin recovery of zebrafish was increased from 68.4% to 93% with 10% ACEW diet after 3-week regeneration. ACEW effectively down-regulated the gene expression of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-10, and up-regulated the gene expression of IL-4/13A. Additionally, the supplement of ACEW in the feed can maintain and prevent the fish’s body weight from dropping too much under enteritis. Taken together, ACEW has beneficial potential in aquaculture.

Colorectal cancer is ranked third and fourth in terms of mortality and cancer incidence in the world. While advances in treatment strategies have provided cancer patients with longer survival, potentially harmful second primary cancers can occur. Therefore, second primary colorectal cancer analysis is an important issue with regard to clinical management. In this study, a novel predictive scheme was developed for predicting the risk factors associated with second colorectal cancer in patients with colorectal cancer by integrating five machine learning classification techniques, including support vector machine, random forest, multivariate adaptive regression splines, extreme learning machine, and extreme gradient boosting. A total of 4287 patients in the datasets provided by three hospital tumor registries were used. Our empirical results revealed that this proposed predictive scheme provided promising classification results and the identification of important risk factors for predicting second colorectal cancer based on accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve metrics. Collectively, our clinical findings suggested that the most important risk factors were the combined stage, age at diagnosis, BMI, surgical margins of the primary site, tumor size, sex, regional lymph nodes positive, grade/differentiation, primary site, and drinking behavior. Accordingly, these risk factors should be monitored for the early detection of second primary tumors in order to improve treatment and intervention strategies.

Endometrial cancer is a common malignancy of the female genital tract. This study demonstrates that Siegesbeckia orientalis ethanol extract (SOE) significantly inhibited the proliferation of RL95-2 human endometrial cancer cells. Treating RL95-2 cells with SOE caused cell arrest in the G2/M phase and induced apoptosis of RL95-2 cells by up-regulating Bad, Bak and Bax protein expression and down-regulation of Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL protein expression. Treatment with SOE increased protein expression of caspase-3, -8 and -9 dose-dependently, indicating that apoptosis was through the intrinsic and extrinsic apoptotic pathways. Moreover, SOE was also effective against A549 (lung cancer), Hep G2 (hepatoma), FaDu (pharynx squamous cancer), MDA-MB-231 (breast cancer), and especially on LNCaP (prostate cancer) cell lines. In total, 10 constituents of SOE were identified by Gas chromatography-mass analysis. Caryophyllene oxide and caryophyllene are largely responsible for most cytotoxic activity of SOE against RL95-2 cells. Overall, this study suggests that SOE is a promising anticancer agent for treating endometrial cancer.

Bulnesia sarmientoi (BS) has long been used as an analgesic, wound-healing and anti-inflammatory medicinal plant. The aqueous extract of its bark has been demonstrated to have anti-cancer activity. This study investigated the anti-proliferative and anti-metastatic effects of BS supercritical fluid extract (BSE) on the A549 and H661 lung cancer cell lines. The cytotoxicity on cancer cells was assessed by an MTT assay. After 72 h treatment of A549 and H661 cells, the IC50 values were 18.1 and 24.7 μg/mL, respectively. The cytotoxicity on MRC-5 normal cells was relatively lower (IC50 = 61.1 μg/mL). BSE arrested lung cancer cells at the S and G2/M growth phase. Necrosis of A549 and H661 cells was detected by flow cytometry with Annexin V-FITC/PI double staining. Moreover, the cytotoxic effect of BSE on cancer cells was significantly reverted by Nec-1 pretreatment, and BSE induced TNF-α and RIP-1 expression in the absence of caspase-8 activity. These evidences further support that BSE exhibited necroptotic effects on lung cancer cells. By wound healing and Boyden chamber assays, the inhibitory effects of BSE on the migration and invasion of lung cancer cells were elucidated. Furthermore, the chemical composition of BSE was examined by gas chromatography-mass analysis where ten constituents of BSE were identified. α-Guaiene, (−)-guaiol and β-caryophyllene are responsible for most of the cytotoxic activity of BSE against these two cancer cell lines. Since BSE possesses significant cytotoxicity and anti-metastatic activity on A549 and H661 cells, it may serve as a potential target for the treatment of lung cancer.

Objective: To compare the costs of traditional open myomectomy (OM) with laparoscopic myomectomy (LM). Materials and Methods: A retrospective review was conducted of the medical records of 155 women who underwent traditional open myomectomy (OM) or laparoscopic myomectomy (LM) in a teaching hospital in Taiwan. Results: The total medical service expense and the patient out-of-pocket expense were significantly higher for women who received LM than for women who received OM. However, the operative time and blood loss during surgery were significantly less in women who received LM than in women who received OM. Conclusion: The overall expense is higher for LM than for OM; however, the laparoscopic approach has numerous advantages for patients, including shorter operative time, less blood loss, and a more rapid recovery time. No difference existed in the rate of complications or in the recurrence of disease for the two procedures.

Objective: Curcuminoids (including curcumin) are natural antioxidants demonstrating potent chemopreventive properties against several forms of cancer. This study investigated the antiproliferative and induced apoptotic effects of curcuminoids on three cell lines isolated from human breast adenocarcinoma and ductal carcinoma (MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-435S, and MCF-7). Materials and Methods: This study developed a highly sensitive, reproducible assay method using high-pressure liquid chromatography to quantify the cellular uptake of curcuminoids by breast cancer cells and quantitate its effect on inhibition of proliferation and activation of apoptosis in breast cancer cells. Results: Results indicate that curcuminoids inhibited cell proliferation and activation of apoptosis in the cell lines in this study. Both effects were observed to increase in proportion to the cellular uptake of curcuminoids; cellular uptake increased following an increase in the dosage of curcuminoids. Conclusion: The inhibition of proliferation and increased apoptosis of breast cancer cells appears to be associated with the uptake of curcuminoids by cancer cells.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is considered to one of 10 key diseases leading to death in humans. AD is considered the main cause of brain degeneration, and will lead to dementia. It is beneficial for affected patients to be diagnosed with the disease at an early stage so that efforts to manage the patient can begin as soon as possible. Most existing protocols diagnose AD by way of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, because the size of the images produced is large, existing techniques that employ MRI technology are expensive and time-consuming to perform. With this in mind, in the current study, AD is predicted instead by the use of a support vector machine (SVM) method based on gene-coding protein sequence information. In our proposed method, the frequency of two consecutive amino acids is used to describe the sequence information. The accuracy of the proposed method for identifying AD is 85.7%, which is demonstrated by the obtained experimental results. The experimental results also show that the sequence information of gene-coding proteins can be used to predict AD.

Objective: To evaluate the status of human papillomavirus (HPV) following radiotherapy, and its prognostic significance in cervical cancer. Materials and Methods: Multiple tissue sections obtained from 58 patients with cervical cancer before and after radiotherapy were analyzed for the presence of HPV types 16 and 18 DNA by using the polymerase chain reaction. Results: The overall frequencies of HPV-16/18 infection among cervical cancer patients were 93.1% (54/58) and 56.9% (33/58) before and after radiotherapy, respectively. Patients with HPV-16 DNA-containing tumors were significantly associated with a favorable tumor response following radiotherapy compared with patients who had HPV-18-positive tumors (92.9% vs 50%, p = 0.002). After a median follow-up of 5.1 years (range, 3.2–6.5 years), patients with HPV-18-positive tumors were found to have a significantly higher relapse rate than HPV-16-positive patients (50.0% vs 14.3%, p = 0.02). Conclusion: The results suggest that cervical cancer patients with HPV-18 DNA in their tumors have a significantly poorer response to radiotherapy. This implies that the identification of HPV genotypes in cervical carcinoma may play a valuable role in predicting tumor response to radiotherapy.

Metabolic syndrome typically includes Type 2 diabetes associated with hyperglycemia, central obesity, dyslipidemia and hypertension. It is highly related to oxidative stress, formation of advanced glycated end products (AGEs) and key enzymes, such as carbohydrate digesting enzymes like pancreatic α-amylase and intestinal α-glucosidase, pancreatic lipase and angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE). This study used an in vitro approach to assess the potential of four extracts of Siegesbeckia orientalis linne on key enzymes relevant to metabolic syndrome. In this research, S. orientailis was firstly extracted by ethanol. The ethanol extract (SE) was then partitioned sequentially with hexane, ethyl acetate and methanol, and these extracts were named SE-Hex, SE-EA and SE-MeOH, respectively. The experimental results showed that SE-EA had the highest total phenolic content (TPC, 76.9 ± 1.8 mg/g) and the total flavonoids content (TFC, 5.3 ± 0.3 mg/g). This extract exhibited the most significant antioxidant activities, including DPPH radical-scavenging capacity (IC50 = 161.8 ± 2.4 μg/mL), ABTS radical-scavenging capacity (IC50 = 13.9 ± 1.5 μg/mL) and reducing power. For anti-glycation activities, SE-EA showed the best results in the inhibition of AGEs, as well as inhibitory activities against α-glucosidase (IC50 = 362.3 ± 9.2 μg/mL) and α-amylase (IC50 = 119.0 ± 17.7 μg/mL). For anti-obesity activities, SE-EA indicated the highest suppression effect on pancreatic lipase (IC50 = 3.67 ± 0.52 mg/mL). Finally, for anti-hypertension activity, SE-EA also demonstrated the strongest inhibitory activity on ACE (IC50 = 626.6 ± 15.0 μg/mL). Close relationships were observed among the parameters of TPC, antioxidant activities, inhibitory activities on α-amylase, α-glucosidase, lipase and ACE (R > 0.9). Moderate correlations were found among the parameters of TFC, antioxidant activities, and suppression of dicarbonyl compounds formation (R = 0.5–0.9). Taken together these in vitro studies reveal the therapeutic potential of SE-EA extract in the prevention and treatment of metabolic disorders.

Sales forecasting plays an important role in operating a business since it can be used to determine the required inventory level to meet consumer demand and avoid the problem of under/overstocking. Improving the accuracy of sales forecasting has become an important issue of operating a business. This study proposes a hybrid sales forecasting scheme by combining independent component analysis (ICA) with K-means clustering and support vector regression (SVR). The proposed scheme first uses the ICA to extract hidden information from the observed sales data. The extracted features are then applied to K-means algorithm for clustering the sales data into several disjoined clusters. Finally, the SVR forecasting models are applied to each group to generate final forecasting results. Experimental results from information technology (IT) product agent sales data reveal that the proposed sales forecasting scheme outperforms the three comparison models and hence provides an efficient alternative for sales forecasting.

Type II endometrial carcinoma typically exhibits aggressive metastasis and results in a poor prognosis. Siegesbeckia orientalis Linne is a traditional Chinese medicinal herb with several medicinal benefits, including the cytotoxicity against various cancers. This study investigates the inhibitory effects of S. orientalis ethanol extract (SOE) on the migration and invasion of endometrial cancer cells, which were stimulated by transforming growth factor β (TGFβ). The inhibitory effects were evaluated by determining wound healing and performing the Boyden chamber assay. This study reveals that SOE can inhibit TGFβ1-induced cell wound healing, cell migration, and cell invasion in a dose-dependent manner in RL95-2 and HEC-1A endometrial cancer cells. SOE also reversed the TGFβ1-induced epithelial-mesenchymal transition, including the loss of the cell-cell junction and the lamellipodia-like structures. Western blot analysis revealed that SOE inhibited the phosphorylation of ERK1/2, JNK1/2, and Akt, as well as the expression of MMP-9, MMP-2, and u-PA in RL95-2 cells dose-dependently. The results of this investigation suggest that SOE is a potential anti-metastatic agent against human endometrial tumors.