Pan Xu, S. Ling, E. Hu, Hangjie Xu, Lina Ma, Yinghan Song, Jie Liu, Bixia Yi
{"title":"Short‑term outcomes of patients undergoing laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy without mesh for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse with apical compartment defect","authors":"Pan Xu, S. Ling, E. Hu, Hangjie Xu, Lina Ma, Yinghan Song, Jie Liu, Bixia Yi","doi":"10.3892/wasj.2021.138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3892/wasj.2021.138","url":null,"abstract":". The present study aimed to investigate the clinical efficacy and safety of laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy (LSC) without mesh in the treatment of female pelvic organ prolapse (POP) with an apical compartment defect (a‑POP). For this purpose, a total of 24 patients with POP [POP quantification (POP‑Q) ≥II] who underwent LSC without mesh between January, 2019 and August, 2020 were analyze retrospec‑ tively. The duration of the surgery, intraoperative blood loss, post‑operative hospital stay, catheter removal time, post‑oper‑ ative pain and post‑operative complications were recorded and evaluated. The changes in the POP‑Q scores at 3 months post‑surgery were then analyzed. The pelvic floor distress inventory short form 20 (PFDI‑20) was used to evaluate the post‑operative systemic improvement and subjective satis‑ faction rate of the patients. All surgeries were successfully completed. The mean duration of the surgery 135.3±31.5 min. The mean loss of blood was 22.9±15.1 ml. No injuries to the great vessels, nerves, rectum, urethra or bladder occurred. The catheter was retained for 2 days and all patients were able to micturate following extubation. The mean observation time following surgery in hospital was 7 days. The average follow‑up time was 9.4±4.0 months. According to POP‑Q scores, the anatomic cure rate of the LSC without mesh was 100%. The PFDI‑20 scores decreased from 90.6±24.6 to 55.8±18.5 (P<0.0001), and the subjective satisfaction rate was 100% (24/24).","PeriodicalId":87378,"journal":{"name":"World Academy of Sciences journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77520610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Y. Kageyama, K. Aida, K. Kawauchi, M. Morimoto, T. Ebisui, T. Akiyama, Tsutomu Nakamura
{"title":"Jinhua Qinggan granule, a Chinese herbal medicine against COVID‑19, induces rapid changes in the neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio and plasma levels of IL‑6 and IFN‑γ: An open‑label, single‑arm pilot study","authors":"Y. Kageyama, K. Aida, K. Kawauchi, M. Morimoto, T. Ebisui, T. Akiyama, Tsutomu Nakamura","doi":"10.3892/wasj.2021.137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3892/wasj.2021.137","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional Chinese herbal medicine has provided clinical benefits to patients infected with coronavirus 2019 (COVID‐19) in China. Jinhua Qinggan granule (JHQGG) is a Chinese multi‐herbal formula previously developed for the treatment of H1N1 influenza and has been encouraged for use in patients with clinically suspected COVID‐19 infection. However, the immunopharmacological mechanism for the efficacy of JHQGG has not yet been confirmed. To obtain insight into this issue, the present study examined the acute effects of JHQGG ingestion on hematological and immunological parameters using uninfected individuals as subjects. For this purpose, 18 healthy volunteers were enrolled, all of whom tested negative for prior and current severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection. Peripheral blood samples were collected 1 h after a single oral JHQGG administration and subjected to hematological, biochemical and cytokine tests. JHQGG rapidly induced a significant decrease in the plasma level of interleukin (IL)‐6 (P=0.00309) and an increase in the plasma level of interferon (IFN)‐γ (P=0.0268). A decrease in IL‐6 and an increase in IFN‐γ levels were observed in 14 (77.8%) and 13 (72.2%) subjects, respectively. Notably, JHQGG significantly decreased the proportion of neutrophils (P=0.00561) and increased that of lymphocytes (P=0.00485); accordingly, the neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was significantly reduced by JHQGG (P=0.00649). These findings suggest that the clinical benefits of the use of JHQGG against COVID‐19 are, at least in part, associated with its rapid modulatory effects on IL‐6, IFN‐γ and NLR. Considering that IL‐6 and NLR are critical biomarkers for severe COVID‐19 infection, JHQGG may thus be suitable not only for suppressing disease onset in suspected and asymptomatic cases, but also for preventing disease progression in patients with mild to severe infection. The present open‐label, single‐arm study has been prospectively registered on the University Hospital Medical Information Network‐Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN‐CTR) under the trial no. UMIN000040407 on May 15, 2020.","PeriodicalId":87378,"journal":{"name":"World Academy of Sciences journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87795732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Papageorgiou, A. Andreou, Elias Christoforides, K. Bethanis, D. Vlachakis, T. Thireou, E. Eliopoulos
{"title":"Hippo(crates): An integrated atlas for natural product exploration through a state‑of‑the art pipeline in chemoinformatics","authors":"L. Papageorgiou, A. Andreou, Elias Christoforides, K. Bethanis, D. Vlachakis, T. Thireou, E. Eliopoulos","doi":"10.3892/wasj.2021.136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3892/wasj.2021.136","url":null,"abstract":". Modern drug discovery and pharmaceutics benefit from nature. Natural products (NPs) are used as a source of therapeutic agents with beneficial uses. Currently, there is considerable interest in the exploration of NPs for drug discovery and continuous investigations on the therapeutic claims and mechanisms of herbal medicines. To date, approxi‑ mately one million NPs have been isolated and subjected to experimental assays to evaluate quantitative biological activities. This renders the use of an integrated database to assemble and correlate this valuable information from the literature, experimental studies and databases necessary. Although databases contain a large volume of information, it is frequently difficult and complex, even in well‑organized databases, to extract the required information. Novel databases must be accompanied by efficient algorithms and techniques in order to extract beneficial knowledge by a simple query. The Hippo(crates) database aims to fill this gap in the field of chemoinformatics and natural products by providing retrieval not only linked to the Hippo(crates) database, but also to other worldwide chemical and biological databases. Part of the OPENSCREEN‑GR project, the Hippo(crates) Database Graphical User Interface (HDGUI) web server was developed to provide a user‑friendly access interface, integrating anno‑ tated information of NP origin (sources and species), biological activities, physicochemical properties, linear and 3D chemical structure, as well as relative terms that correlate chemical compounds and their use. In its current version (V1.0), the Hippo database provides 45,300 NPs, NP derivatives and synthetic compounds, which are separated into 32 major categories, including biological or medicinal properties. In the database, 22,830 NP source organisms are correlated, with >100,000 terms, including biological pathways, target organisms, target diseases, target types, target proteins and pathogens, and 6,070 three‑dimensional structures of NP target proteins. For each entry, a cluster with similar compounds and a ligand‑based or structure‑based pharmacophore model is provided. The portal is designed as an easy‑to‑use web tool where the user can easily search, extract and correlate informa‑ tion and data for natural product chemical compounds through various fields, such as categories, keywords, targets, species, or two‑dimensional or three‑dimensional similarity structure in the Hippo(crates) atlas of the NP database.","PeriodicalId":87378,"journal":{"name":"World Academy of Sciences journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91060150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Analysis of the use of blood parameters in COPD and ACOS for the purposes of disease differentiation","authors":"D. Zorlu","doi":"10.3892/wasj.2021.133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3892/wasj.2021.133","url":null,"abstract":". The definition of asthma‑chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) overlap syndrome (ACOS) has recently been changed to ‘ACO’ in cases in which certain clinical manifestations of both asthma and COPD are present. In ACO, difficulties in diagnosis and differential diagnosis occur, since inflammation and related pathophysiological changes cannot be clearly demonstrated. In the present study, blood parameters were evaluated with regards to the differ‑ ential diagnosis of ACO‑COPD and are presented with the aim of providing an approach that is easy to apply in daily practice. The present study was conducted in February, 2020 on patients who presented to the pulmonology department. A total of 50 patients with COPD and 51 patients with ACO who were newly diagnosed were included in the study. The results revealed that there were significant differences between the ACO and COPD groups in terms of their neutrophil and lymphocyte counts, platelet (PLT) and C‑reactive protein (CRP) counts, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) (P<0.05). However, no statistically significant differences were found between the groups in terms of their eosinophil ratio and mean platelet volume (MPV) count (P>0.05). The mean neutrophil count, NLR, PLR and CRP values were significantly higher in the COPD group than the ACO group. In the ACO group, the mean PLT and lymphocyte count values were significantly higher than those in the COPD group. According to the findings of the present study, although role of inflammation in ACO has not been fully clarified, the presence of eosinophilia in ACO does not significantly contribute to the differential diagnosis of COPD. MPV also lacks clinically significant differential properties in COPD and ACO. However, the mean PLT and lymphocyte counts were significantly higher in the ACO than in the COPD group, which maybe a promising result in the differential diagnosis of COPD. Thus, the present study may provide insight into the differential diagnosis between 55.2% among patients with COPD and between 13.3 and 61.0% among patients with asthma alone (7). In another, multicenter, cross‑sectional, observational study, the number of patients","PeriodicalId":87378,"journal":{"name":"World Academy of Sciences journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72513746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blood culture at 63 Japanese healthcare facilities","authors":"T. Ohishi, M. Ogawa, Etsuko Katsukura, K. Imoto","doi":"10.3892/wasj.2021.131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3892/wasj.2021.131","url":null,"abstract":". Blood culture is essential for the diagnosis of infectious disease. Appropriate treatment is administered according to blood culture results; thus, highly accurate tests are required. The present study obtained data from hospitals which are ranked among those with the highest number of beds in each prefecture (top 10%; 1,000 hospitals nation-wide), beginning with 3,129 hospitals throughout Japan with ≥200 beds as of 2018. In total, 63 hospitals that gave their consent to participate in the study provided information regarding blood culture‑related indicators over a 2‑year period. The positive blood culture rate (95% confidence interval) was 15.4% (13.7‑17.1%), the number of blood culture sets per 1,000 patient days was 21.5 (18.2‑24.9), multiple set collection rate was 76.7% (71.1‑82.3%) and the contamination rate was 3.1% (2.4‑3.8%). Using these results as reference values for blood culture in Japanese healthcare facilities with ≥200 beds, the authors are attempting to approach these values at their resident hospitals and expect improved on‑site interventions and educational activities regarding the state of blood culture.","PeriodicalId":87378,"journal":{"name":"World Academy of Sciences journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78253429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Use of the modified Clavien‑Dindo classification to determine the risk factors for early complications following radical gastrectomy and the effect of such complications on long‑term prognosis","authors":"Jun Ma, Ying Wang, Shui Yu, Chaoping Zhou, Da-tian Wang, Dai-bin Tang, Guoqin Jiang, Yaming Zhang","doi":"10.3892/wasj.2021.130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3892/wasj.2021.130","url":null,"abstract":"Surgical resection remains the gold standard treat‐ ment for gastric cancer; however, the rate of post‐operative complications remains unsatisfactory. Although the majority of complications are treatable, it remains unknown whether the long‐term survival of patients is affected and what type of complications affect prognosis. In the present study, the modi‐ fied Clavien‐Dindo classification system was used to examine the incidence of early complications along with the related risk factors following radical gastrectomy (RG) and to determine the effects of such complications on long‐term prognosis. For this purpose, 525 gastric cancer patients with RG were analyzed retrospectively. The results revealed that age [odds ratio (OR), 1.781; P=0.013], pre‐operative comorbidity (OR, 1.765; P=0.020), blood loss (OR, 2.153; P=0.001) and the type of surgery (OR, 3.137; P<0.001) were identified as indepen‐ dent risk factors associated with post‐surgery complications. Blood loss (OR, 13.053; P=0.013) and the resection type (OR, 7.936; P=0.047) were identified as independent risk factors for severe complications. The 5‐year overall survival (OS) rate of patients in the severe complication group was 35%, which was significantly worse than that of patients in the non‐severe complication group (61.8%). Severe complications (hazard ratio, 1.595; P=0.107) were not found to be independent risk factors associated with the 5‐year OS. On the whole, the present study demonstrates that complications following RG were significantly related to age, pre‐operative comorbidity, blood loss and the type of surgery. Severe complications were distinctly affected by blood loss and the resection type. The 5‐year OS of patients in the severe complication group was significantly worse than that of patients in the non‐severe complication group; however, severe complications were not found to be independent risk factors associated with long‐term survival.","PeriodicalId":87378,"journal":{"name":"World Academy of Sciences journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85570769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vaspin and its relation to cancer (Review)","authors":"Shubham Agarwal, S. Desai","doi":"10.3892/wasj.2021.129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3892/wasj.2021.129","url":null,"abstract":". Adipose tissue releases signaling molecules and hormones which are known as adipokines. Adipose tissue also provides a medium for low‑grade inflammation which occurs from adipocyte hypertrophy with ensuing hypoxia and cell death. Cancers are known to arise in states of low‑grade inflammation. There have been attempts to understand the role of adipokines in cancer pathogenesis and to establish their use as diagnostic and prognostic tools, as well as treatment targets. The present review article aims to highlight the role of vaspin in various types of cancer. Vaspin is known to inhibit apop‑ tosis via the phosphatidylinositol‑3‑kinase/protein kinase B pathway, which has also been implicated in the development of colorectal cancer. The inhibition of the apoptosis of cells with malignant potential promotes tumor formation. At the same time, vaspin exhibits anti‑inflammatory and insulin‑sensitizing properties, which possibly confer its tumor inhibitory effects observed in endometrial cancer. However, its role either as a tumor promoter or inhibitor in other types of cancer in which it has not yet been studied would be difficult to predict.","PeriodicalId":87378,"journal":{"name":"World Academy of Sciences journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73434251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}