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Omar Stokholm posted an update 1 year, 5 months ago
Text representations ar one of the main inputs to various Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods. Given the fast developmental pace of new sentence embedding methods, we argue that there is a need for a unified methodology to assess these different techniques in the biomedical domain. This work introduces a comprehensive evaluation of novel methods across ten medical classification tasks. The tasks cover a variety of BioNLP problems such as semantic similarity, question answering, citation sentiment analysis and others with binary and multi-class datasets. Our goal is to assess the transferability of different sentence representation schemes to the medical and clinical domain. Our analysis shows that embeddings based on Language Models which account for the context-dependent nature of words, usually outperform others in terms of performance. Nonetheless, there is no single embedding model that perfectly represents biomedical and clinical texts with consistent performance across all tasks. This illustrates the need for a more suitable bio-encoder. Our MedSentEval source code, pre-trained embeddings and examples have been made available on GitHub. A distinctive subset of metastatic gastric cancer (MGC) is oligometastatic disease (OMD), which is characterized by metastatic lesions limited in number and location. Although growing evidence mainly based on retrospective analysis or single center case series has shown favorable prognosis in the management of OMD in gastric cancer with aggressive local treatment, no existing guidelines explicitely address the definition of OMD and there are still controversial opinions on how to proceed in a new era with more effective systemic therapy selection. In this review, we present the current advances and evidence as well as controversial on the management of OMD in MGC, including the definition, diagnosis, local aggressive treatments especially surgery, prognostic factors, current ongoing randomized clinical studied as well as challenges facing the field. BACKGROUND The gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) to platelet ratio (GPR) was proposed as a novel index for predicting liver inflammation in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients. We aimed to investigate GPR for predicting significant liver inflammation in CHB patients with normal (≤1×upper limit of normal, ULN) or mildly elevated (≤2×ULN) alanine transaminase (ALT). METHODS AND METHODS 431 treatment-naïve CHB patients with normal or mildly elevated ALT who underwent liver biopsy were enrolled. Comparision of GPR and other parameters for significant liver inflammation (G≥3). RESULTS For patients with ALT≤2×ULN, the receiver-operating characteristic curves (AUROCs) of GPR in predicting significant liver inflammation were 0.837 (95%CI 0.796 to 0.878), 0.860 (95%CI 0.809 to 0.910) and 0.809 (95%CI 0.739 to 0.878) in the entire patients, HBeAg positive and HBeAg negative CHB patients, respectively. The diagnostic performance of GPR was higher than ALT (P less then 0.001, P less then 0.001, respectively), aspartate transaminase (AST) (P=0.001, P=0.003, respectively) and GGT (P=0.002, P=0.002, respectively) in the entire and HBeAg positive patients, but was comparable with AST (P=0.096) and GGT (P=0.273) in the HBeAg negative CHB patients. For patients with ALT≤1×ULN, the diagnostic accuracy of GPR was significantly higher than ALT, AST and GGT in the entire (P less then 0.001, P=0.008 and P=0.043, respectively) and HBeAg positive CHB patients (P less then 0.001, P=0.009 and P=0.024, respectively), while was comparable to AST (P=0.209) and GGT(P=0.555) in the HBeAg negative CHB patients. CONCLUSION GPR has a better diagnostic value than conventional parameters to predict significant liver inflammation in CHB patients with normal or mildly elevated ALT levels, especially for HBeAg positive CHB. INTRODUCTION Clinically, significant stroke injury results from ischemia-reperfusion (IR), which induces a deleterious biphasic opening of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) remains the sole pharmacological agent to treat ischemic stroke. However, major limitations of tPA treatment include a narrow effective therapeutic window of 4.5 h (h) in most patients after initial stroke onset and off-target non-thrombolytic effects (e.g., the risk of increased IR injury). We hypothesized that ameliorating BBB damage with exogenous human neural stem cells (hNSCs) would improve stroke outcome to a greater extent than treatment with delayed tPA alone in aged stroke mice. METHODS We employed middle cerebral artery occlusion to produce focal ischemia with subsequent reperfusion (MCAO/R) in aged mice and administered tPA at a delayed time point (6 h post-stroke) via tail vein. We transplanted hNSCs intracranially in the subacute phase of stroke (24 h post-stroke). We assessed the outcomes of hNSC transplantation on pathophysiological markers of stroke 48 h post-stroke (24 h post-transplant). RESULTS Delayed tPA treatment resulted in more extensive BBB damage and inflammation relative to MCAO controls. Notably, transplantation of hNSCs ameliorated delayed tPA-induced escalated stroke damage; decreased expression of proinflammatory factors (tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin (IL)-6), decreased the level of matrix metalloprotease-9 (MMP-9), increased the level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and reduced BBB damage. CONCLUSIONS Aged stroke mice that received delayed tPA treatment in combination with hNSC transplantation exhibited reduced stroke pathophysiology in comparison to non-transplanted stroke mice with delayed tPA. This suggests that hNSC transplantation may synergize with already existing stroke therapies to benefit a larger stroke patient population. Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2A (CMT2A) peripheral neuropathy, the most common axonal form of CMT, is caused by dominantly inherited point mutations in the Mitofusin 2 (Mfn2) gene. Ruboxistaurin manufacturer It is characterized by progressive length-dependent degeneration of motor and sensory nerves with corresponding clinical features of motor and sensory impairment. There is no cure for CMT, and therapeutic approaches are limited to physical therapy, orthopedic devices, surgery, and analgesics. In this study we focus on histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) as a therapeutic target in a mouse model of mutant MFN2 (MFN2R94Q)-induced CMT2A. We report that these mice display progressive motor and sensory dysfunction as well as a significant decrease in α-tubulin acetylation in distal segments of long peripheral nerves. Treatment with a new, highly selective HDAC6 inhibitor, SW-100, was able to restore α-tubulin acetylation and ameliorate motor and sensory dysfunction when given either prior to or after the onset of symptoms. To confirm HDAC6 is the target for ameliorating the CMT2A phenotype, we show that genetic deletion of Hdac6 in CMT2A mice prevents the development of motor and sensory dysfunction.

