[Evaluation of Red Blood Cell Indices and Parameter Formulas in Differential Diagnosis of Thalassemia Trait and Iron Deficiency Anemia for Children in Shenzhen Area of Guangdong Province in China].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficiency of red blood cell indices and fomulas for the differential diagnosis of the thalassemia trait (TT) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) for children in Shenzhen area of Guangdong Province in China. METHODS: A total of 849 child patients from Shenzhen were enrolled, including 536 cases of TT and 313 cases of IDA. The sensitivity (SEN), specificity (SPE), positive predictive values (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and Youden's indices (YI) were analyzed using five red blood cell indices ï¼»including red blood cell count, average red blood cell volune(MCV), average amount of red blood cell hemoglobin(CMH), red blood hemoglobin cancentration(MCHC), red blood cell distribution width(RDW)ï¼½ and 10 red blood cell paramter formulas including Mentzer, Green and King, Srivastava, Ricerca, RDWI, Sirdah, Huber-Herklotz, Ehsani, Shine and Lal, and England and Fraser. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn. RESULTS: Green and King was the most reliable index, as it had the highest YI (63.7%) and area under ROC curve (AUC) (0.875), the SEN and SPE was 82.5% and 81.2%. The YI, SEN, SPE, and AUC for RDWI were 62.8%, 79.1%, 83.7%, and 0.870, respectively. CONCLUSION: The formulas of Green and King and RDWI can be used for the differential diagnosis of TT and IDA, suitable for chidren in Shenzhen, China.

Clinical application of entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films in patients with intestinal neuronal dysplasia type B.

OBJECTIVE: To report and evaluate the application of entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films in the diagnosis of patients with intestinal neuronal dysplasia type B (IND type B). METHODS: Thirty-six patients with symptoms of long-standing constipation were enrolled in this study. The study took place at the Department of General Surgery, Xiangyang Central Hospital, Hubei Province, China from July 2007 to October 2012. All of them had already been subjected to the tests of barium enema and anorectal manometry and were suspected to be IND type B, but were not confirmed by mucous membrane acetylcholinesterase determination. All underwent the entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films. The data was collected and then analyzed retrospectively. RESULTS: After entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films, 30 out of 36 cases in this group were diagnosed with intestinal neuronal diseases, and then were treated with appropriate surgical treatment. The postoperative pathological diagnosis was IND type B. The other 6 patients in this group still could not be diagnosed explicitly after the test; thus, we treated them with conservative treatment. CONCLUSION: Entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films has the advantage of being able to test the gastrointestinal transfer capabilities and to find physiological and pathological changes simultaneously. It could provide important proof for the diagnosis of patients with intestinal neuronal dysplasia type B.

[Quantification of fish starvation treatments and randomization test for the contribution rates of treatment factors by BP network].

In this paper, four feeding treatments including continuous feeding (SR00), recycling of 2 days starvation and 2 days refeeding (SR22), recycling of 7 days starvation and 2 days refeeding (SR72), and recycling of 7 days starvation and 7 days refeeding (SR77) were designed, and the feeding treatments were quantified as two treatment factors, i. e., starvation stress (SS) and starvation frequency (CF). Combining these two factors with the factors dry matter feed intake (FI), body weight (BW), water temperature (TE), water salinity (SA), water pH (PH) and growth time (GT), three BP artificial neural networks were constructed to predict the weight gain (WG), specific growth rate (SGR), and feed conversion ratio (FCR) of Lateolabrax japonicus, respectively. The results showed that the WG, SGR and FCR of L. japonicus were significantly affected by different feeding treatments. Throughout a 8-week trial, the WG and SGR of starved fish couldn't catch up to those of control fish. Except for SR72 group whose FCR was markedly higher than that of control group, no differences in FCR were observed between control group and experimental groups SR22 and SR77. The study also indicated that artificial neural network could well predict WG and SGR, but was unavailable for FCR. Among the eight factors, FI, SS, CF and GT had significant contributions to both WG and SGR. Furthermore, WG and SGR were predominantly dependent on FI and SS, respectively. Based on 4999 randomizations, the contribution rate of the treatment factors (including related FI) to WG and SGR was 64.9% and 79.7% , respectively.