digest

BACKGROUND: Endoscopic healing (EH) is a therapeutic target in ulcerative colitis (UC). However, even patients who have achieved EH relapse frequently. AIMS: To investigate the association between recent steroid use and relapse risk in UC patients with EH. METHODS: This multi-centre cohort study included 1212 UC patients with confirmed EH (Mayo endoscopic subscore ≤1). We excluded patients with current systemic steroid use or history of advanced therapy...

BACKGROUND: The expanding options in advanced therapies for ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) present challenges in treatment selection. Persistence analysis assesses drug durability in real-world settings, acting as a surrogate marker for medication efficacy and tolerance. Unlike traditional comparative studies, persistence analysis provides insights extending beyond the initial year of treatment. AIM: To provide real-world evidence on treatment effectiveness, tolerability and preferences of physicians and patients regarding various advanced therapies for IBD...

OBJECTIVES: Previous studies have shown rates of surgical resection of up to 41% in stricturing pediatric Crohn's disease. In this retrospective multicenter study, our aims were to identify clinical risk factors and magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) features of small bowel strictures associated with surgery. METHODS: Pediatric patients with symptomatic stricturing small bowel CD (defined as obstructive symptoms or proximal dilatation on MRE) confirmed by MRE between 2010 and 2020 were recruited from 12 French tertiary hospitals...

AIMS: A multi-stakeholder consensus has proposed MASLD (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease). We aimed to investigate the pathological findings related to the mid-term mortality of patients with biopsy-proven MASLD in Japan. METHODS: We enrolled 1349 patients with biopsy-proven MASLD. The observational period was 8010 person years. We evaluated independent factors associated with mortality in patients with MASLD by Cox regression analysis. We also investigated pathological profiles related to mortality in patients with MASLD using data-mining analysis...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a digestive tract cancer with high mortality and poor prognosis, especially in China. Current chemotherapeutic drugs lead to poor prognosis, low efficacy, and high side effects due to weak targeting specificity and rapidly formed multidrug resistance (MDR). Based on the previous studies on the doxorubicin (DOX) formulation for cancer targeting therapy, we developed a novel DOX delivery formulation for the targeting chemotherapy of HCC and DOX resistant HCC. HCSP4 was previously screened and casein kinase 2α (CK2α) was predicted as its specific target on HCC cells in our lab...

Acute pancreatitis (AP) is a common disease with no targeted therapy and has varied outcomes ranging from spontaneous resolution to being lethal. While typically painful, AP can also be painless. Various agents, including opioids are used for pain control in AP; the risks, and benefits of which are often debated. Since experimental AP in mice is used to study the efficacy of potential therapies, we studied the effect of a commonly used opioid buprenorphine on the initiation and progression of AP. For this we administered extended-release buprenorphine subcutaneously prior to inducing the previously established severe AP model that uses Interleukins 12 and 18 (IL12,18) in genetically obese (ob/ob) mice and compared this to mice with AP but without the drug...

A total of 425 weaned pigs (Exp. 1: 225 pigs [5.8 ± 0.9 kg]; Exp. 2: 200 pigs [6.1 ± 1.2 kg]) were used to determine the optimal dietary standardized ileal digestible ( SID ) arginine ( Arg ) level in early nursery diets based on growth and health responses. The basal diet in Exp.1 was formulated to meet SID Arg recommendation (0.66%; NRC, 2012) and in Exp. 2, SID Arg was set to simulate current industry practices for feeding nursery pigs (1.15 %). Basal diets were supplemented with 0...

BACKGROUND: Catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome (CAPS) is a multi-system autoimmune disease characterized by extensive thrombosis. Pediatric CAPS is extremely rare and associated with a high mortality rate, especially when midbrain infarction is involved. Hence, early diagnosis and prompt initiation of appropriate treatment for CAPS complicated by midbrain infarction are of utmost importance in achieving favorable outcomes. CASE PRESENTATION: In this report, we present the case of a 14-year-old girl who presented with neurological symptoms and digestive system infection and was initially diagnosed with an "intracranial infection"...

INTRODUCTION: The gut microbiota, T cell subsets, and cytokines participate in tuberculosis (TB) pathogenesis. To date, the mechanisms by which these factors interactively promote TB development at different time points remain largely unclear. In the context of this study, We looked into the microorganisms in the digestive tract, T cell types, and cytokines related to tuberculosis. METHODS: According to QIIME2, we analyzed 16SrDNA sequencing of the gut microbiome on the Illumina MiSeq...

INTRODUCTION: In the contemporary perspective, periodontitis is considered a complex issue triggered and perpetuated by bacteria but strongly influenced by the way the body reacts to bacterial plaque. Recent research has indicated that variations in genes might have an impact on the development of periodontitis. This study was conducted to explore a probable link between the genetic variations in intercellular adhesion molecule-1 ( ICAM-1 ) represented by rs5498 and the occurrence of periodontitis...

BACKGROUND: The appropriate sample handling for human fecal microbiota studies is essential to prevent changes in bacterial composition and quantities that could lead to misinterpretation of the data. METHODS: This study firstly identified the potential effect of aerobic and anaerobic fecal sample collection and transport materials on microbiota and quantitative microbiota in healthy and fat-metabolic disorder Thai adults aged 23-43 years. We employed metagenomics followed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing and 16S rRNA gene qPCR, to analyze taxonomic composition, alpha diversity, beta diversity, bacterial quantification, Pearson's correlation with clinical factors for fat-metabolic disorder, and the microbial community and species potential metabolic functions...

Surveillance data published since 2010, although limited, showed that there is no evidence of zoonotic parasite infection in market quality Atlantic salmon, marine rainbow trout, gilthead seabream, turbot, meagre, Atlantic halibut, common carp and European catfish. No studies were found for greater amberjack, brown trout, African catfish, European eel and pikeperch. Anisakis pegreffii , A. simplex (s. s.) and Cryptocotyle lingua were found in European seabass, Atlantic bluefin tuna and/or cod, and Pseudamphistomum truncatum and Paracoenogonimus ovatus in tench, produced in open offshore cages or flow-through ponds or tanks...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) depicts transmural changes in response to biological treatment for Crohn's disease (CD); however, the long-term prognostic significance of these findings is unknown. The primary objective of this study was to identify findings on MRE 46 weeks after initiating biological treatment that predict adverse long-term outcomes. METHODS: Patients with CD underwent MRE 46 weeks after initiating biological treatment and were prospectively followed for 2 years...

BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that chemotherapy and radiotherapy can cause premature ovarian failure and loss of fertility in female cancer patients. Ovarian cortex cryopreservation is a good choice to preserve female fertility before cancer treatment. Following the remission of the disease, the thawed ovarian tissue can be transplanted back and restore fertility of the patient. However, there is a risk to reintroduce cancer cells in the body and leads to the recurrence of cancer. Given the low success rate of current in vitro culture techniques for obtaining mature oocytes from primordial follicles, an artificial ovary with primordial follicles may be a good way to solve this problem...

OBJECTIVES: Continuous curriculum improvements reveal the dedication of policy-makers to raising the quality of education and student learning. This study aims to report the impact of curriculum changes to the three-month pediatric course curriculum at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU) on the satisfaction levels of medical students. METHODS: One hundred eighteen 4th -5th years medical students, who had completed their pediatric clinical rotation in SBMU-affiliated teaching hospitals including Mofid Children Hospital, Loghman Hakim Hospital, Shohada-e-Tajrish Hospital, and Imam Hossein Hospital from January to December 2022 were included in this cross-sectional study...

This study assessed Rhodotorula paludigena CM33's growth and β-carotene production in a 22-L bioreactor for potential use as an aquatic animal feed supplement. Optimizing the feed medium's micronutrient concentration for high-cell-density fed-batch cultivation using glucose as the carbon source yielded biomass of 89.84 g/L and β-carotene concentration of 251.64 mg/L. Notably, using sucrose as the carbon source in feed medium outperforms glucose feeds, resulting in a β-carotene concentration of 285...

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Food access is an important social determinant of health and refers to geographical and infrastructural aspects of food availability. Using publicly available data on food access from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), geospatial analyses can identify regions with variable food access, which may impact acute pancreatitis (AP), an acute inflammatory condition characterized by unpredictable outcomes and substantial mortality. This study aimed to investigate the association of clinical outcomes in patients with AP with geospatial food access...

This study evaluates models for predicting volatile fatty acid (VFA) concentrations in sludge processing, ranging from classical statistical methods (Gaussian and Surge) to diverse machine learning algorithms (MLAs) such as Decision Tree, XGBoost, CatBoost, LightGBM, Multiple linear regression (MLR), Support vector regression (SVR), AdaBoost, and GradientBoosting. Anaerobic bio-methane potential tests were carried out using domestic wastewater treatment primary and secondary sludge. The tests were monitored over 40 days for variations in pH and VFA concentrations under different experimental conditions...

BACKGROUND: Recently, a panel of multi-society experts proposed steatotic liver disease (SLD) as an alternative terminology for metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) or nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). AIMS: We compared the impact of SLD, subtype of SLD, MAFLD and NAFLD on all-cause and cause-specific mortality. METHODS: A total of 7811 individuals in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and linked mortality through 2019 were analysed...

Up to now, it has been believed that invertebrates are unable to synthesize ascorbic acid (AA) in vivo. However, in the present study, the full-length CDs (Coding sequence) of L-gulonolactone oxidase (GLO) from Pacific abalone (Haliotis discus hannai Ino) were obtained through molecular cloning. The Pacific abalone GLO contained a FAD-binding domain in the N-termination, and ALO domain and conserved HWAK motif in the C-termination. The GLO gene possesses 12 exons and 11 introns. The Pacific abalone GLO was expressed in various tissues, including the kidney, digestive gland, gill, intestine, muscle and mantle...