Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Home administration of filgrastim (Nivestim™) in primary prophylaxis of chemotherapy-induced febrile neutropenia

Background The granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) biosimilar filgrastim (Nivestim™) reduces the duration and severity of neutropenia and the frequency of occurrence of febrile neutropenia (FN). Administration of this biosimilar filgrastim and the patient population receiving it at home have not been sufficiently documented in day-to-day medical practice. Insight into home administration may help optimize the management of FN in this setting, potentially at a reduced cost and patient burden vs hospital administration. Materials and methods This was a prospective, non-interventional, non-comparative, multisite study involving 171 patients across 29 sites treated with at least one dose of filgrastim. Mean age was 59.3 years, and most patients were female and G-CSF-naïve. The data collected originated from paper-based patient questionnaires and routine documentation by the treating physicians. The primary endpoint was the characterization of patients treated with filgrastim. Secondary endpoints were satisfaction with filgrastim, effectiveness, safety and tolerability, and compliance with prescription. Results Most patients had solid tumors (95.9%), mainly located in the breast, while 4.7% had malignant hematological disease. Solid tumors were recorded as grade 1 (7.9%), grade 2 (28.0%), grade 3 (45.7%), and grade 4 (3.0%), and the majority of patients classified at TNM Stages I and II. Many patients (71.0%) could self-inject filgrastim and 72.2% found the handling instructions “extremely straightforward and easy to understand” at least once. Nearly all (99.4%) patients found the syringes “easy to use” at least once and 91.7% were willing to continue home administration. The mean patient satisfaction score for home administration was 1.9±0.9, ranging from 1 (very satisfied) to 6 (absolutely dissatisfied). No cases of neutropenia were observed and only one event of FN occurred. Conclusion Home-based prophylaxis for FN with filgrastim was found to be effective, well tolerated, and well received by patients (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02956967).
Fundamental Asymptotic Behavior of (Two-User) Distributed Massive MIMO

This paper considers the uplink of a distributed Massive MIMO network where &#x1D4A9; base stations (BSs), each equipped with &#x2133; antennas, receive data from $K=2$ users. We study the asymptotic spectral efficiency (as $M\to \infty$) with spatial correlated channels, pilot contamination, and different degrees of channel state information (CSI) and statistical knowledge at the BSs. By considering a two-user setup, we can simply derive fundamental asymptotic behaviors and provide novel insights into the structure of the optimal combining schemes. In line with [1], when global CSI is available at all BSs, the optimal minimum-mean squared error combining has an unbounded capacity as $M\to \infty$, if the global channel covariance matrices of the users are asymptotically linearly independent. This result is instrumental to derive a suboptimal combining scheme that provides unbounded capacity as $M\to \infty$ using only local CSI and global channel statistics. The latter scheme is shown to outperform a generalized matched filter scheme, which also achieves asymptotic unbounded capacity by using only local CSI and global channel statistics, but is derived following [2] on the basis of a more conservative capacity bound.
Impact of Surface Modification via Plasma Treatment on the Response of Strain Sensor Based on MWCNTs/epoxy Nanocomposite

Strain sensor based on MWCNTs/epoxy nanocomposite are attracting the attention of many researchers not only because they have low cost, but also because of the high sensitivity comparing to the conventional strain sensor due to the piezoresistive behavior under load. In this study, the objective is to achieve higher sensing sensitivity by enhancing the stress transfer between thin film/Substrate. To this aim, polyimide substrate was exposed to oxygen plasma treatment in order to activate and enhance the surfaces prior deposition of the MWCNTs/epoxy nanocomposite thin film. In fact, exposure time was varied 2, 4, 5, 10 min in order to investigate the impact on the electro-mechanical response. For deeply investigation, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) was used to examine the topography of the modified surfaces of the kapton HN by measuring the root-mean-squared (RMS) roughness. The AFM results show that the root-mean-squared (RMS) roughness of pristine PI film was 2.5 nm, increasing to 15.5 nm after 4 minutes oxygen plasma treatment. Furthermore, Raman spectroscopy was used to follow the changes on the molecular structure of surface following treatment time. A higher sensitivity was achieved after 4 min plasma with a gauge factor around 13.6.
A Systematic Review on Novel Mycobacterium tuberculosis Antigens and Their Discriminatory Potential for the Diagnosis of Latent and Active Tuberculosis

Background: Current immunodiagnostic tests for tuberculosis (TB) are based on the detection of an immune response toward mycobacterial antigens injected into the skin or following an in-vitro simulation in interferon gamma-release assays. Both tests have limited sensitivity and are unable to differentiate between tuberculosis infection (LTBI) and active tuberculosis disease (aTB). To overcome this, the use of novel Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) stage-specific antigens for the diagnosis of LTBI and aTB has gained interest in recent years. This review summarizes current evidence on novel antigens used for the immunodiagnosis of tuberculosis and discrimination of LTBI and aTB. In addition, results on measured biomarkers after stimulation with novel M. tuberculosis antigens were also reviewed. Methods: A systematic literature review was performed in Pubmed, EMBASE and web of science searching articles from 2000 up until December 2017. Only articles reporting studies in humans using novel antigens were included. Results: Of 1,533 articles screened 34 were included in the final analysis. A wide range of novel antigens expressed during different stages and types of LTBI and aTB have been assessed. M. tuberculosis antigens Rv0081, Rv1733c, Rv1737c, Rv2029c, Rv2031 and Rv2628, all encoded by the dormancy of survival regulon, were among the most widely studied antigens and showed the most promising results. These antigens have been shown to have best potential for differentiating LTBI from aTB. In addition, several studies have shown that the inclusion of cytokines other than IFN-γ can improve sensitivity. Conclusion: There is limited evidence that the inclusion of novel antigens as well as the measurement of other biomarkers than IFN-γ may improve sensitivity and may lead to a discrimination of LTBI from aTB.
Association between mitochondrial DNA copy number and cardiovascular disease: Current evidence based on a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Mitochondria are energy-producing structure of the cell and help to maintain redox environment. In cardiovascular disease, the number of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) will changes accordingly compare to normal condition. Some investigators ask whether it has a clear association between mtDNA and cardiovascular disease with its adverse events. Thus, we conduct the meta-analysis to assess the role of circulating mtDNA in evaluating cardiovascular disease. Methods The meta-analysis was conducted in accordance with a predetermined protocol following the recommendations of Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews. We searched the Pubmed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and World Health Organization clinical trials registry center to identify relevant studies up to the end of October 2017. Data were analyzed using STATA. Besides, publication bias and meta-regression analysis were also conducted. Results We collected results from 5 articles for further analyses with 8,252 cases and 20,904 control. The normalized mtDNA copy number level is lower in cardiovascular disease (CVD) than the control groups with a pooled standard mean difference (SMD) of -0.36(95%CI,-0.65 to -0.08); The pooled odds ratio (OR) for CVD proportion associated with a 1-SD (standard deviation) decrease in mtDNA copy number level is 1.23 (95% CI,1.06–1.42); The OR for CVD patients with mtDNA copy number lower than median level is 1.88(95% CI,1.65–2.13); The OR for CVD patients with mtDNA copy number located in the lowest quartile part is 2.15(95% CI, 1.46–3.18); the OR between mtDNA copy number and the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) is 1.83(95% CI, 1.22–2.74). Conclusion Although inter-study variability, the overall performance test of mtDNA for evaluating CVD and SCD revealed that the mtDNA copy number presented the potential to be a biomarker for CVD and SCD prediction. Given that, the fewer copies of mtDNA, the higher the risk of CVD.
Pancreatic cystic neoplasms in 2018: The final cut

289 Address for correspondence Dr. Gabriele Capurso, Pancreato-Biliary Endoscopy and Endosonography Division, Pancreas Translational and Clinical Research Center, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Vita‐Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy. E‐mail: capurso.gabriele@hsr.it Received: 2018-05-16; Accepted: 2018-07-27; Published online: 2018-10-15 Pancreatic cystic neoplasms in 2018: The final cut
Language GANs Falling Short

Generating high-quality text with sufficient diversity is essential for a wide range of Natural Language Generation (NLG) tasks. Maximum-Likelihood (MLE) models trained with teacher forcing have consistently been reported as weak baselines, where poor performance is attributed to exposure bias (Bengio et al., 2015; Ranzato et al., 2015); at inference time, the model is fed its own prediction instead of a ground-truth token, which can lead to accumulating errors and poor samples. This line of reasoning has led to an outbreak of adversarial based approaches for NLG, on the account that GANs do not suffer from exposure bias. In this work, we make several surprising observations which contradict common beliefs. First, we revisit the canonical evaluation framework for NLG, and point out fundamental flaws with quality-only evaluation: we show that one can outperform such metrics using a simple, well-known temperature parameter to artificially reduce the entropy of the model's conditional distributions. Second, we leverage the control over the quality / diversity trade-off given by this parameter to evaluate models over the whole quality-diversity spectrum and find MLE models constantly outperform the proposed GAN variants over the whole quality-diversity space. Our results have several implications: 1) The impact of exposure bias on sample quality is less severe than previously thought, 2) temperature tuning provides a better quality / diversity trade-off than adversarial training while being easier to train, easier to cross-validate, and less computationally expensive. Code to reproduce the experiments is available at github.com/pclucas14/GansFallingShort
Reference intervals for hematology test parameters from apparently healthy individuals in southwest Ethiopia

Background: Clinical laboratory reference intervals are an important tool to identify abnormal laboratory test results. The generating of hematological parameters reference intervals for local population is very crucial to improve quality of health care, which otherwise may lead to unnecessary expenditure or denying care for the needy. There are no well-established reference intervals for hematological parameters in southwest Ethiopia. Objective: To generate hematological parameters reference intervals for apparently healthy individuals in southwest Ethiopia. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted involving 883 individuals from March to May 2017. Four milliliter of blood sample was collected and transported to Jimma University Medical Center Laboratory for hematological analysis and screening tests. A hematological parameters were measured by Sysmex XS-500i hematology analyzer (Sysmex Corporation Kobe, Japan). The data were analyzed by SPSS version 20 statistical software. The non-parametric independent Kruskal–Wallis test and Wilcoxon rank-sum test (Mann–Whitney U test) were used to compare the parameters between age groups and genders. The 97.5 percentile and 2.5 percentile were the upper and lower reference limit for the population. Results: The reference interval of red blood cell, white blood cell, and platelet count in children were 4.99 × 1012/L (4.26–5.99 × 1012/L), 7.04 × 109/L (4.00–11.67 × 109/L), and 324.00 × 109/L (188.00–463.50 × 109/L), respectively. The reference interval of red blood cell, white blood cell, and platelet count in adults was 5.19 × 1012/L (4.08–6.33 × 1012/L), 6.35 × 109/L (3.28–11.22 × 109/L), and 282.00 × 109/L (172.50–415.25 × 109/L), respectively. The reference interval of red blood cell, white blood cell, and platelet count in geriatrics were 5.02 × 1012/L (4.21–5.87 × 1012/L), 6.21 × 109/L (3.33–10.03 × 109/L), and 265.50 × 109/L (165.53–418.80 × 109/L), respectively. Most of the hematological parameters showed significant differences across all age groups. Conclusion: Most of the hematological parameters in this study showed differences from similar studies done in the country. This study provided population-specific hematological reference interval for southwest Ethiopians. Reference intervals should also be established in the other regions of the country.
An Efficient Algorithm for MIMO Cylindrical Millimeter-Wave Holographic 3-D Imaging

A novel cylindrical millimeter-wave holography regime using a multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) array is first introduced. More importantly, an accurate and fast 3-D imaging algorithm is developed for this regime. Although many efficient imaging algorithms for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) or circular SAR have been developed, they can hardly be used for this new regime due to the compound effects of a spherical wavefront, MIMO geometry, and cylindrical observation aperture. In this paper, we develop an efficient algorithm mainly based on the ideas of a spherical wave decomposition, circular convolution, and nonuniform fast Fourier transform. The proposed algorithm achieves similar imaging quality with the golden-standard back-projection algorithm (BPA) while costs much less time. Compared with the BPA, the proposed algorithm belongs to a kind of the frequency-domain method built upon range migration techniques. Detailed derivations are first presented. Then, several important issues including resolutions, sampling criteria, and computational complexities are analyzed. Finally, a series of simulations and experiments are carried out, and all the results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm on both accuracy and efficiency.
Modelling ponatinib resistance in tyrosine kinase inhibitor-naïve and dasatinib resistant BCR-ABL1+ cell lines

TKI resistance remains a major impediment to successful treatment of CML. In this study, we investigated the emerging modes of ponatinib resistance in TKI-naïve and dasatinib resistant BCR-ABL1+ cell lines. To investigate potential resistance mechanisms, ponatinib resistance was generated in BCR-ABL1+ cell-lines by long-term exposure to increasing concentrations of ponatinib. Two cell lines with prior dasatinib resistance demonstrated BCR-ABL1 kinase domain (KD) mutation(s) upon exposure to ponatinib. In one of these cell lines the T315I mutation had emerged during dasatinib exposure. When further cultured with ponatinib, the T315I mutation level and BCR-ABL1 mRNA expression level were increased. In the other cell line, compound mutations G250E/E255K developed with ponatinib exposure. In contrast, the ponatinib resistant cell lines that had no prior exposure to other TKIs (TKI-naïve) did not develop BCR-ABL1 KD mutations. Rather, both of these cell lines demonstrated Bcr-Abl-independent resistance via Axl overexpression. Axl, a receptor tyrosine kinase, has previously been associated with imatinib and nilotinib resistance. Ponatinib sensitivity was restored following Axl inhibition or shRNA-mediated-knockdown of Axl, suggesting that Axl was the primary driver of resistance and a potential target for therapy in this setting.
Improvement of thyroid function in POEMS syndrome after combination therapy of lenalidomide and dexamethasone

Abstract Hypothyroidism is the most common endocrine disorder in POEMS syndrome. In this single-center prospective study, 36 patients with newly diagnosed POEMS syndrome were treated with lenalidomide (10 mg daily for 21 days) and dexamethasone (40mg once per week) for 12 cycles. Hypothyroidism was demonstrated in 58.5% (24/41) at baseline, including 25% (6/24) of clinical hypothyroidism and 75% (18/24) of subclinical hypothyroidism. After 12-month treatment, the percentages of clinical hypothyroidism and subclinical hypothyroidism had decreased 11.8% and 27.2%, respectively. Percentage of euthyroidism had increased from 41.5% to 80.5%. There was a strong relation between VEGF response and thyroid function improvement (p = .028). Patients with clinical hypothyroidism at baseline had an inferior 1-year OS (50% vs. 100%, p < .043) than euthyroidism and subclinical hypothyroidism groups. Clinical hypothyroidism was associated with decreased overall survival and this combination treatment was effective in improving thyroid function in POEMS syndrome.
A Noninvasive Score to Predict Liver Fibrosis in HBeAg-Positive Hepatitis B Patients with Normal or Minimally Elevated Alanine Aminotransferase Levels

Noninvasive fibrosis tests are highly needed but have not been well studied in chronic hepatitis B patients with normal or minimally elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels. This study is aimed at developing a noninvasive score system to predict liver fibrosis in these patients. HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B patients with ALT levels of <80 IU/l and liver histology (n = 290) were assigned to training (n = 203) or validation (n = 87) groups. Training group patients were divided into nonsignificant (F0–1) and significant fibrosis (F2–4) according to METAVIR stages. Logistic regression was performed to identify factors for liver fibrosis and develop a score system. The capacity of the score to identify the severity of fibrosis was displayed by receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) and area under ROC (AUROC) values. Multivariate logistic regression showed that HBeAg (ratios of the sample to the cutoff values (S/CO)) and liver stiffness measurement (LSM; kilopascals (kPa)) were independent factors of liver fibrosis. A score system composed of HBeAg and LSM by assigning a point of 1, 2, or 3 to different HBeAg and LSM levels, respectively, was developed. The scores 2-3, 4, and 5-6 of the sum of HBeAg and LSM points indicated nonsignificant, indeterminate, and significant fibrosis, respectively. The score system had an AUROC of 0.880 and showed similar performance in validation group patients. The accuracy for identifying significant and nonsignificant fibrosis was 77.14% in validation group patients and 71.26% in the entire group of patients. It is suggested that this noninvasive score system can accurately predict hepatic fibrosis and may reduce the need for liver biopsy in HBeAg-positive patients with normal or minimally elevated ALT levels.
Design of magnetic spirals in layered perovskites: Extending the stability range far beyond room temperature

A novel strategy to design magnetic spirals well above room temperature opens a way for their use in technological applications. In insulating materials with ordered magnetic spiral phases, ferroelectricity can emerge owing to the breaking of inversion symmetry. This property is of both fundamental and practical interest, particularly with a view to exploiting it in low-power electronic devices. Advances toward technological applications have been hindered, however, by the relatively low ordering temperatures Tspiral of most magnetic spiral phases, which rarely exceed 100 K. We have recently established that the ordering temperature of a magnetic spiral can be increased up to 310 K by the introduction of chemical disorder. Here, we explore the design space opened up by this novel mechanism by combining it with a targeted lattice control of some magnetic interactions. In Cu-Fe layered perovskites, we obtain Tspiral values close to 400 K, comfortably far from room temperature and almost 100 K higher than using chemical disorder alone. Moreover, we reveal a linear relationship between the spiral’s wave vector and the onset temperature of the spiral phase. This linear law ends at a paramagnetic-collinear-spiral triple point, which defines the highest spiral ordering temperature that can be achieved in this class of materials. On the basis of these findings, we propose a general set of rules for designing magnetic spirals in layered perovskites using external pressure, chemical substitutions, and/or epitaxial strain, which should guide future efforts to engineer magnetic spiral phases with ordering temperatures suitable for technological applications.
Insomnia and suicidal ideation in nonaffective psychosis

Study Objectives Insomnia is a common symptom in the clinical course of schizophrenia. There is a robust association between insomnia and suicidality in other psychiatric disorders. Two previous studies found associations between insomnia and suicide attempt or completed suicide in patients with schizophrenia. We hypothesized that greater insomnia would be associated with greater levels of suicidal ideation in patients with schizophrenia and other nonaffective psychoses. Methods We recruited 108 inpatients and outpatients age 18-65 between July 2010 and July 2016 with DSM-IV nonaffective psychosis (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or schizophreniform disorder). We investigated relationships between current insomnia (Insomnia Severity Index [ISI]), suicidal ideation over the past week, and lifetime history of suicide attempt (Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation [BSS]) in regression analyses. Results After controlling for potential confounders, insomnia was a significant indicator of suicidal ideation (β = 0.27, p = 0.032). Insomnia was also a significant indicator of a high BSS score (≥16; OR = 1.14, 95% CI: 1.01-1.28, p = 0.029). Furthermore, participants with severe insomnia were almost 15 times more likely to have a lifetime history suicide attempt than participants without current insomnia (OR = 14.8, 95% CI: 1.4-157, p = 0.025). Insomnia was also an indicator of greater PANSS total (β = 0.33, p = 0.001), positive subscale (β = 0.32, p = 0.002), and general subscale (β = 0.40, p < 0.001) scores. Conclusions Insomnia is associated with suicidal ideation, lifetime suicide attempt, and greater psychopathology in patients with schizophrenia. Our findings suggest that formal assessment of insomnia may be germane to the clinical care of patients with schizophrenia as a marker of suicide risk and symptom severity.