Epidemiology and prognostic nomogram for locally advanced gastric signet ring cell carcinoma:A population-based study

BACKGROUND Gastric signet ring cell carcinoma(GSRC)represents a specific subtype of gastric cancer renowned for its contentious epidemiological features,treatment principles,and prognostic factors.AIM To investigate the epidemiology of GSRC and establish an improved model for predicting the prognosis of patients with locally advanced GSRC(LAGSRC)after surgery.METHODS The annual rates of GSRC incidence and mortality,covering the years 1975 to 2019,were extracted from the Surveillance,Epidemiology,and End Results(SEER)database to explore the temporal trends in both disease incidence and mortality rates using Joinpoint software.The clinical data of 3793 postoperative LAGSRC patients were collected from the SEER database for the analysis of survival rates.The Cox regression model was used to explore the independent prognostic factors for overall survival(OS).The risk factors extracted were used to establish a prognostic nomogram.RESULTS The overall incidence of GSRC increased dramatically between 1975 and 1998,followed by a significant downward trend in incidence after 1998.In recent years,there has been a similarly optimistic trend in GSRC mortality rates.The trend in GSRC showed discrepancies based on age and sex.Receiver operating characteristic curves,calibration curves,and decision curve analysis for 1-year,3-year,and 5-year OS demonstrated the high discriminative ability and clinical utility of this nomogram.The area under the curve indicated that the performance of the new model outperformed that of the pathological staging system.CONCLUSION The model we established can aid clinicians in the early prognostication of LAGSRC patients,resulting in improved clinical outcomes by modifying management strategies and patient health care.

Anti-depressant effects of Jieyu Anshen granule in chronic unpredictable mild stress-treated rats after ischemic stroke

OBJECTIVE To explore the effects and underlying mechanism of Jieyu Anshen granule(JY) in chronic unpredictable mild stress(CUMS)-treated rats after ischemic stroke.METHODS A rat model of post-stroke depression(PSD) was developed by additional CUMS procedures after middle cere.bral artery occlusion(MCAO).Sprague-Dawley rats were given 1 g·kg^(-1) and 3 g·kg^(-1) of JY by gastrogavage for 4 weeks.Escitalopram(10 mg·kg^(-1)) served as a reference drug.Behavioral tests including sucrose preference test,forced swim test and open-field test were performed to evaluate the antidepressant effects.Levels of norepinephrine(NE),dopamine(DA) and 5-hydroxytryptamine(5-HT) in rat brain were assayed.The anti-inflammatory activity was evaluated by measuring TNF-α and IL-1β in brain.Serum adrenocorticotropic hormone(ACTH) and corticosterone(CORT) were estimated as indices of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal(HPA) axis activity.Western blot analysis was used to evaluate hippo.campal expression of the 5-HT1 A receptor(5-HT_(1A)R) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor(BDNF).RESULTS PSD rats exhibited decreased sucrose consumption and motor activity,increased immobility time(P<0.01).JY treatment reversed the depressive behaviors in PSD rats(P<0.05,P<0.01).Treat.ment with JY resulted in significantly increased levels of NE,DA and 5-HT in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex(P<0.05,P<0.01),and increased expression of 5-HT_(1A)R and BDNF in the hippocampus(P<0.01).JY treatment significantly down-regulated the levels of TNF-α and IL-1β in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex(P<0.05).Treatment with JY also resulted in significantly decreased ACTH and CORT in serum which had been increased(P<0.05).CONCLUSION These findings suggest that JY treat.ment could ameliorate PSD,and the effects are likely ascribed to inhibiting HPA axis hyperfunction and inflammatory,up-regulating the levels of neurotransmitters(NE,DA and 5-HT),and the expression of hippocampal 5-HT_(1A)R and BDNF.

Gentiopicroside, originated from Gentiana macrophylla Pall, possesses antiarthritic efficacy in adjuvant-induced arthritis rats

OBJECTIVE This work aimed to investigate the anti-rheumatoid arthritic effect of gentio.picroside from Gentiana macrophylla Pall using an animal model of adjuvant induced arthritis.METH.ODS Adjuvant arthritis was induced in fifty SD male rats,which were randomly divided into five groups(n=10):control(0.5% CMC-Na) group,AIA(rats with CFA) group,dexamethasone(1 mg·kg^(-1)) group,gentiopicroside(50 mg·kg^(-1)) group,and gentiopicroside(100 mg·kg^(-1)) group.Rats were administered intragastrically with drugs or CMC-Na once a day for a period of 2 weeks.Paw swelling,arthritic index,histological changes were assessed to evaluate the anti-arthritic effect.Weight growth,spleen and thymus indexes were also investigated in.RESULTS Gentiopicroside at dose of 100 mg·kg^(-1) significantly inhibited the secondary paw swelling(P<0.05) and arthritis index(P<0.05),decreased synovial inflammatory infil.tration,synovial hyperplasia and bone erosion.Furthermore,gentiopicroside showed no immunosup.pressive adverse effects in body weight,index of spleen and thyums compared with dexamethasone administration(P<0.05,P<0.01).CONCLUSION Gentiopicroside possessed anti-arthritic efficacy in AIA rats without immunosuppressive effects.

Escin may exert a synergistic anti-inflammatory effect with glucocorticoids

Escin is a natural mixture of triterpenoid as- ponin isolated from the seed of the horse chestnut and demonstrates anti-oedematous and anti-inflammatory effects. As yet, the pre-cise mechanisms by which escin exerts its anti- inflammatory effects remain unclear. The data from current studies indicate that the anti-in-flammatory properties of escin were attributed to its ability to reduce the adhesiveness of neu-trophils and the associated release of inflam-matory mediators;its ability to decrease hista-minic and serotoninergic activities;its ability to inhibit phospholipase A2;its ability to decrease nuclear factor-κ B activation and down-regulate the expression of tumor necrosis factor-α. All these effects are similar to glucocorticoids. Mo- reover, escin depends on adrenal glands to ex-ert its anti-inflammatory effects. Also, our recent research showed that the serum corticosterone level in mice did not increase after a 7-day in-travenous injection of escin. The results sup-port the hypothesis that escin may exert a syn-ergistic anti-inflammatory effect with glucocor-ticoids. Confirming this hypothesis will play a role in elucidating the anti-inflammatory mech- anisms of escin.

Message delay time distribution analysis for controller area network under errors

Controller area network(CAN) is a widely used fieldbus protocol in various industrial applications.To understand the network behavior under errors for the optimal design of networked control systems, the message response time of the CAN network needs to be analyzed. In this study, a novel delay time distribution analysis method for the response messages is proposed when considering errors. In this method the complex message queues are decomposed into typical message patterns and cases. First, a stochastic fault model is developed, and the probability factor is defined to calculate the error distribution. Then the message delay time distribution for the single slave node configuration is analyzed based on the error distribution. Next, based on the delay time distribution analysis of typical patterns and cases, an analysis framework of message delay time distribution for the master/slave configuration is developed. The testbed is constructed and case studies are conducted to demonstrate the proposed methodology under different network configurations. Experimental results show that the delay time distributions calculated by the proposed method agree well with the actual observations.

Controller area network node reliability assessment based on observable node information

Controller area network(CAN) based fieldbus technologies have been widely used in networked manufacturing systems. As the information channel of the system, the reliability of the network is crucial to the system throughput, product quality, and work crew safety. However, due to the inaccessibility of the nodes' internal states, direct assessment of the reliability of CAN nodes using the nodes' internal error counters is infeasible. In this paper, a novel CAN node reliability assessment method, which uses node's time to bus-off as the reliability measure, is proposed. The method estimates the transmit error counter(TEC) of any node in the network based on the network error log and the information provided by the observable nodes whose error counters are accessible.First, a node TEC estimation model is established based on segmented Markov chains. It considers the sparseness of the distribution of the CAN network errors. Second, by learning the differences between the model estimates and the actual values from the observable node, a Bayesian network is developed for the estimation updating mechanism of the observable nodes. Then, this estimation updating mechanism is transferred to general CAN nodes with no TEC value accessibility to update the TEC estimation. Finally, a node reliability assessment method is developed to predict the time to reach bus-off state of the nodes. Case studies are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Experimental results show that the estimates using the proposed model agree well with actual observations.