Medical science monitor : international medical journal of experimental and clinical research
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The aim of this study was to predict the emergency admission of elderly stroke patients in Shanghai by using a multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network. ⋯ Outdoor temperature and related meteorological parameters are associated with stroke attack. The absolute temperature difference and the weather types have adverse effects on stroke. Further study is needed to determine if other meteorological factors such as pollutants also play important roles in stroke attack.
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Review Meta Analysis
Diagnostic Accuracy of Serum CA19-9 in Patients with Cholangiocarcinoma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
BACKGROUND Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a relatively rare cancer worldwide; however, its incidence is extremely high in Asia. Numerous studies reported that serum carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) plays a role in the diagnosis of CCA patients. However, published data are inconclusive. ⋯ The area under SROC curve was 0.8300. The subgroup analyses based on different control type, geographical location, and sample size revealed that the diagnostic accuracy of CA19-9 tends to be same in different control type, but showed low sensitivity in European patients and small size group. CONCLUSIONS Serum CA19-9 is a useful non-invasive biomarker for CCA detection and may become a clinically useful tool to identify high-risk patients.
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Comparative Study
Combined Use of Etomidate and Dexmedetomidine Produces an Additive Effect in Inhibiting the Secretion of Human Adrenocortical Hormones.
BACKGROUND The direct effects of etomidate were investigated on the secretion of cortisol and its precursors by dispersed cells from the adrenal cortex of human of animals. Dexmedetomidine (DEX) is an anesthetic agent that may interfere with cortisol secretion via an unknown mechanism, such as involving inhibition of 11b-hydroxylase and the cholesterol side-chain cleavage enzyme system. The aim of this study was to determine whether dexmedetomidine (DEX) has a similar inhibitory effect on adrenocortical function, and whether combined use of etomidate (ETO) and DEX could produce a synergistic action in inhibiting the secretion of human adrenocortical hormones. ⋯ In the presence of DEX, E0 was 8.57-0.0247×(CDEX-4.6), and the other parameters remained unchanged. All parameters but γ were natural logarithm conversion values. CONCLUSIONS Combined use of DEX and ETO reduced ETO's inhibitory E0 (basal secretion) of CORT from human adrenocortical cells in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting that combined use of ETO and DEX produced an additive effect in inhibiting the secretion of human adrenocortical hormones.
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Sex differences, which may be an important variable for determining anesthetic requirements, have not been well investigated in the aspect of local anesthetic. This investigation aimed to compare the minimum local analgesic concentration (MLAC) of ropivacaine for ultrasound-guided supraclavicular brachial plexus block (US-SCB) between men and women. ⋯ We found no significant sex-related differences in MLAC or analgesia duration of ropivacaine for US-SCB.
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This study aims to describe trinitrotoluene (TNT)-induced endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) and apoptosis in HePG2 cells. ⋯ TNT could increase the expression levels of GRP78, GRP94, Caspase-4, and CHOP in HePG2 cells; this increase in protein expression might be involved in HePG2 apoptosis through the induction of the ERS pathway.