Scientific reports
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Overexposure to intense noise can destroy the synapses between auditory nerve fibers and their hair cell targets without destroying the hair cells themselves. In adult mice, this synaptopathy is immediate and largely irreversible, whereas, in guinea pigs, counts of immunostained synaptic puncta can recover with increasing post-exposure survival. ⋯ Synaptic puncta move all over the hair cell membrane during recovery, translocating far from their normal positions at the basolateral pole, and auditory-nerve terminals extend towards the hair cell's apical end to re-establish contact with them. These observations provide stronger evidence for spontaneous neural regeneration in a mature mammalian cochlea than can be inferred from synaptic counts alone.
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Clinical and pathological predictors have proved to be insufficient in identifying high-risk patients who develop cancer recurrence after tumour resection. We aimed to compare the prognostic ability of various inflammation markers in patients undergoing surgical resection of lung cancer. We consecutively included 2,066 patients with stage I-III non-small-cell lung cancer undergoing surgical resection at the center between 2005 and 2015. ⋯ The cut-off value is 2.3 for predicting both recurrence (sensitivity: 46.1% and specificity: 66.7%) and mortality (sensitivity: 84.2% and specificity: 40.4%). Advanced cancer stage, poor tumour differentiation, and presence of perineural infiltration were significantly correlated with higher preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio. We concluded that preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio is superior to prognostic nutritional index and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio in predicting postoperative recurrence and mortality of patients undergoing surgical resection of non-small-cell lung cancer.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The influence of induction speed on the frontal (processed) EEG.
The intravenous injection of the anaesthetic propofol is clinical routine to induce loss of responsiveness (LOR). However, there are only a few studies investigating the influence of the injection rate on the frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) during LOR. Therefore, we focused on changes of the frontal EEG especially during this period. ⋯ When concentrating on the slow induction group the increase in relative alpha power pre-LOpR and even before LOvR indicated that frontal EEG patterns, which have been suggested as an indicator of unconsciousness, can develop before LOR. Further, LOvR was best reflected by an increase of the alpha to delta ratio, and LOpR was indicated by a decrease of the beta to alpha ratio. These findings highlight the different spectral properties of the EEG at various levels of responsiveness and underline the influence of the propofol injection rate on the frontal EEG during induction of general anesthesia.
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The habenula plays an important role in brain reward circuitry and psychiatric conditions. While much work has been done on the function and structure of the habenula in animal models, in vivo imaging studies of the human habenula have been relatively scarce due to its small size, deep brain location, and lack of clear biomarkers for its heterogeneous substructure. In this paper, we report high-resolution (0.5 × 0.5 × 0.8 mm3) MRI of the human habenula with quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) at 3 T. ⋯ In particular, we observed high prevalence of elevated susceptibility in the posterior subregion of the habenula. Correlation analysis between the susceptibility and the effective transverse relaxation rate (R2*) indicated that localized susceptibility enhancement in the habenula is more associated with increased paramagnetic (such as iron) rather than decreased diamagnetic (such as myelin) sources. Our results suggest that high-resolution QSM could make a potentially useful tool for substructure-resolved in vivo habenula imaging, and provide a groundwork for the future development of magnetic susceptibility as a quantitative biomarker for human habenula studies.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Reduced levels of biomarkers of exposure in smokers switching to the Carbon-Heated Tobacco Product 1.0: a controlled, randomized, open-label 5-day exposure trial.
In addition to smoking cessation, for those who would otherwise continue to smoke, replacing cigarettes with less harmful alternatives can reduce the harms of smoking. Heating instead of burning tobacco reduces, or eliminates, the formation of harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHC) that are found in cigarette smoke. The Carbon-Heated Tobacco Product (CHTP), a heat-not-burn tobacco product, mimics the cigarette smoking ritual. ⋯ Our results provide evidence of decreased exposure to 15 selected HPHCs in smokers switching from cigarettes to exclusive CHTP use. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02503254; Date of first registration: 20/07/2015 https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02503254. Study protocol Study protocol published at: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ProvidedDocs/54/NCT02503254/Prot_000.pdf .