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Aim: This study aimed to compare the efficacy and safety of excimer laser (EL)-based combination regimens in improving repigmentation. Methods: A comprehensive search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Embase on July 1, 2023, to include randomized controlled trials of EL combination treatments for vitiligo that met the criteria. The primary outcome measure was a repigmentation rate ≥ 75%, and the secondary outcome measures were a repigmentation rate of ≤ 25% and adverse events. Results: Eleven studies involving 348 patients were included. Network Meta-Analysis showed that EL combined with antioxidants (SUCRA = 98.8%), EL combined with calcipotriol (SUCRA = 59.8%) and EL combined with tacalcitol (SUCRA = 59.6%) were the three optimal interventions achieving repigmentation rates ≥ 75%. EL alone (SUCRA = 77.6%), EL combined with tacalcitol (SUCRA = 61.7%) and EL combined with antioxidants (SUCRA = 57.2%) were the three interventions with the highest rates of treatment failure. Adverse events in all groups mainly included erythema, burning sensation and hyperpigmentation. Based on the results of the current study, EL combination therapies were safe with mild adverse events. Conclusion: EL combined with antioxidants was the preferred regimen for vitiligo, whereas EL alone was the regimen with the highest rate of treatment failure in vitiligo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuroimaging genetics is an emerging field that aims to identify the associations between genetic variants (e.g., single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)) and quantitative traits (QTs) such as brain imaging phenotypes. In recent studies, in order to detect complex multi-SNP-multi-QT associations, bi-multivariate techniques such as various structured sparse canonical correlation analysis (SCCA) algorithms have been proposed and used in imaging genetics studies. However, associations between genetic markers and imaging QTs identified by existing bi-multivariate methods may not be all disease specific. To bridge this gap, we propose an analytical framework, based on three-way sparse canonical correlation analysis (T-SCCA), to explore the intrinsic associations among genetic markers, imaging QTs, and clinical scores of interest. We perform an empirical study using the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) cohort to discover the relationships among SNPs from AD risk gene APOE, imaging QTs extracted from structural magnetic resonance imaging scans, and cognitive and diagnostic outcomes. The proposed T-SCCA model not only outperforms the traditional SCCA method in terms of identifying strong associations, but also discovers robust outcome-relevant imaging genetic patterns, demonstrating its promise for improving disease-related mechanistic understanding.

Aim: This study was aimed to investigate the role of TUG1 in LPS‐stimulated hPDLCs and to evaluate the potential functions of TUG1 in the pathogenesis of periodontitis. Methods: LPS‐stimulated hPDLCs were established as the cell model. CCK‐8 assay was performed to assess cell proliferation ability. Flow cytometry was performed to detect cell cycle distribution, and quantitative RT‐PCR and Western blotting were conducted to measure gene expressions. ELISA kits were used to evaluate the production of inflammatory cytokines. The putative binding site between TUG1 and miR‐498 was verified using luciferase reporter and RNA immunoprecipitation assays. Results: TUG1 was downregulated upon LPS stimulation in hPDLCs. TUG1 overexpression promoted cell proliferation through regulating the cell cycle distribution, along with the decreased expression of p21 and increased expression of CDK2 and cyclin D1. Besides, TUG1 overexpression decreased the production of inflammatory cytokines. The effects were opposite upon TUG1 knockdown. TUG1 negatively regulated its target miR‐498, and influenced the expression of RORA, the direct target of miR‐498. Simultaneous TUG1 overexpression and miR‐498 reversed the effect of TUG1 overexpression alone on alleviating LPS‐induced cell injury and inhibition of Wnt/β‐catenin signaling, which was further changeover after co‐overexpression with RORA. Conclusion: Therefore, TUG1 could protect against periodontitis via regulating miR‐498/RORA mediated Wnt/β‐catenin signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-glazed zirconia has been recently developed and widely used in crowns owing to its high strength, low wear on opposite teeth, and aesthetic appearance. This clinical study was to explore the application prospect of the bridge restoration made by self-glazed zirconia with a digital process. The results demonstrated that self-glazed zirconia could meet both the aesthetics and functional requirements of anterior and molar teeth in a time-saving and efficient manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This clinical case report describes the fabrication of monolithic self-glazed zirconia prostheses via a digital workflow, for full-arch rehabilitation in a patient with a severely worn dentition. Prostheses composed of self-glazed zirconia are less prone to chipping, and have a lower risk of progressive wear of the opposing natural teeth. The use of a digital workflow not only ensures a higher degree of precision in the fabrication of self-glazed zirconia prostheses, but it also greatly improves patient comfort, and reduces the clinical chairside time required for adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: Neuroimaging genetics identifies the relationships between genetic variants (i.e., the single nucleotide polymorphisms) and brain imaging data to reveal the associations from genotypes to phenotypes. So far, most existing machine-learning approaches are widely used to detect the effective associations between genetic variants and brain imaging data at one time-point. However, those associations are based on static phenotypes and ignore the temporal dynamics of the phenotypical changes. The phenotypes across multiple time-points may exhibit temporal patterns that can be used to facilitate the understanding of the degenerative process. In this article, we propose a novel temporally constrained group sparse canonical correlation analysis (TGSCCA) framework to identify genetic associations with longitudinal phenotypic markers., Results: The proposed TGSCCA method is able to capture the temporal changes in brain from longitudinal phenotypes by incorporating the fused penalty, which requires that the differences between two consecutive canonical weight vectors from adjacent time-points should be small. A new efficient optimization algorithm is designed to solve the objective function. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm on both synthetic and real data (i.e., the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative cohort, including progressive mild cognitive impairment, stable MCI and Normal Control participants). In comparison with conventional SCCA, our proposed method can achieve strong associations and discover phenotypic biomarkers across multiple time-points to guide disease-progressive interpretation., Availability and Implementation: The Matlab code is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/ibrain-cn/files/ ., Contact: dqzhang@nuaa.edu.cn or shenli@iu.edu., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com)