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Circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) are potential diagnostic biomarkers for breast cancer (BC). The application of miRNA panels could improve the performance of screening tests. Here, we integrated bioinformatic tools and meta-analyses to select circulating miRNAs with high diagnostic accuracy and combined these markers to develop diagnostic panels for BC.Analyses across databases were performed to identify potential BC-related circulating miRNAs. Next, a comprehensive meta-analysis was conducted for each miRNA following the PRISMA guidelines. An electronic and manual search for relevant literature was carried out by two reviewers through PubMed, ScienceDirect, Biomed Central, and Google Scholar. The quality of the included studies was assessed using the QUADAS-2, and the statistical analyses were performed using R software 4.1.1. Finally, the accurate biomarkers confirmed through meta-analyses were combined into diagnostic models for BC.Twenty-seven circulating miRNAs were identified as BC-related by bioinformatic tools. After screening, only 10 miRNAs presented in 45 studies were eligible for meta-analyses. By assessing pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, and diagnostic odds ratio, 8 miRNAs (miR-21, miR-30b, miR-125b, miR-145, miR221 miR-222, and miR-335) were revealed as promising BC diagnostic biomarkers. Two panels constructed from these miRNAs showed excellent diagnostic accuracy for BC, with areas under the SROC curve of 0.917 and 0.944.We identified 8 potential circulating miRNAs and 2 diagnostic models that are useful for diagnosing BC. However, the established miRNA panels have not been tested in any experimental studies and thus should be validated in large case-control studies for clinical use.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Comparison of descriptive characteristics of the AD vs PPA groups (Bayesian analyses). Table S2. Number of different diagnoses before and after first consultation.

The impact of organic matter inputs from agricultural, forest and domestic sources on aquatic processes has been considerably less studied in tropical reservoirs relative to temperate systems despite the high number of these small aquatic systems in the tropics. Here we present the results of an in situ mesocosm study that examined the impact of allochthonous organic matter on a headwater reservoir in Northern Vietnam. We examined the impact of wastewater and soils from floodplain paddies, Acacia mangium plantations and from upland slopes on the metabolic status of the reservoir. The addition of floodplain paddy soils to the reservoir water led to a rapid switch in metabolic status from net autotrophic to net heterotrophic. In contrast, the addition of wastewater in low concentrations had less impact on the metabolic status of the reservoir, reflecting the low population density in the area. The addition of floodplain paddy soils also increased phytoplankton diversity and evenness relative to the control. In summary, soils from floodplain paddies and from A. mangium plantations had the highest impact on the reservoir, with upland soils and wastewater having less of an impact. We also found that primary production in this reservoir was nitrogen limited. In order to avoid accelerating the impact of runoff on the reservoir, future management options should perhaps focus on minimizing water and sediment runoff from upstream paddy fields and from A. mangium plantations. These results also underline the importance of studying these upland tropical water bodies that can contribute an important but, on the whole, ignored part of the global carbon balance.

The progress in the development of the European 170 GHz, 1 MW/CW gyrotron for electron cyclotron heating & current drive (ECH&CD) on ITER is reported. A continuous wave (CW) prototype is being manufactured by Thales Electron Devices (TED), France, while a short-pulse (SP) prototype gyrotron is in parallel under manufacture at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), with the purpose of validating the design of the CW industrial prototype components. The fabrication of most of the sub-assemblies of the SP prototype has been completed. In a first step, an existing magnetron injection gun (MIG) available at KIT was used. Despite this non-ideal configuration, the experiments provided a validation of the design, substantiated by an excellent agreement with numerical simulations. The tube, operated without a depressed collector, is able to produce more than 1 MW of output power with efficiency in excess of 30%, as expected, and compatible with the ITER requirements. © 2015 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.