Effects of different doses of metformin on bone mineral density and bone metabolism in elderly male patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

BACKGROUND Diabetes is a chronic disease,which may cause various complications.Patients with diabetes are at high risk of bone and joint disorders,such as osteoporosis and bone fractures.In addition,it became widely accepted that diabetes has an important impact on bone metabolism.Metformin is a commonly used and effective first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes.Some glucose-lowering agents have been found to have an effect on bone metabolism.The present study explored if different doses of metformin have an effect on bone mineral density(BMD)and bone metabolism in type 2 diabetes.AIM To investigate the effects of different doses of metformin on BMD and bone metabolism in elderly male patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.METHODS A total of 120 elderly male outpatients with type 2 diabetes mellitus who were admitted to our hospital were included in the study from July 2018 to June 2019.They were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group with 60 patients in each group.Patients in the experimental group were given high dose metformin four times a day 0.5 g each time for 12 wk.Patients in the control group were given low dose metformin orally twice a day 0.5 g each time for 12 wk.The changes in bone mineral density and bone metabolism before and after treatment and the efficacy rate of the treatment were compared between the two groups.RESULTS There was no significant difference in the efficacy rate between the two groups(P>0.05).Before the treatment,there was no significant difference in BMD and bone metabolism between the two groups(P>0.05).However,after the treatment,BMD and bone metabolism were improved in the two groups.Moreover,BMD and 25-hydroxyvitamin D were significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group,and N-terminal/midregion andβ-isomerized Cterminal telopeptides were significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group(all P<0.05).There was no significant difference in the incidence of adverse reactions between the two groups(P>0.05).CONCLUSION Both high and low dose metformin can effectively control the blood glucose levels in elderly male patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.However,the benefits of high dose metformin in improving BMD and bone metabolism level was more obvious in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Mucinous adenocarcinoma:A unique clinicopathological subtype in colorectal cancer

Mucinous adenocarcinoma(MAC)is a unique clinicopathological subtype of colorectal cancer,which is characterized by extracellular mucinous components that comprise at least 50%of the tumor tissue.The clinical characteristics,molecular features,response to chemo-/radiotherapy,and prognosis of MAC are different from that of non-MAC(NMAC).MAC is more common in the proximal colon,with larger volume,higher T-stage,a higher proportion of positive lymph nodes,poorer tumor differentiation,and a higher proportion of peritoneal implants compared to NMAC.Although biopsy is the main diagnostic method for MAC,magnetic resonance imaging is superior in accuracy,especially for rectal carcinoma.The aberrant expression of mucins,including MUC1,MUC2 and MUC5AC,is a notable feature of MAC,which may be related to tumor invasion,metastasis,inhibition of apoptosis,and chemo-/radiotherapy resistance.The genetic origin of MAC is mainly related to BRAF mutation,microsatellite instability,and the CpG island methylator phenotype pathway.In addition,the poor prognosis of rectal MAC has been confirmed by various studies,and that of colonic MAC is still controversial.In this review,we summarize the epidemiology,clinicopathological characteristics,molecular features,methods of diagnosis,and treatments of MAC in order to provide references for further fundamental and clinical research.

345 GHz Band-Pass Filter Using Ultra-Precision Machining Technology

This paper presents a terahertz（THz）band-pass filter using ultra-precision machining technology based on Chebyshev filter prototype.This iris inductive window coupled waveguide filter was designed by using 8 resonant cavities with a center frequency of 345 GHz and a 7% bandwidth.The final design fulfills the desired specifications and presents the minimum insertion loss of 1.55 d B and the return loss of less than 15 d B at 345 GHz.The stop-band rejection is50 d B off the center frequency about 30 GHz,which means it has a good performance of high stop-band suppression.Compared with the recent development of THz filters,this filter possesses the characteristic of simple structure and is easy to machining.

Binary relevance for multi-label learning： an overview

Multi-label learning deals with problems where each example is represented by a single instance while being associated with multiple class labels simultaneously. Binary relevance is arguably the most intuitive solution for learning from multi-label examples. It works by decomposing the multi-label learning task into a number of independent binary learning tasks （one per class label）. In view of its potential weakness in ignoring correlations between labels, many correlation-enabling extensions to binary relevance have been proposed in the past decade. In this paper, we aim to review the state of the art of binary relevance from three perspectives. First, basic settings for multi-label learning and binary relevance solutions are briefly summarized. Second, representative strategies to provide binary relevance with label correlation exploitation abilities are discussed. Third, some of our recent studies on binary relevance aimed at issues other than label correlation exploitation are introduced. As a conclusion, we provide suggestions on future research directions.