bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Biocontrol Efficacy Of Native Trichoderma Strains Isolated From Farm And Forest Soil Against Collar Rot (Sclerotium Rolfsii) Of Lentil
Authors: Adhikari P , Shrestha SM , Manandhar HK , Marahatta S 
Published: July 2024

Lentil, Lens culinaris is an important pulse crop of Nepal which is susceptible to collar rot disease caused by Sclerotium rolfsii during its early growth stages. The fungus attacks the collar region of the plant, causing rotting of the stem resulting in stunted growth, wilting and reduced productivity. Additionally, it weakens the plant, making them more susceptible to other diseases and stresses such as drought. The pathogen can survive in the soil for extended periods by producing sclerotia. Trichoderma species are known for their antagonistic ability against diverse plant pathogens, including S. rolfsii. This study was conducted to identify promising native Trichoderma isolates for controlling collar rot of lentil during 2020 and 2021 in Chitwan, Nepal. A total of 104 Trichoderma isolates collected from farm and sal, Shorea robusta forest soil and examined in vitro by dual culture technique against S. rolfsii in a completely randomized design. Of them, 30 isolates were selected to study biocontrol potential under a screen house by inoculating both the pathogen and Trichoderma onto lentil seedlings. Subsequently, four promising Trichoderma isolates were selected representing different agro-ecological regions for the field trial in a randomized complete block design to assess their ability to control S. rolfsii in field conditions. Results showed that Trichoderma isolates T73, Forest soil (96.96%); T74, Forest soil (94.49%) and T62, Darchula (88.92%) had shown strong inhibition of S. rolfsii growth, with forest soil isolates exhibiting higher antagonistic potential. In the screen house assay, all Trichoderma isolates increased seed germination, enhanced plant growth, and reduced disease incidence as compared to the control. Trichoderma isolates T49, Bhaktapur, and T31, Banke showed the highest percentage of disease control and percentage yield increase in the field conditions. These findings highlight the consistent potential of Trichoderma for biocontrol of collar rot diseases in lentil.
SAARC J. Agric., 22(1):169-179 (2024)
Usefulness of dalbavancin in early discharge and non-hospitalization. It’s time to throw your heart over the obstacle?
Authors: Crapis Massimo , Venturini Sergio , Callegari Astrid , Del Fabro Giovanni , Bramuzzo Igor , De Santi Laura , Pontoni Elisa , Tonizzo Maurizio , Basso Barbara 
Published: July 2024

Introduction: Dalbavancin is a semisynthetic lipoglycopeptide long-acting antibiotic approved for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSIs). Its features can be useful in the current healthcare scenario characterized by the shortage of available hospital beds.
Materials, methods and results: We implemented several actions in order to optimize the use of dalbavancin allowing an improvement strategy both from the healthcare system and the patient’s perspective in two hospital settings. In the Emergency Department we hospitalized only patients who met the clinical criteria and not the logistic criteria (i.e., the need for antibiotic therapy infusion). During the years 2017-2023, this strategy was applied in 40 cases, thus avoiding 40 hospitalizations for a total saving of 280 days of hospitalization.
In the Internal Medicine ward and surgery department when there was no longer any need for hospitalization, we discharged the patient as early as possible. During the years 2017-2023, this strategy was applied in 189 cases, saving at least 1,134 days of hospitalization. The outcome of the treated patients was favorable in 228 out of 229 patients (99.5%).
Conclusions: Our experience using dalbavancin in ABSSSI has been very satisfactory overall. The efficacy was close to 100%. Minor adverse events of slight severity occurred rarely. At the same time, this strategy allowed a more efficient allocation of hospital beds. Dalbavancin presents an ideal pharmacodynamic/pharmacokinetic profile for the management of ABSSSI especially in settings where shortage of hospital beds is critical.
Clinical, organizational, and pharmacoeconomic perspectives of dalbavancin vs standard of care in the infectious disease network
Authors: Segala Daniela , Barbieri Marco , Di Nuzzo Mariachiara , Benazzi Melissa , Bonazza Aurora , Gentili Francesca , Scolz Kristian , Marra Anna , Cultrera Rosario 
Published: July 2024

Introduction: The therapeutic approach to the patient with acute bacterial skin and skin structure infection (ABSSSI) and complicated infections often involves the early transition from intravenous to oral therapy (early switch) or early discharge. Our study aimed to evaluate sustainable and innovative care models that can be transferred to community healthcare and the economic impact of dalbavancin therapy vs Standard of Care (SoC) therapy for the treatment of ABSSSI and other Gram-positive infections including those by multidrug-resistant organisms. We also described the organization of an infectious disease network that allows optimizing the treatment of ABSSSI and other complex infections with dalbavancin.
Materials and Methods: We retrospectively studied all patients treated with dalbavancin in the University Hospital “S. Anna” of Ferrara, Italy, between November 2016 and December 2022. The clinical information of each patient was collected from the hospital’s SAP database and used to evaluate the impact of dalbavancin in early discharge with reduction of length of stay promoting dehospitalization and in improving adherence to antibiotic therapy
Results: A total of 287 patients (165 males and 122 females) were included in the study of which 62 were treated with dalbavancin. In 13/62 patients dalbavancin was administered in a single dose at the completion of therapy to facilitate early discharge. Assuming a 12-day hospitalization required for the treatment of ABSSSI or to complete the treatment of osteomyelitis or spondilodiscitis, the treatment with dalbavancin results in a cost reduction of more than €3,200 per single patient compared to SoC (dancomycin, linezolid or vancomycin)
Conclusions: Dalbavancin has proven to be a valid therapeutic aid in the organization of a territorial infectious disease network given its prolonged action, which allows the dehospitalization with management of even patients with complex infections in outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy.
Artificial intelligence assisted preoperative planning and 3D-printing guiding frame for percutaneous screw reconstruction in periacetabular metastatic cancer patients
Authors: Wang Jichuan , Zhao Zhiqing , Liang Haijie , Zhang Ranxin , Liu Xingyu , Zhang Jing , Singh Swapnil , Guo Wei , Yan Taiqiang , Hoang Bang H. , Geller David S. , Tang Xiaodong , Yang Rui 
Published: July 2024

BackgroundThe percutaneous screw reconstruction technique, known as the “Tripod Technique,” has demonstrated favorable clinical outcomes in the management of metastatic periacetabular lesions, as evidenced by our prior investigations and corroborated by independent studies. Nevertheless, there is a steep learning curve in handling this technique, with possible complications such as intraarticular screw placement.MethodsPreoperative pelvic CT scans were acquired before surgery and utilized for the guiding frame design. A convolutional neural network model was trained with annotated data to identify the starting point and trajectory of each potential screw. A model boundary intersection detection technology was used to determine the optimal diameter and length of each screw. A non-rigid registration technology was matched with a prefabricated model of the body surface to design personalized anchoring skin pads. Finally, a polylactic acid-based guiding frame for intraoperative was custom-made with a 3D printer.Results12 patients underwent a guiding frame-assisted Tripod procedure for treatment of periacetabular metastatic lesions. An intraoperative CT scan was performed in all cases to confirm screw trajectories. Among 36 screws that were implanted, 26 screws were implanted as designed. The remaining ten screws drifted, but all remained within the intra-osseous conduit without any complications. The mean surgical time was 1.22 h with the guiding frame compared with 2.3 h without the guiding frame. Following the surgical procedure, a noteworthy enhancement in pain management, as evidenced by a reduction in scores on the visual analog scale (p &lt; 0.01), and an improvement in functional status, as assessed through the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group score (p &lt; 0.01), were observed when compared to the patient’s pre-operative condition.ConclusionThis proof-of-concept investigation demonstrates that the amalgamation of AI-assisted surgical planning and additive manufacturing can improve surgical accuracy and shorten surgical duration. While access to this technology is currently constrained during its early stages of development, it is anticipated that these limitations will diminish as the potential of AI and additive manufacturing in facilitating complex orthopedic procedures becomes more evident, leading to a surge in interest and adoption of this approach.
M3: using mask-attention and multi-scale for multi-modal brain MRI classification
Authors: Kong Guanqing , Wu Chuanfu , Zhang Zongqiu , Yin Chuansheng , Qin Dawei 
Published: July 2024

IntroductionBrain diseases, particularly the classification of gliomas and brain metastases and the prediction of HT in strokes, pose significant challenges in healthcare. Existing methods, relying predominantly on clinical data or imaging-based techniques such as radiomics, often fall short in achieving satisfactory classification accuracy. These methods fail to adequately capture the nuanced features crucial for accurate diagnosis, often hindered by noise and the inability to integrate information across various scales.MethodsWe propose a novel approach that mask attention mechanisms with multi-scale feature fusion for Multimodal brain disease classification tasks, termed M3, which aims to extract features highly relevant to the disease. The extracted features are then dimensionally reduced using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), followed by classification with a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to obtain the predictive results.ResultsOur methodology underwent rigorous testing on multi-parametric MRI datasets for both brain tumors and strokes. The results demonstrate a significant improvement in addressing critical clinical challenges, including the classification of gliomas, brain metastases, and the prediction of hemorrhagic stroke transformations. Ablation studies further validate the effectiveness of our attention mechanism and feature fusion modules.DiscussionThese findings underscore the potential of our approach to meet and exceed current clinical diagnostic demands, offering promising prospects for enhancing healthcare outcomes in the diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases.
Connectomic insights into the impact of 1p/19q co-deletion in dominant hemisphere insular glioma patients
Authors: Yang Zuo-cheng , Xue Bo-wen , Song Xin-yu , Yin Chuan-dong , Yeh Fang-cheng , Li Gen , Deng Zheng-hai , Sun Sheng-jun , Hou Zong-gang , Xie Jian 
Published: July 2024

ObjectivesThis study aimed to elucidate the influences of 1p/19q co-deletion on structural connectivity alterations in patients with dominant hemisphere insular diffuse gliomas.MethodsWe incorporated 32 cases of left insular gliomas and 20 healthy controls for this study. Using diffusion MRI, we applied correlational tractography, differential tractography, and graph theoretical analysis to explore the potential connectivity associated with 1p/19q co-deletion.ResultsThe study revealed that the quantitative anisotropy (QA) of key deep medial fiber tracts, including the anterior thalamic radiation, superior thalamic radiation, fornix, and cingulum, had significant negative associations with 1p/19q co-deletion (FDR = 4.72 × 10–5). These tracts are crucial in maintaining the integrity of brain networks. Differential analysis further supported these findings (FWER-corrected p &lt; 0.05). The 1p/19q non-co-deletion group exhibited significantly higher clustering coefficients (FDR-corrected p &lt; 0.05) and reduced betweenness centrality (FDR-corrected p &lt; 0.05) in regions around the tumor compared to HC group. Graph theoretical analysis indicated that non-co-deletion patients had increased local clustering and decreased betweenness centrality in peritumoral brain regions compared to co-deletion patients and healthy controls (FDR-corrected p &lt; 0.05). Additionally, despite not being significant through correction, patients with 1p/19q co-deletion exhibited lower trends in weighted average clustering coefficient, transitivity, small worldness, and global efficiency, while showing higher tendencies in weighted path length compared to patients without the co-deletion.ConclusionThe findings of this study underline the significant role of 1p/19q co-deletion in altering structural connectivity in insular glioma patients. These alterations in brain networks could have profound implications for the neural functionality in patients with dominant hemisphere insular gliomas.
Clinical value of optical coherence tomography in the early diagnosis of cervical cancer and precancerous lesions: a cross-sectional study
Authors: Cui Xiaoli , Yang Di , Zhang Jing , Zhao Yuqian , Cui Zhumei , Wang Chunyan , Qiao Youlin 
Published: July 2024

BackgroundThis study aimed to measure the accuracy of optical coherence tomography (OCT) in the early diagnosis of high-grade cervical lesions and assess its diagnostic value in the triage of high-risk HPV infection.MethodFrom Jan 2019 to Jan 2021, women who visited the gynecology clinics of 2 hospitals for colposcopy were invited to participate in this study. Women aged 35 to 64 years old who were sexually active and had an intact cervix with a diameter of more than or equal to 2 cm were included in this study. Additionally, individuals with abnormal cytology, positive HPV test results, or other clinically suspicious symptoms or signs were referred. All participants were examined before colposcopy using OCT. Biopsy and/or ECC were conducted under colposcopy. We used the results of histopathology as the gold standard and assessed the accuracy of OCT.ResultsOverall, 883 women were included in the analysis. Approximately 13.25% of women were ASCUS+ in cytological assessments, and 22.31% were positive for high-risk HPV. Nearly 15.18% of women were positive in OCT. Of them, 27 women were diagnosed with CIN2, and 33 were diagnosed with CIN3+ lesions. Among HPV-positive women, the detection rates for CIN2+ and CIN3+ were much lower for those who were negative in OCT, compared with NILM cytology (CIN2+: 20.0% vs. 30.0%, P=0.002, and CIN3+: 18.2% vs. 27.3%, P=0.013). Among women who were positive for HPV16/18, the detection rate for CIN2+ was much lower for negative OCT, compared with NILM cytology (8.3% vs.15.0%, P=0.005). Compared to HPV and cytological tests, HPV combined with OCT had higher specificity for detecting CIN2+ and CIN3+ (96.1% vs. 93.2%, P=0.002; 93.8% vs. 91.3%, P=0.013). OCT triage after HPV genotyping had the highest AUC for detecting CIN2+ and CIN3+ cases among patients with high-risk HPV infection (0.921, 0.920).ConclusionOCT is an accurate test for the early diagnosis of high-grade cervical lesions and has great diagnostic value in the triage of patients with high-risk HPV infection.
Unearthing phytochemicals as natural inhibitors for pantothenate synthetase in Mycobacterium tuberculosis: A computational approach
Authors: Chouhan Mandeep , Tiwari Prashant Kumar , Mishra Richa , Gupta Saurabh , Kumar Mukesh , Almuqri Eman Abdullah , Ibrahim Nasir A. , Basher Nosiba Suliman , Chaudhary Anis Ahmad , Dwivedi Vivek Dhar , Verma Devvret , Kumar Sanjay 
Published: July 2024

Pantothenate synthetase protein plays a pivotal role in the biosynthesis of coenzyme A (CoA), which is a crucial molecule involved in a number of cellular processes including the metabolism of fatty acid, energy production, and the synthesis of various biomolecules, which is necessary for the survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Therefore, inhibiting this protein could disrupt CoA synthesis, leading to the impairment of vital metabolic processes within the bacterium, ultimately inhibiting its growth and survival. This study employed molecular docking, structure-based virtual screening, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to identify promising phytochemical compounds targeting pantothenate synthetase for tuberculosis (TB) treatment. Among 239 compounds, the top three (rutin, sesamin, and catechin gallate) were selected, with binding energy values ranging from −11 to −10.3 kcal/mol, and the selected complexes showed RMSD (&lt;3 Å) for 100 ns MD simulation time. Furthermore, molecular mechanics generalized Born surface area (MM/GBSA) binding free energy calculations affirmed the stability of these three selected phytochemicals with binding energy ranges from −82.24 ± 9.35 to −66.83 ± 4.5 kcal/mol. Hence, these identified natural plant-derived compounds as potential inhibitors of pantothenate synthetase could be used to inhibit TB infection in humans.
Prognostic impact of metformin in solid cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors: novel evidences from a multicenter retrospective study
Authors: Wang Jiaxin , Lin Jie , Guo Huaijuan , Wu Wenjuan , Yang Jingjing , Mao Jingxian , Fan Wenbin , Qiao Hong , Wang Ying , Yan Xuebing , Guo Hong 
Published: July 2024

Objective: Metformin as a common antidiabetic drug, has recently found to exert its anti-cancer and immunomodulatory effect in numerous preclinical studies. This study aims to clarify the prognostic impact of metformin use in solid cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs).Methods: A retrospective cohort enrolling 516 solid cancer patients who received ICI-based therapy between 2018 and 2023 at three hospitals was analyzed. The primary endpoints included overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). In addition, a bioinformatics analysis based on TCGA and GSE cohort was performed to investigate the prognostic significance of metformin target genes (MTGs) and their correlation with immune infiltration in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.Results: In the entire cohort, a total of 76 patients received metformin before and/or during ICI therapy. The global analysis demonstrated that metformin use was unrelated with the OS (p = 0.064) and PFS (p = 0.059) of ICI-treated cancer patients, which was confirmed in the subgroups of esophagus, hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancer (all p &gt; 0.05). However, metformin use was significantly correlated with better OS (p = 0.012) and PFS (p = 0.005) in ICI-treated lung cancer patients. Metformin use was also identified as an independent favorable prognostic factor for these patients. The bioinformatics analysis identified five favorable prognostic MTGs (RPS6KA5, RORA, SH3BP5, NUPR1, and CD40LG) for NSCLC patients, all of which was downregulated in lung cancer tissues as compared with normal tissues. The expressions of five MTGs not only could effectively stratify the OS of NSCLC patients, but also was correlated with infiltration of immune cells such as CD4+ and CD8+ T cells.Conclusion: Metformin use was significantly correlated with better OS and PFS in ICI-treated lung cancer patients. MTGs has the potential to serve as novel clinical biomarkers or druggable targets for cancer immunotherapy. Considering study limitations, the actual impact of metformin use on ICI therapy needs to be clarified by more clinical trials.
Melatonin improves cognitive dysfunction and decreases gliosis in the streptozotocin-induced rat model of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease
Authors: Gáll Zsolt , Boros Bernadett , Kelemen Krisztina , Urkon Melinda , Zolcseak István , Márton Kincső , Kolcsar Melinda 
Published: July 2024

IntroductionAlzheimer’s disease (AD) and other forms of dementia have a devastating effect on the community and healthcare system, as neurodegenerative diseases are causing disability and dependency in older population. Pharmacological treatment options are limited to symptomatic alleviation of cholinergic deficit and accelerated clearance of β-amyloid aggregates, but accessible disease-modifying interventions are needed especially in the early phase of AD. Melatonin was previously demonstrated to improve cognitive function in clinical setting and experimental studies also.MethodsIn this study, the influence of melatonin supplementation was studied on behavioral parameters and morphological aspects of the hippocampus and amygdala of rats. Streptozotocin (STZ) was injected intracerebroventricularly to induce AD-like symptoms in male adult Wistar rats (n = 18) which were compared to age-matched, sham-operated animals (n = 16). Melatonin was administered once daily in a dose of 20 mg/kg body weight by oral route. Behavioral analysis included open-field, novel object recognition, and radial-arm maze tests. TNF-α and MMP-9 levels were determined from blood samples to assess the anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects of melatonin. Immunohistological staining of brain sections was performed using anti-NeuN, anti-IBA-1, and anti-GFAP primary antibodies to evaluate the cellular reorganization of hippocampus.Results and DiscussionThe results show that after 40 days of treatment, melatonin improved the cognitive performance of STZ-induced rats and reduced the activation of microglia in both CA1 and CA3 regions of the hippocampus. STZ-injected animals had higher levels of GFAP-labeled astrocytes in the CA1 region, but melatonin treatment reduced this to that of the control group. In conclusion, melatonin may be a potential therapeutic option for treating AD-like cognitive decline and neuroinflammation.