Search

This study aims to evaluate chest computed tomography (CT) findings in hospital patients with primary varicella pneumonia (PVP). We retrospectively analyzed CT images of 77 PVP patients using 3D Slicer, an open-source software, to model lesions and lungs. This retrospective cohort study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (Ethical Committee, Renmin Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, China) and waived the requirement for written informed consent. The left lung was more frequently and severely affected in PVP, with significant differences between the 2 groups in CT involvement percentage of each lung region, except for total lung inflation. Group A showed higher median percentages of lung collapse compared to Group B. The extent of left lung involvement is a critical predictor of emphysema in PVP patients, highlighting the importance of also monitoring the right lung for more severe cases. Lower emphysema levels correspond to more collapsed and infiltrated lung segments, suggesting a more severe clinical presentation., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2024 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B is the pathological repair response of the liver to chronic injury, which is a key step in the development of various chronic liver diseases to cirrhosis and an important link affecting the prognosis of chronic liver diseases. The further development of liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B can lead to the disorder of hepatic lobule structure, nodular regeneration of hepatocytes, formation of a pseudolobular structure, namely, cirrhosis, clinical manifestations of liver dysfunction, and portal hypertension. So far, the diagnosis of liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B has been made manually by doctors. However, this is very subjective and boring for doctors. Doctors are likely to be interfered with by external factors, such as fatigue and lack of sleep. This paper proposed a 5-layer deep convolution neural network structure for the automatic classification of liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis B. In the 5-layer deep convolution neural network structure, there were three convolution layers and two fully connected layers, and each convolution layer was connected with a pooling layer. 123 ADC images were collected, and the following results were obtained: the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, F 1, MCC, and FMI were 88.13% ± 1.47%, 81.45% ± 3.69%, 91.12% ± 1.72%, 80.49% ± 2.94%, 80.90% ± 2.39%, 72.36% ± 3.39%, and 80.94% ± 2.37%, respectively., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article., (Copyright © 2021 Ziquan Zhu et al.)

Casticin is one of the major active components isolated from Fructus viticis Increasing studies have revealed that casticin has potential anticancer activity in various cancer cells, but its effects on breast cancer cell migration and invasion are still not well known. Therefore, the ability of cell migration and invasion in the breast cancer MDA-MB-231 and 4T1 cells treated by casticin was investigated. The results indicated that casticin significantly inhibited cell migration and invasion in the cells exposed to 0.25 and 0.50 µM of casticin for 24 h. Casticin treatment reduced matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) 9 (MMP-9) activity and down-regulated MMP-9 mRNA and protein expression, but not MMP-2. Casticin treatment suppressed the nuclear translocation of transcription factors c-Jun and c-Fos, but not nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB), and decreased the phosphorylated level of Akt (p-Akt). Additionally, the transfection of Akt overexpression vector to MDA-MB-231 and 4T1 cells could up-regulate MMP-9 expression concomitantly with a marked increase in cell invasion, but casticin treatment reduced Akt, p-Akt, and MMP-9 protein levels and inhibited the ability of cell invasion in breast cancer cells. Additionally, casticin attenuated lung metastasis of mouse 4T1 breast cancer cells in the mice and down-regulated MMP-9 expression in the lung tissues of mice treated by casticin. These findings suggest that MMP-9 expression suppression by casticin may act through inhibition of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt signaling pathway, which in turn results in the inhibitory effects of casticin on cell migration and invasion in breast cancer cells. Therefore, casticin may have potential for use in the treatment of breast cancer invasion and metastasis., (© 2018 The Author(s).)