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Chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) infection significantly contributes to morbidity and mortality in bronchiectasis patients. Initiating antibiotics early may lead to the eradication of PA. Here we outline the design of a trial (ERASE; NCT06093191) assessing the efficacy and safety of inhaled tobramycin, alone or with oral ciprofloxacin, in bronchiectasis patients with a new isolation of PA. This multicentre, 2×2 factorial randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial includes a 2-week screening period, a 12-week treatment phase (with a combination of ciprofloxacin or a placebo at initial 2 weeks) and a 24-week follow-up. 364 adults with bronchiectasis and a new PA isolation will be randomly assigned to one of four groups: placebo (inhaled saline and ciprofloxacin placebo twice daily), ciprofloxacin alone (750 mg ciprofloxacin and inhaled saline twice daily), inhaled tobramycin alone (inhaled 300 mg tobramycin and ciprofloxacin placebo twice daily) or a combination of both drugs (inhaled 300 mg tobramycin and 750 mg ciprofloxacin twice daily). The primary objective of this study is to assess the proportion of patients successfully eradicating PA in each group by the end of the study. Efficacy will be evaluated based on the eradication rate of PA at other time points (12, 24 and 36 weeks), the occurrence of exacerbations and hospitalisations, time to first pulmonary exacerbations, patient-reported outcomes, symptom measures, pulmonary function tests and the cost of hospitalisations. To date no randomised trial has evaluated the benefit of different PA eradication strategies in bronchiectasis patients. The ERASE trial will therefore generate crucial data to inform future clinical guidelines.

CerSs (ceramide synthases), a group of enzymes that catalyze the formation of ceramides from sphingoid base and acyl-CoA substrates. As far, six types of CerSs (CerS1-CerS6) have been found in mammals. Each of these enzymes have unique characteristics, but maybe more noteworthy is the ability of individual CerS isoform to produce a ceramide with a characteristic acyl chain distribution. As key regulators of sphingolipid metabolism, CerSs highlight their unique characteristics and have emerging roles in regulating programmed cell death, cancer and many other aspects of biology. However, the role of CerSs in lung cancer has not been fully elucidated. In this study, there was no significant change in the sequence or copy number of CerSs gene, which could explain the stability of malignant tumor development through COSMIC database. In addition, gene expression in lung cancer was examined using the OncomineTM database, and the prognostic value of each gene in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier analysis. The results showed that high mRNA expression levels of CerS2, CerS3, CerS4 and CerS5 in all NSCLC patients were associated with improved prognosis. Among them, CerS2 and CerS5 are also highly expressed in adenocarcinoma (Ade), but not in squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). In contrast, high or low expression of CerS1 and CerS6 no difference was observed in patients with NSCLC, Ade and SCC. Integrated the data of this study suggested that these CerSs may be a potential tumor markers or drug target of new research direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To analyze the prescription law of TCM compound in the treatment of new coronavirus pneumonia, and provides reference for the clinical treatment of new coronavirus pneumonia. Methods: Collected Collected 24 novel coronavirus pneumonia related diagnostic and therapeutic plans issued by the National Health Council and the Chinese medicine authority from January 26, 2020 to March 8th ,the filtered solution involved in the formula, establishing database of traditional Chinese medicine compound prescription for the treatment of new crown pneumonia, the frequency of using frequency analysis methods of analysis and clustering analysis and association rules analysis to sort out data mining analysis of traditional Chinese medicine compound. Results: In this study, a total of 159 TCM compounds were included in the treatment of new crown pneumonia from the country and 23 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, involving 189 TCM compounds. A total of 62 highfrequency traditional Chinese medicines (frequency = 11) were obtained, mainly including licorice, almond, ephedra, gypsum, Poria cocos, Huoxiang, etc The drug types are mainly heatclearing drugs, vacuous drugs, moisture-curing drugs, and surfactant drugs. The main effect of the medicine was warm, cold, lukewarm and flat, the main effect of the medicine was bitter and bitter, and the main effect of the medicine was the lung, stomach and spleen. Cluster analysis results according to the performance of traditional Chinese medicine treatment of new crown pneumonia high frequency drugs into 7 classes; Association rule analysis results in 29 common drug pairs. Conclusion: In the treatment of pneumonia caused by new coronavirus infection with traditional Chinese medicine, the following characteristics are presented: the number of times of supplementing qi and Yin is more than that of attacking evil and maintaining health; The method of dispersing and solving the attack of wet, beneficial, wet, permeable and wet medicine fully embodies a variety of ways to drive away evil; In terms of drugs, heat-clearing drugs, deficiency drugs, dampness drugs and surface drugs are the main ones, highlighting that the basic treatment method is to dissolve dampness and detoxify, and replenish qi and Yin. In summary, this study can provide reference for guiding clinical drug use and developing new drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Circulating cell-free DNA (ccf-DNA) in plasma may contain both specific and non-specific of tumor markers. The concentration and integrity of ccf-DNA may be clinical useful for detecting and predicting cancer progression. Methods: Plasma samples from 40 healthy controls and 73 patients with gastric cancers (two stage 0, 17 stage I, 11 stage II, 33 stage III, and 10 stage IV according to American Joint Committee on Cancer stage) were assessed respectively. qPCR targeting the Alu repeats was performed using two different sets of primers amplifying the long and short segments. DNA integrity was calculated as a ratio of the long to the short fragments of Alu repeats. Results: Plasma DNA concentration was significantly higher in patients with stage III and IV gastric cancers than in healthy controls (p = 0.028 and 0.029 respectively). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for discriminating patients with stage III and IV gastric cancers from healthy controls had an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.744 (95% CI, 0.64 to 0.85). Circulating cell-free DNA concentration increased within 21 days following surgery and dropped by 3 months after surgery. Conclusions: Concentration of ccf-DNA is a promising molecular marker for assessing gastric cancer progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of computational models based on different views for visual saliency detection have emerged in computer vision. In this paper, we combine RGB space and Lab space to represent original features of each image patch in the vector form, and employ principal component analysis (PCA) to select effective features. The saliency cue is obtained by integrating the contrast and distribution of image patches in the reduced dimensional space and supposed to be the reference for saliency foreground. Then we regard saliency map computation as a source signal separation problem in the framework of independent component analysis with reference (ICA-R). Our approach utilizes the common ICA-R to separate the saliency object from the background of the input image with the saliency cue. The main benefits consist of two aspects. On one hand, the combination of Lab and RGB color spaces in both the saliency reference computation and saliency result computation is able to produce better saliency maps than those using only one color space. On the other hand, the input image is assumed to be a mixture of saliency foreground and background, which enables the saliency detection can be embedded into the source separation problem. This source separation problem is solved by ICA-R with the reference for saliency foreground. Extensive experiments on public saliency benchmarks demonstrate that compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed method is more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced pulmonary arterial hypertension is characterized by extensive vascular remodeling that is usually resistant to vasodilator therapy. As the major component of the vascular media, decreased apoptosis of pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cell (PASMC) plays key roles during pulmonary vascular remodeling. Recent studies showed that enhancement of apoptosis of PASMC can reverse pulmonary vascular remodeling and severe pulmonary arterial hypertension. Enhancement of apoptosis of PASMC is becoming a novel strategy to reverse severe pulmonary arterial hypertension. This review analyzes some potential strategies to reverse pulmonary vascular remodeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]