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Article 13, Paragraph 8 of the Drug Injury Relief Act was amended in 2021, adding a provision that conditionally expands the scope of drug injury relief to include "off-label drug use." Nevertheless, when physicians deem it necessary to prescribe off-label drugs, they should still adhere to principles such as "for legitimate reasons," "reasonable use," "not contravening the credible medical literature available at the time," and "truthfully informing patients" to ensure patient safety in drug usage, thereby mitigating potential medical disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Controversy has persisted over the clinical benefits of low-dose sacubitril/valsartan in patients with heart failure (HF). Hypothesis: Low-dose sacubitril/valsartan might also be effective and safe in HF patients. Methods: Electronic databases including PubMed, Ovid, and Cochrane Library were systematically retrieved from inception to August 5, 2021. Review manager 5.4 and Stata 15.1 were employed in this systematic review and meta-analysis. Key efficacy outcomes of interest included HF hospitalization, all-cause mortality, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), together with New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class. The safety outcome was systolic blood pressure (SBP). The grading of recommendations assessment, development, and evaluation approach was conducted to evaluate the quality of evidence for each outcome. Results: A total of 1269 studies were screened and 9 real-world studies met the inclusion criteria were included in the meta-analysis, with 1697 participants. Compared with low-dose sacubitril/valsartan, high-dose sacubitril/valsartan significantly reduced the risk of HF hospitalization (odds ratio [OR]: 0.4, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.27-0.61, p < .0001) and the risk of all-cause mortality (OR: 0.23, 95% CI: 0.11-0.47, p < .0001). However, there were no appreciable differences in improvements of NYHA (OR: 0.59, 95% CI: 0.15-2.35, p = .45), changes of LVEF (mean difference [MD]: 2.73%, 95% CI: -2.24% to 7.7%, p = .28), changes of NT-proBNP (MD: 43.09, 95% CI: -28.41 to 114.59, p = .24) and changes of SBP (MD: 3.01, 95% CI: -4.62 to 10.64, p = .44) between groups with low-dose and high-dose sacubitril/valsartan. Conclusions: Compared with high-dose sacubitril/valsartan, low-dose sacubitril/valsartan was associated with increased risks of HF hospitalization and all-cause mortality. However, no distinct between-group differences in improvements of NYHA, changes of LVEF, changes of NT-proBNP and changes of SBP were observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with Autoimmune Diseases (AD) are at increased risk of complications, which adversely affect the quality of life and prognosis. Recently, a large amount of literature suggested reduced oxidative stress by hydrogen supplements in reducing inflammation and improving prognosis. In this study, clinical trial NCT05196295, we randomly assigned different dosages (low, medium, and high) of hydrogen-rich coral calcium (HRCC) to patients with autoimmune diseases, including Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) patients in Ming-Sheng Hospital in Taiwan (age 54 years, 80% females). Participants were measured with their baseline health biomarkers including inflammatory indicators, haematologic, urinary biomarkers, and health status prior to the trial. Clinical and follow-up assessments were collected after 1 month of the treatment. We performed analyses to compare the baseline with the changes after the HRCC treatment. Together with the groups treated with different dosages, the treatment demonstrated no adverse effects on participants' responses to the HRCC. While the primary endpoint of the trial was met, the potential therapeutic effects of HRCC are addressed for future studies. This clinical trial of HRCC in safety response is the first-in-human study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with Autoimmune Diseases (AD) are at increased risk of complications, which adversely affect the quality of life and prognosis. Recently, a large amount of literature suggested reduced oxidative stress by hydrogen supplements in reducing inflammation and improving prognosis. In this study, clinical trial NCT05196295, we randomly assigned different dosages (low, medium, and high) of hydrogen-rich coral calcium (HRCC) to patients with autoimmune diseases, including Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) patients in Ming-Sheng Hospital in Taiwan (age 54 years, 80% females). Participants were measured with their baseline health biomarkers including inflammatory indicators, haematologic, urinary biomarkers, and health status prior to the trial. Clinical and follow-up assessments were collected after 1 month of the treatment. We performed analyses to compare the baseline with the changes after the HRCC treatment. Together with the groups treated with different dosages, the treatment demonstrated no adverse effects on participants' responses to the HRCC. While the primary endpoint of the trial was met, the potential therapeutic effects of HRCC are addressed for future studies. This clinical trial of HRCC in safety response is the first-in-human study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes the three dimensions of CSR, namely, economic (G), social (S), and environmental(E) dimensions, and the three indicators of corporate governance performance, stakeholders and environmental information disclosure, to explore the relationship between family business of CSR and brand value and determine whether the CSR performance of companies in electronic and non-electronic industries has significantly positive effect on brand value. According to the empirical results, regardless of industry, a better CSR performance by a family business has stronger effect on brand value than that of non-family business. Regardless of industry, a better CSR in both electronics and non-electronics companies exerts a significantly positive effect on brand value. A strong tie between family business in an non-electronic industry and the stakeholder contributes to a higher brand value of an enterprise; a higher degree of environmental information disclosure of an electronics family business exerts greater influence on brand value than does a non-electronics family business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluid-solid phase transition and coexistence of square-well fluids confined in narrow cylindrical hard pores are characterized using molecular simulation methods. The equation of state containing a fluid phase, a solid phase and a fluid-solid coexistence state was separately obtained for different attractive ranges of potential well and pore diameters; λ=1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 for a pore of diameter D=2.2σ, λ=1.5 and 1.65 for a pore of diameter D=2.5σ. For λ=1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 at pore diameter D=2.2σ, λ=1.5 at D=2.5σ, the fluid-solid phase coexistence densities and pressure are close to the hard sphere fluids at the same temperature, while the pressure decreases significantly for λ=1.5 at D=2.2σ and λ=1.65 at D=2.5σ, respectively. We also report the structural properties of the systems undergoing a phase transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a study to assess the use of the chorda tympani nerve in reconstruction of the ossicular chain. We retrospectively examined the medical records of 141 patients (154 ears) who had undergone middle ear surgery with 12 months of follow-up. The study population was made up of 58 males and 83 females, aged 9 to 83 years (mean: 45). These patients were divided into three groups based on the specific type of surgery they had undergone: in 35patients, the chorda tympani nerve was used to spring and press the auricular bone prosthesis (CTN group); in 67 patients, the tympanic membrane was used to spring and press the auricular bone prosthesis (TM group); and in 39 patients, a gelatin sponge was used to support the auricular bone prosthesis (GS group). We compared pre- and postoperative air-bone gaps (ABGs) in each group, as well as the differences between these gaps among the three groups. We found significant differences between the pre- and postoperative ABGs in all three groups (all p < 0.01). These differences were also compared between the CTN and TM groups (t = 0.41; p > 0.05), between the CTN and GS groups (t = 2.07; p < 0.05), and between the TM and GS groups (t = 2.51; p < 0.05). In the CTN group, 1 patient experienced temporary postoperative hypogeusia, and another developed a mild case of delayed facial paralysis; both patients recovered within 2 weeks. We conclude that the chorda tympani nerve can be used to repair the ossicular chain to improve hearing without causing taste and facial nerve dysfunction and without the need for a second operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bridge function required to yield a singlet integral equation (IE) up to the second order in density expansion for the hard sphere fluid confined in a slit-pore is evaluated. The slit-fluid bridge function can be divided into wall-particle bridge diagrams with hb-bond, which were evaluated by recently proposed Transition Matrix Monte Carlo (TMMC) Mayer-sampling method. The bulk-fluid total correlation function hb(r) used in cluster integrals is determined by solution of the bulk-fluid Ornstein-Zernike (OZ) equation with a hypernetted chain closure (HNC). The calculation is performed for the reduced density of bulk fluid in equilibrium with the fluid in slit-pores from 0.3 to 0.7 with narrow slit width of 3.0σ and 4.0σ. The quantity of the slit-fluid bridge function is assessed by comparison of the density profile obtained from the singlet IE theory and the grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulation. Good agreement between the proposed approach and the GCMC data is observed. The reduced normal pressure is also calculated, and agrees well with the simulation data at low to medium densities but becomes a little larger at high density. It is expected that the result can be improved by adding higher order bridge coefficients. The direct evaluation of the slit-fluid bridge function seems to be practical since a great improvement of the quality of the singlet IE theory has been achieved for predicting the structural and thermodynamic properties of fluids confined in narrow slit pores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two modified Mayer-sampling methods are described based on Transition Matrix Monte Carlo (TMMC) and overlap sampling for calculating the integrated diagrams appearing in the coefficients of the bridge function; bn(r) constructed in terms of the total correlation function h(r) for a hard-sphere system. Calculations are performed using prescribed h(r) for reduced densities at 0.2, 0.5 and 0.8 up to the third-order expansion in density. The results from these methods compared with the generic Monte Carlo Mayer-sampling are analysed in detail. It was found that the TMMC Mayer-sampling approach shows better precision over core and tail regions of b2(r) and b3(r), and the overlap sampling method shows overall improvement in the precision of the bridge coefficients. Both methods can be straightforwardly applied to calculate higher order bridge function coefficients and to any model systems with relatively simple modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]