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Background: The aim of this study was to examine publication bias associated with a failure to report research results of studies that were initially posted on the ClinicalTrials.gov registry and to examine factors associated with this phenomenon. Methods: A search was conducted in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry using six dental-related topics. Corresponding publications for trials completed between 2016 and 2019 were then searched using PUBMED, EMBASE and Google Scholar. For studies lacking matching publications, we emailed the primary investigator and received some additional data. For included studies, we recorded additional variables: industry funding, site setting (academic, private research facilities or private practice), design (single or multi-center), geographical location and commencement date vis a vis registration and publication dates. Results: A total of 744 entries were found, of which 7 duplicates were removed; an additional 67 entries just recently completed were removed. An additional 7 studies were in different fields and thus removed. Thus, 663 trials were included; of these, only 337 studies (50.8%) were published. The mean registration to publication interval was 29.01 ± 25.7 months, ranging from +142 to −34 months (post factum registration). Less than 1/3 of the studies were posted prior to commencement, of which much smaller proportions were published (37.3%). Studies that were posted after commencement (n = 462) had a much higher publication rate (56.7%), p < 0.001. Multi-center studies and those conducted in commercial facilities had much higher, though non-significant, publication rates (56.5% and 58.3%, respectively). Conclusions: With only half of the studies registered being published, a major source for publication bias is imminent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent technological advancements led to the development of various plasma-based technologies for post-packaging modifications. The purpose of the present preclinical in vivo study was to assess the safety and efficacy of a novel chairside nonthermal gas plasma treatment for enhancing osseointegration of titanium implants. Six male mixed foxhounds underwent extraction of mandibular premolars and first molars, and the sockets healed for 42 days. Canine mandibles were randomized to receive either plasma-treated (test) or non-plasma-treated (control) dental implants. A total of 36 implants were placed in six animals, and they were sacrificed at 2 weeks (two animals), 4 weeks (two animals), and 6 weeks (two animals) after the implant surgery. When the radiographic analysis was performed, the changes in bone level were not statistically significant between the two groups at 2 weeks and 4 weeks. The difference became significant at 6 weeks (p = 0.016), indicating more bone loss from baseline to 6 weeks for the control group. The bone-to-implant contact (BIC) appeared to be higher for the test groups at all time points, and the BIC was significantly higher for the test group at 4 weeks (p = 0.046). In conclusion, this study underscored the potential of nonthermal plasma treatment in enhancing implant osseointegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the global decline in the standardized mortality rate of multiple sclerosis (MS), recent research on MS patient survival, especially in Taiwan, remains limited. This study aimed to investigate survival, mortality causes, and associated factors among MS patients in Taiwan. The Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database was used as the primary data source, and a Cox proportional hazard model was employed to estimate and analyze factors related to survival. We analyzed data from 1444 MS patients diagnosed between 2000 and 2018. Age at diagnosis was positively correlated with the risk of death. Among the 190 patients who died, the leading causes of disease-related deaths were nervous system diseases (n = 83, 43.68%), followed by respiratory system diseases and certain infectious and parasitic diseases. The 8-, 13-, and 18-year survival rates for MS patients were 0.97, 0.91, and 0.81, respectively. This study highlights that the MS patient's socioeconomic status, environmental factors, comorbidity severity, and related medical variables were not significantly associated with survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Cervical cancer is the fourth most prevalent cancer in women worldwide. It is vital to achieve a high cervical cancer screening rate among women. We compared the Pap smear test (PST) used between individuals with disabilities and those without disabilities in Taiwan. Methods: Individuals registered in the Taiwan Disability Registration File and the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) were screened for this nationally representative retrospective cohort study. Women aged 30 and above in 2016 and who were still alive in 2016 were matched in a 1:1 ratio via propensity score matching (PSM); 186,717 individuals with disabilities and 186,717 individuals without disabilities were included. Controlling for relevant variables, the odds of receiving PST were compared using conditional logistic regression analysis. Results: A lower percentage of individuals with disabilities (16.93%) received PST than those without disabilities (21.82%). The odds of individuals with disabilities receiving PST were 0.74 times that of individuals without disabilities (OR = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.73–0.76). Compared to individuals without disabilities, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities had the lower odds of receiving PST (OR = 0.38, 95% CI = 0.36–0.40), followed by individuals with dementia (OR = 0.40, 95% CI = 0.33–0.48) or multiple disabilities (OR = 0.52, 95% CI = 0.49–0.54). Conclusions: We highly recommend that healthcare practitioners recognize the unique needs of individuals with different types of disabilities, especially those with cognitive impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soft tissue sealing around zirconia (ZrO2) abutment is critical for the long-term stability of dental implants. The goal of the study is to develop a strong basal lamina (BL)-mediated epithelial attachment to ZrO2 via a novel physicochemical immobilization method. An electrophoretic fusion (EPF) method was applied to fuse a phosphonic acid (PA) linker to ZrO2 discs. Bindings of the PA linker and the following protease activated receptor 4 (PAR4) were verified by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FITR). Then, ZrO2 discs were doped in platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) was measured to assess platelet activation. PRP-doped discs were subsequently co-cultured with human gingival epithelial cells (OBA9) to evaluate establishment of basal lamina-mediated epithelial attachment. The EPF method achieved robust immobilization of the PA linker and PAR4 onto the ZrO2 surface. The resultant PAR4-coupled ZrO2 successfully induced platelet aggregation and activation. Furthermore, a BL-mediated epithelial attachment was established. The results are significant for clinical application to minimize the risk of developing peri-implant diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluating several vital signs and chest X-ray (CXR) reports regularly to determine the recovery of the pneumonia patients at general wards is a challenge for doctors. A recent study shows the identification of pneumonia by the history of symptoms and signs including vital signs, CXR, and other clinical parameters, but they lack predicting the recovery status after starting treatment. The goal of this paper is to provide a pneumonia status prediction system for the early affected patient's discharge from the hospital within 7 days or late discharge more than 7 days. This paper aims to design a multimodal data analysis for pneumonia status prediction using deep learning classification (MDA-PSP). We have developed a system that takes an input of vital signs and CXR images of the affected patient with pneumonia from admission day 1 to day 3. The deep learning then classifies the health status improvement or deterioration for predicting the possible discharge state. Therefore, the scope is to provide a highly accurate prediction of the pneumonia recovery on the 7th day after 3-day treatment by the SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanation), imputation, adaptive imputation-based preprocessing of the vital signs, and CXR image feature extraction using deep learning based on dense layers-batch normalization (BN) with class weights for the first 7 days' general ward patient in MDA-PSP. A total of 3972 patients with pneumonia were enrolled by de-identification with an adult age of 71 mean ± 17 sd and 64% of them were male. After analyzing the data behavior, appropriate improvement measures are taken by data preprocessing and feature vectorization algorithm. The deep learning method of Dense-BN with SHAP features has an accuracy of 0.77 for vital signs, 0.92 for CXR, and 0.75 for the combined model with class weights. The MDA-PSP hybrid method-based experiments are proven to demonstrate higher prediction accuracy of 0.75 for pneumonia patient status. Henceforth, the hybrid methods of machine and deep learning for pneumonia patient discharge are concluded to be a better approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: The tongue plays a key role in the stomatognathic system in carrying out oral functions. The aim of this study was to identify the association between tongue pressure and orthodontic parameters. (2) Methods: This study is a cross-sectional multicentered cohort study with IRB approval. During routine orthodontic initial examinations, the following data were recorded: age, sex, angle classification, overjet (OJ), overbite (OB), arch sizes, tongue width, and maximum tongue pressure (MTP). The association between MTP and orthodontic parameters was analyzed using Pearson's correlation analysis and the Student's t-test. (3) Results: There is a positive correlation between MTP and age between ages 10 and 20 (R = 0.47, p < 0.01). There is a negative correlation with MTP and age between 20 and 40 (R = −0.30, p < 0.05). There are negative correlations between MTP and OJ (R = −0.278, p < 0.01)) and OB (R = −0.374, p < 0.01). While there is no statistical significance between MTP and tongue width, there is a statistically significant difference between age and tongue width (R = 0.22482, p < 0.05). There is no statistical significance between MTP and sex, angle classification, arch length, intercanine width, and intermolar width. (4) Conclusion: An earlier decline in MTP is observed with patients with malocclusion. This implies that patients with malocclusion should seek early treatment for the malocclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to assess the accuracy of a method of predicting post-movement root position during orthodontic treatment using a 3D digital crown/root model (3DCRM) created with pre-movement records of both cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and dental arch digital scans. Pre- and post-movement CBCT scans and dental arch digital scans of five patients who had completed orthodontic treatments were used in this study. The 3DCRM was superimposed onto the post-movement scanned dental arch to identify the post-movement root position (test method). Post-movement CBCT (referenced as the current method) served as the control to identify the actual post-movement root position. 3D-coordinate analysis revealed no significant differences between the test and current methods along the X and Y axes. However, the discrepancy on the Z axis (especially in cases of intrusion) was greater than that in all other directions for all three tooth types examined (p < 0.05). A strong positive correlation between the degree of discrepancy and the distance of tooth movement was observed on the Z axis (r = 0.71). The 3DCRM method showed promising potential to accurately predict root position during orthodontic treatments without the need for a second CBCT. However, root resorption, which affected the Z axis prediction, needs to be closely monitored using periapical radiographs to complement this method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High salt intake ranks among the most important risk factors for noncommunicable diseases. Western diets, which are typically high in salt, are associated with a high prevalence of obesity. High salt is thought to be a potential risk factor for obesity independent of energy intake, although the underlying mechanisms are insufficiently understood. A high salt diet could influence energy expenditure (EE), specifically diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), which accounts for about 10% of total EE. We aimed to investigate the influence of high salt on DIT. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study, 40 healthy subjects received either 6 g/d salt (NaCl) or placebo in capsules over 2 weeks. Before and after the intervention, resting EE, DIT, body composition, food intake, 24 h urine analysis, and blood pressure were obtained. EE was measured by indirect calorimetry after a 12 h overnight fast and a standardized 440 kcal meal. Thirty-eight subjects completed the study. Salt intake from foods was 6 g/d in both groups, resulting in a total salt intake of 12 g/d in the salt group and 6 g/d in the placebo group. Urine sodium increased by 2.29 g/d (p < 0.0001) in the salt group, indicating overall compliance. The change in DIT differed significantly between groups (placebo vs. salt, p = 0.023). DIT decreased by 1.3% in the salt group (p = 0.048), but increased by 0.6% in the placebo group (NS). Substrate oxidation indicated by respiratory exchange ratio, body composition, resting blood pressure, fluid intake, hydration, and urine volume did not change significantly in either group. A moderate short-term increase in salt intake decreased DIT after a standardized meal. This effect could at least partially contribute to the observed weight gain in populations consuming a Western diet high in salt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sheet metal-based products serve as a major portion of the furniture market and maintain higher quality standards by being competitive. During industrial processes, while converting a sheet metal to an end product, new defects are observed and thus need to be identified carefully. Recent studies have shown scratches, bumps, and pollution/dust are identified, but orange peel defects present overall a new challenge. So our model identifies scratches, bumps, and dust by using computer vision algorithms, whereas orange peel defect detection with deep learning have a better performance. The goal of this paper was to resolve artificial intelligence (AI) as an AI landing challenge faced in identifying various kinds of sheet metal-based product defects by ALDB-DL process automation. Therefore, our system model consists of multiple cameras from two different angles to capture the defects of the sheet metal-based drawer box. The aim of this paper was to solve multiple defects detection as design and implementation of Industrial process integration with AI by Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) for sheet metal-based drawer box defect detection, stated as AI Landing for sheet metal-based Drawer Box defect detection using Deep Learning (ALDB-DL). Therefore, the scope was given as achieving higher accuracy using multi-camera-based image feature extraction using computer vision and deep learning algorithm for defect classification in AOI. We used SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values for pre-processing, LeNet with a (1 × 1) convolution filter, and a Global Average Pooling (GAP) Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) algorithm to achieve the best results. It has applications for sheet metal-based product industries with improvised quality control for edge and surface detection. The results were competitive as the precision, recall, and area under the curve were 1.00, 0.99, and 0.98, respectively. Successively, the discussion section presents a detailed insight view about the industrial functioning with ALDB-DL experience sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Antinuclear antibody pattern recognition is vital for autoimmune disease diagnosis but labor-intensive for manual interpretation. To develop an automated pattern recognition system, we established machine learning models based on the International Consensus on Antinuclear Antibody Patterns (ICAP) at a competent level, mixed patterns recognition, and evaluated their consistency with human reading. Methods: 51,694 human epithelial cells (HEp-2) cell images with patterns assigned by experienced medical technologists collected in a medical center were used to train six machine learning algorithms and were compared by their performance. Next, we choose the best performing model to test the consistency with five experienced readers and two beginners. Results: The mean F1 score in each classification of the best performing model was 0.86 evaluated by Testing Data 1. For the inter-observer agreement test on Testing Data 2, the average agreement was 0.849 (κ) among five experienced readers, 0.844 between the best performing model and experienced readers, 0.528 between experienced readers and beginners. The results indicate that the proposed model outperformed beginners and achieved an excellent agreement with experienced readers. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the developed model could reach an excellent agreement with experienced human readers using machine learning methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to assess the accuracy of a method of predicting post-movement root position during orthodontic treatment using a 3D digital crown/root model (3DCRM) created with pre-movement records of both cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and dental arch digital scans. Pre- and post-movement CBCT scans and dental arch digital scans of five patients who had completed orthodontic treatments were used in this study. The 3DCRM was superimposed onto the post-movement scanned dental arch to identify the post-movement root position (test method). Post-movement CBCT (referenced as the current method) served as the control to identify the actual post-movement root position. 3D-coordinate analysis revealed no significant differences between the test and current methods along the X and Y axes. However, the discrepancy on the Z axis (especially in cases of intrusion) was greater than that in all other directions for all three tooth types examined (p < 0.05). A strong positive correlation between the degree of discrepancy and the distance of tooth movement was observed on the Z axis (r = 0.71). The 3DCRM method showed promising potential to accurately predict root position during orthodontic treatments without the need for a second CBCT. However, root resorption, which affected the Z axis prediction, needs to be closely monitored using periapical radiographs to complement this method.

STEAP1 (six transmembrane epithelial antigen of the prostate 1) is a transmembrane protein that functions as a potential channel or transporter protein. It is overexpressed in certain cancers and is viewed as a promising therapeutic target. However, the prognostic role of STEAP1 is still controversial, and no role for STEAP1 has yet been indicated in colorectal cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible association of STEAP1 expression with colorectal cancer prognosis. STEAP1 expression was analyzed by immunohistochemical staining of a tissue array of 165 cancer specimens from primary colorectal cancer patients. The mean and medium follow-up times after surgery were 5.1 and 3.9 years, respectively. A total of 139 patients died during the 13 years of follow-up in the survey period. The prognostic value of STEAP1 with respect to overall survival was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazard models. In total, 164 samples displayed detectable STEAP1 expression in the cytoplasm and membrane. Low STEAP1 expression was correlated with poor overall survival (five-year survival: 33.7% vs. 57.0%, low expression vs. high expression, p = 0.020). Accordingly, multivariate analysis identified low STEAP1 expression as an independent risk factor (hazard ratio = 1.500, p = 0.018), especially in elderly patients or those with late stage cancers, late T values, and early N values. We suggest that analysis of STEAP1 expression by immunohistochemical staining could serve as an independent prognostic marker for colorectal patients. This finding should be validated by other investigative groups.