Improved fine needle aspiration (FNA) cytology results with a near patient diagnosis service for breast lesions

This study is a review of the quality of FNA cytology results for breast lesions approximately 18 months before and 10 months after a change from a rapid diagnosis FNA service with consultant pathologist aspirators to a conventional FNA service with clinician aspirators of varied experience. The setting was symptomatic breast clinic in a large hospital in rural New Zealand acting as a tertiary referral centre for a population of 550,000. The results were collected retrospectively and prospectively. The quality of results for pathologist aspirators (total 810) and clinician aspirators (total 403) was compared using the definitions of the NHS Breast Screening Program Guidelines for Cytology Procedures and Reporting in Breast Cancer Screening. There were statistically significant differences in specificity (biopsy cases only) with 73% for pathologists and 49% for clinicians, specificity (full) with 74% and 56%, inadequate rate with 23% and 37%, and complete sensitivity with 76% and 67%. The use of pathologist aspirators allowed the specimens to be reported in a few minutes. Specimens taken by clinicians took at least 30 min to report. The financial aspects of the two approaches are discussed. When compared with clinician aspirators, pathologist aspirators obtained better quality results and these were reported more quickly.     

Supplemental selenium and coenzyme Q10 reduce glycation along with cardiovascular mortality in an elderly population with low selenium status – A four-year,prospective, randomised,double-blind placebo-controlled trial

BackgroundA low intake of selenium has been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality, and supplementation of selenium and coenzyme Q10 influences this. The mechanism behind is unclear although effects on inflammation, oxidative stress and microRNA expression have been reported.Fructosamine, a marker of long-term glycaemic control, is also a marker of increased risk of heart disease and death, even in non-diabetics.ObjectiveTo analyse the impact of selenium and coenzyme Q10 supplementation on the concentration of fructosamine. Also, the relation between pre-intervention serum selenium concentration and the effect on fructosamine of the intervention was studied.MethodsFructosamine plasma concentration was determined in 219 participants after six and 42 months of intervention with selenium yeast (200 μg/day) and coenzyme Q10 (200 mg/ day) (n = 118 of which 20 had diabetes at inclusion), or placebo (n = 101 of which 18 had diabetes at inclusion). Pre-intervention, the serum selenium levels were 67 μg/L (active treatment group: 66.6 μg/L; placebo group: 67.4 μg/L), corresponding to an estimated intake of 35 μg/day. Changes in concentrations of fructosamine following intervention were assessed by the use of T-tests, repeated measures of variance, and ANCOVA analyses.ResultsPost-intervention selenium concentrations were 210 μg/L in the active group and 72 μg/L in the placebo group. A lower concentration of fructosamine could be seen as a result of the intervention in the total population (P = 0.001) in both the males (P = 0.04) and in the females (P = 0.01) in the non-diabetic population (P = 0.002), and in both the younger (<76 years) (P = 0.01) and the older (≥76 years) participants (P = 0.03). No difference could be demonstrated in fructosamine concentration in the diabetic patients, but the total sample was small (n = 38). In subjects with a low pre-intervention level of serum selenium the intervention gave a more pronounced decrease in fructosamine compared with those with a higher baseline selenium level.ConclusionA significantly lower concentration of fructosamine was observed in the elderly community-living participants supplemented with selenium and coenzyme Q10 for 42 months compared to those on the placebo. As oxidative mechanisms are involved in the glycation of proteins, less glycoxidation could be a result of the supplementation of selenium and coenzyme Q10, which could have contributed to lower cardiac mortality and less inflammation, as has earlier been reported.This study was registered at Clinicaltrials.gov, and has the identifier NCT01443780.     

Valoración del estado nutricional en Geriatría: declaración de consenso del Grupo de Nutrición de la Sociedad Española de Geriatría y Gerontología

Ongoing population ageing is one of the factors influencing the increase in the prevalence of undernutrition, as elderly people are a vulnerable group due to their biological, psychological and social characteristics.Despite its high prevalence, undernutrition is underdiagnosed in the geriatric sphere. For this reason, the aim of this consensus document is to devise a protocol for geriatric nutritional assessment. A multidisciplinary team has been set up within the Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology (in Spanish Sociedad Española de Geriatría y Gerontología [SEGG]) in order to address undernutrition and risk of undernutrition so that they can be diagnosed and treated in an effective manner.The MNA-SF is a practical tool amongst the many validated methods for nutritional screening. Following suspicion of undernutrition, or after establishing the presence of undernutrition, a full assessment will include a detailed nutritional history of the patient. The compilation of clinical-nutritional and dietetic histories is intended to help in identifying the possible risk factors at the root of a patient's undernutrition. Following this, an anthropometric assessment, combined with laboratory data, will describe the patient's physical and metabolic changes associated to undernutrition. Currently, the tendency is for further nutritional assessment through the use of non-invasive techniques to study body composition in association with functional status. The latter is an indirect index for nutritional status, which is very interesting from a geriatrician's point of view. To conclude, correct nutritional screening is the fundamental basis for an early undernutrition diagnosis and to assess the need for nutritional treatment. In order to achieve this, it is fundamental to foster research in the field of nutritional geriatrics, in order to expand our knowledge base and to increasingly practice evidence-based geriatrics.     

Synthetic lethality-mediated precision oncology via the tumor transcriptome

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Validation of an ambient system for the measurement of gait parameters

Fall risk in elderly people is usually assessed using clinical tests. These tests consist in a subjective evaluation of gait performed by healthcare professionals, most of the time shortly after the first fall occurrence. We propose to complement this one-time, subjective evaluation, by a more quantitative analysis of the gait pattern using a Microsoft Kinect. To evaluate the potential of the Kinect sensor for such a quantitative gait analysis, we benchmarked its performance against that of a gold-standard motion capture system, namely the OptiTrack. The “Kinect” analysis relied on a home-made algorithm specifically developed for this sensor, whereas the OptiTrack analysis relied on the “built-in” OptiTrack algorithm. We measured different gait parameters as step length, step duration, cadence, and gait speed in twenty-five subjects, and compared the results respectively provided by the Kinect and OptiTrack systems. These comparisons were performed using Bland-Altman plot (95% bias and limits of agreement), percentage error, Spearman’s correlation coefficient, concordance correlation coefficient and intra-class correlation. The agreement between the measurements made with the two motion capture systems was very high, demonstrating that associated with the right algorithm, the Kinect is a very reliable and valuable tool to analyze gait. Importantly, the measured spatio-temporal parameters varied significantly between age groups, step length and gait speed proving the most effective discriminating parameters. Kinect-monitoring and quantitative gait pattern analysis could therefore be routinely used to complete subjective clinical evaluation in order to improve fall risk assessment during rehabilitation.     

社会冲突理论视角下的医疗纠纷解决方式

随着社会经济的发展和人们生活水平的提高,人们的健康需求指数越来越高,法律意识也越来越强。与此同时,由医疗事故等原因导致的医疗纠纷案件正呈逐年上升趋势。有效地解决医疗纠纷,有助于建立和谐的医患关系,而和谐的医患关系是构建和谐社会一个主要的组成部分。本文在社会学视角下,运用达伦多夫和科塞的社会冲突理论来分析当前的医疗纠纷,从而促进医疗纠纷的解决。     

The pathology clinic – pathologists should see patients

S. Manek The pathology clinic – pathologists should see patients This invited review describes why and how a pathologist should talk to patients in order to enhance the patient care pathway. The pathologist–patient interaction should become a natural extension to multidisciplinary team decision making, and also become the forum in which patients are helped to understand important aspects of their conditions and the pathological basis for their treatment plans. There is a vast amount of information available through the internet and to digest this can be a difficult process for a patient who is already having to cope with a medical condition. The pathologist is often best placed to sieve through this information and offer the patient the relevant detail necessary to understand the condition and the management pathway. Pathologists can provide up‐to‐date, simple information about malignant and even certain significant benign conditions, and they can do this with the help of several pictorial tools. In this way, the pathologist becomes an even more active member of a clinical team and helps both clinicians and patients to deal with illnesses in a novel way hitherto not considered.     

DC‐CIK cells derived from ovarian cancer patient menstrual blood activate the TNFR1‐ASK1‐AIP1 pathway to kill autologous ovarian cancer stem cells

Ovarian cancer stem cells (OCSCs) are highly carcinogenic and have very strong resistance to traditional chemotherapeutic drugs; therefore, they are an important factor in ovarian cancer metastasis and recurrence. It has been reported that dendritic cell (DC)‐cytokine‐induced killer (CIK) cells have significant killing effects on all cancer cells across many systems including the blood, digestive, respiratory, urinary and reproductive systems. However, whether DC‐CIK cells can selectively kill OCSCs is currently unclear. In this study, we collected ovarian cancer patient menstrual blood (OCPMB) samples to acquire mononuclear cells and isolated DC‐CIK cells in vitro. In addition, autologous CD44+/CD133+ OCSCs were isolated and used as target cells. The experimental results showed that when DC‐CIK cells and OCSCs were mixed and cultured in vitro at ratios of 5:1, 10:1 and 50:1, the DC‐CIK cells killed significant amounts of OCSCs, inhibited their invasion in vitro and promoted their apoptosis. The qPCR and Western blot results showed that DC‐CIK cells stimulated high expression levels and phosphorylation of TNFR1, ASK1, AIP1 and JNK in OCSCs through the release of TNF‐α. After the endogenous TNFR1 gene was knocked out in OCSCs using the CRISPR/Cas9 technology, the killing function of DC‐CIK cells on target OCSCs was significantly attenuated. The results of the analyses of clinical samples suggested that the TNFR1 expression level was negatively correlated with ovarian cancer stage and prognosis. Therefore, we innovatively confirmed that DC‐CIK cells derived from OCPMB could secret TNF‐α to activate the expression of the TNFR1‐ASK1‐AIP1‐JNK pathway in OCSCs and kill autologous OCSCs.     

老年支气管哮喘患者血清25-羟维生素D3浓度与免疫功能及肺功能的相关性研究

目的:研究老年支气管哮喘患者血清25-羟维生素D3[25-(OH)D3]浓度与免疫功能及肺功能的关系。方法:选取2016年1月至2017年12月我院收治的老年支气管哮喘患者96例作为研究组,根据肺功能检查结果分为轻度哮喘组(n=30)、中度哮喘组(n=38)和重度哮喘组(n=28),另选取同期在我院进行体检的健康老年人40例作为对照组。比较各组血清25-(OH)D3浓度、第一秒最大呼气量占用力肺活量百分比(FEV1/FVC)、FEV1占预计值百分比(FEV1%pred)、CD4~+、CD8~+、CD4~+/CD8~+以及血清免疫球蛋白A(IgA)、免疫球蛋白M(IgM)、免疫球蛋白G(IgG)水平,并分析血清25-(OH)D3与免疫功能指标及肺功能指标的相关性。结果:研究组血清25-(OH)D3浓度、FEV1%pred水平均低于对照组(P0.05),两组FEV1/FVC水平比较差异无统计学意义(P0.05)。研究组CD4~+、CD4~+/CD8~+、血清IgA、IgM、IgG水平均低于对照组,CD8~+水平高于对照组(P0.05)。重度哮喘组血清25-(OH)D3、IgA、IgM、IgG水平、FEV1%pred、CD4~+、CD4~+/CD8~+均低于中度哮喘组和轻度哮喘组,中度哮喘组又低于轻度哮喘组(P0.05),重度哮喘组CD8~+水平高于中度哮喘组和轻度哮喘组,中度哮喘组又高于轻度哮喘组(P0.05)。经Pearson相关性分析可得:老年支气管哮喘患者血清25-(OH)D3与FEV1%pred、CD4~+、CD4~+/CD8~+、IgA、IgM、IgG均呈正相关(P0.05),与CD8~+呈负相关(P0.05)。结论:老年支气管哮喘患者的血清25-(OH)D3浓度显著降低,且与肺功能和免疫功能相关,25-(OH)D3浓度的检测可用于评估患者病情严重程度。     

中西医结合治疗老年心力衰竭合并2型糖尿病的疗效观察

目的:研究中医强心贴穴位贴敷结合常规西医治疗老年心力衰竭合并2型糖尿病患者的临床疗效,为中西医结合治疗老年心力衰竭合并2型糖尿病提供理论依据。方法:选择2014年11月-2016年5月于我院诊断与治疗的100例老年心力衰竭合并2型糖尿病患者,将其随机分为观察组与对照组,每组各50例,对照组患者仅给予常规抗心衰以及降血糖治疗,观察组患者在对照组治疗基础上加用强心贴穴位贴敷治疗。比较两组患者治疗前后左心室舒张末期内径(LVEDD)、左心室射血分数(LVEF)、6 min步行距离以及甘油三酯(TG)、总胆固醇(TC)、低密度脂蛋白胆固醇(LDL-C)、空腹血糖以及餐后两小时血糖水平的变化及治疗后的临床疗效,并采用SF-36量表评价治疗前后生活质量。结果:两组患者治疗后LVEDD、血清TG、LDL-C、TC水平均较治疗前显著降低、LVEF、6 min步行距离较治疗前显著升高,且观察组治疗后LVEDD、血清TG、LDL-C水平均明显低于对照组,LVEF、6 min步行距离、生理职能、社会功能、精神健康、躯体疼痛、情感职能、总体健康、活力评分、生理功能评分均显著高于对照组(P0.05),观察组治疗总有效率为92.00%,显著高于对照组(72.00%,P0.05);两组治疗后空腹血糖以及餐后两小时血糖比较差异无统计学意义(P0.05)。结论:相较于常规西医治疗,中医强心贴穴位贴敷联合西医治疗能够有效增强老年心力衰竭合并2型糖尿病患者的心脏功能,降低血脂水平,提高临床疗效。