Frontiers of medicine
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Frontiers of medicine · Dec 2015
U-shaped association between telomere length and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma risk: a case-control study in Chinese population.
Telomeres play a critical role in biological ageing by maintaining chromosomal integrity and preventing chromosome ends fusion. Epidemiological studies have suggested that inter-individual differences of telomere length could affect predisposition to multiple cancers, but evidence regarding esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) was still uncertain. Several telomere length-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (TLSNPs) in Caucasians have been reported in genome-wide association studies. ⋯ More interestingly, an evident nonlinear U-shaped association was observed between RTL and ESCC risk (P < 0.001), with odds ratios (95% confidence interval) equal to 2.40 (1.84-3.14), 1.36 (1.03-1.79), 1.01 (0.76-1.35), and 1.37 (1.03-1.82) for individuals in the 1st (the shortest), 2nd, 3rd, and 5th (the longest) quintile, respectively, compared with those in the 4th quintile as reference group. No significant associations were observed between the eight reported TL-SNPs and ESCC susceptibility. These findings suggest that either short or extremely long telomeres may be risk factors for ESCC in the Chinese population.
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Obama’s precision medicine initiative made the medical community boil over after the initiative’s release. Precision medicine has been advocated by the majority of scientists and doctors. ⋯ This article does not oppose precision medicine. However, the incentive of vigorously promoting precision medicine at present is a concern.
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Frontiers of medicine · Mar 2015
Essential training steps to achieving competency in the basic intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography examination for Chinese anesthesiologists.
Guidelines for the intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) examination have defined a detailed standard for medical professionals, particularly anesthesiologists, on how a TEE exam should proceed. Over the years, TEE has gained substantial popularity and emerged as a preferred monitoring modality to aid in perioperative management and decision making during hemodynamic instability situations or critical care settings. TEE training pathways and practice guidelines have been well established in western countries and many regions of the world. ⋯ Developing an effective curriculum that can be incorporated into an anesthesiology resident's overall training is also necessary to provide knowledge and skills toward competency in basic TEE exam. With evolving medical system reforms and increasing demands for intraoperative hemodynamic monitoring to accommodate surgical innovations, anesthesiology professionals are increasingly obliged to perform intraoperative TEE exams in their current and future practices. To overcome obstacles and achieve significant progress in using the TEE modality to help in intraoperative management and surgical decision making, publishing basic TEE training guidelines for China's anesthesiologists is an important endeavor.
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Frontiers of medicine · Sep 2014
ReviewExperience inheritance from famous specialists based on real-world clinical research paradigm of traditional Chinese medicine.
The current modes of experience inheritance from famous specialists in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) include master and disciple, literature review, clinical-epidemiology-based clinical research observation, and analysis and data mining via computer and database technologies. Each mode has its advantages and disadvantages. ⋯ Through continuous exploration and practice, the research group proposes the innovation research mode based on the real-world TCM clinical research paradigm, which involves the inheritance and innovation of the existing modes. This mode is formulated in line with its own development regularity of TCM and is expected to become the main mode of experience inheritance in the clinical field.
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Frontiers of medicine · Sep 2014
ReviewClinical research of traditional Chinese medicine in big data era.
With the advent of big data era, our thinking, technology and methodology are being transformed. Data-intensive scientific discovery based on big data, named "The Fourth Paradigm," has become a new paradigm of scientific research. Along with the development and application of the Internet information technology in the field of healthcare, individual health records, clinical data of diagnosis and treatment, and genomic data have been accumulated dramatically, which generates big data in medical field for clinical research and assessment. ⋯ Our research target shifts from the "causality inference" to "correlativity analysis." This not only facilitates the evaluation of individualized treatment, disease prediction, prevention and prognosis, but also is suitable for the practice of preventive healthcare and symptom pattern differentiation for treatment in terms of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and for the post-marketing evaluation of Chinese patent medicines. To conduct clinical studies involved in big data in TCM domain, top level design is needed and should be performed orderly. The fundamental construction and innovation studies should be strengthened in the sections of data platform creation, data analysis technology and big-data professionals fostering and training.