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Objective The purpose of the present paper was to evaluate the safety and clinical efficacy of mini‐open retroperitoneal oblique lumbar interbody fusion (OLIF) for the treatment of lumbar spinal tuberculosis. Methods A total of 115 patients who suffered from lumbar spinal tuberculosis from June 2014 to December 2017 were included in this research. A total of 59 patients underwent OLIF and percutaneous pedicle screw fixation (OLIF group) and 56 patients underwent the anterior‐only approach (anterior‐only group). All patients were followed up for at least 24 months. Operation time, blood loss, and rate of complications were used to assess the safety of these two techniques. The visual analog scale (VAS) and the Oswestry disability index (ODI) were used to evaluate the relief of neurological and functional symptoms. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C‐reactive protein (CRP) were measured to investigate the activity and recurrence of spinal tuberculosis. The Cobb angle, the sagittal vertical axis of the spine (SVA), the pelvic tilt (PT), the sacral slope (SS), the pelvic incidence (PI), and postoperative Frankel classification were also used to assess the efficiency of the spine deformity correction and the recovery of long‐term neurological function. Results Most patients were successfully treated with OLIF and the anterior‐only technique and attained satisfactory clinical efficiency during the 24‐month follow‐up period. In the perioperative period, the mean operative time (154.68 ± 23.64 min, P, Oblique lumbar interbody fusion is a new surgical technique for treating lumbar tuberculosis. Compared to the anterior‐only technique, it is more minimally invasive, is associated with a lower rate of complications, and has more effective deformity correction and pathological bone and soft tissues clearance.

BackgroundIdentifying patients with BRCA mutations is clinically important to inform on the potential response to treatment and for risk management of patients and their relatives. However, traditional referral routes may not meet clinical needs, and therefore, mainstreaming cancer genetics has been shown to be effective in some high-income and high health-literacy settings. To date, no study has reported on the feasibility of mainstreaming in low-income and middle-income settings, where the service considerations and health literacy could detrimentally affect the feasibility of mainstreaming.MethodsThe Mainstreaming Genetic Counselling for Ovarian Cancer Patients (MaGiC) study is a prospective, two-arm observational study comparing oncologist-led and genetics-led counselling. This study included 790 multiethnic patients with ovarian cancer from 23 sites in Malaysia. We compared the impact of different method of delivery of genetic counselling on the uptake of genetic testing and assessed the feasibility, knowledge and satisfaction of patients with ovarian cancer.ResultsOncologists were satisfied with the mainstreaming experience, with 95% indicating a desire to incorporate testing into their clinical practice. The uptake of genetic testing was similar in the mainstreaming and genetics arm (80% and 79%, respectively). Patient satisfaction was high, whereas decision conflict and psychological impact were low in both arms of the study. Notably, decisional conflict, although lower than threshold, was higher for the mainstreaming group compared with the genetics arm. Overall, 13.5% of patients had a pathogenic variant in BRCA1 or BRCA2, and there was no difference between psychosocial measures for carriers in both arms.ConclusionThe MaGiC study demonstrates that mainstreaming cancer genetics is feasible in low-resource and middle-resource Asian setting and increased coverage for genetic testing.

A country’s economic prosperity is intimately linked to the external and internal forces that exert influences on its economy. While some of these forces may not be under the overt control of the country’s economic planners, any disruption to the economy by these forces may just tip the balance that causes financial hardship to millions of people. Certainly, national governments through fiscal and monetary policy measures may attempt to prevent such a catastrophe, but what happens if at such a critical time, the needed government leadership is suddenly not available? In such a situation, what will be the most appropriate reaction from the central bank and what is the likely effect to the country’s banking industry? While this scenario might sound like an interesting thought experiment in a banking classroom, a similar situation is in fact unfolding in real life at this very moment in Malaysia.

As an important breakthrough to speed up the new-type urbanization, the characteristic towns are conducive to solving the problem of developing kinetic energy transformation in the current supply-side structural reform in China. Shanghai, as a global city, will create several distinctive towns with characteristics that highlighting local culture, which will contribute to the further improvement of regional development and the overall improvement of urban competitiveness. Based on the overall development in Shanghai, this paper fully evaluates the existing resource endowments and development status of Shanghai’s existing characteristic towns through empirical research. Based on this, it sorts out the major bottlenecks and the goals and directions of the construction of characteristic towns from the perspective of “people-oriented”, coordinating the residents’ life, creative talents’ work as well as tourists’ travel. Finally, it gives specific direction and policy initiatives from the layout, characteristics, resource, industry, policy and other aspects to promote the construction of characteristic towns.

Objective To investigate residents' psychological stress factors and research the correlation between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and platelet 5-HT concentrations so as to provide scientific bases for diagnosis and treatment of PTSD and psychological intervention for people in the disaster area. Methods A questionnaire survey of 5 500 residents who have accepted psychological help was conducted by the emphatic investigation method. While high performance liquid chromatography was used to detect the platelet serotonin concentration of 100 PTSD patients and 100 healthy people. Results (1) Of the 5 114 cases, 3 167 (61.93%) showed positive results in screening for psychological stress symptoms, and 399 (7.8%) were tested having apparent PTSD symptoms. Male and female prevalence showed no significant difference (χ2 = −0.380, P = 0.704). The differences of prevalence between different age groups were statistically significant (χ2 = 381.89, P = 0.000). (2) The differences in the level of platelet 5-HT between PTSD patients and normal control group were statistically significant. Conclusions The typhoon of Hainan Province caused relatively large psychological problems to the disaster victims. Compared with normal control group, the platelet 5-HT levels of PTSD patients in the disaster areas are lower. It may be related to incidents exposure levels, cultural background, religious ideas, social concerns and psychological rescue of the residents who live in the disaster areas of Hainan.

Under today’s market environment, the brand is an important intangible asset to enterprises. If the brandiscertain to win in the market, the first condition is to establish a good image of integrity and makesit firmly rooted in the minds of consumers. In recent years, a spate of food brands lacking of integrity events shocked the nation and the world which make people’s health, and economic development under serious threat. How to evaluate the integrity of the food brands, find out the reason for lacking of integrity and provide a reference to the integrity system construction of food brand enterprises are the main content of this paper. This paper is based on the Creeds of Business Governance in Oriental Management theory and builds integrity indicator system according to the four ethics—honesty, trustworthiness, justice and benevolence. AHP is utilized to calculate the index weight to make the integrity evaluation system with scientific and operability.

Objective: This study aims to investigate the sub-acute oral toxicity of a methanolic leaf extract of Clinacanthus nutans (MECN) in male and female mice.Methods: The study used three groups of male and female mice, the crude MECN was dissolved in distilled water and administered orally in single doses of 1000 and 2000 mg/kg body weight for 28 d by gavage, at a dosing volume of 10 ml/kg body weight, while the control group received only the distilled water. Mice were weighed weekly for the duration of the study period. After the treatment period, the blood samples were collected and examined for hematology changes, total red blood cell (RBC) and total white blood cell (WBC), packed cell volume (PCV) and plasma protein concentration. The serum was analyzed for liver and kidney function test. The degree of injury of the liver and kidney tissue was histopathologically assessed and scored under the light microscopy. one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Turkey’s test was used to analyze the difference (p0.05) changes in the body weight, hematological, biochemical and histology signs of toxicity for both male and female mice, except for the sodium level which was decreased in the mice treated with 2000 mg/kg of MECN (137±5.06) as compared to the 1000 (151±1.91) mg/kg as well as the control males (152±3.74) [F=4.87, p=0.03].Conclusion: This study showed that MECN at dosages up to 2000 mg/kg is safe to be used in mice regardless of their sex. Overall, this study suggests the potential utility of MECN in the development of herbal drug formulations in vivo.

We randomly interviewed 2129 individual investors in 17 different provinces in China to study the individual demographic characteristics of Chinese individual investors. We find that (1) 96.33% individual investors are less than 60 years old and only 11.55% of them are retired or are student, which is in sharp contrast to stories of dowdy grandmothers and college graduates among individual investors in China; (2) they are generally well educated (72.03% of them hold a degree above secondary school level); (3) their investment is mostly lower than $ 15,657 (88.09%) and the ratio of investment/income in the stock market is lower than 0.5 (95.4%), which implies their impact on the price changes of financial market may be exaggerated. More interestingly, we also find a robust gender difference in terms of investor sentiment: compared to female individual investors, male individual investors are more i) rational, ii) loss tolerable, and iii) optimistic, as determined by the questionnaire.

Objectives The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence, distribution, and intensity of dental caries in the Iron Age population of northern China in order to increase knowledge about the type of food, dietary habit, and social stratification in this Iron Age people. Materials and methods The samples analyzed were dental remains of 1548 permanent teeth from 69 male individuals unearthed from the Qin archaeological site of Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum in Lintong (northern China). The sex and the age-at-death of the samples were estimated. Results Overall frequency of antemortem tooth loss in the samples was 0.8%. The proportion of individuals with at least one carious tooth was 65.2%, and the frequency of carious lesions was 9.4%, both showing a trend to rise as age increased. Data obtained on dental caries and antemortem tooth loss provided a corrected rate of 9.5% of teeth with caries. The most frequent carious lesions were occlusal lesions (2.6%), followed by interproximal (2.5%) and buccal/lingual lesions (1.0%). Tooth type analysis showed that molars had the highest percentage of caries (18.6%), followed by premolars (4.5%), canines (3.0%), and incisors (3.0%). The total SRCI was 1.6, increasing with age. Conclusions These findings indicate that dental caries may be related, at least in part, to the subsistence and diet of this Iron Age population.

Background The 2010 WHO/ICO (Institut Catala d’Oncologia) summary report states that Malaysia has a population of 8.7 million women aged 15 years and above who are at risk of developing cervical cancer. Annually, 2126 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 631 die from the disease. The introduction of HPV vaccine in Malaysia has significantly encouraged the introduction of molecular era which could potentially improve the future of cervical cancer screening program. This article aimed at reviewing the proposed methods published from different perspectives in improving the screening and preventive practices of cervical cancer in Malaysia.

The circulating current method can judge whether the multipoint earthing fault happens by monitoring the variety of metal sheath's circulating current value. This article introduce an on-line monitoring system which use the circulating current method to monitor the multipoint earthing fault of the metal sheath. In the hardware layer, we use distributed current sensors and microcontroller's acquisition units to complete the signal acquisition and signal conditioning of the circulating current value. After the distributed acquisition and conditioning, the signals, through the RS485 bus, will be sent to the Ethernet Serial Device Server network system and then connected to the console cabinet. The computer of the console cabinet could read the circulating current value on-line by the Real Com Mode of the Ethernet Serial Device Server. This distributed on-line monitoring system has a simple structure, excellent real-time performance and high reliability proved by the practical operation.

Background The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of photodynamic therapy (PDT) compared to intravitreal vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors in the treatment of polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV). Methods Relevant studies were selected through an extensive search of the PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library databases. Outcomes of interest included visual outcomes, anatomic variables, and adverse events. Results Six studies enrolling a total of 346 patients were included. The weighted mean differences (WMDs) of the mean changes in LogMAR VA when comparing PDT with anti-VEGF were −0.02 (95 % confidence interval [CI]: −0.12–0.08) at 3 months, 0.02 (95 % CI: −0.12–0.16) at 6 months, 0.02 (95 % CI: −0.15–0.18) at 12 months, and −0.17 (95 % CI: −0.90–0.55) at 24 months. There were no significant differences between the two groups at any of the time points. PDT was found to be associated with greater reduction of central retinal thickness (CRT) at six months (WMD: 44.94; 95 % CI: 16.44–73.44; P = 0.002), and it was superior to anti-VEGF therapy in achieving complete polyp regression (odd ratio, OR: 6.85; 95 % CI: 2.15–21.79; P = 0.001).Rates of adverse events did not differ significantly between the two treatments. Conclusions PDT appeared to result in greater CRT reduction at six months and higher polyp regression rate. However, the two treatments appear to be comparable in terms of best corrected visual acuity change and adverse events.